Just as Kian was recovering his footing, the hands supporting him withdrew, and he tumbled to the dusty floor. At the same instant, a dozen or more steel arrowheads thudded against the closed doors. A few punched through, sending splinters flying. As his captors backed away, two other men, one stocky and the other merely fat, hacked the intruding arrowheads away with short swords, then hastily dropped a thick wooden beam into a set of iron brackets to bar the doors. Even as the hooves of the warhorses began pounding the doors, the men placed two more beams into brackets set lower and higher than the first.
Kian jumped to his feet, sword slashing in a tight, deadly pattern to ensure no one came too near. Besides the shouts and thuds from without, the warehouse was silent. Two score rough men and women holding torches aloft stared at Kian and his fellows with a mingling of curiosity and contempt. Overhead, a dozen or more skinny children sat upon sagging rafters, eyes overly wide in their hungry faces. Stacked everywhere in the storehouse were towering mountains of everything from bolts of silk and wool, to casks of ale and wine and jagdah, to bound bushels of dried firemoss and swatarin. This last filled the air with a heady fragrance.
A tall thin man draped in ratty, pale green robes stepped forward. He peered at the newcomers over a nose that was long and sharply hooked. After a quick study that ended on Hya, he offered a humorless and wholly unwelcoming smile full of small, pegged teeth.
“O’naal,” Hya said, “it appears that you are my rescuer this night. Such is a change from the many times I have had to tease life back into your veins.”
O’naal’s narrow-set black eyes were twin points of night that showed much cunning and little mercy. In a light, mocking voice, he said, “Sister Hya, as I have promised before, I am forever in your debt. However, these others … well, they are strangers to me, and so must be deemed trespassers. While the Chalice is a den of unlawfulness, it does have its rules and consequences-as you well know.”
Hya harrumphed. “They are with me, you scrawny wretch. The big one is Hazad, the pretty one is Azuri.” She nodded at Ellonlef then, “She is a fellow Sister of Najihar. The last is Kian. They … we … I need your help to gain access to the palace.”
At the mention of Kian’s name, O’naal’s long face grew thoughtful. “I had heard that our new and great king had given over an ice-born barbarian of that name to the Priests of Attandaeus for torturing. After they had their way with him and sent him to the Pit, a pack of rabble-rousers somehow managed to set him free. While the story of getting free of the Pit is hard enough to imagine, what I find even more unbelievable is that you could be that same man, who was said to have been tortured near unto death. Unless, of course, the priests of the Watcher Who Judges have gotten soft with their ministrations.”
“It is enough to say that I was tortured, and that my companions ensured my escape,” Kian growled. “Now, it is in your best interest to help us, and the sooner the better.”
O’naal turned his head. “Help you? I’m afraid that may be difficult.”
Kian’s sword was still firmly in hand, but unless he intended to kill O’naal, and then die with his friends, it was useless. “Then why did you spare us?”
O’naal frowned at the thuds against the door. “As I said, I am indebted to Hya, and it so happens that I despise being a debtor. That, now, has been seen to by my estimation … yet this other task, well….”
“You expect payment,” Kian said in disgust, but closed his lips on anything else. Recompense, even if coerced, was acceptable if it meant he could get to Varis.
“I’m glad we see things the same,” O’naal said. “And if I am not promised the proper degree of compensation, I expect King Varis will reward me with both gold and a vision of your head on a pike.” A few hard chuckles met this.
Before Kian could utter a word, Hya asked, “What is your price?”
“One hundred aridols,” O’naal answered promptly. “And mind that they are minted in the image of our befallen Simiis-his grandson, it seems to me, might well be the sort of sovereign to mingle gold with brass, and take the head of any honest man who voices a concern.”
“Thrones have been bought for less,” Hya said evenly, “but you will have it. You have seen but a tenth part of my wealth, which I have earned over the years, so you know I can pay. Now, lead us to the palace by your secret ways.”
“I suggest you and your followers join us,” Kian said, thinking he would rather have the scoundrel at his side than at his back, where the temptation to betray him might become overwhelming. “If you do not come along, you will surely die.”
O’naal burst out laughing, a queer, high-pitched giggle. “And how, exactly, would that come to pass?”
“By the very hands of those you pulled us from. What’s more, this shelter is doomed. If it has failed to catch your eye, the whole of the Chalice is burning-”
“It’s true!” a young boy high in the rafters shouted down. “I just seen the Boar’s Belly catch!”
Kian let that sink in and then went on, more grateful for that child’s shout than the boy would ever know. “By dawn, those who have not fled will be dead … or in chains, marching to some slave mine. Every step of the way, your backs will taste the lash. Better that you stay close to me and out of sight, until I kill Varis.”
Behind Kian, the booms continued at the doors, and the first cracks were showing in the timbers. O’naal glanced at the doors with growing concern on his gaunt features. A loud cracking noise decided him.
“Very well,” he said, almost choking on the words in his haste.
“I suggest we all depart,” Kian said.
“All?” O’naal repeated. He turned and waved his hand. “These are Chalice folk. They can make their own way, and be happier for it.”
Voices rose in protest, and O’naal blanched. “All, then,” he consented.
Not wasting time, he then called several men to his side, and they bowed their heads together. After a moment, his underlings ran into the shadows farther back in the warehouse. O’naal glanced at Kian and the others with something close to hatred pinching his lean features. Kian slammed his sword into its worn scabbard and smiled pleasantly. The rogue turned away with a snort.
From the darkness came the strident squeal of rusted hinges opening. O’naal spoke with unconcealed disgust. “Come, my people, we are about to taste the lavish splendor of the palace.”
He motioned Kian and the others to follow, gliding along like a ghost, as the gloom gradually swallowed them into a well of murk. A moment later, O’naal vanished from sight, seeming to sink into the ground. Before Kian could say anything, a fat man covered in layers of grime stood at his side bearing a torch. The flickering light showed a small black square in the floor. Around the hole sat several stacks of crates. The hidden door itself had several rolled rugs roped to it, the tattered ends far overreaching the edges of the door. From the underside of the door, a chain descended into the gloom.
O’naal’s voice floated up from far below. “Get down here, you sister-loving fool! I do not fancy having rats gnaw at my ankles, while you stand there gawking.”
The torchbearer hunched his shoulders at the insult, but tossed the torch down with something more shrewd turning his lips than an idiot’s grin. O’naal squawked, then cursed in anger. Quietly snickering, the filthy rotund man clambered down the ladder, indifferent to the verbal abuse hurled his way.