Stop that!
“Oh, good Goddess.” The words were a breath of shock, and the teacher stared.
At the hall’s far end, hung from the very last two pillars, were two beautiful silk hangings, torn now and their colours fading. They flanked the remnant of the doorway that led out to the promenade. In the functionality of the crafthouse, they seemed out of place, incongruous.
Amethea was trembling, but this time it was not with fear. Her face was hot and she pressed her cold hands to her cheeks.
The two women crept closer.
The silks had been painted, delicate and flawless. Every tone of flesh and facial expression was evocative, enchanting, the colours still rich. The images looked as though they would come to life, would pull themselves free from the silk to dance across the shattered hallway.
Amethea’s heart was hammering, choking her.
One hanging bore the image of a lounging woman, indulgent and soft and full-fleshed, her blue-black hair spread out like nightfall. She was lusciously naked, one hand between her thighs; in the other, a goblet the size of her head.
The other hanging bore a man, scholarly and slender, his dark hair shorn short and his garments woven with pattern and wealth. One eye socket was empty, but his self-assurance was tangible and the remaining eye was alight with humour. In spite of his youth, Amethea could see a hunger in him - in his hands, in the straight line of his mouth - the hanging seemed almost to burn with it.
Something about him - his stance and attitude - reminded her of Maugrim.
Her temples pounding, her face burning, Amethea looked at her boots. For a moment, the image of the man’s single eye was all she could see - it felt as though it was burning into her mind.
Little priestess.
Triq punched her. Hard enough to make her jump. She shook herself and looked back at the images.
The pictures were painted, not woven. They bore no craftmark, no evidence of their artist. The silk, too, was anonymous - there were no anomalies in its smoothness or stitching that would tell them anything about its origin. By the style, they’d been crafted within the last twenty or thirty returns, but the vibrancy of their colours suggested that they had not been hung for that long.
So had they been hung
after
the hall had been damaged?
For a long moment, both women stood and stared, half-distracted and half-baffled - then Triqueta suddenly nudged Amethea’s shoulder and pointed, “It’s moving.”
Her voice was soft as sand.
“What’s moving?”
“The wind’s wrong,” Triq said. “Can’t you feel it? The inside of the building is warmer than the outside, but the wind’s going
that
way.” She nodded. “Our lady friend here seems to have a mind of her own.”
“Not just a mind.”
“Stop it, I’m serious.” A poke in the ribs. “I reckon we might find the workshop - it’s still open. Somewhere down there.”
“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘secret door’...”
“Secret, my arse. Keep an eye out, will you, this shouldn’t be too hard...”
It wasn’t.
The promenade was pillared like hospice cloisters. Between two pillars a stone arch framed a doorway, a mouth onto cold, worn stone steps, littered with leaves and debris.
From somewhere close by came air, a breath like alchemy, rank and thick with scents - herbal and medicinal, old sweat, the tang of rotted flesh.
Amethea’s laughter was gone now.
They exchanged a look, then carefully, quietly, crept forwards to peer into the building’s broken throat.
Silence.
Close to the hole, the smells were stronger and mingled with them now was the odd stench of scaled flesh - something Amethea didn’t recognise. Triq wrinked her nose and said softly, “Mwenar. Desert creature. Predator, six-limbed, ’bout so high.” She held a hand to mid-thigh, then caught Amethea’s eye. “And very lost.”
Neither of them moved.
There was nothing down there, no motion. In the dim glow of a long-faded rocklight they could see a smooth, grey stone floor. Close to the doorway, it was still scattered with rubble; further in, it was as smooth as if it had been...
...as if it had been in use.
Amethea gripped her little belt-knife more tightly, and wished she was Redlock.
They listened.
Then Triq said, “Stay here, watch the door. If anything moves that isn’t me, caw like an aperios or something and we’ll get the rhez out of here.”
“You’re not going down there alone.”
“Thea, I love you, but you’re dead noisy.” Triq grinned. “Watch the door and count to three thousand. If I’m not back, go tell Nivvy the monsters ate me.”
Monsters...
“Triq...” Something in Amethea knew that the Banned woman’s motives were all wrong; this was all about her age, her capabilities. “Triq, don’t...”
But she’d already gone.
And the monsters crowded in from the corners of Amethea’s mind.
* * *
The workshop was a series of small store rooms and records rooms, all of them empty. Between her fingers, Triq’s skin itched enough to drive her loco, but the air was still, and the smell was strong. There were remnants scattered in dust on the floors - a scrap of cloth, an old sack, a bradawl with its fibre-tip broken.
The smell teased as if it coaxed Triqueta on. It was a desert smell; it didn’t belong here, not in this cold stone, in all this emptiness. It smelled out of place, it smelled
wrong.
Triq wondered how long this crafthouse had been abandoned. A master of this quality was the centre of his own small community, even his incoming trading was tightly supervised by the Cartel. The Cartel gave him his records-keepers, his workers and distributors, his traders and merchants that came straight to his home - he had his own tithes, his own neighbourhood and politics and rivalries and tales. Why this building should be hollowed out like this, that little community bereft -
The air changed.
It was larger, colder. It raised chillflesh down her arms. The smell grew suddenly, sharply stronger as if a doorway had opened, or a barrier had come down.
She paused, listened. She dropped back against the wall, blades in hand. Her blood now alight, alive with anticipation.
I can still do this!
Carefully, she eased forwards.
And then she understood why they were here.
* * *
A small sound made Amethea turn.
There was a man in the empty hall with her, standing suddenly close upon the haphazard rockpile of masonry. He was a slight, slim figure, pale haired and weaponless - yet he looked as if he could raise his arms and call lightning from the very sky.
His presence was close; it was tiny, and massive.
His presence was wrong.
Her stomach curled in on itself, knotting with fear. The monsters at the corners of her vision had withdrawn, but they seemed to be somehow
waiting...
Morning sunlight slanted through the broken roof, pale stripes that lit the hallway in glow-perfect slants. One of them angled down to the rubble and touched the man like a benediction.
Amethea was backing away, her breath balled in her throat and choking her. Now, she could see that his clothing was worn, crusted, torn and stained; his skin was darkened somehow, as though something grew within it, within
him.
What flesh remained seemed to have caved in upon itself. His face was grown with creeper, in his mouth, in his eyes.
The lucid part of her mind told her to scream for Triqueta to help her, but she gagged, was almost sick.
The man was pale, blotched with lichen - moss grew from his ears and jaw. There was need in him, a ravening; a desperate hunger that made her quail from the passion of it. And there was such loss that she would have pitied him, despite her fear.
Once, Amethea would have trusted the World Goddess Cedetine to come to her aid, to give her strength to understand this madness, to help. But she had seen so much, too much...
The monsters crouched, grinning.
Stop that!
The man’s head turned, his senses fixed on her, seemed to focus. The need sharpened, somehow became more wheedling, almost as if he sought to coax her. He started to move, stumbling as he came higher up the shattered pile.
The snarling beasts, broken under his feet, did not move.
Amethea’s fear threatened to suffocate her, to shove her screaming heart right out through her chest. One hand tightened on her ridiculous little belt-knife. She half-crouched, looked for something to throw.
Somehow, he reminded her of the sick feel of the craftmaster’s knife.
* * *
Triqueta had found the main workspace. It was very dry, very cold, and it
stank
of mwenar.
She had paused on its outermost edge, watching inwards and trying to follow the long stripes of dying rocklight. Pillars were wreathed in shadows and shelving marched away into the distance, their ranks interrupted by still-full sacks that lurked silent as if to trip them up.
But the sacks no longer contained terhnwood fibres.
Triq moved like a figment from pillar to pillar, touching nothing, glancing at the labels on jars and pots - long names she didn’t understand.
In places the pillars stood guard over tables decorated with inexplicable contraptions, instruments that stood patient as if awaiting skilled hands. Wicker cages along one wall contained creatures, long mummified by the dryness of the air. A huge, cold fireplace lay in one wall, a blackened stone chimney piece leading to the hole above it. Something else might have been a crucible-oven, also cold.
It was absolutely deserted.
But if this place was abandoned, Triq asked herself, why did she feel as though she was being
watched
?
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
Responding to her instincts, she put her back to the chill, smooth stone of the nearest pillar, and looked around her, scanning for signs of movement. In front of her was one of the long tables, stretching between the pillars and towards the far wall. Underneath her boots, the flag floor was hard.
New weeds grew in the cracks, coiling colourless with the absence of the sun.
For some reason, their presence made her nervous.
She continued to scan.
Ahead of her somewhere there was rocklight, casting long streaks of shadow back from the pillars, layers of loco darkness that offered both cover and nightmare...
Then the light was gone.
* * *
The eyeless man was coming towards her.
His overgrown mouth was open, sucking in air as if he sought to find her by her very breath. His own breath steamed like plant life rotting on a hot day. Her first instinct was to stand still, silent, in the hope that he would lose her and drift away...
...but his need was too strong.
Still crouched, she got her hand on a decent sized chunk of roof, threw it, threw another. She was a good shot - one hit his shoulder and rocked him, the other caught him smack in the forehead and he lost his footing and toppled, skidded down the back of the heap.
Got you! Now just you stay -
Somehow, she couldn’t even muster surprise when he got up again.
* * *
In the basement, Triq stayed stock-still. Ghosts of light kept the darkness limited to many shades of grey, but it was more distracting than helpful. Still there was no sound.
Trying not to think about the colourless weeds, she shut her eyes. Resisted the urge to stamp her feet.
Slowly, she became aware of a new smell - something under the saturating smell of mwenar. It was a smell of gangrene, of rotting herbs and death; a sweet, cloying smell that was oddly familiar.
Then the noise began.
* * *
Amethea was no warrior - but she did have a good, solid helping of sense. As the thing came again to the top of the pile, its eyes grown over, its feet skidding now, the wound in its forehead dark but unbleeding, she swallowed the inevitable mouthful of fear and tried to think.
Her mouth tasted like sand, like rock-dirt and horror.
How did she stop this thing?
It was closer now, skidding down the near side of the pile, corners of masonry tilting under its feet and making it lurch, awkward and angled. Its eyes were cold, its mouth still open and she could see the faint steam of hot, swift breath in the chill, bright air.
Was it trying to speak?
Help me.
Was it trying to say something?
Help me.
Frankly, Amethea decided, that was more than enough. Her hand closing around the biggest piece of stone she could find, she backed to the stairway and gave her best impression of a cawing aperios.
They were getting out of here. Whatever this was, Nivvy had a full quota of soldiers and Range Patrols and other armed and dangerous things - and this was absolutely
their
problem.
* * *
The voice that sounded almost in her ear made Triqueta slash a deadly response.
“Surprise.” Ecko’s scratchy tones ripped into the darkness and her blades were cutting from reflex alone. He cackled. “An’ besides, you missed.”
What the rhez...?
Triq had no time to recover from the shock, to even formulate the question. The darkness was shattered by another noise, a noise that made her shudder to the soles of her soft desert boots.
The noise was a hiss, a cold, wet, open-mouthed hiss of pure hate. It was a distance away, somewhere at the end of the long gap between table and wall.
And she had no idea what’d made it.
“Holy
shit,”
Ecko said softly. He almost sounded awed.
The chilling hiss sounded again.
Triq’s hands tightened on her blades. She turned her head, trying to orient on the sound.
Then, through the darkness, another noise reached her, the noise of something heavy dragging itself across the floor. The smell of mwenar was rising, but more than that - there was the herb smell, the smell of thick moss and wet lichen, and a rich, familiar scent that was unmistakably female.