29
The oracle must always speak if she is summoned by the proper ritual words. If she does not, there is a longer ritual to coax her voice awake. I need them to go away quickly so no one notices the rope looped around the air shaft on the roof.
I run into the oracle’s chamber and sit on the stool before the “mouth,” the slit through which worshippers can hear her whispered prophecies. No priest would look directly through the slit so all I see are the robes they wear, dyed in colors that represent the god each priest serves: blue for Lady Hayiyin of the Sea, yellow for Lord Seon the Sun of Justice, and red for Lord Judge Inkos who rules the afterlife. The High Priest wears purple to mark his descent from royal ancestors, since only palace-born men can serve as High Priest. Whether or not he is in on Lord Gargaron’s plot, I have to convince him to leave.
My pulse pounds in my ears so loudly I am dizzy with it. If the words she spoke leave my mouth, do I become the oracle?
“The tale begins with a death.” I pitch my voice low to disguise it. “Where will it end? There could be a victory, a birth, a kiss, or another death. There might fall fire upon the City of the Dead, upon the tombs of the oracles. A smile might slay an unsuspecting adversary. Poison might kill the flower that bloomed brightest. A living heart might be buried. Death might be a mercy.”
Silence pools like fate as a scribe writes my words down. It takes all my willpower not to bolt for the bier’s shaft, but at length, singing a hymn, the priests walk away to complete a circuit of the tombs. The instant it is safe to move, Kalliarkos grabs the rope at the bottom of the air shaft.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“I have to climb up and cut the rope free. It’ll be tricky coming down but it’s nothing more than a very tight blind shaft.”
“What if they see you?”
He shrugs. “If they arrest me, I won’t have to go into the army, will I?”
I kiss his cheek for luck.
He rests his fingers briefly against my cheek in answer, then climbs the rope hand over hand, the muscles tight in his arms.
“Time to go, Doma, if you can pull your eyes away from the handsome prince who’s showing off for you,” says Ro-emnu, watching me from the arch.
I see no need to answer such an impertinent comment. Pushing past him, I stop short. Lord Ottonor’s corpse has been put back into the coffin, and the oracle is gone. Only my brother remains. Ro picks up the tiny bundle and offers it to me.
“You did not tell me there were two babies, Doma. Twins are sacred.”
“Twin boys are considered a sign of good fortune, and twin girls of ill fortune, but they’re not sacred.”
“You’re speaking like a Patron. Twins are sacred to the five.”
“To the Fives? The game? What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know anything about being Efean, do you?” His dark gaze mocks me. “What I can’t believe is that you just discarded him on the floor.”
“She gave birth to him in darkness. Don’t think you can judge what you were not here to experience.” I am not about to confess the desperate thing I did in my panic. Instead I kiss the baby’s cold forehead as a blessing. Watching me, Ro-emnu’s sneer softens.
A bed-curtain sliced up makes a sling to tie the baby against my body. Unlike my new sister he feels empty: no spark heats him, and his self has long since fled. Father never had any luck with his sons.
“Why do you care?” His sympathetic expression fades into his usual derision.
A thump interrupts us. Kalliarkos trots in with two lamps, the rope and harness, and a sealed reservoir of oil. He grins with a cocky confidence that looks good on him.
“They’ve gone on around the hill. We did it, Jes! Everyone is out!”
I can’t allow myself to relax. Disaster lurks around every corner.
We tidy up the tomb, then wrestle the heavy stone lid almost all the way back over the bier.
“Tomb robbers built this so they could sneak in,” I say after we set the coffin on top.
Ro-emnu scoffs. “Men from the Efean masons’ guild built it, Doma. Your father’s people are the tomb robbers, not mine.”
Kalliarkos sets a hand casually on Ro-emnu’s shoulder. “Ro, we have got to go, not argue about history.”
Instead of scorching him with a retort, Ro-emnu shoves him away companionably. “You’re right, Kal. We can argue later.”
I’m impressed by how Kalliarkos has so quickly forged a comradeship with a Commoner criminal.
“Jes, you go first,” Kalliarkos says. “You won’t need the rope. It’s an easy climb. Ro and I will close the bier and follow.”
Even with the baby bundled against me it is indeed an easy climb. Hand- and footholds have been carved into the rock, as if this really is a route for tomb robbers. A lantern burning at the base of the shaft guides me down. The stonework is fine masonry in a crisscrossing pattern, obviously laid by a master craftsman. At the base I look around curiously. A jagged cleft makes a passageway out of the shaft but I wait, a hand curved atop my brother’s cap of hair. Above, the stone lid grinds as they shift it, then clunks into place. Ro-emnu descends. The way his feet thump as he probes for footholds betrays him as an inexperienced climber. A stream of words pours out of him, sounding like the silkiest poetry even though he is cursing about donkeys, manure, and breaking legs in holes filled with scorpions. Just above me he slips and plummets the last body length.
I press back against the wall to avoid his feet but steady him so he doesn’t smash. He slams into my side, grabbing hold of me for purchase. He’s very strong.
Above us, Kal laughs. “I heard that slip! Best stagger out of the way as I’m coming down.”
Ro-emnu’s murmur teases my ear. “Hard to imagine a petted and cosseted princeling running the Fives when he could be sitting in the stands making bets on the outcome and eating grapes offered to him by a prettily masked slave like you, Doma.”
The insinuation is a slap in the face. I twist out of his arms and shove him into the cleft. “Efeans are the ones who enslaved their own people. Kliatemnos the First and his queen, Serenissima, put a stop to that evil custom. We don’t keep slaves.”
“No, you just call them something else and treat them worse. How your father’s people love the lies they tell!”
“I’m down!” says Kalliarkos cheerfully. The lantern bobs as he picks it up and follows us into the narrow passage.
“That was fast for a pampered lord,” says Ro-emnu in a tone so affably joking that I feel my neck has been wrenched by his abrupt change of mood.
“Climbing is my best skill, as both you and Jes should know by now,” replies Kal in a laughing way that confounds me. His voice is as bright as the lamp, glittering with triumph. “We have only to follow the chalk marks back out to the pool we came by, and we’re free.”
“Good thing you brought the chalk,” says Ro-emnu.
“Now you see the value of running the Fives, don’t you?”
“It’s a foul game that Patrons love. No offense.”
“None taken. We’ll contest the matter later over a drink.”
Lord Gargaron is wrong to think that Kalliarkos’s instinct to treat others as equals is a flaw. Even I thought so at first, believing him too nice, but his ability to respect others and set them at ease makes him strong, not weak.
The cleft opens into a perfectly square chamber. Lamplight’s golden aura washes the shadows into the corners. Mother sits in the center of the room with Cook on one side and Maraya on the other. The baby suckles at her breast. Amaya rocks back and forth, arms crossed over her belly as she groans in pain. Coriander stands guard over the oracle, who hides her face behind her hands.
“There’s no door,” says Coriander. “How do we leave?”
Ro-emnu snatches the lamp from Kalliarkos and swings it so its light falls full on one corner. “We climbed up this shaft.”
There is no shaft, just a square depression with a grate lying beside it and grooves in the stonework where the grate would fit over a hole, if there were one.
“Where did the shaft go?” Kalliarkos prods the stone. “It must have closed after we came up.”
The two men thump at the blocked depression as I walk a tour of the chamber, shining lamplight into every corner. For the life of me I cannot see another opening. It was too easy after all. Or the masons betrayed us. I sink down next to Mother. What do we do now?
“We’re going to die down here,” Amaya whimpers.
“Just shut up, Amiable. Let me think.” There has to be a way.
“Jessamy, let me look on him,” Mother whispers.
I push the linen folds away from his little face. The light gilds his perfect features. He has his father’s eyes and his mother’s coloring.
“He will not be cursed to lie alone in a tomb until he is dust.” Tears slide down her cheeks. “Poor child. His father would not have loved that face.”
“How could anyone not love such a beautiful face?” I retort, for I do not like to think that Father did not love me when he first saw me.
“Shhh. Let go of your anger, Jessamy. It will weaken you if you allow it to rule your heart.”
My lips press closed over the things I would like to say but will not trouble her with. I love Father but I know Maraya is right: he could have turned his back on ambition, and he didn’t.
Maraya walks over to the two men. “Could someone have shut the opening behind you to trap you here?”
Ro-emnu scratches at his shaved head and looks surprised when his fingers find no hair. “I don’t think so. The masons who know about this place never enter it. It is forbidden to disturb what lies beneath. They say angry spirits eat intruders but I think fear makes a man see spirits where there are none. People are just afraid of the past.”
“Maybe angry spirits shoved the stone into place to trap us so they can eat us like a fine meal,” murmurs Amaya, “leaving the delicacies for last. Which means you will be eaten first, Jes.”
“Then I’ll be spared your whines and shrieks, which will sour your flavor!”
She laughs, as I guessed she would, but I cannot join her. The exhaustion of all our hopes weighs too heavily. What if our only choice is to climb back into the tomb?
Merry probes around the rim for a latch. She hasn’t given up. “There is no need to fear malignant spirits when a better explanation would be that springs or ropes made a stone move to close the opening.”
Kalliarkos turns a slow circle, studying the blank walls. “Certainly the chambers we worked our way through to get here had pitfalls and barriers.”
“The way you climbed that one shaft blind with no assistance was cursed amazing,” says Ro-emnu.
He nods. “There was a lot of climbing to get here, wasn’t there? Many collapsed rooms too. We had to retrace our path several times. That’s why the chalk was so valuable. But if there are spirits lurking we never saw them. That this place was buried long ago is enough to make it unsafe.”
Cook clears her throat, and we all look at her stoic face. “My lord, can we get out?”
“I don’t know.”
Maraya stands. “Ro-emnu, do you think the masons might have tricked you?”
Coriander laughs bitterly. “They would never have. Don’t you know who he is?”
“No, I don’t. Is he a magician to spell us free?”
Ro-emnu shakes his head with a patience he has never shown me. “The masons do not lie, Doma. My uncle is one. This is a dangerous place and we walk here at our own risk.”
Maraya nods. “How did you identify Lord Ottonor’s tomb from underneath?”
“When the tombs were erected in the reign of Kliatemnos the First, they were built over old air shafts from the buried complex. The biers hide the shafts. The priests don’t even know about them because the Efean workers never told them. I’ve heard stories about how women were rescued from the tombs but I don’t know if they’re true. Each tomb has a mark that gives its location to the north, south, west, and east. Here, do you see it?” He goes to the cleft and shows us simple lines depicting Clan Tonor’s three-horned bull, the same mark carved into the tomb’s lintel.
“Do that again!” says Amaya.
“Do what?” he asks, surprised by her command.
“Honored Lord, walk from the cleft to the grate, more slowly this time.”
Ro-emnu lifts an eyebrow, not sure whether she is mocking him or showing respect by using the Efean honorific. Yet instead of throwing a nasty retort into her face he paces out the gap.
When he is halfway across she yelps. “Stop! The pattern of the bricks is broken there. You can see it when the light and shadow fall just right.”
The even pattern of the bricks is broken to make a faint outline in the shape of a door. I press a hand along the outline but nothing moves. A pattern at the center resembles the nested pyramid, a small one inverted inside a large one; this symbol marks the entrance to Traps on any Fives court. Resting my palm flat on the center brick, I lean into it. The wall gives way.
A door opens as by magic or by the secret workings of ancient wires and pulleys.
Startled exclamations ring out. I raise a hand to stop the others from crowding forward.
“There is a trick here. Let me go through first.”
Lantern in hand, I ease through the opening. No light penetrates the space beyond, except the glow of the lantern. When I lift it I cannot see ceiling or floor, for I stand on a ledge on the brink of a cliff. Water slops below like waves shushing among rocks. The air smells salty. Does the ocean reach under the City of the Dead? Or is this all an illusion?
Two bridges attach to the ledge. It is far too dark for me to see where they lead. They simply vanish as into nothingness. The stone bridge seems to be anchored with arches and pillars beneath; it looks sturdy but has no railing, so it would be easy to step off. The wider bridge is built of wood and has railings, but when I test its first plank the wood feels spongy. If this chamber has lain here for five generations, this bridge is surely rotting.
I call back. “Everyone come through at once in case there’s a trap to close you in there.”
They arrive in hasty procession: Maraya has the baby. Cook assists Amaya. Ro-emnu carries Mother like a sack of rice, while Coriander has slung the oracle over her shoulders. Kalliarkos brings up the rear with the other three lanterns and our gear. We crowd the ledge, clinging together in the aura of lantern-light. Who knows what might be lurking in the dark beyond?
“I’m going first,” I say, tightening the cloth that binds my dead brother against my chest. “You all follow when I give the order.”
“Yes, Captain,” says Ro-emnu in his sardonic voice.
With a rumbling scrape the open door suddenly slides shut.
“It looks like we have no choice but to go forward,” Maraya remarks.
“Follow me single file,” I say.
The bridge rises in a slow arch. We all tread cautiously on the span, step by step. I can no longer see the ledge where we started, just Kalliarkos’s lamp at the end of our group. My light shines only a few paces ahead of me. Horribly, the roadway starts to narrow. From being as wide as the width of my outstretched arms it shrinks until the bridge is no wider than the distance from the tip of my fingers to my elbow. It’s not so hard to walk, unless you look down into the stygian depths. Watery sighs breathe out of the abyss like a monster sleeping. There might be a sea-swallowing serpent waiting to rise and snap us up one by one as the rest plunge screaming off the bridge to their deaths.
I can’t allow fear to master me.
“How much farther?” Maraya asks, her breath coming in short bursts. She has crouched to brace herself on hands and knees. Behind her Cook and Amaya are crawling. Kalliarkos has given the lit lamp to Coriander so he can coax the oracle forward. Like me, Ro-emnu remains standing. How he balances with Mother on his back I cannot fathom but it’s impressive that he does.
I creep forward, holding out the lamp to see what comes next. The span narrows until it is no wider than my hand, a single course of bricks.
Maraya begins to wheeze. Amaya sobs once and is silent.
“How are we to cross without falling, Doma?” asks Cook in her phlegmatic voice.
Ro-emnu says, “I confess I do not think I could balance that even if I weren’t carrying the honored lady. We will have to turn back.”
“We can’t turn back. The door closed behind us, just as the shaft did. It’s as if we’re being driven in one direction. But who would build a bridge to get narrower? There’s something I’m missing.” I snap a finger. “Wait. Don’t anyone move.”
Kneeling, I feel my way forward, pushing the lantern ahead of me. My fingers brush along the edge but it feels wrong. Air should move up into my face from the depths but it doesn’t. Carefully I straddle the span so as to test its sides. A calf-length below, my legs hit stone. The span remains the same width as at the beginning. It’s just this little ridge bricked atop and cunningly painted to make it look like the bridge is narrowing.
“It’s a trap! An illusion. Our eyes deceive us, and our fear makes us quail.”
I press forward and they creep after. In a mere twenty strides, the false painting ends and we reach the far shore and enter a vaulted chamber with four ramps leading into further passageways.
“Why would anyone want to frighten and confuse people like this?” Amaya whimpers as she huddles on the floor, clutching Cook’s leg for comfort.
Maraya turns to look back the way we came. A wall of wide arches gives us a view onto the lightless gulf we just traversed, a maw of darkness.
“That is a very good question, Amiable,” she says in a brisk voice. “Who built this place originally? When it was buried, why was it not totally filled in with rubble? Think how strong the roof must be to have not collapsed under the weight of a hill.”
“What are those lights?” asks Mother, twisting out of Ro-emnu’s supporting arm. She shades her eyes as against the sun. “What haunts us?”
Out on the gulf of night, sparks of blazing light dance like a swarm of fireflies. They spin through hypnotic circles and spirals and all in a silence that wraps us like swaddling clothes. Their uncanny glamour paralyzes when we should be running away.
As with an inhaled breath the lights collect into a pulsing mass. They spill toward us in a flood. Too stunned to move or speak, we stare helplessly. Like fiery locusts the sparks pour through the arches in such numbers that their brilliance blinds us. Sparks tumble hotly through my flesh like a thousand million falling stars. Their radiance dissolves me; my being becomes mist. Unmoored, my heart comes unanchored and slides toward the ocean of eternity.
My shadow frays and tears where it attaches to my heels. I forget my name. My breath ceases.
In the shadow-ridden flesh of my dead brother, a fierce spark lodges with a hiss of steam.
In an eyeblink the lights vanish. Silence crashes down over us like the fist of voiceless thunder, a force that jolts the whole world. My knees buckle, and I pitch forward, barely catching myself on a hand. The sling flops sideways, cloth flapping open to uncover his face. My little finger brushes the bow of his tiny lips. His mouth parts under its pressure, and an answering force clamps down.
I suck in a harsh breath, heart thudding madly, as I realize what I am feeling.
My dead brother is suckling on my finger. He is alive.