the whole monastery or a large part of it. It's
all full of gold. Tons and tons of gold."
He tried lifting one of the bricks and decided that
Everman had done very well to carry two of them
across the courtyard. "Thousands of tons, maybe
millions."
"Gold is no use to the dead." Wolfbiter,
that practical soul, started forward again, but
inconspicuous skulking had suddenly become very
difficult. The smallest ray of light he could
produce reflected dazzlingly from the walls.
In a moment he reached another gold corridor
branching off to the right. He hesitated and then went
straight. Then one to the left--he stopped.
"We're going to get lost."
"Keep left. It ought to put us under the corner
tower, I'd think."
It led, eventually, to a stone doorway
slightly narrower than the corridor itself, and beyond
that was a dark place, with no reflections. The
air did not smell good. Wolfbiter paused at
the entrance and directed a narrow beam through his
fingers, moving a spot of brightness over rocky
walls and then a cubical structure with an
obvious chimney, metal tongs, a stone
crucible ...
"A forge?"
"No. That's a furnace, though." Durendal
activated his own ring and advanced into the room.
"A foundry. This is where they cast the gold."
He pointed to the molds. "Where do they get their
ore?" And why did the place stink so badly?
He turned his hand to light up the other end of the
chamber and almost cried out at the resulting blaze.
The conical mountain of raw gold heaped there
filled the room from side to side and reached almost
to the roof. It was not what he supposed ore would
look like, being a collection of odd-shaped
fragments and nuggets, from lumps the size of a
man's head all the way down to gravel. He
picked up a log that had rolled free, marveling
at its weight. Its surface was rough, and here and
there black stone still adhered ... except it
wasn't a log, it was a human tibia.
Blood and fire! Ribs, vertebrae,
jawbones, skulls, and the gravel was toe and finger
bones. The black adhesions were lumps of dried
flesh. Hence the stench.
"They don't feed the livestock, do they?"
Wolfbiter said aloud.
"Sh!"
"But this is what they do with the bodies. They
turn the bones to gold."
The surface of the tibia sparkled as if
whatever had scraped away the flesh had scored the
metal heavily all over. Durendal recoiled
from trying to understand that and laid his trophy down again.
On impulse he helped himself to a few finger
bones and slipped them in his pocket as souvenirs.
There was only the one door. The bones had been
tipped in through a trapdoor in the roof, like trash.
As he followed his Blade back along the
gold-paneled corridor, he marveled at the
obscene hoard. A great nation could not spend this much
wealth in a thousand years, and yet a mere dozen
or so maniacal monks waged daily slaughter
to increase it. So infinite a fortune must surely
be guarded by infinite defenses. When they came
to the junction, he was very tempted to tell
Wolfbiter to go to the right, back to the trapdoor,
but Wolfbiter went left again and he followed.
Would the trapdoor even be there? He could
easily call up a nightmare of wandering in this
golden maze forever, imprisoned by some potent
conjuration. If Herat had anything to do with it, the
reality might be worse than anything he could
envision.
The corridor went on and on. As he was
deciding that they must soon reach the far side of the
monastery, they came to a door of stout timbers,
banded with iron. In darkness, Wolfbiter tried the
latch.
Whisper. "It's not locked."
"Go ahead then. Slowly! And sniff."
The worst thing they could stumble into would be a stable
full of sleeping monkeys. Even Herat might
Slowly Wolfbiter pulled, easing hinges that
would be longing to creak but not giving them the chance. The
room beyond was pitch-black. A momentary flash
... A pleased breath. "Ah!" ... More light.
They had found the jail, a double line of barred
doors. It did not smell of monkey. It did
smell of men, but not recent men. Stale and foul.
A few of the little cells still had rotting straw in
them; some had old buckets and water jugs
covered with dust. The jail had not been used for
many, many years.
"If Polydin is anywhere, he should be here,
sir."
"Probably. Not necessarily." Durendal
went to the door at the far end.
His Blade reached it first and stood before it,
barring the way. "Sir! We've seen enough."
He was absolutely right, of course. They had
met with amazing luck and ought not to push it any
further. How long had they been inside? The
brethren must certainly rouse at dawn, if not
before.
"I'm going on," Durendal said miserably
--knowing he was making a mistake, knowing his friend must
come with him and share his fate. "Remember if we
have to make a run for it, the way out is straight
down that corridor." But there was an unexplored
branch in that corridor. They could be cut off.
Without wasting time on argument, Wolfbiter
doused his light and tried the door. Perhaps a spirit of
adventure was overcoming his caution at last.
The next room had been designed for
jailers, for it contained ancient wooden benches and
racks for weapons. Now it was merely used for
junk; a heap of old swords and axes,
baskets and boxes, piles of rotting clothes.
It stank of rats and immemorial dust.
It did have another door at the far end.
Wolfbiter eased it open in darkness, but there was a
faint light beyond. For the first time, they had reached a
place that might be inhabited. It might even be
luxurious, for there was just enough brightness to show that the
walls and floor were patterned or tiled. It was
a squarish hallway with two more doors at this
level and a white stone staircase winding upward.
The light was coming from somewhere up there--perhaps only
starlight, but probably the first stirring of dawn--
and with it came unexpected odors of flowers and
vegetation and a very faint sound of running water.
What lay outside? The monastery was swathed in
city houses all around, so a best guess was that it
was hollow, a shell enclosing an open atrium.
One of the doors was ajar, showing blackness.
Staying ahead of his ward, Wolfbiter padded over
to it in silence and peered inside.
"Stinks," he whispered. "Kitchens.
&n
bsp; Flies." Then he crouched down and risked a
single ray of light, running it around the floor
to check for more open doors. He was worried about
windows, although they were probably not quite up
to ground level yet. Finally he rose and went
in. Durendal followed.
It was not a kitchen, it was the meat locker,
containing a single carcass, although there was space for
more. It had been flayed and eviscerated and hung
up by a metal hook through its hocks--upside
down, of course, so that the fluids could drain from the
gash in its throat. It buzzed with flies.
Judging by its size, it had been Khiva son of
Zambul.
Wolfbiter made a retching noise and put a
hand over his mouth.
"Gold ore," Durendal whispered. "Those
... bastards!" He could not think of words anywhere
near adequate. He poked the corpse. It was
stiff with rigor mortis, but the way it swayed
told him it was not heavy enough to have gold bones. It
would probably have fallen apart if it did.
"But why skin him and gut him?" his Blade
said. "Why leave him here to go bad?"
"Some meat improves with hanging." Not in this
climate, surely?
"Sir, let's go now, please?"
"I want to look outside. Just a quick
peek."
Wolfbiter sighed and followed him as he started
up the stairs.
Durendal knew he had given up all hope
of locating Jaque Polydin and was now
motivated by pure curiosity to see a little more of the
monastery. Dungeons and cellars were not enough.
Where was he, though? His sense of direction had
failed him. Somewhere at the back, he thought,
well away from the court. This stairwell was
probably in one of the towers.
They reached another decorated hallway. More
stairs went upward. There were two closed doors
at this level and an archway open to a shadowed
garden, with faint shapes of trees and bushes.
Frustrated, he stood on the step and peered out
at the darkness, sniffing lush odors of greenery,
very unexpected in Samarinda. A few lights
glimmered in windows, and above the encircling walls
the stars were fading as dawn approached. Even as
he watched, more windows brightened. He could see
nothing of the garden itself, but its presence showed that the
monastery must be a much finer place to live in
than it seemed from the outside--a palace, in
effect. Everman's decision might not be quite as
crazy as it had seemed.
"Beautiful!" Wolfbiter whispered. "Now can
we go?"
"Yes, all right. Lead the--"
Hinges squeaked downstairs in the hall they had
just left. Light flared. Wolfbiter spun
around, drawing his sword. Grunts and shuffling
footsteps, a door closing but the light remaining
... Someone or something was coming up. Trapped!
Without a word, the two intruders dived out the
archway, down two steps to a paved path. A
tangle of shrubbery to the right of the door offered
cover. Dropping to hands and knees, they squirmed
underneath and lay prone. Wolfbiter mouthed some
obscene words under his breath. Somewhere close, a
steady tinkle of water did nothing to add to the comfort
of the situation.
Light from the arch grew brighter, flickering like
fire and illuminating elaborate colored
tiles on the path. A monkey came shuffling out
to stop abruptly not five feet from the cowering
Chivians. She wore the usual garish trousers
and held a flaming torch. There was a sword on
her back. She snuffled suspiciously. Could
she smell the intruders?
Durendal might not be able to jump to his feet
and put Harvest through her heart fast enough to prevent
her crying out, because animal reflexes were usually
faster than human. He might trip over a
branch and fall flat on his face. More light
had appeared in a window overhead, meaning that more people
or monkeys were coming down the stairs. Light
brightened behind her. She stepped aside to make
way.
Two more monkeys emerged, carrying Khiva's
flayed corpse like a rolled rug on their
shoulders, its death-stiffened arms stretched
rigidly ahead of it. A fourth shuffled along
behind them, bearing another torch, and all four headed
down the path. Wolfbiter started to move and then
sank back with a sound of grinding teeth as he saw
more light streaming from the arch.
Durendal leaned close to his ear. "I think
we may have to relax here for a while. Someone has
called a meeting."
"Relax? Yes, sir. Wake me when it's
time to go."
Next through the door was a torch-bearing monkey
lighting the way for two tottering humans. They
seemed to be two women, but they were so shrunken and
bent that Durendal could not be sure. He
could hear voices from the stairwell.
More torches had appeared in the far corner of the
garden and begun moving slowly in their direction.
Once or twice their flames reflected off
water. The ground seemed to be lower at that end, so
the tantalizing fountain nearby probably fed an
ornamental stream and a series of ponds like the
Queen's Garden at Oldmart. More windows were
brightening, others going dark. The entire population
of the monastery must be awake, and it was a reasonable
guess that they were all on their way here.
Why? The focus was just below him, a platform of
white stone, probably marble. He slithered
forward under the branches until he had a better
view. The floor itself was irregular in shape,
bounded by ornamental walls and flower beds close
at hand, a lawn at the far side. Khiva's
corpse lay facedown in the center of an inlay
of dark tiles that outlined an octogram. The
two old women were sitting on the far edge, and now
a monkey arrived carrying another, whom he set
down gently beside them. No, it was a man, and the
next three who came shuffling into the gathering were men
also. They all stayed outside the octogram and
well away from the stinking, buzzing load of bad
meat that yesterday had been Khiva son of
Zambul. Obviously someone was going to perform a
conjuration.
Sunrise and sunset were very sudden affairs in
Altain. The roofline and the towers' silhouettes
were clearly visible now against the sky. Even the
shadowy atrium had brightened to reveal a tiny
secret paradise of lawns, bushes, flowers,
little gazebos, ornate bridges, tall
trees.
Wolfbiter's whisper in his ear: "Kromman
will have gone by now. He was going to leave the
trapdoor open."
"Can't be helped. Let's just hope all the
monkeys are here at the moment. Who do you think the
senility
cases are?"
His Blade's eyes showed white all around their
irises. "You tell me."
Durendal did not try. He could not convince
even himself of what he suspected, let alone
put it into words. But it had begun to make a
horrible sort of sense. Some very potent
conjurations could be performed only at certain
specific times. Now it was dawn, the start of a
new day. By next morning I was good
as new, Everman had said.
There were twenty-three of those living corpses
laid out around the platform now. Most of them were
wrapped in some sort of sheet or robe, a few
completely naked, all gray-skinned and either
bald or white haired. Some mumbled aimlessly
to their neighbors, others lay prone, as if near
death. Three more were brought in and set down by their
animal guardians, for a total of fifteen
monkeys and twenty-six human beings, if that was
a fair description of those repulsive
bundles of stick limbs and sagging flesh. Most
of the monkeys squatted down on the grass
nearby. Two climbed into trees, but four went
inside the octogram with the corpse and began
to chant, first one, then another. Chivian
conjurations were usually done by eight people, but other lands
might know other rituals.
Wolfbiter squeezed his ward's shoulder.
"Now!"
"Wait!"
"Go! I'll wait and see what happens if
you want, but if you stay here any longer, I shall go
out of my mind!" He was right, of course. The time
to make a break was now, while the livestock was
engrossed in watching the ceremony.
Durendal began to wriggle back, then
paused. "Listen! They're revoking time!" The
ritual was unlike any he had ever heard of, a
complicated sequence of invocations and revocations that
seemed to leap in purely random fashion back and
forth across the octogram. All the manifest
elements were being invoked. He could have predicted
that, because life sprang from all four in combination:
air, fire, earth, and water, while to make
gold must require massive amounts of fire and
earth. It seemed that all the virtuals were being
revoked, even love. The entire faculty of the
Royal College of Conjurers would tear its
collective hair out for a chance to witness this
ritual, but it was making his skin prickle. The
climax came as the first rays of the sun flashed
on the top of the towers. The chant ended on a long
note of triumph.
The corpse moved.