Flight to Opar

  Then the portcullis and door had been opened, and Hadon had led a sally outside. This had resulted in his forces being driven back with heavy losses. He had suffered several minor wounds and once almost been captured.

  Later, a force of about three hundred of the Queen's men had fought their way through to the doorway. Hadon had again led his men out to help them, and two hundred of the reinforcements had gotten into the temple.

  Phebha had sent messengers to the port to order at least half the troops there, six hundred men, to come to Opar. But it would be several days before the messenger could get there, even if he traveled night and day. And it would take heavily armed men four days to get to Opar with forced paddling. Moreover, Gamori was sure to have the river watched, so there was no guarantee that the messengers would get through.

  There were about five hundred soldiers inside the temple now. Unfortunately at least half of them were casualties. After eating the soup from the great kettles in the kitchen, two hundred and fifty had gotten very sick. Within an hour, almost a hundred had died in agony. The others had survived, but they were too sick to be of any use. Phebha started an investigation within half an hour after the first dozen became ill. By then the culprits, two chief cooks, had disappeared. Ropes dangling from third-story windows revealed their escape route.

  "Gamori is not as stupid as I had thought him, though he is even more vile," Phebha said. "Well, he has bit us hard. But if you succeed tonight, Gamori and all his ambitions will go up in his funeral pyre."

  Hadon was shocked. "You are going to burn him?"

  "Why not? He deserves the fate of a traitor and blasphemer. Would you have me give him a hero's burial and erect a pylon over him just because he once sat on a throne and was my husband?"

  "It's just that it's seldom done," he said.

  "If you are to be a good king, you will do many things that are seldom done."

  "I have been learning to do such things," Hadon said.

  He excused himself and went to his apartment. Abeth and Kohr were asleep in an inner chamber, watched by an elderly priestess. She looked up as Hadon stuck his head into the room. She smiled and made a sign that all was well with the children. He went to his own bed but was unable to sleep at all. After tossing and turning, he rose and drank several cups of hibiscus-tea. Then he paced. After a long, long time the water clock indicated it was time to leave.

  Klyhy met him outside the door of Phebha's quarters. "She is asleep," she said. "There is no need to wake her; we know what to do."

  Klyhy's slave was carrying a large jar of some black stuff. She opened it, and Hadon and Klyhy stripped and smeared themselves with the ointment. Then they dressed, though there was not much to that. Each wore a tight black loincloth, antelope-skin moccasins and a belt holding several sheaths and metal hooks. Pouches dangled from some of the hooks. A loop in Hadon's belt held a curious T-shaped device of iron. During this time four men, all also covered with black ointment, entered. They carried coils of rope over their shoulders, and their sheaths held knives and short-handled axes. Pouches hanging from the hooks held lead double-coned missiles. Their leather slings were secured through loops on their belts.

  Hadon had met these four that afternoon. He had gone over the diagrams with them and Klyhy until all could redraw them from memory. Like the other men, Hadon had sworn an oath never to reveal what he had learned from the diagrams. He had also sworn not to allow himself to fall alive into the hands of the enemy.

  Fully accoutred, Hadon and Klyhy led the others down the hall, past a sentry around the corner and down a small side hall. At its end Klyhy drew a large iron key from a pouch and unlocked a small iron door. Inside the room, she groped around until she found torches in brackets. Using a flint and iron and some tinder, she got a tiny fire going and then dumped the tinder on the oil-soaked torch. Two others also lit torches.

  The room was ostensibly used for storage. The priestess went around behind a pile of wooden boxes, the others following. There was a space between the pile and a single large box set against the stone wall. The wall itself was composed of stone blocks, each a three-foot square. Klyhy opened the lid of the box, revealing that it was half filled with rolls of papyrus. Klyhy told them to remove these, which they did. On the bottom was an ingot of lead weighing about forty pounds. They lifted that out and a plate of bronze rose a few inches from the bottom.

  "The lead block holds the plate down," she said. "Lift it and the plate comes up, and counterweights behind the wall start to work. Quickly! Into the opening!"

  A section of the wall had swung open and out. The others quickly moved through it into a tunnel beyond. Hadon, at her orders, pushed up on a huge wooden lever within the opening. Klyhy replaced the weight, threw in the papyrus rolls, closed the box lid and went through the opening. Hadon took the pressure off the lever and the stone section pivoted back.

  "Only the Queen has the key to the storage room," Klyhy said. "Only she and two priestesses at any one time know the secret of this room. Now you men know because this is an extreme emergency. But Kho will blast you if you should talk about it. If we can use it to get at our enemies, they can use it to get at us."

  The tunnel was about ten feet wide and eight feet high. It was well ventilated, though the source of the air was not visible. The torch flames bent toward the far end of the tunnel. Klyhy went first, turning to the left. There was no need for them to know where the right passage led, so they had not been told. The left was a lower, narrower passage. It ran for about a hundred yards, turning often, apparently going between the walls of rooms and corridors. Occasionally there were niches in the walls, some of which held skulls.

  "They are supposed to belong to the slaves who built these secret passages," she said. "I doubt that, though, since they would be seven hundred years old, and I think a skull would rot in that time. The walls are thick, but they are damp. Personally, I think they're the relics of enemies of the high priestesses of the past few generations. But if that's true, where are the skeletons?"

  Those who could answer her questions were also dead.

  The men made a sign to ward off evil spirits as they passed each skull.

  Occupied with his own thoughts about the skulls, Hadon trailed Klyhy. All of a sudden he bumped into her, causing her to gasp and then curse.

  "You clumsy hulk!" she said. "Watch where you're going! You almost knocked me down that!"

  She pointed at the open well just below her feet.

  Hadon said nothing. She was right. He should have been paying more attention. If he did not forget everything except the work at hand, he was likely to forget everything for all time.

  The torchlight struck water far down. It also showed a bronze ladder affixed to the stone. Klyhy lowered herself over the edge and went down it swiftly. A man called Wemqardo held her torch out so she could see all the way to the bottom. Reaching it, she swung around the ladder and disappeared into an opening. Wemqardo lowered the torch to her at the end of a rope and then went down himself. Within a few minutes all six were inside another tunnel. This one curved rapidly to the left, taking them for a quarter of a mile in a path like a snake's. On coming to what seemed the end of the passage, the priestess pushed against one side of the wall close to the corner. It pivoted ponderously, requiring Hadon's weight to move it. The bronze pins squeaked loudly, causing Klyhy to curse.

  Cold, wet air struck them. They advanced through the opening onto a curving piece of granite which held a boat just large enough to accommodate six adults uncomfortably. Though small, the boat took up almost all the room on the projection. A river, dark and greasy, lapped a few inches below the surface of the stone. Hadon lifted his torch to get a better view. The other side was at least three hundred feet away. The ceiling and walls formed an arch which glittered in the light; there were many veins of quartz in the granite. The highest part of the ceiling was about thirty feet above the water, though its height would vary further along.

  Wemqardo said, "I have
heard of this river deep under the city. It is said that the Cold Snake dwells at its bottom in the thick mud, and when—"

  "Quiet, fool!" Klyhy demanded. "Would you scare everybody to death!"

  Wemqardo said nothing more, but he had started a series of thoughts in the minds of the others. Hadon thought of creepy tales he had heard when a child, horrifying stories of the demons of the rock, of the things, half-gorilla, half-worm, which were supposed to haunt these tunnels. It was said that the slaves who dug for gold in these deeps often unaccountably disappeared. Or their fellows saw them being dragged away by things dark and misshapen… It was good not to think about such monsters, but how did you not think about something?

  They got the boat into the water and themselves into the boat, though they came close to overturning it. They drove it downstream with the short-handled paddles stored in the craft. Brackets on the prow and stern held torches; the third had been extinguished. Their flickering light revealed niches carved into the walls, each of which held a skull. It also showed, now and then, a sudden boiling of the water when a paddle dipped in. Hadon, in a low voice, asked Klyhy what caused this phenomenon.

  "It's a small fish which infests these waters," she said. "They're blind and colorless and only about four inches long. But they have a big head and many sharp teeth and they occur in great numbers. So it won't do to fall into the river. You'd be stripped of flesh within ten minutes."

  "Why didn't you tell us about them earlier?" Hadon said somewhat angrily.

  "You have enough to worry about."

  Hadon lifted his paddle and held it in the torchlight for a moment. The wooden blade was pitted in many places.

  "If there are so many of them, how do they get enough to eat in this sterile environment?" he asked. "Are there many other kinds of fish here? What do these eat?"

  "There are some other types of fish," she said, "though not many. Not enough to account for the swarms of those devilfish."

  "Then what do they eat?"

  "I wish I knew," she replied. "Though perhaps it is better for my peace of mind that I do not."

  Hadon wished he had not been so curious.

  After passing two aprons of stone, presumably opening to pivoted sections also, she told them to head for the third. They got onto the tiny dock without mishap, and she and Hadon pushed open the section. This, like the last one, squeaked loudly. The boat had to be left on the apron, since it was a little too large to get through the opening. Hadon did not like this. What if the King's men patrolled this area—as the priestess said they sometimes did—and saw the boat? They might take it with them, leaving Hadon and his group stranded.

  "They don't come around very often," she said. "And since Gamori needs all the men he can get for the fighting, I doubt he'll spare any for this area. Besides, the King's men don't know anything about the secret passages. They might suspect we have them, but they don't know where they are."

  "Won't they think it peculiar when they find a boat all by itself, up against a wall?"

  "I suppose so," she said. "Occasionally a boat does disappear, and we figure that a patrol found it and took it along with them, although a rising of the river could account for it. Whatever the reason for the disappearances, the King's men seem never to have pushed on the wall sections. They might have thought the boats were being used by demons of the rock or some other things even more unpleasant. I don't think the patrols like to linger down here."

  "One more thing to worry about," Wemqardo muttered.

  Hadon, in turn, would have worried about Wemqardo, but he had been assured by Phebha that the man was a very dependable veteran. Wemqardo might grumble and appear apprehensive, but when the time for action came he would be very active indeed.

  They proceeded down a narrow tunnel so low that Hadon had to duck down a little. Then the ceiling suddenly became quite high. After three hundred feet, Klyhy halted. Hadon expected her to push on the wall section ending the passage, but she held her torch high. Looking up, he saw a square opening about three feet across the ceiling. She handed her torch to him, removed and uncoiled the rope from her shoulder. Its end held a three-pronged grapple of iron. She tossed it up through the hole three times before it caught. After pulling on it to make sure it was secure, she braced her feet against the wall and hauled herself up to the opening.

  Hadon's torch showed that the rope had caught on the rung of a Bronze ladder set into the stone. Klyhy was now climbing on up it.

  He followed her with the torch. Within five minutes, all were climbing up the rungs after the priestess. At the top they went along a tunnel so narrow they went single file and so low they had to crouch or crawl. Reaching the end of this, they descended another bronze ladder, at least fifty feet down, then they took a tunnel which led directly below the river.

  Klyhy stopped again after more winding. She pointed to a sign carved in the rock on her right, about five feet above the floor. It was a simple, single vertical line crossed by two horizontal lines near its top.

  "It means a trap," she said, though they had all been instructed in the use of the secret signs by Phebha.

  She walked up to the oblong stone set in the floor just beyond the sign. It was five feet across, an easy standing jump. She leaped across and went on down to make room for the others. They hopped across, taking care to land at least a foot beyond the crack.

  "The last time I was here—the last time anyone was here—was six years ago," Klyhy said. "I opened the trapdoor at the orders of my superior—she's dead now—to check it. There were two skeletons down at the bottom which had not been there before, according to my superior. You see, the stone does not give way immediately. There is a delay which allows several people to get on the stone before it drops. Apparently at least two of the King's soldiers had found this passage. Their armor identified them. But they had fallen in, and if anyone else was with them, they decided not to explore any further."

  "What keeps the King from setting traps too?" Wemqardo said.

  "Nothing at all," she said, not very cheerfully.

  Wemqardo grunted. Klyhy turned and led them for about fifty yards in a straight line. Then she cast her grapple again, and after a while they were going along another horizontal passage. Once she stopped to point out another incised sign, a horizontal line just below a circle. A foot from it was a recess carved into the rock. This was large enough to admit a big man's hand. She put her fingers within it, gripping the raised edge.

  "Pull hard on this stone and it comes out, causing the ceiling blocks for a hundred feet that way"—she pointed ahead—"to fall in. Don't forget that."

  "Has this device been tested?" Wemqardo said.

  "Well, no," she said. "At least not as far as I know. It was built Kho only knows how many years—perhaps centuries—ago."

  "Then it may not work," Wemqardo said.

  "Just hope you don't have to use it," she said. "Or, if you do, that it does work. There are about two dozen such devices in this complex. If you're pursued, keep your eye out for this sign. The recess grip will be near it."

  "Just my luck not to have a torch," Wemqardo said.

  "Talking about bad luck brings bad luck," one of the other men commented.

  "Quiet now," Hadon ordered. "We're getting near the shaft to the roof of the temple, aren't we?"

  "Yes," Klyhy agreed.

  A minute later they came to another seeming end to the tunnel. Klyhy worked this device to swing it on its pivot. The group went through to an extension of the tunnel with a hole in the floor about six feet ahead. Above the hole was a shaft going upward and holding a bronze ladder. The hole went down, Hadon found out when he leaned over it, about thirty feet.

  "The underground river," Klyhy explained. "It was King's men who sank this shaft," she went on, "old King Madymeth, Gamori's great-great-grandfather. He wanted an escape route to the river in case of revolt or invasion. He did not inform his wife about it, but she found out, of course, and had the necessary shafts and tunnels c
arved to come out here. Thus the vicars of Kho have long had a secret passage into the Temple of Resu, though it has never been used until now. The original bronze ladder was also set there by Madymeth. About fifty years ago an earthquake tumbled part of it down into the river, and the present one was set into the stone."

  "I hope the men who did it were good artisans," Wemqardo whispered.

  "We'll find out," Hadon said. He leaped out across the hole and caught one bar with his two hands while a foot scraped down the wall and then against a rung. The bronze seemed to give a little, but that was probably only his imagination. He climbed up until there was room for the next jumper. Klyhy grabbed a rung, but her foot slipped and she dangled, swearing, no doubt sweating, for a moment until she had found a foothold.

  A torch was tossed to Hadon, who knotted his rope around it and carried it up that way, out to one side so the torch would not drip on those below. When he reached the sign—incised there how many decades or centuries ago?—he stopped. He drew the torch up and tied it two rungs above his head.

  The last man had tied the second torch to the ladder at the level of the tunnel. Now they had light from above and below and were unencumbered. Far up, a pale oval indicated the top of the shaft. The light came from the reflection of fires against the clouds.

  The sign was an inverted arrow on a horizontal line, the character of the syllabary which meant, among other things, sun, sungod, eagle. In this case it indicated the entrance to the apartment of the chief vicar of Resu, the Flaming God.