“You must approach them, my friend.”
Cathan looked at the Lightbringer, saw only the light that mantled him, then peered up to the Forino’s entrance. The statues loomed; the one head seemed to be staring at him… seemed almost to smile. Every part of him wanted to refuse.
As he started shakily up the steps, he glanced at the surrounding trees and suppressed the thought that Revando’s shape-shifting magic must already be at work. He saw no sign of his confederates. He steadied himself and moved on. There was no way of knowing if all the elements of the plot were in place. Besides, he couldn’t take his eyes off the smiling statue for long. He reached the balcony and looked past the statues, trying to see through to the doors beyond.
The statue blinked.
He didn’t have enough time to reach for Ebonbane, for already, the creature had risen and leapt from its pedestal, moving with a grace that belied its stone form. It hit the ground to his left with a knee-weakening thump, then swiped its paw lazily, slamming him face-first to the ground. The breath left his lungs in a whoosh, and he lay gasping, clutching his side. Below, he heard the knights shouting, but what they were saying he couldn’t guess. The ringing in his ears made their words indistinguishable.
Wait, he tried to say. All he could manage was “Whh-hhh.”
“Thief!” the statue spoke, in a voice equal parts snarl and earthquake. He sensed it standing over him, felt its slit-eyed stare, its killing hunger. He wondered how long it had been since the creature had a foolish intruder to hunt. It pinned him down with one paw, then lifted another, baring obsidian claws. “None who live may enter this place! For all who dare, there is only one fate.”
Cathan couldn’t draw breath to speak. The pressure of the lioness’s weight upon him made white stars burst in his head. Its eyes blazed like blue suns, boring into him. There was no malice there, no cruelty; only deadly intent. It had been waiting here for centuries; this was its only purpose, the reason the clerics-and mages-had crafted it. Even now, worn by age, its arms long gone, it clung to its responsibility. The stars in Cathan’s vision shifted to black. The Iudulo’s fangs gleamed in the bloom-glow. They took on the color of blood.
No, he thought. Not like this. Paladine, if ever you favored me, give me strength.
Summoning every last bit of energy, he managed to wrench his body slightly out from under the lioness’s grasp. Whooping like a drowning man, he dragged in a breath. “Don’t,” he choked. “Remember your geas! What did Symeon say?”
The creature’s polished brow creased. For a moment it didn’t respond. Then, with a shuddering snarl, the statue spoke-not in the voice it had used before, but in that of an old man. It must be the voice of Symeon himself, relating his own words through this warden beast.
“Nisi firno at ifeso big pironit e nisit. Sifat.”
No living man or woman shall enter and survive. So be it.
Cathan nodded, part of him wanting to shriek with relief: The legends had been accurate, after all. He saved his breath, however. Every word was precious, and he chose them with painstaking care.
“Look … at me,” he gasped. “Are these the … eyes … of one … who… lives?”
That was all he could manage to say. He resisted the urge to close his eyes and pray, and focused his stare on the lioness. The statue gazed back, its puzzlement growing as it met the empty gaze of the Twice-Born, the gaze no man but Beldinas had been able to meet for more than a brief moment, for the past forty years. In his eyes was death, a shadow of the after-world that clung to him… the afterworld he’d lost when the Lightbringer resurrected him. Now the Iudulo peered deep into him, searching behind the forbidding surface.
Silence. The statue wavered… wavered…
“No,” said the Iudulo, lifting itself off him. “They are not living eyes.”
Air had never hurt so badly. Cathan curled into a ball, retching as his breath slashed his lungs like razors. It was a long time before he could draw a proper breath again, longer still before he retrieved the strength to raise his head. When he did, he saw that the lioness was back on its perch, exactly as before. Its eyes were stone once more, coldly staring sightlessly into the night.
He shivered. It had been waiting here for him, all this time. He could sense it. He had never felt so much like a pawn on the gods’ khas board.
A hand touched him, nearly scaring him to death. But the hand glowed, and he saw Beldinas, bent over him, head bowed. The Kingpriest murmured a prayer, summoning Paladine’s power to speak the healing prayer. “Palado, ucdas pafiro…”
Cathan felt warmth, and light, and all the pain went away.
It came back when he awoke, but as a dull ache that flared as he pushed himself up on his elbows. There was a great deal of blood-his blood-on the balcony, and looking around at it made him feel weak and nearly pass out again.
A glowing hand pressed a cup to his lips. “Drink.”
It was watered wine, and his strength returned as he sipped it. His ribs still hurt, there were livid claw-marks showing through the rips in his robes. “You didn’t heal me completely,” he said.
“You would have slept too long,” Beldinas replied. “We must enter the Forino, or the Guardian will awaken again. Can you stand?”
Cathan got to his feet, waving off the Kingpriest’s help. As he did, he felt the malachite amulet slide against his skin, and swallowed at the thought of how close Beldinas had come to touching it when he healed him. When he was upright again, he cast an eye at the Iudulas. They were lifeless, unmoving.
“Come,” Beldinas said, and they stepped past the lionesses, to the gold-scaled doors. The doors parted at a touch, and the Lightbringer and the Twice-Born entered Symeon’s Vault.
It was dark within, but the Kingpriest’s light filled the air around them, driving the shadows back. The walls were covered with mosaics rendered in a crude style that artists had abandoned years ago, showing images of gods and priests alike. The plaster had crumbled in places where vegetation invaded the Forino. Now and then, a faint, glassy plink broke the stillness as another tile stirred loose and fell to the floor. What remained on the walls glimmered with a hundred colors as it caught Beldinas’s glow: red and green, blue and violet, gold and flame, all coming together to make a coruscating white.
Beldinas wasted no time, moving down the wide entry hall to an archway on the far side. There were similar arches to the left and right, but he knew where he was going, and moved as if pulled by forces beyond his control. Cathan had seen him like this before, in the lowest catacombs beneath the Pantheon of Govinna, where the two of them had discovered the Miceram. Drawing his sword, watching the shadows between the winking tiles, Cathan followed just behind Beldinas without a word.
Through the arch was a passage, also covered with glittering tiles. It angled downward, and the air grew noticeably cooler as they descended into the rock of the cliff. Silver light seemed to glimmer farther on, luring them toward shallow stairs, then steeper ones. Soon they were climbing more than walking, past dusty side passages where rats chattered and many-legged things scuttled to hide out of sight. Down, down…
Their descent halted, and Cathan caught his breath, staring. The stairs gave way to a broad, tall chamber, its jeweled walls ablaze, its ceiling decorated with a chipped, faded fresco of Paladine. It was an older rendition of the god, black-bearded and battle-fierce, rather than the gentle old man the imperial church currently espoused: a harder deity for harder times, Cathan thought. A helm crowned with gold shone upon his head. The same god had looked down on them in the Govinnese catacombs, such a long time ago. This was the god of the burning hammer, the one whose wrath Cathan felt every time he tried to sleep.