Dawn of the Ice Bear (10 page)

But he kept his hand on the hilt of his knife and Tarawa's back in front of him, just in case . . .

IN THIS CHAMBER, Shehkmi al Nasir allowed himself physical comfort. A fireplace warded off winter's chill. In the rare event that it grew warm, so far below the surface, there were fans that could be operated by slaves tugging on cords. There were soft, padded couches on which he could nap or, if he preferred, be entertained by one of his more attractive servants. He kept casks of fine wine down here. It was his retreat from the demands the rest of his life placed on him—the constant quest for more and deeper wisdom, the struggle to increase his power and influence throughout the shadowy reaches of the hierarchy of Set.

So he waited, lounging in a pillowed corner with a cloud of incense overhanging the room, for the delivery of the Pictish crown. The power inherent in that artifact would, he believed, give him the means to overturn the balance that existed. Presently he heard the rasp of slippered feet in the corridor. His acolytes, bringing him the prize, which he had wrested right out from under the nose of his Aquilonian “friend” Kanilla Rey. Suppressing a smile, he sat up straight until they entered the chamber, then rose to meet them.

“Do you have it?” he asked. He already knew the answer. But tradition dictated certain rules be followed.

“We have it,” the three acolytes intoned together. They wore matching hooded robes. Their heads were all shorn under their hoods. They had dark eyes and dusky skin. They might have been three slightly different versions of the same man. Which was the point—by eliminating individual characteristics, they were able to focus on their servitude to Set.

And, of course, to Shehkmi al Nasir.

He held both hands out toward a small wooden table. The two acolytes in front stepped to the sides, allowing the one behind, carrying an inlaid box, to come forward. He put the box down on the table and removed the lid.

The crown inside was even less impressive than al Nasir had expected.

It was undeniably ancient. A collection of small bones, most of which looked human but might also have included the bones of a bear's paw. Some of them had been joined with strips of flesh originally, but at some point in the past bits of copper wire had reinforced it. Set into the circle of bones, jutting up from the crown, were enormous teeth that looked like a bear's. Surely no bear that size had ever walked the Earth, at least not within the memory of man. The ugly thing might have sat in some shop for decades, gathering dust. But the sorcerer knew that it had not.

When he picked it up from the box, he knew why.

His hands tingled, then his arms. Finally, his entire body felt charged, energized. The little crown radiated power. Now he allowed himself a smile. He had made the right decision, taking this powerful object away from Kanilla Rey and having it brought here. The Aquilonian wasn't a good enough magician to know how to use the crown properly, and al Nasir was certain that even if he could have figured it out, his goals would have been petty.

He held the crown for a few moments, then put it back into the box. It was only then, looking down on it, that he noticed what was wrong.

“It's missing teeth!” he shouted angrily. “Where are they?”

The acolytes were too frightened to answer in unison. The one who had borne the box said, “This is as we found it.”

“I sent you for the
whole
crown,” Shehkmi al Nasir raged. “Not
part
of it. Yes, it is a powerful artifact. But like this . . . its power is minimized, reduced. It is not whole. It is not what I commanded you to bring me.”

“We . . . we had no way to know,” the acolyte protested. “We had never seen it before, knew only that we were to bring you the crown that we discovered where you told us to look.”

Al Nasir knew the man spoke truth. But as powerful as the thing was now, whole it would have been far more so. He had not counted on pieces of it having been removed, leaving obvious, gaping holes where they had rested for eons unknown.

Fury built inside him, and it needed release. He performed a quick spell, so familiar to him that he had only to think it. In his right hand, a tiny ball of energy grew to the size of a fist. He held his hand up toward the acolyte who had spoken, and uttered a single word. The acolyte's face registered shock as his chest bulged, then fabric and flesh rent themselves. His heart burst from its enclosure and flew to al Nasir's outstretched hand, where it was quickly consumed by the pulsating energy there. When al Nasir closed his hand, heart and energy ball had both vanished.

“Such is the price of failure,” he said. The two remaining acolytes looked at the floor, rather than at the fallen corpse of their comrade or at their master. “Now go. Leave me. I would find those missing teeth, and I need privacy for that task.”

The acolytes backed out of the chamber as fast as they could, and within moments al Nasir could hear them hurtling headlong up the corridor away from him. They would have second thoughts about their service, perhaps. But if they stayed on, they would be careful never to fail their master again.

 

 

“MISSING TEETH?” KRAL whispered. They stood behind a screened-off door through which they could just barely see what was happening in the chamber beyond. Alanya had been afraid that he could see them, but Tarawa had assured them that the screen was positioned in such a way as to keep the door invisible to anyone in the room, since al Nasir didn't want his acolytes or other visitors to know about the special entrance.

“Silence,” Tarawa replied, raising a warning hand. “Just wait . . .”

Moments later, Alanya saw what they were waiting for. With a last, furious glance at the crown, Shehkmi al Nasir stormed out of the chamber through an intricately carved door. The body of the slain acolyte lay where it had fallen.

“He never performs magic in that room,” Tarawa explained.

“Then how did he kill that man?” Mikelo wondered.

“Almost never. Not serious magic,” she elucidated. “Killing someone like that, for him, is as easy as breathing or swallowing for you and me. But to find what happened to any missing teeth from that crown will require a more intense effort. He has a special room for that, with all of his magical equipment and tools in it. This is more a place for reflection or relaxation.”

“But . . . he left the crown sitting there!” Kral pointed out.

“He must not need it for the spell he plans,” Tarawa reasoned.

“Does anything prevent us from going in and taking it now?”

“If it doesn't matter that it is not complete,” she answered.

“It does,” Kral said. “We need the whole thing, ultimately. But I doubt the missing teeth are here in Stygia. Better to take what we can now and find the rest ourselves.”

Frustration caused Alanya to clench her fists so hard that her fingernails dug into her palms. To have come so close to the prize they sought, and now this!

She tried to remember in whose hands the crown had been. It must have been whole in its cavern beneath the Bear Clan's village, she reasoned. Then Uncle Lupinius had stolen it. He had carried it with him to Tarantia, where he'd taken refuge in the home of her late father. A thief had stolen the crown from him, then the Stygians, according to Conor, had taken it from the thief. If they didn't have all the teeth, then it must have been the thief who took them.

Him, or . . .

“Conor!”

“The Cimmerian you hired?” Kral asked. “What about him?”

“We should have known better than to trust that lout,” she said. “He might have taken them from the thief who stole the crown from our uncle. At the very least, he would have been among those who had access to them, and he never mentioned them to us.”

“You could be right,” Kral said. “That thief had the crown for long enough to have removed some. If Conor took them . . . Is he still in Tarantia?”

“He disappeared before we left,” Donial said. “No doubt headed home to Cimmeria. That's what he said he was planning. He never did care for civilized life.”

“That's the one thing we share, then,” Kral said. “But we tarry too long. Tarawa, open the door.”

She did so. Kral passed through, nervously entering the wizard's chamber. Nothing stopped him, however, and within seconds he was back at the door with the crown's container in his hands. “We'll transfer it to something less showy after we get out of here,” he said. “Now, Tarawa, how fast can we leave this place?”

Alanya had never heard more beautiful words in her life. Leaving the sorcerer's den seemed like the best idea a human mind had ever conceived. Tarawa hoisted her torch high and led the way back up the same tunnels that had brought them here, but faster, with less regard for stealth. Kral followed, carrying the crown in its container, then Alanya and Mikelo, with Donial in the rear. With every step toward the surface, Alanya felt her spirits rising.

Coming across Gorian's body brought her a momentary panic, but they made it through that intersection with no trouble. Farther along, Tarawa's torch illuminated the bodies of the other mercenaries. None of them had made it out, it seemed.

“If they could not gain the exit, how will we?” Mikelo asked anxiously. “They had not even stolen anything from al Nasir.”

Tarawa hesitated to answer, and her uncertainty sent fear through Alanya like a bolt of lightning. “I know not,” she admitted. “Unless it is as Kral suggested, that because I am known here, the traps that lie in wait for others allow us passage.”

“I should not like to rely on that,” Kral said. “But I see little choice.”

“Let's not tarry then,” Donial urged. “Before whatever force controls them changes its mind.”

Tarawa seemed to agree with him. She swallowed hard and stepped around the bodies scattered on the passageway floor with eyes wide, hands hooked into claws, as if they had tried to catch whatever had slain them.

Whether she was right or not, Alanya would never know. But nothing attacked them as they made their way up the narrow corridor. In less time than she would have believed possible they were back out into the cool night air of the desert. There were undoubtedly dangers yet to be encountered—the great snakes, for example, were certainly still on the hunt. But soon enough, the walls of al Nasir's compound were in sight, and Alanya felt that she could finally breathe again.

When they could see the gate through which they had entered, Mikelo broke into a sprint. Alanya tried to catch him, but missed, and dared not call out to him. Nothing interrupted his dash, though. Almost before the others could react, he had his hands on the gate's bolt and was drawing it open. But as she watched—and it could have been a trick of the faint moonlight painting the scene with its silvery glow, but she didn't think so—the bolt wriggled in his hands, lunged, and bit Mikelo's hand.

It had only been a snake for a second, maybe less. By the time the boy crumpled to the dirt, it was nothing more than a bolt again. They ran across the empty space to him, but he was dead when they reached him. Like the mercenaries inside, he had died with his eyes wide open, as if staring at something he would never see.

Tears sprang to Alanya's eyes. “Mikelo . . .” she said. “He should never have—”

“He died free,” Donial interrupted. “To him, that was the most important thing. Not to be a prisoner of those Argossean pirates anymore—that was all that mattered.”

“True enough,” Kral said. “You knew him best, of us, Donial. But that is what I believe, as well.”

Alanya dabbed at her cheek. “I suppose you're right,” she admitted. She was going to say more, but Tarawa had the gate open.

“Come,” she said. “We have spent enough time here and lost enough lives. When Shehkmi discovers his prize missing, he'll be furious. I would rather not be close by when he does.”

None could argue with her reasoning. Even the great snakes beyond the compound's walls held less fear for them than Shehkmi al Nasir's wrath. The relief Alanya felt at putting the place completely behind her overwhelmed even her sorrow at Mikelo's loss.

Still, as they returned to Tarawa's house through Kuthmet's night-shrouded lanes, she could not erase from her mind the image of that bolt turning into a quick-striking snake, and back again, as fast as the eye could follow.

And as she saw that, she wondered what kind of trouble they had taken on when they had decided to steal from Shehkmi al Nasir.

BACK IN TARAWA'S small house, Kral opened the box and took out the Teeth of the Ice Bear. The crown was not beautiful in itself, but he was surprisingly moved by the experience of holding it. It was a part of his history, his heritage as a son of the Bear Clan. He had never held the crown, had only seen it a couple of times, during rituals held in the Guardian's cave. But there was no mistaking it.

“We need to replace that fancy box,” he said. “Carrying that around would attract all manner of attention to it. Have you a sack or something, Tarawa?”

“I can probably find one,” she said.

“Good. Then we must figure out where to go and how to get there.”

“Cimmeria,” Donial reminded him. “We believe that's where Conor would have gone. I know he mentioned the name of his village.”

Alanya had screwed up her face. “Taern!” she burst out. “I have been trying to remember it ever since we found out the teeth were missing. If Conor had not boasted so about his status there, I would never have remembered.”

“Cimmeria is far from here,” Tarawa pointed out. “How will you travel?”