“The prophecy, Your Majesty?”
“Thank you, Pons, You remind us of what is truly important. And the fact that this Haplo knows of the prophecy is of monumental significance.”
“Forgive me, Majesty, but I fail to see—”
“Pons!” Kleitus came to stand in front of his minister. “Think! One comes through Death’s Gate who knows the prophecy. This means that the prophecy is known beyond.”
Light shown on the benighted chancellor. “Your Majesty!”
“This Patryn lord fears us, Pons,” Kleitus said softly, eyes gazing far away, to worlds he had seen only in his mind. “With our necromancy, we have become the most powerful Sartan who have ever lived. That is why he has sent his spies to learn our secrets, to disrupt our world. I see him, waiting for his spies to return. And he will wait in vain!”
“Spies plural. I assume that Your Majesty refers to the other man, the Sartan who destroyed the dead. May I respectfully remind you, Sire, that this man is a Sartan. He is one of us.”
“Is he? Destroying our dead? No, if he is a Sartan, he is one of us turned to evil. It is likely that, over the centuries, the Patryns have corrupted our people. But not us. They will not corrupt us. We must have that Sartan. We must learn how he performed his magic.”
“As I told you before, Sire, he did not use a rune structure that I recognized—”
“Your skills are limited, Pons. You are not a necromancer.”
“True, Sire.” The chancellor admitted this lack quite humbly. Pons knew of and was confident in his own particular area of expertise—how to make himself indispensable to his ruler.
“This Sartan’s magic could prove to be a significant threat. We must know what he did to the corpse that ended its ‘life.’”
“Undoubtedly, Sire, but if he is with the earl, capturing this Sartan may prove difficult—”
“Precisely why we will not attempt it. Nor will ‘capture’ be necessary. The duke and duchess are coming to rescue the prince, are they not?”
“According to Tomas, their plans are moving forward.”
“Then, this Sartan we want will come with them.”
“To rescue the prince? Why should he?”
“No, Pons. He will come to rescue his Patryn friend—who, by that time, will be dying.”
29
The next cycle, the conspirators planned their move to the city, to the house of Tomas. They would have no difficulty slipping into Necropolis under the cover of the slumber hours. Only one main gate led into the city and it was guarded by the dead. But, being a network of tunnels and caves, Necropolis had any number of other entrances and exits, too numerous for guards to be posted at each, particularly because there was usually no enemy to guard against.
“But now there is an enemy,” said Jera. “Perhaps the dynast will order all the ‘rat holes’ stopped up.”
But Tomas was confident that the dynast would not have issued such an order; the enemy was, after all, on the other side of the Fire Sea. Jera appeared dubious, but Jonathan reminded her that their friend Tomas stood high in the dynast’s regard and was extremely knowledgeable concerning His Majesty’s way of thinking. At length all agreed that they would sneak into the city through the rat holes. But what were they to do with the dog?
“We could leave him here,” suggested Jera, eyeing the animal thoughtfully.
“I’m afraid the animal wouldn’t stay,” Alfred returned.
“He’s got a point,” Jonathan said in an undertone to his wife. “The dog wouldn’t even stay dead!”
“Well, we can’t let it be seen. Few in Necropolis are likely to pay any attention to us, but some zealous citizen would report a beast inside the city walls in a moment!”
Alfred could have told them they needn’t have worried. The dog could be tossed into any number of boiling hot mud pits. It could be hauled off by any number of guards, locked into any number of cages, and, as long as Haplo lived, the dog would, sooner or later, turn up again. The Sartan didn’t know quite how to put this into words, however. He let the discussion continue until it became obvious that their solution was to leave both him and the dog behind.
The old earl was in favor of this plan. “I’ve seen corpses dead fifty years who got around with less likelihood of falling apart!” he said to his daughter testily.
Moments before, Alfred had nearly broken his neck tumbling down a staircase.
“You’d be much safer here, Alfred,” added Jera. “Not that smuggling the prince out of Necropolis will be all that dangerous, but still—”
“I’m coming,” Alfred insisted stubbornly. To his surprise, he had an ardent supporter in Tomas.
“I agree with you, sir,” the young man said heartily. “You should definitely be one of us.” He drew Jera to one side, whispered something to her. The woman’s shrewd eyes gazed at Alfred intently, much to his discomfiture.
“Yes, perhaps you’re right.”
She had a talk with her father. Alfred listened closely, picked out a few threads of conversation.
“Shouldn’t leave him here ... chance dynast’s troops ... remember what I told you I saw ... the dead dying.”
“Very well!” stated the old man disagreeably. “But you’re not planning to take him into the palace, are you? He’d go bumbling into something and that’d be the end of us!”
“No, no,” soothed Jera. “But what,” she added with a sigh, “do we do about the dog?”
In the end, they decided to simply take their chances. As Tomas pointed out, they were entering the city during the slumber hours and the odds of meeting any living citizens who were likely to protest against a beast inside the city walls were slim.
They traveled the backroads of Old Provinces, and reached Necropolis during the deepest of the slumber hours. The main highway leading into the city was deserted. The city walls stood dark and silent. The gas lamps had been dimmed. The only light was a lambent glow shining redly from the distant Fire Sea. Dismounting from the carriage, they followed Tomas to what appeared to be a hole burrowing beneath the cavern wall. All the citizenry knew about the rat holes, as they were called, and used them because they were more convenient than entering by the main gate and trying to move through the congested tunnel streets.
“How does the dynast plan to defend these entrances against an invading army?” Jera whispered, ducking her head to walk beneath a glistening wet cavern ceiling.
“He must be wondering that himself,” said Tomas, with a slight smile. “Perhaps that’s why he’s shut up in his room with his maps and military advisers.”
“On the other hand, he may not be worried at all,” pointed out Jonathan, assisting Alfred to his feet. “Necropolis has never fallen in battle.”
“Wet pavement,” murmured Alfred in apology, cringing at the earl’s look of irritation. “Have there truly been that many wars fought among you?”
“Oh, yes,” Jonathan answered, quite cheerfully. They might have been discussing rune-bone games. “I’ll tell you about them later, if you’re interested. Now, we should probably keep our voices low. Which way, Tomas? I get rather muddled down here.”
Tomas indicated a direction, and the group entered a perfect maze of dark, intersecting tunnels that had Alfred completely lost and confused in a matter of moments. Glancing around, he saw the dog, trotting along behind.
The first streets, those nearest the wall, were empty. Narrow and dark, they wound among a confused jumble of shabby houses and small shops, built of blocks of black rock or carved out of lava formations.