Vansen felt rather than heard a ragged sound-a shout from below-and most of the prisoners hurried to the pulleys above the deep, square pit, while others went to bring the wagon nearer. The slaves hauling on the ropes grunted and moaned until they had hauled a huge wooden basket up
from the unseen depths, then they swung the basket out on.a hinged,arm until it dangled over the bed of the huge wagon. When they tipped it down several dozen corpses fell out in a limply flopping heap.
Vansen almost lost his grip on Gyir, or the fairy nearly lost his hold oil Vansen.
One of bodies slid off the top of the pile and tumbled onto the stone floor beside the cart wheel, limp as a grain sack. The yellow fairy bent with another prisoner to lift the body-in life it had been a goblin, Vansen guessed, although the small creature's hairy pelt was so caked with dust it was hard to be certain. There were no obvious marks of violence, at least not anything fataclass="underline" long weals ran across the dead goblin's back, crisscrossed through the fur like roads being swallowed by undergrowth, but the skin had scarred long ago: it had not been the whipping that had killed this creature.
The yellow forest-fairy went about its grisly chores as though sleep¬walking, which was just as well, since Ferras Vansen found it hard to watch what the creature was doing. It wrestled another fallen body back onto the cart, a bumpy-skinned corpse of the star-nosed thing's own type, with blood on its face but no other sign of violence. Vansen caught only the briefest moment of hesitation as the creature saw one of its own kind, then it turned away without looking at the face, pulling an emptiness over its thoughts that Vansen could feel. Nevertheless, it did not linger beside the corpse of its star-nosed kin, but walked around the back of the cart just as the creaking vehicle began to roll away from the pit. The yellow fairy bent one last time to pick up the corpse of a hard-shelled creature whose half-closed eyes and sagging mouth were the only parts of its face not covered by leathery plates of skin. The buglike thing was clearly heavier than the yellow fairy had expected; after a moment's struggle, he decided to drag it instead of trying to lift it. As he pulled it scraping across the floor one of the other prisoners came to help-something that Vansen found oddly touching- and together they heaved the shelled thing back onto the cart.
Beyond the doorway at the chamber's far end, a more or less level track led away into darkness. Within a few hundred paces the track grew deep with dust and the wagon slowed, then stopped. The yellow fairy and sev¬eral other prisoners stepped up and pushed until it the wheels came free and began to roll again. Another thumping crash shook the cavern-Vansen could not hear it so much as he could see the way it knocked the yellow fairy and everything around him off-kilter-and for a moment the eyes through which he was looking stared straight down into nothingness: on
the left side the path dropped away and the shadows stretched so deep the torchlight could not find their ending.
The prisoners steered the heavy cart very slowly around a bend in the track, trying not to let themselves or the wagon get too near the edge. Even so, one small captive was caught between the front wheel and the edge of the track; with a scream Vansen could barely hear, although he knew it must be hideously shrill in the yellow fairy's ears, the little creature was swept off into darkness. The rest of the prisoners stopped, frightened and miserable, but blows from the guards' clubs quickly set them moving again.
After they had finally coaxed the wagon around the difficult bend, they found themselves face-to-face with more of the hairy beast-guards coming along the track toward them. This group had scarves wrapped around their faces so that only their tiny eyes could be seen, which made them even more ominously strange. These new ape-things did not like to see their way blocked by the cart, and pointed forked spears at the prisoners, gestur¬ing and grunting angrily until the yellow fairy and his comrades shrank back against the cliff face and let the masked creatures shove by. When they were gone, the woodsprite and his fellow prisoners laboriously heaved the corpse-wagon into motion again.
The part of Vansen that still thought as Vansen had wondered why they should be traveling so far, and where the bodies were being taken. Now he learned. As the wagon creaked onward the light grew stronger: there was clearly some other source besides the torches high on the walls above the narrow path. Only another hundred yards or farther the path turned and then turned again. The light and the sickening smell bloomed, and those prisoners who still wore rags of clothing tried to cover noses and mouths. The yellow fairy could do nothing except spread his hand over his muzzle, squeezing the star-shaped protuberance closed like a parent wrapping his fist around a child's hand. Even through the curious dislocation of Gyir's spell, Vansen could smell rotting flesh-the true stench must have been al¬most beyond belief.
For a moment Vansen could feel not just the woodsprite's dull horror, and his own, but a flare of despair and dread from Prince Barrick as well, as though the boy were standing just beside him, or even just inside him. Barrick was fighting to get away, somehow, pushing back from the scene that stretched before them in the billowing firelight. Vansen felt Gyir's con¬nection to them all grow thin.
No! Gyir's thoughts came like hammer blows. Do not turn away! Wait!
Dozens of guards, many in sacklike hooded robes that covered them al-most entirely, swarmed along the floor of the vast cavern, which was little more than a shelf around a huge, open pit full of corpses, thousands of dead creatures of all kinds and sizes. Dirt brought in on ore carts by other guards was being shoveled in on top of the uppermost bodies. Fires burned every¬where, great bonfires at each corner of the huge hole and smaller fires tended by the guards in several of the wider places on the shelf around the pit, meant to disperse or consume the stench. The smoke and sparks swirled upward, and the heat of the fires and the air drawn in from the corridors that emptied into the pit chamber on all sides made the stinking winds rush in circles around the cavern before at last rising upward into the darkness of the cavern's roof.
No. So many…! It is…
Vansen did not know if the thoughts were his own now or Barrick's, or perhaps even Gyir's. All he knew was that the terrible sight blurred before him as if his eyes were filling with tears, then it all flew away into darkness and he was back in his own frail body once more, sprawled on the floor of the cell beside Gyir and Barrick, weak, ill, and horror-stricken.
.
26
Rising Wind
Uvis White-Hand, favorite of dark Zmeos, was wounded by Kernios and
was taken from the field to die. In his rage, the Horned One beat down
brave Volios of the Measureless Grip, stabbing him with his terrible sword
Whitefire until the war god's blood turned the river Rimetrail red, and at
last the giant son of Perin staggered, fell, and died.
— from The Beginnings of Tilings The Book of the Trigon
PINIMMON VASH, THE PARAMOUNT MINISTER of Xis and its possessions all across Xand, looked at his closet with disaffection. Three boys, naked except for artful decorations of gold around their necks and ankles, cringed on the carpet. The slaves knew what it meant when their master was in an unhappy mood.
"I do not see my silk robe with my family nightingale crest. It should be in the closet. That robe is worth more than your entire families to the sev¬enth generation. Where is it?"
"You sent it to be cleaned, Master," one of the slaves ventured after a long silence.
"I sent it to be cleaned and brought back. It has not been brought back. I am going on a voyage. I must have my nightingale robe."
Vash was just debating which one of them to beat, and if he had time to beat two, when the messenger came. It was one of the Leopards, dressed in the full panoply of warfare and very conscious of the days of fire and blood