Authors: Kate Elliott
Chryse shivered. “Let’s go back.”
They walked for a time before they spoke again.
“Do you think,” asked Chryse finally, “that a treasure hidden in such a place as that, whatever it proved to be, is a safe thing to possess?”
Sanjay did not need to reply for her to know his answer.
At the laborers’ camp, no one seemed to have noticed their defection. Chryse went to stand by the musicians; soon enough one offered her his extra hornpipe, and she played with them for the rest of the evening while, under the light of dim lanterns, Sanjay sketched, on paper borrowed from Thomas Southern, a rendering of the city he had seen, one quite at odds with the professor’s interpretation of the ruins.
The weeks passed. Julian waited for a letter, some message, from his great-aunt, but none came. In fact, all correspondence from Heffield ceased. Colonel Whitmore’s regiment remained encamped some fifteen miles away, but even Kate’s infrequent visits there stopped as the weather turned more and more to rain and blustery winds.
Autumn grew towards winter, but still the earl refused to call a halt to the dig for the season. At last, under pressure even from Professor Farr, whose enthusiasm was daunted only by his arthritis, the earl agreed to set a date for departure. He settled on St. Maretha’s March, the church holy day commemorating the legendary knight’s rescue of a thousand doomed children from a valley cursed by the Daughter with the Black Death.
The morning of Marching Eve dawned clear and still. The laborers from Heffield set off in a compact train just after sunrise. Most of the local workers had gone the day before; a handful remained—Mistress Cook and four or five brawny lads to take down the expeditionary tents, as well as the four coachmen and grooms for the trip back. The day passed quickly to afternoon as the members of the earl’s party readied themselves to leave the next morning.
“It is cold.” Chryse emphasized each word as she rubbed her hands together before attempting to latch the handles on her trunk. “There. Everything is packed. Now we have time to walk over the whole site in what’s left of the day—a sort of farewell.” She blew on her hands and pulled on a pair of dark gloves.
Sanjay sat at the table, bare now of its usual scattering of papers. He flipped through his last sketchbook; the others had been packed away together with their clothing and sundry goods. “Farewell? We haven’t found anything Madame Sosostris would call a treasure, my love. And neither has the earl. We may very well be back here next spring.
She sat down on the trunk. “You say neither we nor the earl has. What about Professor Farr?” She answered herself before he could reply. “I suppose this place is treasure enough for him. The excavations, the frescos, the catalog of glyphs Maretha has collected. He can write monographs for years just on what we’ve done this past season. And next year—”
She broke off at the sound of shouting. They rose together and went out. Kate stood in the cleared space between the tents, her audience Julian, Maretha, and Thomas Southern. Mog and Pin jumped up and down behind her.
“It’s incredible!” In her excitement she was gesticulating wildly. “The central stairwell is completely excavated—clear, all the way down. I went down as far as I could, but without a lantern—” She shrugged eloquently. “I was there yesterday and I know it was only cleared to the seventh step. I just walked there today with the children and—” She broke off. “Where is Lucias?” Her voice was uncharacteristically sharp.
“I’m here.” He appeared from around the corner of Julian’s tent, looking a little embarrassed.
“I
told
you not to go out of sight,” snapped Kate. “Do I have to remind you again that on every one of the old holidays someone has attempted to murder you?”
“They didn’t Harvest Fair.”
“Only because you were in our sight every second of the day. Bloody hell!”
“I thought tomorrow was the holiday,” said Sanjay as he and Chryse joined the circle.
“It’s a churchday,” explained Maretha. “After—” She blushed a little. “—after St. Maretha. But isn’t Marching Day Eve really one of the ancient holydays disguised?”
“I know which one,” said Chryse abruptly. “Lord Death’s Progress. You remember the card, Sanjay. Death riding a fine horse with a procession of the—ah—unfortunate trailing behind.”
“Oh, yes. I remember that one. Kate is right, Lucias. You’d better stick with one of us.”
Lucias paled and moved to stand close to Kate.
“You found the treasure?” Charity’s soft voice barely stirred the air. She had pushed aside the entrance to her tent and stood under the awning so wrapped in clothes and cloak that she had no shape at all.
“Lady bless us,” said Kate. “What if the treasure is down there?”
“Let’s go look! Let’s go look!” shrieked Mog and Pin.
Maretha turned to Thomas Southern. “Thomas, we’ll need lanterns besides those we have here. Are any of the wagons still here?”
He nodded. “Some of the local lads are coming back up tonight to drive them out in the morning. I can get half a dozen more, I believe.” He glanced at Charity as she came forward. She had developed an awkward walk, a little off-balance: the result, she had told Chryse, of back pain. “Will you need assistance, Miss Farr?” he asked in his most reserved voice, but even as he said it, she walked past him to Julian.
“Perhaps you would escort me, Lord Vole?” The full rosiness of her cheeks belied the lassitude of her voice. Julian bowed and offered her his arm. Southern left to get the lanterns.
They went as a procession to the central excavation: Kate and the children first; Lucias next, alone, frowning like an angel perplexed by some high moral question; Chryse and Sanjay, thoughtful; Julian with Charity; and Maretha last of all, her face expressionless as she walked with a lantern in one hand and a journal in the other.
Southern had arrived before them, with a number of lanterns. With him stood Professor Farr: he had lit one of the lanterns and was about to descend. As the others hurried up to crowd around the stairwell, they saw another light below, growing smaller. It had a strange wild quality to it that was clearly magical in source.
“Just following the earl down,” said the professor.
“Wait a moment, Father. I’ll go with you.”
Below, the flickering light vanished. Maretha and the professor started down as the rest hurriedly lit lanterns and went singly behind them, all except Charity, who kept hold of Julian’s arm. Thomas Southern descended last, his lips set tight as if only by keeping them closed could he prevent himself from delivering a sharp rebuke.
Inconstant figures accompanied them in the dimness, following along the walls, suggestions of shapes and long-forgotten events rubbed away by centuries of elemental erosion. Chryse, going down one tentative step at a time, was halted more than once by Sanjay’s back as he stopped to peer at the indistinct tracery of lines along the wall. Ahead, the excited chattering of Mog and Pin reverberated up and down the stairwell. Gloom and rock closed in above, and abruptly the floor was level and they ducked under a low lintel and came into a small, square room.
A kind of collective gasp caught in their throats. Thomas Southern stopped in the lintel opening and crossed himself.
The frescos in the room were brilliant, even by lantern glow, beautiful in execution, but macabre in detail. Directly opposite the door a fine horse walked, golden and proud, and on its back sat a fine, golden-haired man dressed in some ancient costume, heavy sword in one hand, the other cupped around a shimmering ball of light, or fire. A beautiful young woman, sorrow etched on her face, babe at her breast, walked alongside, holding onto the fine hem of his trailing robe. Behind her another figure walked, and another, each detailed, each progressively closer to death, and then passing beyond it, deteriorating, rotting, wasted to bone, until the final figure, as in an unending circle, walking just in front of the horse, was a capering, empty-eyed skeleton.
And in the center of the room, on a thin pillar of white stone, stood a cup, a golden chalice. It had no decoration whatsoever, but from it emanated a force that both attracted and repelled the eye.
“The treasure,” whispered Charity, gaze locked on the cup.
Chryse, too, stared at it, just as fascinated, sure that at any moment the plain burnished gold of its surface would shift to reveal in simple patterns the secret of the city. Sanjay nudged her.
“Almost too like to be coincidence,” he said in an undertone into her ear. The warmth of his breath on her skin broke her from her hypnotized stare. She followed the touch of his arm to look beyond the golden cup.
The earl stood just below the figure of Lord Death. In the light his hair shone like the gold of the chalice, and in one hand, extended before him, he cupped a shimmering ball of sorcerous fire. He could just have dismounted from the fine horse painted on the wall behind him. His gaze, unlike almost everyone else’s, was not on the cup. Instead, he watched Maretha as she slowly circled the room, lantern lifted high to illuminate as much of the detail of the frescos as possible. His gaze could have been death’s, it was so piercing.
Then she reached the end of the procession and passed back by her husband to stand before the chalice. Professor Farr was scribbling hasty notes in the journal she had bought for him.
“Lift it up for me, Maretha,” he said in a distracted tone. “I need to see if there is any mark at its base.”
She extended her hand and touched the cup.
Every light in the little room vanished. Someone swore. It was so black that Chryse could not discern her own hand in front of her face until her breath brushed it.
A soft grating echoed in the chamber, like the scraping of stone. Laughter sounded, as if from the walls, from the very air, from the depths, but it was neither crazed nor mocking; it was the laughter of young women sharing sweet secrets about their admirers.
Then a snap, like the first spark of fire, and light blossomed at the earl’s hands, casting their shadows high on the painted walls. Mog and Pin yelped with fear and cast themselves on Julian.
“Where is Maretha?” asked Sanjay sharply.
“She couldn’t have come past me,” said Southern from his stand in the doorway. “There isn’t room, and I didn’t move.”
“Damnation.” The earl’s tone fairly dripped fury. Fire blazed in his hands. Maretha was gone. “I
knew
there was another level.” He moved so abruptly that no one could react until it was too late. “She will be mine,” he said, and he charged out past Thomas Southern and raced up the stairs, plunging the room into darkness again.
“Bloody hell,” said Kate. “I don’t know what happened to her, but we’d better find her before he does. Got any matches?”
Julian felt Charity remove her hand from his arm and move away from him. Cloth rustled against cloth. Chryse grabbed for Sanjay, found his belt, and gripped there. She started violently when a hand touched her back, relaxed when Lucias breathed her name and huddled in under her arm. Professor Farr was mumbling indistinguishably. A match snapped and hissed, and a second later Thomas Southern’s lantern flared to life.
“Hell in a basket,” said Kate in the gloom. “The treasure is gone, too.”
Sanjay’s lantern flickered and caught. In the double light the white pillar could be seen; there was no cup. It might as well have been an apparition that had dissolved into the air.
“I feel ill,” said Charity abruptly. She was hunched forward next to the pillar, arms crossed over her abdomen. Sanjay and Thomas Southern stepped forward at the same moment. There was an instant’s hesitation, and then Southern turned and retreated up the steps, his lantern held as a beacon for the rest, while Sanjay went to aid her.
“Wasn’t Maretha the one who—” Chryse was surprised to discover that her voice was unsteady. “—who didn’t believe that the city itself had magic?”
“She can’t simply have vanished,” said Julian. “There’s got to be another way down.”
“Can’t she?” muttered Kate. “And why Maretha? Was it something to do with the cup?” She shook her head. “This is pointless, Julian. If this stairwell was miraculously cleared out, the others might be, too.” She had gotten her lantern lit and now scoured the floor and walls for some sign of a seam. “We’ll never find anything here. I feel sure of it.”
“Then we’d better go,” said Chryse. “I don’t like the way the earl ran out of here any better than you do.”
Lucias shrank away from her, into the center of the glow generated by Kate’s lantern. His eyes were wide, half dazed. “‘The labyrinth.’” His voice held fear and the hypnotic dullness of one reciting at the behest of some stronger will. “‘The hunter seeks the labyrinth as well.’” He backed up, away from a sight the others could not see. Kate put out a hand, touched him, and he jerked as if he had been shot and shuddered and began to cry. “Don’t go,” he muttered under his ragged sobs. “Don’t go there.”
“Something very strange—” murmured Kate, holding him against her with one arm. She looked at the others as if for confirmation.
“We don’t have any choice,” said Chryse. “We have to find Maretha. And we’ll have to take the children.”
“I’ve got to take Charity back to camp,” said Sanjay. Charity was leaning against him; she moaned and tightened her grip around her belly.
Julian rose. Mog and Pin clung each to one of his legs. “Kate. You and I and those three can go to the western entrance, beyond the evening palace—”
“Sanjay and I will go to the western stairwell,” interrupted Chryse. “It’s too hard a climb for the children. You go to the east.”
Julian nodded.
“I’ll meet you there,” Sanjay said to his wife. “And I’ll bring more lanterns. We’ll leave Thomas at camp—he’ll have to handle any problems with the workers who are left.”
“I say.” Professor Farr looked up from the scribbled notes in his journal. “Where did the chalice get to? Did Maretha take it back to the tent for cataloging and packing?” He slipped his pen into his coat pocket and closed the journal. “Always anticipating me, that child. Always has.” He harrumphed once or twice, clearing his throat, and walked back to the stairs. “I trust you are all coming,” he continued as he began to climb. “It must be about suppertime.”