'The oil burns,'Thalric observed. 'So it has been lit – but by who?'
If I said by magic, would he believe me? she asked herself. Perhaps now he would. 'I think that we have… caused them to be lit. I think that our presence here has made this happen.' Ancient enchantments – but why give tomb robbers light to work by?Why this long-dead hospitality?
'Some device…' Thalric mused. 'It's possible.' Yet he did not seem eager to examine the braziers for artifice. Che looked past them into the next hall. There were other braziers there, glowing and flickering with pale light. Did I notice those before? She could not be wholly certain that she had.
What are we nearing? How large is this place? She felt they had been exploring, admittedly at a cripplingly cautious pace, for hours.
They stepped through the archway and stopped. For a long time they simply looked.
The ceiling was at least another six feet higher, and it was supported by great columns that had been fantastically worked into the shape of abominations. It was an old motif. She had seen carvings like it in Tharn, but never as grandly detailed as these. Human features were merged with those of beasts so that each column became a monster with its arms or claws raised high to support the earth. There were spiders with the faces of women, and scorpion-tailed men with pincered hands, beetle-headed, wing-backed, joint-legged. One depicted a woman who was partly consumed within the shell of a great mantis, and this image in particular Che turned away from, finding it obscurely, disturbingly familiar.
Between the columns were the tombs, arrayed in earnest now. Where Garmoth Atennar, whoever he had been, had kept a lonely vigil, here were an even score of great stone sarcophagi interspersed with the grotesque carved pillars.
The eerie light leapt and dwindled on them, these sleeping statues, the ranks of the forgotten, the Masters of Khanaphes. She saw their names: Hieram Tisellian, who Raised the Temple and brought Life to the Parched Land, Lord Architect of all Time… Killeris Jaenathil, the Beautiful, the all-Knowing, Lady of the Utmost Sorcery… Iellith Quellennas, Bringer of Death, the Harvester of the Old Lands, the Chariot of War…
'How many hundreds of years,' Che wondered, 'since anyone last saw this?'
'Always assuming you don't count the lamp-lighters.' The sense of awe and reverence had passed Thalric by, and he was becoming increasingly unnerved, looking up at the hybrid visages of the carved abominations and shuddering. For impossible monsters, they had been rendered extremely lifelike.
They were crude, however, compared to the likenesses that the Masters had decreed for themselves. Each one of these was an individual, as recognizable and distinct as they must have appeared in life. The white stone flowed smoothly over their musculature, each curve of gut and jowl and breast. Theirs was an alien aesthetic, but one that seemed to overrule all others. They were not delicately beautiful as Spiders were, or Dragonflies or Beetles or Moths, or any other kinden. They were simply beautiful de facto, commanding and magnetic. Even their stone facsimiles confirmed it.
'No wonder they are still revered as they are,' Che said in wonder.
'Oh, true,' Thalric snapped. 'They'd be able to give our Slave Corps a few lessons: how to keep an entire population under your thumb for a thousand years after you've died! How about that? The greatest slavemasters in the history of the world lie here, and I'm glad that, beyond this stinking piece of sand and stone, nobody even knows about them.'
'How can you say that?' Che demanded. 'Thalric, what we're seeing here… it's an age of history that Collegium has never guessed at. In all the Lowlands, there are probably only a few records of this mouldering in the Moth-kinden strongholds. I could go home right now and claim my seat as a College Master just for being here. This is history, this is the past right here for us to look upon. Can't you see that?'
'Do you know what I see?' he asked her. 'I see those pillars in the main hall of the Scriptora – the hall with the little fountain, where they held that reception for us both.'
'I don't-'
'They were just like these monsters: pillars carved into figures that were holding up the ceiling. Very artistic. Only those ones were carved to look like Beetle-kinden. Your people, the Khanaphir. What did these dead Masters think? That it was your lot above ground, and monsters for servants once they were dead? They were mad, Che. They're better forgotten, believe me…' He trailed off just then, and she heard his breath suddenly become ragged. She turned to see what had caught his eye.
One of the stone coffins was bare.
The sight – the absence – chilled her. For a moment neither of them moved. Then Thalric said, 'So, we're both thinking the same ridiculous thing just now, and we should stop it. After all, they wouldn't be the first people not to finish crafting a tomb. It's something you tend to have built late in life.'
Che walked closer and wiped slime away from the inscription to read it clearly.
'Elysiath Neptellian, Lady of the Bright Water, She whose Word Breaks all Bonds, Princess of the Thousand,' she translated.
'Maybe she didn't care for the likeness,' said Thalric harshly. 'Now, can we get out of this festering place and…' His voice choked off and Che looked around wildly.
'What? What now?'
'I… thought I saw something…' he said, voice openly shaking. 'Ahead there. Something pale…'
'The lamps. The shadows of the lamps,' Che said hurriedly. 'The lamplight on the stone.' She was tense as a drawn bow, waiting for whatever terrible thing was about to descend on them. The air was thick with it.
When it came, it came from behind them: a long, drawn-out scream of human agony. Thalric whirled around, his sword in his hand instantly.
'Wait-' Che started but he snarled, 'Osgan,' and was away from her at once, plunging back the way they had come, and leaving her to scurry in his wake. Thirty-Nine Totho was awoken by the sound of stone, great loads of it being hauled up the span of the bridge by sled, and by the noisy efforts of a labouring draught beetle.
Are we building the barricade now? he wondered vaguely, but had they not already built it? Had they not defended it for a day already? I refuse to go through that again.
He sat up, seeing the great bow-backed animal settle, antennae twitching, as the sled was unloaded. By the barricade itself, the centre had been reinforced, going some way towards repairing the petard's damage, and some complex woodwork was being lashed together, a slope on either side of the central point, with what seemed like a vast quantity of rope lying about. He could make nothing of it.
He jumped up, looking for authority, and spotted Amnon. The big man was supervising the unloading. Meyr, whose watch it was, leant against the barricade well out of the way.
'What's going on?' Totho asked him. 'When did this start?'
'Hour ago,' Meyr said. 'That Amnon, he's got an idea or something. Look down at our end of the bridge.'
Totho did so, seeing a great many torches down below, and what seemed like two hundred Khanaphir busy hauling stone about. A second barricade. 'Amnon!' he called out. 'I told you, once they get a leadshotter up here, they'll sweep away anything you put down at the shore. They'll just smash it to pieces.'
'That is indeed what you told me,' Amnon confirmed.
'Then what?'
'I have been speaking with Praeda about the engines of the enemy, and what they are capable of,' Amnon revealed.
'Yes, that's exactly what I meant when I said you should go home to her,' Totho remarked drily. 'So what did she have to say about it?'