"You will need to light your torches at the stairs. At the top, you will find another antechamber. Beyond it lie a series of large rooms. These are the chambers within which the ken are tested. To become a Bo-no-ken, one must enter the first and return. The Hab-no-ken must penetrate the second room, as I once did." For a moment, his voice quavered. "The Zee-no-ken must survive the third."
Gast searched their faces. "If what you seek is truly within the citadel, it must be past the third chamber. Some of the Zee-no-ken have reported seeing a portal at the end of that room. If any have entered, they have never emerged to tell the story."
Suddenly he reached out and clasped Alemar's hand. "I don't want to lose you, my son."
Alemar stepped forward and hugged the old man. "We have to try, master."
"I am not an old fool," Gast said as they separated. "The danger is literal. Only one out of every two who venture into the third room survive as whole human beings. Even the first claims victims. What guarantee have you that your quest is true?"
"Only the word of a ghost," Alemar said, his throat sore. "But you still haven't said what isin the rooms."
"All the fears you have ever felt," Gast said. "And nothing else. Remember that: Whatever happens inside, it is nothing more than fear."
"We have company," Elenya said.
They turned toward the mouth of the valley. They heard echoes of many hoofbeats and saw a night-lit shroud of dust.
Gast said, "If they are Po-no-pha, they must leave their weapons and wait for permission of the High Scholar to approach the citadel. But now the ken will know you are here. Go in now, or lose your chance. Take off your clothes."
The twins blinked.
"Take them off," Gast insisted. "You don't want clothes in there. Leave your weapons as well."
They stared at him skeptically.
"Trust me," he implored. "I have been inside. You haven't."
Elenya toyed with the fastenings at her collar. "You can't expect us to leave our weapons here. What happens when we come back out?"
Gast was adamant. "What good will two swordplayers do against many Po-no-pha? And in there, weapons will only be your ruin. You will be undone by your fears." He groaned. "I wish there were more time to prepare you."
The intensity of his plea eventually persuaded the twins to strip, but neither would disarm. They stood ready, naked except for their belts and the weapons hanging from them.
"I feel like an imbecile," Elenya said.
"You look like one, too," Alemar said.
Elenya shot him a backhand swipe. He ducked it. "I see you haven't changed a bit." She smiled.
They needed the humor. One look at Gast's expression was enough to dismay the stoutest heart.
"Choose separate routes," the healer said. "And God be with you." In Zyraii, the phrase meant a permanent farewell.
"And with you," Alemar said. The noises from the far side of the valley were stronger. They took deep breaths and stepped into the dark passageway.
Full of bitter thoughts, Gast gathered their clothing into neat piles and began to prepare the proper eulogies.
XLI
THE CORRIDOR WAS LITwith cerulean light. It seemed to come from the stone walls themselves, and though this should have dispelled any shadows, the impression was of shadows everywhere. Alemar peered ahead, half expecting something to come shambling toward him, but all that appeared were forks and curves, steps and intersections of halls long lost to sepulchral dust and the mephitis of ancient sorceries. The dread of the wight reawakened, an almost forgotten memory given an unwelcome resurrection.
The passageways contained no artifacts, no designs, nothing to indicate that they may have served some purpose other than the one to which they were now being put. It awed him to think of the man-hours it must have taken to build this place. Who was this ancestor, that he should construct so laboriously a site he meant to abandon?
He turned a corner and saw a stairwell on his left, sinking into the depths of the citadel. Remembering Gast's instructions, he ignored it and soon found another ahead to his right. The path he had followed led up the steps, marked by channels in the dust. He paused at the base.
Laughter rebounded down the stair, deep baritone cackles that froze him where he stood.
Goose pimples rose on Elenya's flesh. No human voice had produced that laugh. She looked behind and farther down her corridor and wished that she and Alemar had not separated. The source of the mirth lay upward, where, until a few moments before, she had planned to go.
She understood why searchers of ancient times had passed by the climb and found their fates deeper within the maze.
She struck her flint, igniting the torch. A cheerful glow dispelled the somber blue of the werelight, momentarily buoying up her spirits. The desert people knew how to make their lamps and torches. This one, from the stack in the anteroom, burned almost without smoke, consuming the brand very gradually.
She found it hard to think of herself as an Elandri princess and of the relic as her ancestor's work. She was Po-no-pha. What was she doing intruding on chambers meant only for the ken?
"Elandri tu," she murmured, trying to convince herself the words were important to her. For Elandris, for the empire, for her father's people. For duty.
She placed her foot on the first step. The light of the corridor went out.
She turned but found only darkness beyond the range of her torch. Like the laughter, it bothered her. The magics of this place were far from dead.
She took another step. Something boomed in the distance. A third pace, and the wind sputtered her light, almost extinguishing it. The fourth -
And nothing.
Somehow this frightened her more than the active manifestations. She climbed on into ominous silence.
Alemar felt the air, thick with the odor of thaumaturgy, close in with every step. The torchlight never penetrated far enough or strongly enough; there was always something lurking just beyond his vision. He had to concentrate to keep breathing normally, his lungs by now aching from constriction. Doubts began to plague him. Gast was right; he should have waited until he was properly prepared.
The flight of steps was actually quite brief. At the top was an anteroom, just as Gast had described. Like the rest of the citadel, the chamber was empty, its only features the portal leading into it at the top of the stairs and an identical opening in the opposite wall. As he stepped into it, the room seemed to shrink, pressing in from every side. The walls and ceiling, though he could see otherwise, felt as close as the sides of a coffin. He stopped in the center.
A sibilant hissing came from the darkness. Abruptly Alemar's saber was in his hand. He held the torch higher and approached. Something whispered to him. It spoke the High Speech, with a Cilendri accent, but the words were indistinct. Surely he only imagined it?
As he started to walk again, his progress was halted by a stench so foul he almost choked. It smelled like death, like something rotting, maggot-ridden, bloated with gases until the guts had exploded and released the fumes to sear the lungs of those who came near. He shuddered. It seemed so real. Nevertheless, he proceeded. The manifestations disappeared as he reached the entrance to the first of the rooms of the Test, the one the Bo-no-ken were required to enter. He took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.
The first thing that happened was that his torch went out.
Elenya screamed aloud as the blackness fell, dropping the torch in her panic. She groped on the floor but couldn't find it; not even a tiny ember remained to guide her. Instead, her fingers touched something soft, slimy, and living. She jerked away, only to back into a group of sticky, thin strands unmistakably like a spider's web. She felt the prickle of tiny feet on her face, her knees, her back. She brushed frantically, but they came on in greater waves. She felt a bulbous, furry body scurry up her thighs and poke at her womanhood. She squeezed involuntarily, and the creature burst with a sickeningsplrrrt, hot ooze splattering her labia and perineum. Oh, rythni, it got inside.