16

There was a metallic thump against the door as something hard was hammered into it, and then it swung sharply outward, revealing a peculiar figure: a bull with a crowned and bearded man’s head reaching to the height of the generous doorway and filling it almost completely. It was carved all of wood, and was stained mostly black, save for large gray wings that were folded at its sides. Its unblinking eyes were bright green jewels, and its sharp metal teeth were coated red with blood still trickling down its curling beard.

I can assure you that sight was unique in all my long experience, before or since. Dabir grabbed up a bunch of the documents and shoved them under one arm. At my shout to move we raced down the stairs, but as we ran, two of the scrolls shook loose and bounced down the steps before us. Dabir let out a little cough of dismay and bent to chase one but I yelled for him to run on.

I risked a backward look. The monster was at the head of the stairs, where it glared down at us with those dead, unblinking eyes. By the time we reached the central floor it had begun to stomp its way down. One of its knee joints cracked loudly each time a leg bent.

Dabir ran between the lines of tall shelves, the spear swinging in one hand. The aisles were but a horse length wide, and the shelves, stuffed full mostly with scrolls wound tightly around wooden rods, stretched well above our heads toward the ceiling far beyond. Light flared in sconces set high on the wall, which meant the aisles were little more than dark alleys.

“That’s got to be one of Koury’s monsters!” I said. “The Sebitti have followed us here!”

“Aye—pray that blood is not Lydia’s or Erragal’s,” Dabir said over his shoulder.

While that was fine sentiment, the way the monster gained on us it seemed important to pray that the thing would not shortly be decorated with our own blood. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“Away from that thing!”

That also was fine sentiment, but I had a thought. “Go up! Dabir—climb the shelves!”

He skidded to a stop, glanced back at me in surprise, then, spear lengthwise in one hand, grabbed the shelf and pulled himself up. I heard him groan as a scroll crunched under one foot, but by planting boots carefully in cubbyholes he was soon grasping the bookcase height. The arched ceiling loomed a full story overhead.

The monster closed quickly, and was less than a full spear cast off now. There was no good way to climb while holding that club, so I handed it up to Dabir.

“Hurry!”

An unkillable monster with bloodstained metal teeth was but a leopard’s spring away and closing fast, so I can assure you I started up with great haste. I did not care so much as Dabir that jamming my feet into cubbyholes destroyed ancient works. The next moment I was halfway over the lip of the bookcase, and the monster had skidded to a stop. The pointed crown carved at the top of its head was only a hand span below my dangling boot, and I thought at any moment to feel those teeth tearing off my toes. Yet it did not, or could not, leap vertically, and with Dabir hauling on my arm I was quickly standing atop what seemed a most sturdy board.

The monster could not look up very well. The best it could manage was to turn its head and tilt slightly, so that it could take us in with one eye.

“A design flaw,” Dabir noted.

I grunted. “Go!”

He picked up his spear and took up running once more, this time atop the bookcase. It had not been a bad idea at all, for the case housed scrolls both from left and right, which meant its top was almost as wide as one of the aisles. There were two more sets of aisles and bookcases between us and the left wall, and three between us and the right.

The monster galloped along below, its head cocked at an angle that would have been uncomfortable to any living creature.

“Look for another door,” Dabir called to me.

Even the finest plans have their challenges, and after a few paces more I discovered one when Dabir put on a burst of speed. By the time I realized what he was doing, it was too late to offer criticism.

There were periodic breaks in the lines of shelves, wider by several feet than the space between cases. Dabir had seen this and was preparing for a leap.

My warning cry died before I voiced it, for he was already airborne. He was ever agile, as I have mentioned, and landed crouched on two feet, as though he had spent many years working as an acrobat. I frowned a little, and raced at the gap myself. The monster paced me on the right, and it may be I spent a moment too long staring at the horrible thing, because I stumbled as I landed. If it had not been for Dabir’s steadying arm I would have tumbled right over the edge.

He pointed across the aisles. “There is our way out.”

This lane between the bookcases stretched to both walls. Set in the farthest was a large wooden door. “I hope it’s unlocked.”

“Let us run a little farther on this case, then leap aisle to aisle.”

I immediately saw the merit to this plan—the monster would have farther to run, and would also lose sight of us. The flaw, of course, was that we had more leaping to do, and there would be less space to build speed. Yet what other choice did we have? I followed him twenty paces while the monster kept up with us. Then Dabir turned, quick as a rabbit, backstepped to the far edge of the case, and hurtled across the empty space. He landed almost as finely as he had on the longer jump, the spear held out in both hands before him.

I picked up my courage and followed. I landed more ably than the last time, though there was an ominous creak of timber as I hit.

“Good,” Dabir said. “Let’s keep moving!”

This we did, and we jumped between two more cases. I took Dabir’s spear as he lowered himself to the floor. The moment his boots hit the tile we heard something that sounded rather like thunder, and the ground shook.

Surely that did not bode well.

I handed him the weapons and slipped down, then Dabir and I ran for the door.

Distantly I heard shouts; closer at hand came the swift approach of huge wooden hooves on tile. The damned thing could not only see, apparently it could hear, for it had followed, and now galloped between the cases toward us.

It was only twenty lengths behind when Dabir reached the door, which fortunately opened at his hand. The monster was at my heels as I darted to safety. Dabir slammed the door closed and pressed his back to it even as a mighty echoing thump rang against the wood.

Dabir was knocked several paces back by the force of the monster’s strike against the door. I threw down the club and pressed with him against the barrier in time to feel it tremor mightily beneath my hands.

I glanced quickly to either side, and started at sight of what I first took to be men. We were surrounded by life-sized statues on stone plinths, each facing the narrow lane that led down the midst of the long rectangular room. There were dozens of them, and the twin pairs of lanterns flickering along the walls set their shadows moving in the gloom. I think I might have been even more troubled by the sight if there had not been a wooden monster with bloodstained teeth hammering on the door behind me.

“Can you hold it?” I asked Dabir.

“Hopefully,” he said. “Find something to spike the door!” He grunted with effort as there came another bang. I dashed over and briefly considered the first statue, a severe-looking young woman in a long dress. I put hands to her thigh and discovered she was crafted from wood. It pained me to dull my blade, but I hacked off the statue’s fingers and came running back.

While Dabir pressed himself to the door, I used my sword hilt to hammer the wooden digits into the narrow gap of the doorjamb. We stepped back cautiously, watching the door vibrate as the thing on the other side beat against it.

I allowed myself several deep breaths. Dabir, beside me, took in the same.

“That may hold it for a while,” he said.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Erragal. We must find him.”

We gathered up our gear and started down the aisle at the same moment the hammering started against a part of the wall behind us.

“It’s trying to smash through stone?” I asked. It struck again, and we saw a rain of masonry flakes.

“Nay,” Dabir said. “Much of the construction here is plaster designed to simulate stone. We may not have long.”

“We could set it on fire,” I pointed out as we hurried forward. It was my thought to douse it with flame from one of the lanterns as it emerged.

“Then a flaming monster with metal teeth would be trying to kill us,” Dabir pointed out. “And it might set the library on fire.”

A small hole had opened in the wall by the time we reached the door on the far side. Dabir suggested we just keep moving rather than spiking the next, and we stepped through into a narrow hallway, turned left, and almost ran into two of the snow women.

They did not face us, but were gliding up behind a short, broad-shouldered fellow in furs who wrestled one of Koury’s animated wooden men.

Dabir and I slowed momentarily in astonishment, then lifted our weapons and charged the snow women. One had started to turn as my blow disintegrated it, but I did not see its face as it died, for which I was thankful. Dabir’s spear thrust destroyed the other.

At that moment the wrestler looked over his shoulder at us. He had a dark rugged beard, matched in wildness by the tangled locks of his hair. His eyes were a soft green, almost like those of a blind man, sad somehow even as he strained to pin the arms of the wooden warrior. This construct Koury had not bothered robing, and we could clearly see the rounded elbow and ankle joints; it was decorated only by a sharp knife held in one mittenlike hand. One wooden leg was broken.

The stranger returned attention to the thing struggling in his arms. He set both hands to the arm with the weapon and bent it the wrong way so there came a gratifying crack.

Since this was no feeling creature, it did not pause in reaction, and immediately swung its other fist at the stranger’s head. He ducked just in time.

And then came a loud smash from the direction of the room we’d just quitted, and the clatter of wooden hooves.

Dabir mouthed a curse I shall not repeat, then said, panting: “It is time again to move!”

“Come, man!” I told our new ally, and Dabir and I tore down the hall, our robes flapping behind. The wild man sprinted effortlessly ahead.

“Follow me,” he said. So we did. Behind galloped the bearded bull with its grotesque, kingly head. The wooden man limped after.

“You are Enkidu,” Dabir called to the man ahead of us.

“Yes.” He halted at an unremarkable section of wall, with the monster no more than twenty paces back. At his touch a door-sized section opened silently inward. Enkidu passed through, and then Dabir and me. From this side, it looked like a solid wooden door. I grabbed the locking bar set in its back to push the door shut. Just before it closed on the jamb, the monster thrust in, sharp teeth in that wooden mouth clacking at me.

I had dueled with corpses and danced with great serpents, but the sight of that thing’s dark, dead-eyed face, its metal-tipped teeth stained with blood, chilled me and set me near to panic. The head with its gnashing teeth was caught but a short distance from my face.

“One side!” Dabir called, and as I moved away I saw he’d picked up the club. A terrific blow smashed off some of the monster’s decorative curling “hair” and sent it rattling to the floor. It pulled away and I pushed the door toward its frame, slamming down the bar.

“Hurry!” Enkidu called from up ahead. “The hall’s defenses will go off any moment!”

“Come, Asim!” Dabir handed me the club.

I did not know what Enkidu meant, but I guessed that if he was worried, I should be. I raced after Dabir, who paused only to grab the spear.

This hall was narrower than the others through which we’d moved, barely wide enough for two of us to run side by side. Lanterns lit alternating walls. Some thirty paces ahead there was a stairwell up which Enkidu was running. Behind us came a series of heavy thuds, then a loud crash. Incredibly, the wooden monster had pushed itself in, smashing the door and much of the frame to the floor. It loped after us, building speed.

Suddenly there was a ringing clatter from the rear, and I risked a glance over my shoulder to see a rain of caltrops drop from the ceiling. A heartbeat later there came the distinctive twang of bowstrings and the rattle of dozens upon dozens of shafts against the corridor floor. The wooden monster was struck with ten or twenty of them. They stood out like quills, but neither caltrops nor arrows slowed it in the least.

“Hurry!” Enkidu shouted, and I then knew fear, for the urgency in his call made it seem as though worse things would follow.

Dabir and I sprinted for the stone stair ahead and my breath came now in such loud gasps I could not hear my friend. I risked no looks behind, but I heard the sound of liquid spraying from overhead and felt a few drops of something strike one shoulder. I smelled oil.

We had just set our foot upon the bottom step when we heard a roar of flame and felt heat against our backs. We pounded up, pausing only at the first landing to both turn and see curtains of fire rain into the hallway, completely obscuring our view.

“Bismallah!” Dabir managed.

The fire crackled loudly, but we could still hear the knocking steps of the creature ascending the stone, different now with the caltrops embedded in its feet. Further above, Enkidu was shouting that there wasn’t much time.

“You mean,” I gasped to Dabir, “it gets worse?”

We forced ourselves up the steps as fast as we could. I risked another look back and saw the monster emerge from the flames, wrapped in fire. The many arrows that stood out from its body were lit on their ends like candles.

I went on, gaining the final landing a moment before Dabir. I spun to aid him just as the stairs dropped completely away. One moment Dabir was there, the next moment some twenty steps broke into pieces and dropped. By pure reflex I reached out and snagged at Dabir, missing his arm but catching hold of the spear he still clutched. His weight unbalanced me and I staggered on what had become a ledge. The leaping monster and crumbling masonry fell away into a cavernous darkness, a pit lit only by the flaming monster itself, which was still opening and closing its shining teeth when I last caught sight of it careening off a rocky vertical surface.

I dug into the grainy stone wall on my left with fingernails. This steadied me, and I grabbed out for Dabir’s sleeve. Then there came a ripping noise and I saw the whites of Dabir’s eyes as he stared up in consternation.

But Enkidu joined me then, and the two of us hauled Dabir up over the rim. My friend stumbled along the stonework until he hit the wall across from me, where he leaned, spent and panting.

“That would have been a long fall,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said, gasping. “Thank you.”

Enkidu waited a few paces on, leaning with hands upon his knees.

“Are all of Erragal’s halls like that?” I asked him.

“Only the few to his personal chambers. I used a lever to activate his protections.”

“Next time,” I said, “you should wait a moment longer.”

Enkidu let out a short, barking laugh.

“Do you know how far both groups of enemies have penetrated the palace?” Dabir asked.

Enkidu considered him with his sad eyes. This, I thought, was the strangest wizard I had ever met, for he looked like nothing so much as a gentle hermit. He smelled of wild places, and his clothes were fashioned all of dark, untanned leather and fur.

“I do not,” he answered. “I had come up the river way to seek Erragal, but before I could find him, one of Koury’s things found me.”

“And the frost women are here,” I said. “Again, both sides attack at once.”

“Do you know where Erragal is?” Dabir asked.

“He should be beyond that door.” Enkidu pointed to the rough stone against which Dabir leaned. “This is the safest of his rooms, the place to retreat when under attack.”

I saw no door anywhere close to Dabir, though I looked now for seams. We stood in a rounded space no greater than ten paces across, walls on every side, the pit behind us. A single lantern flickered in one wall, at Dabir’s right.

“He told us he was going to fight them,” Dabir said.

“Then the way is still through here,” Enkidu said after a moment of reflection. There was no other apparent choice that didn’t involve leaping into a pit.

Enkidu touched a notched recess below a bracketed torch and another silent section of wall slid away. A short flight of stairs led down to a door of burnished bronze adorned this time with the image of a huge stone bridge arching over a river alive with fishes.

Enkidu descended without hesitation and pushed open the door.

Here at last we had come upon more living beings—a handful of older men and women clothed in simple robes. They were huddled together at one end of a long room furnished comfortably with rugs, pillows, and couches.

Apparently Erragal did not trust all his chores to skeletons.

The folk started at our entrance, though they calmed before the unkempt wizard with us, whom they must have recognized.

“Have you seen your master?” Enkidu asked them.

The servants, or slaves—I was never sure which they were—told us that they had fled here when the attack begin. There followed a harrowing account of their fellows’ deaths at the hands of strange wooden beings. They spoke Arabic, and I wondered if they had been recruited from Mosul.

Enkidu pressed for more details, and Dabir crowded in, listening closely.

They finished with the servants, who seemed much more content now that they’d told their story. Some even smiled. And, indeed, when the Sebitti turned to us, I, too, felt a flush of good fellowship.

“I think I know where Erragal is,” Enkidu said. “Come with me.”

We passed then through another door, to a landing where we could follow steps up or down. Enkidu went upward. From somewhere there came a rumble that shook the ground around us.

“I hope that’s one for our side,” I said.

We climbed behind Enkidu up those old stone stairs, much like the ones I’d descended with Lydia to enter this death trap warren, then emerged finally at a landing with another dead end. Enkidu pressed a faded red stone halfway up the wall, and we were met immediately with a blast of cold air as a door-sized swath of stone swung outward. We then looked upon a darkened field of snow-topped ruins. The wind whistled and little bursts of frost danced beyond the doorway, cleverly concealed in a substantial pillar fragment. We seemed to stand at the end of what had once been a wide avenue. Half-tumbled walls and blocks of stone lay to left and right, stretching ahead of us under the starlight.

Enkidu stepped through and halted a few paces in front of us, looking to both left and right. It was almost like watching a feral animal suddenly on the alert. We followed, weapons at the ready. I was about to ask Dabir if he thought we should activate their magics when Enkidu wheeled to look past us. We pivoted and found Lamashtu standing between us and the exit we’d just left.

She had been so swift when last we met that I’d forgotten how thick she was. Her appearance might almost have been described as matronly save that her eyes gleamed in the darkness like a cat’s.

“Enkidu. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out chasing lions?”

“Erragal called for my help,” he said.

“And so you came, like a good dog.”

“You have gorged yourself, I see,” Enkidu replied calmly. “But I do not mind, sister. We can still be friends.”

I felt a wave of calm flood through me once more. It was good, I thought, to be near Enkidu.

Before us, Lamashtu smiled. “You know that has never worked upon me.”

“I do not wish to hurt any old friends,” he said. “You are outmatched. Withdraw.”

At that she laughed. “Not me, but you,” she said, and at that very moment something round as a barrel and black burst from behind the snowy ruins and hurtled at Enkidu. Our ally was lightning-swift, but even so the largest wooden serpent yet struck into his chest like a club. The attack would have killed a normal man, but he only let out a groan and staggered back.

Lamashtu advanced on us with a wicked smile.

“How did you know we would be here?” Dabir demanded.

“We watched all entrances,” she said simply, “to see the rats flushed out. We had long since learned most of Erragal’s defenses. He hasn’t bothered changing them in centuries.”

She looked as though she meant to say more, and with her distracted I did not think I would have a better opportunity. I drove at her, lifting back the club. She did not move, and I thought surely I would stave in her skull. There was the briefest moment of regret for killing a woman, and then she stopped my arm with a single, effortless lift of her own small hand. My strength and momentum meant nothing—the instant she caught me with her fingers, my swing stopped. She slid back a foot, but was otherwise unfazed.

She then stepped nimbly over the spear haft Dabir swung to trip her. She did not bother looking at him, but smiled into my eyes. “I will take your strength. If I feel merciful when I am done, perhaps I shall kill you. If you beg for it.”

The might of that one hand was astonishing. I could not pull free. Dabir jabbed at her again with the blunt end of his spear. This seemed only to irritate her, for Lamashtu frowned a bit as she caught hold of the haft. Dabir immediately set to tugging on it, uselessly. I lashed out with my foot, but kicking her leg was like striking a tree trunk. I winced; she but looked annoyed and did not even rock backwards.

“Allah preserve us,” Dabir whispered. I dared not look away, but I heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow behind and to right and left. I had the vague impression of lean figures ringing us.

From off to my left I heard terrific grunts and thunks and guessed that Enkidu battled still with the huge wooden serpent. Lamashtu’s eyes still stared into my own, alien and dangerous, and I thought then of Najya’s life ruined by these dark wizards, and Tarif and Jibril, and Abdul and the others, lost or frozen. All that we had endured of late passed swiftly before my memory, aye, even unto the death of brave Alexis, and an anger fired my very soul. It was not the devil of rage; it was a sense of righteous fury that so much evil had been done and that I had not the power to stop it. I wished that I’d had time to run through the form so that I might at least attempt to use the magic in the club as a weapon.

It was as I thought about the movement used to activate the club that its symbols lit with a white-gold brilliance. I had not noticed my weariness until it was lifted from me and astonishing vigor coursed through my muscles. I straightened, grinning. Lamashtu’s expression widened in surprise as I yanked my arm free of her grasp and swung.

Lamashtu’s inhuman speed kept her clear of my strike as she leapt back, but she still cried in pain, for a pulse of white light coursed out from the old weapon. She landed heavily on her side just in front of the open doorway. I had thought Lydia’s farr black, until I saw that of Lamashtu’s, which all but swallowed light.

“How—” Dabir began, but I was already turning to take in the rest of our foes.

Those who had closed upon us were dressed lightly, and possessed Lamashtu’s eerie eyes. Their whites gleamed in the glow put off by the club. For all that their clothes were nicely kept, the way that they stood, crouching with fingers held like talons, they seemed more like beasts. And with the sorcerous sight the club lent me, I saw they were cut from midnight cloth.

“You have but to think the form!” I called to Dabir. One of Lamashtu’s fiends sprang, tigerlike, but my blow caved in his head, smashing through bone and tissue. There was a curious lack of blood. My swing carried me through into a second and I broke through shoulder bone. He dropped, screaming, at my booted foot.

Dabir then was at my side, his spear shining, and he drove it through the beast-man’s chest. Our foe wailed, collapsed, and fell into dust.

“A fine strike!” I called to Dabir, who laughed.

The others charged as a mounted figure came round a snowcapped pillar. Even in the darkness a man could perceive the odd stiff gait of the beast and the strange way it held its head. Koury’s stallion. And, from the darkly powerful glow of the rider’s farr, Koury himself. Interestingly, he was not wrapped wholly in darkness.

“Back to back!” I called to Dabir.

So we stood thus as the creatures rushed us, and I fought with a fierce pride, wielding that great club as though it were a simple toy. On they came, and down they fell. The weapon smashed through bone like paper, and its light burned these men born of darkness. I left a field of broken bodies; Dabir, though, pierced their flesh, and those who did not go reeling back disintegrated, leaving only dust and empty garments that fluttered to the ground.

Koury did not leave his horse, but cast down two items from his satchel and wooden men sprang into being.

I saw a red flare of energy from the corner of my eye and risked a glance in time to see Lamashtu wielding a whip of fire. Dabir struck this with his spear. The flame blasted into a rain of sparks, and the sorceress screeched furiously.

Enkidu had triumphed at last over the snake and, holding its tail, lashed its long broken body at the sorceress. She stepped away, but two of her remaining minions were not as agile, and they went sprawling.

Enkidu jumped and landed hard on a nearby beast-man. He grinned at us. His farr was mostly blue and silver.

“Good!” he shouted, laughing. “We shall win this!”

On came the wooden warriors. Up rose the beast-men I had downed, no matter their horrifying wounds. They slunk to the sides, away from me, and I knew they waited until we were distracted. From far behind came a man’s voice raised in a roar of fury and then a string of odd syllables. Two of the nearest beast-men disintegrated in a rain of ash. The others cried out and pulled away.

“Erragal!” Enkidu said with relief.

On my right I saw Lamashtu raise up another whip of flame. Enkidu tossed one of her lackeys at her.

Behind us, Erragal and Lydia had stepped forth from the doorway. His farr blazed with a riot of colors stronger than any others. Lydia unleased a trio of howling ghosts that came surging toward Lamashtu.

This apparently was enough for the death mother, who sneered something in disgust and winked out of existence. The handful of remaining well-dressed beast-men vaulted away over the tumbled walls.

This left only the wooden men Koury had sent forth, which were now returning to him. Lydia’s spirit creatures soared after.

“What are you doing here?” Erragal asked us. We were but ten paces apart, and he had taken a step toward us when snow women flowed forth from the walls all around, dozens upon dozens of them. I started to brace myself for attack when I realized that they didn’t mean any harm at all. They and the beautiful white animal spirits with them were friends.

I couldn’t understand why Erragal and Lydia looked so upset as a giant wolf loped up to greet them, or why they lashed the spirit elephants with magical fire. They had not come to overwhelm, but to welcome.

“Fight, Asim!” Dabir urged.

I felt Enkidu’s comforting hand on my shoulder. He stepped toward Dabir.

Erragal’s robed skeleton, suddenly there beside its master, tossed down Lydia’s carpet, which she kicked open. I did not know why Dabir looked so horrified when I smiled at him, nor why he lobbed the spear toward the retreating pair with both hands, as though he were tossing a log. I saw it fly, dreamlike, its glow fading. It passed through the snow women crowding toward Lydia and Erragal, leaving only fragments of drifting frost.

I watched as the elder Sebitti leaned from the rising carpet and caught the spear. The huge white wolf snapped playfully at the carpet as it flew up and out, the spear still dangling from Erragal’s hands, and then all cares left me and I relaxed in the companionship of my most excellent friend Enkidu.