A Painted Goddess (7 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Brasley rolled over and opened his eyes. It was very much the same as having his eyes closed. He tried to blink the darkness away and failed.

Then he remembered where he was.

Ah, yes. The delightful pitch-dark place with the sealed door at the top of the shaft with the wrecked lift. He felt around in the darkness. He’d set the lantern close the night before, but he was still disoriented and his groping couldn’t find it at first. There’d been talk of leaving it on, but of course they couldn’t risk burning through the fuel so quickly. Even on the darkest winter night in the middle of a forest, there’d been a glimmer of starlight. The darkness in the enclosed heights of the Great Library was so complete Brasley would actually have been impressed if he hadn’t been so certain he was going to die here.

In the occasional morbid moments he imagined his own death, it was usually something like a dagger tossed into his back by an angry husband as he climbed out of his wife’s bedroom window.

Or falling into a nice long sleep after far too much wine and never waking up again.

Not trapped in the Great Library of Tul-Agnon to rot slowly in the dark.

He found the lantern and lit it. The others were already sitting up, clearly waiting for him to conclude his fumbling.

“I presume everyone had a comfortable night on the cold stone floor?” The bedrolls Brasley had purchased when outfitting the expedition might as well have been drawn on the floor with chalk for all the comfort they provided.

Brasley set the lantern in the center of the landing and fed Titan a handful of oats and then rationed the animal a bit of water. Then he went to the lift shaft and looked inside. It was still ruined, not that he’d expected anything different.

“We might have enough rope to climb down to the next level,” he said.

Talbun tsked
behind him, and Brasley could sense her rolling her eyes. They’d already had this conversation the previous evening, and nobody had liked the climbing-down-the-shaft option. After yesterday’s spectacular smashing of the lift and the subsequent pounding the shaft took as the debris plummeted, ricocheting off the sides as it went, there was legitimate doubt about the shaft’s stability. Tying a rope to the wrong support beam might result in a long, lethal drop.

Then there was the goat and the cart. Lowering them by rope would be problematic at best. At worst . . . well, Brasley pictured their mangled bodies in a bloody heap at the bottom of the shaft with the goat and cart on top of them.

So climbing down the shaft was out, and that left the door.

The sealed door.

With who knew what sort of perilous instant death on the other side.

He sighed. He didn’t want to be here. He missed Fregga.

The shadows shifted, and Brasley turned to see Talbun holding the lantern up to the seal again, squinting at it with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.

“Nothing’s going to change no matter how much we stall and think it over,” she said. “We go inside. Today. Now.”

Brasley raised a finger. “Point of order. What about instead of now, later? And instead of open the door, have breakfast?”

“Brasley!”

“Okay, okay.” He turned to the guide. “Any last-minute advice before we open the dangerous door of mystery, Olgen?”

Olgen started, surprised to be included in the conversation. “Me? I’m not even supposed to be here.”

Brasley smiled. It was difficult, but he did it. “Nevertheless. If something on the other side of the door turns out to be the sort of thing that might kill us, I imagine that would include you regardless of the fact that, as you say, you’re not supposed to be here. Thus it would behoove you, as a matter of self-preservation, to relate to us any tidbits of information you might think relevant to the current situation.”

“Well.” Olgen cleared his throat. “I mean, it could be
anything
in there. No one from the university has ever been this far up into the Great Library, at least no one that’s lived to return and tell about it. The Great Library is the most ancient puzzle in the world.”

“So to sum up,” Brasley said. “We should prepare ourselves for anything that’s ever been known or imagined, mundane or magical, animal, vegetable, or mineral in the last thousand years or so.”

“Just so, milord.”

Brasley drew his sword and looked at Talbun. “Proceed.”

She passed her hand over the seal, mumbling arcane words. Pinpoints of cold blue light danced and jerked over the seal like insects looking for a way to burrow inside.

Olgen stepped forward, wonder on his face. “You’re a spell caster? I didn’t know you—”

Brasley put a gentle hand on his shoulder and eased him back. “Give her room, boy.”

Olgen stepped back.

There was a sharp pop, more felt than heard, and Talbun had to scramble away quickly as the chains clattered to the floor. The seal tumbled from the door in pieces, acrid smoke rising from it.

“What happened?” Brasley said.

“An opening spell,” Talbun said. “A powerful one. Sort of all purpose. Like I said before, the seal was meant to keep something in, not us out. Otherwise, I don’t think I could have broken it. The magic felt . . . old. And very strong.”

There was a muffled
whumf
and a sucking sound as the doors swung outward, eddies of air swirling around them. The temperature seemed to drop suddenly, and Brasley shuddered at a sudden chill. When the doors stood wide, Talbun lifted the lantern and entered. Brasley swallowed hard, sword in hand, and followed, Olgen in tow.

They halted a dozen paces inside the doorway, the black floor smooth as glass spreading out ahead of them. The chamber in which they found themselves was so large, the lantern light touched neither the walls nor the ceiling. The three of them stood on a small island of dim illumination in the vast darkness.

Brasley’s palm was sweaty on his sword hilt.
I wish whatever was going to jump out and eat my face would just get on with it. The suspense is killing me
.

A flicker of light overhead. Their heads snapped up. Another flicker. Faint. More flickers off to the sides. Slowly the lights brightened. Enormous glass globes hung from the vaulted ceilings. What seemed to be flakes swirled in a frenzied circle within each sphere like a tiny blizzard, the glow increasing with the agitation. The globes extended a hundred yards to the right and left and ahead of them, illuminating wide hallways of highly polished back stone.

Carved into the walls down both sides of each hallway were rectangular indentions like large picture frames without the pictures, six feet high and three feet wide. The halls were dust free and perfect, no sign of the deterioration they’d seen elsewhere in the Great Library.

Talbun stared up at the globes, mouth agape.

“A spell?” Brasley asked.

“Several spells, I would imagine,” Talbun said. “Something to energize the particles in the globes. A spell that detects when people walk in and then turns on the lights. Another to preserve everything for centuries. That’s just off the top of my head. But that’s not the most amazing part. I’m wondering why, in a place where rust and dust rule, these halls are completely unblemished.”

Brasley looked around. In the full light of the globes, he could see that the halls of gleaming black stone indeed looked brand new. Nothing was dirty or had fallen into disrepair. It didn’t have the look of a place that had been abandoned for centuries, as if they arrived mere seconds after the cleaning staff had departed. Even the old, musty smell was absent here.

“I don’t think the seal was just a seal on the door, on this place,” Talbun said. “I think it was a seal on time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I have—had—a spell that created a time bubble,” she said. “This might be similar, although much more powerful obviously. I think time has been frozen here, preserving this place until somebody came along.”

Brasley frowned. “But why would somebody preserve an empty—”

The sliding sound of stone on stone stopped him short. All the rectangles lining the walls were doorways, and they were sliding to one side, revealing darkened passages behind them.

A second later, scores of people scurried out of all the new doorways.

People
might not have been the right word.

They were all clearly female but just as clearly not quite human. They were all the same height, about half a head shorter than Brasley. Skin as white and as clear as milk, hair a coppery red, glinting metallic beneath the glow of the globes. Their features were odd, eyes completely black, noses pressed just a little too flat, mouth a tad too wide. They weren’t all
exactly
identical, but the variations were so slight, they might as well have been.

They wore black shirts of some shimmering material and matching pants hemmed at the ankles. No shoes.

At the sight of the milk-skinned women swarming the halls, Brasley, Talbun, and Olgen drew together in a tight circle. Talbun drew the short dagger from her belt. Olgen hadn’t brought a proper weapon, but he held the pry bar in front of him ready to whack anything that got too close. Even the goat took up a defensive position.

“What in blazes are
they
?” Brasley said.

“You think I know?” Talbun snapped.

“Olgen?”

“Sorry, milord. Nothing about them in any of my university texts.”

“They don’t seem hostile.” Talbun lowered her dagger. “They don’t actually seem to notice us at all.”

They fell into lines, groups breaking off and going one way or another up and down the halls, bare feet slapping on the smooth floor.

One of the women broke off from one of the groups and approached Brasley and the others. She had three white stripes circling her left sleeve, and he wondered if it were some indication of rank. She stopped four feet from Brasley, bowed deeply, and spit out a string of words in a language he’d never heard before.

“Okay, what do I do now?” he asked.

“Wait,” Talbun said. “It sounds familiar. Almost like Fyrian.”

“We’re a long way from Fyria,” Brasley said.

“It’s said that all sorcery began in Fyria,” Talbun said. “As a result, all spell casters study the language. But I speak
fluent
Fyrian, and I’m not really catching what she said. It just sounds so tantalizingly familiar.”

“Begging your pardon, milady,” Olgen said. “But the language might be ancient Fyrian.”

“I’ve just told you, I
speak
Fyrian,” the wizard said.

“I mean
ancient
Fyrian, milady.”

“I
know
it’s an ancient language,” Talbun said sharply. “I
speak
it. Have you gone deaf?”

Olgen blanched. “My apologies, but I mean a language that predates Fyrian, spoken by the first dwellers in Fyria who in later centuries would become the Fyrians we know today.”

Talbun’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I would never have known either, milady,” Olgen said, placating. “My studies of the ink magic led me to it. Old Tohler, the master of languages and dialects, showed me the precious few tomes the university has on the subject.” The guide’s voice took on an academic tone, as if he were delivering a lecture. “Evidently the first wizards to create magical tattoos needed words more elemental, closer to the properties the tattoo was attempting to duplicate, and it’s believed that ancient Fyrian is likely the first spoken language on the entire—”

“Hey,” Brasley interrupted. “This is all very fascinating, but I think the young lady expects some sort of reply.”

Talbun sighed. “Can you speak it?” she asked Olgen.

Olgen’s eyebrows went up. “Speak it?”

“Aloud,” Brasley said. “With your mouth.”

“I’ve only ever read it,” Olgen admitted. “Maybe?”

“Try,” Talbun said.

Olgen cleared his throat. A pause. Then: “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell her we’d like some wine while we browse the menu,” Brasley suggested.

“Can you be serious?” Talbun said.

But it was too late. Olgen was already translating, stumbling through the syntax, groping for vocabulary.

“What are you doing?” Talbun said. “Don’t take that idiot seriously.”

Olgen shrank from her, abashed. Brasley frowned.

The copper-haired woman with the stripes on her sleeve jabbered frantically, and three nearly identical women fell out of the line jogging past to scamper in three different directions. Additional jabbering from the one in the stripes, and a dozen more scurried in seemingly random lines away from her, bare feet like a summer rain shower on the smooth floor.

“What did you tell her?” Talbun asked.

“Only what Baron Hammish asked me to,” Olgen said. “I think. I told you, I’ve never spoken ancient Fyrian out loud.”

“From now on you only translate what
I
tell you to,” Talbun said. “Understand?”

Olgen’s eyes shifted to Brasley.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Brasley said.

Talbun made a low growl in her throat. “No, we bloody will not talk—”

The three women who’d darted away earlier—at least Brasley thought it was the same three—returned abruptly. One held a silver tray with a dazzling crystal wine decanter filled with red wine. Another held a similar silver tray with three crystal wineglasses. The woman in the middle unstoppered the decanter and filled one of the glasses, then handed it to Brasley with a respectful nod.

Brasley brought the glass halfway to his mouth, paused, glanced sideways at Talbun.

The wizard shrugged, as if to say,
Might as well
.

Brasley drank.

He lowered the glass.

He didn’t move.

Talbun started to reach for him, then stopped herself. “Uh . . . Brasley.”

“This,” Brasley said, “might be the best wine I’ve ever had.” He remained frozen, staring into the wineglass.

“Uh . . . what are you doing now?” Talbun asked.

“I’m trying to think what I should ask for next,” Brasley said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Her Perranese captors had carried Rina steadily south as she’d lain spelled and unconscious in the back of the cart. As a result, she and Bishop Hark were only a few days’ fast ride from Sherrik’s landward gates.

The size and frequency of the refugee groups increased the first day until finally there was just a line of them, disheveled, downtrodden, and defeated, their bleak faces hollow and haunted. The next day the number of refugees gradually decreased, and the road was empty of them by the third day. Scavengers rummaged the discarded baggage the refugees left in their wake and scuttled away like startled crabs as Rina and Hark galloped past.

They topped a low hill and caught their first sight of the city. Or rather sight of the wall that separated them from the city, carved of great gray stones and forty feet high. The gates were double doors fifteen feet high and forged of iron. From this vantage, Sherrik looked more like a grim fortress than the glittering cosmopolitan jewel Rina had always heard about.

Hark must have seen the look on her face and guessed her thoughts. “Most travelers and merchantmen approach from the sea, where Sherrik presents its better face.”

They reined in their horses before the gate, craning their necks to look up at the top of the wall.

“Hello, the wall,” called Hark. “Hello, the gate.”

A second later, two silhouettes appeared atop the wall, leaning out to look down at them, helmed men with spears. “Be off!” one shouted down at them. “The city is closed.”

“Then open it!” shouted the bishop. “We didn’t travel all this way to be told to go home.”

“Don’t give a shit if you walked barefoot all the way from the Glacial Wastes with King Pemrod on your back. I said get lost!” yelled one of the guards. “Or you can start sprouting crossbow bolts if you prefer.”

Hark looked at Rina. Rina shrugged.

Hark went red and blew out an annoyed burst of air. “I am
Bishop
Feridixx Hark, and I ride with
Duchess
Rina Veraiin.”

“Right, and I’m the great sorcerer of Fyria.”

“Fools!” Hark bellowed. “Are Sherrik’s walls manned exclusively by the mentally infirm, or is there someone with half a brain up there who can make a proper decision? Think fast, for I’m not made of patience. Perhaps I’ll have a word with your Captain Sarkham and have you stationed on the seaward wall so you can be first to greet the Perranese when the fighting starts. And be warned that I will snatch out of midair any bolts you loose at me, break them in half, and return them to you up your arses. Go now and find an officer!”

The silhouettes put their heads together, conversing, and then one left in a hurry.

The hint of a smile on Rina’s face. “Haven’t seen you so furious before. Or was that the wrath of Dumo you were channeling?”

“Well.” Hark looked slightly embarrassed. “Somebody had to set those louts straight, and a duchess shouldn’t have to deal with such lowly matters.”

“Thank you for sparing me from such grubby matters,” she said. “I am a fine and delicate flower after all.”

Hark cleared his throat and looked away. “I just hope Sarkham is still master of the city guard. It’s been some years since I’ve visited Sherrik.”

A moment later, the other silhouette appeared again and pointed to his left. “Go to the west door, sir. They’ll take care of you there.”

Rina and Hark turned their horses from the main gate and followed a narrow track west around the city wall. As they went, a shallow ditch along the wall widened into a moat fifty feet across, two feet of muddy water at the bottom. Fifteen minutes later, the track intersected with a narrow road that led away north, probably to outlying villages. A narrow bridge spanned half the moat, then stopped. A wooden drawbridge was up on the other side. A small stone building guarded the intersection.

Rina dismounted and knocked on the guardhouse door. “Anyone there?”

No answer.

“I imagine they’ve all pulled back to the other side of the wall,” Hark said.

A minute later, the clank of heavy chains drew their attention. The drawbridge lowered, revealing a portcullis no larger than an ordinary doorway. The drawbridge thudded into place, completing the way across. Hark and Rina led their horses across the span, the portcullis raising as they arrived and lowering again after they entered the narrow walkthrough, barely big enough to accommodate the horses. Rina glanced up, imagining murder holes and all sorts of other nasty defenses. If an army wanted to take Sherrik, she didn’t think squeezing through here would be the best way to do it.

They emerged through another portcullis into a courtyard on the other side. Walls rose up high and close all around them, and soldiers atop the walls pointed crossbows down at them. Three soldiers walked toward them, two men with spears and a third who looked like an officer, if the gold badge pinned to his tunic was any indication. He wore a breastplate with chain mail underneath and a simple, open-faced helm. A long sword hung from his belt on one side and a dagger on the other. He had a well-trimmed black beard and moustache with just a little gray creeping in at the sides, a sharp nose and deep brown eyes.

Rina felt an air of gentle authority radiating from the man, but maybe that was just something she hoped.

The officer grinned suddenly and stepped forward, clasping hands with Hark.

“Good to see you again, Bishop,” he said. “Although you’ve picked an odd time to visit Sherrik. Can you really snatch crossbow bolts out of midair?”

Hark laughed. “Please don’t ask me to prove it. And my thanks for letting us in, Captain Sarkham. You’re looking well. Jeela and the children?”

“Gone to Kern out of harm’s way,” Sarkham said. “Jeela has cousins there.”

“Good, good. Glad to hear it.” Hark turned and gestured to Rina. “Captain, please allow me to introduce—”

“Duchess Veraiin.” Sarkham bowed politely. “Welcome to Sherrik and to General Braxom’s side door.”

Rina raised an eyebrow. “General Braxom’s side door?”

“The door and bridge were ordered built nearly two hundred years ago by the general of Sherrik. A man called Braxom.”

“Why?”

Sarkham grinned. “Because he’s a general, and generals get what they want.”

Ah
.

Sarkham glanced back at Hark, looking mildly embarrassed. “Forgive me, old friend, but it’s the duchess you should thank for your safe passage into the city. When the duke heard who was at the gate, he ordered you both be admitted immediately. He waits for you even now.”

Rina nodded to him. “Well, then. I don’t suppose it’s polite to keep a duke waiting, is it?”

In the tall grass, behind a fallen log, two Perranese scouts watched the duchess and the bishop cross the bridge and enter the castle, the drawbridge pulling up again behind them.

“Well, they’re in now, and that’s all there is to that,” said the first. “There’s no getting her back now.”

“Suits me fine,” said the second one.

“Maybe we should have tried to take them.”

“The two of us? Pull the other leg. You know what she can do.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said the first.

“What about the door and the drawbridge?”

“Even if we got the bridge down and the portcullis up, that tunnel looked pretty narrow from here. We’d get slaughtered going in single file. Go back and tell Yano what we’ve seen and that I’m going to keep circling the city west to see if there’s a better way inside.”

The other Perranese warrior slithered away on his belly in the long grass, keeping out of sight of the watchful eyes atop Sherrik’s wall.