Darkness Weaves (2 page)

Imel speculated uneasily as to what hands might have torn asunder these stout portals to plunder the tombs they had protected--and why. It was a bad night for such thoughts. The darkness within the burial chambers was a far deeper gloom than that of the night, and time had not fully dispelled the stale odor of mouldering decay that tainted the damp air. His nerves crawled each time he nervously stepped past a gaping doorway, and his spine prickled with a sensation of hidden scrutiny. Now and again he caught the elusive sound of tiny scurrying and soft shuffling from within. Imel prayed it was only large rats startled in their lairs that he heard. But then the storm played eerie tricks upon the senses.

"This should be it. I think," Arbas announced shortly, and he led the way into the musty shelter of one of the burial caverns. Arbas turned up the lantern, which had miraculously remained burning, and Imel observed that the cavern took the shape of an L. There was a preliminary passage some twenty feet long, then at right angles a second and larger passage about fifty feet in length. The eight-foot walls of this first section had been cut out to form a triple row of niches. Only a few of the mouldering coffins that were laid in these niches remained intact. Most were broken apart and their contents scattered--although whether this was from age or vandalism the Thovnosian could not immediately tell.

A double curtain of hide was hung across the passage just after it made its bend. The curtain had been placed there to cut down the chill draft from outsides-- and to shut out the light from the lantern within. For as he stepped through the curtains, Imel saw that the chamber had been recently furnished for human occupancy.

Here in this ancient, shadow-haunted burial chamber Kane had made his lair.

"Well, where is he?" asked Imel brusquely. He was eager to get down to business and thereby shake off the dark, half-felt fears that had haunted him ever since he had entered the funerary district.

"Not used to waiting, are we now? Well, he'll get here in his own time, At least, he knows we're coming tonight," said Arbas, and appropriated the chamber's sole chair.

Cursing the assassin's insolence, Imel cast about the chamber for another seat. There was none. Still the chamber had been astonishingly well furnished--particularly so considering the difficulty and the danger of surveillance involved in bringing anything to these tombs. In the corner on the floor was a good bed of several large pelts and a mattress. Along with the chair there was a table with two lamps, several bottles, items of food and--most amazing of all--a number of books, scrolls, and writing implements. Scattered about the floor and empty niches were various other items--jars of oil, a crossbow and several quivers of bolts, utensils, more food, a battle-axe, and an assortment of rather ancient daggers, rings, and other bits of metalwork. There was a bed of ashes, still quite warm, where Kane had risked building small cooking fires. A stack of unburned wood indicated the use Kane had found for the coffins whose resting piece he had preempted.

Heaped in a pile were the discarded bones of the coffins' tenants, and as Imel looked at this mound he felt the hackles of his neck rise. He had never been known as a squeamish man, and there had been no indication that the spirits of these dead were to be reckoned with. Rather, his disquiet stemmed from the state of these mouldering bones. It was enough that they had been gnawed--this could have been done by rats--but beyond that, they had been meticulously cracked apart and the marrow scraped from within. Something human--or vaguely human--would have devoured the rotting corpses like this, reflected Imel. He shuddered even though the bones were old and crumbling.

Idly Imel stirred a curious finger through the litter of antique ornaments and metalwork. He was slightly disappointed to discover nothing of consequence. "Kane been pilfering tombs for this junk?" he asked, startled at the loudness of his voice.

The assassin shrugged. "I don't know. He's been holed up here long enough to go stir-crazy, but I'd guess he was just collecting the stuff to keep busy. Maybe he's thinking about making something with it. Maybe write up a catalogue for the pedants at the academy up in Matnabla. You know, I mean what would you do up here all the time? Kane's... I don't know." He broke off in a mutter and became interested in his dagger.
Imel sighed in frustration, searching about the chamber for diversion. He noticed a cryptic pattern of intricate design and archaic pictographs arched over the threshold. Based on what he had seen thus far, he shrewdly guessed that this represented some manner of charm against the supernatural. Without comprehension he studied the talisman for a space, scratching, slowly at the unaccustomed stubble he had let grow over his features.

The noise of the tempest outside, coupled with his unnatural surroundings, was making Imel more nervous by the minute. He crossed over to the table where Arbas nonchalantly honed his dagger upon a stone Kane had placed there. Leaning over, he looked at the books there in admiration--although more for their monetary than intellectual value. Curiously he leafed through several of them. Two were in the language of the Combine, and of the others, only one was in a language that looked even vaguely familiar. One very old one was extremely unusual, for the strange characters on its pages did not quite appear to have been handwritten. Imel wondered what type of book would seem so interesting to Kane that he would have transported several of them to the crypt. It was surprising enough to see that Kane could actually read, mused Imel. What little information he had compiled gave Kane the reputation of being a rugged and skillful warrior--a violent personality by all accounts. In Imel's experience, such a man usually was contemptuous of anything concerned with the arts.

Idly he looked through one of the two volumes written in the language of the Combine. Suddenly his eyes were held by a page filled entirely by a strange diagram. Startled, he slowly read the script on the page opposite and found his suspicions verified. With horror he shut the book and abruptly set it down. A grimoire. Was Kane then a sorcerer as well as a soldier? Imel remembered Arbas's warning and began to feel fear.

He looked at Arbas and found the assassin grinning at him over his dagger. Sidelong he had been watching Imel and had seen the sudden terror in his eyes. Anger at revealing his emotions flooded Imel, washing away the fear--fear, he told himself, that any sane man feels when confronted with the paraphernalia of black sorcery.

"Stop your stupid smirking!" he snarled at Arbas, who merely chuckled in reply. Cursing fervently, the Thovnosian paced the chamber. By Tloluvin! He was a fool ever to have undertaken this mission--a fool ever to have become involved in her insane schemes! Realizing that he was fast losing control, he halted and struggled to regain his composure.

"Is Kane going to get here or not?" he demanded.

Arbas shrugged; he seemed to be getting impatient himself. "Perhaps he doesn't realize we're here yet," he offered. "Let's just take a lantern and show its light out on the ledge for a bit. I doubt if anyone other than Kane is around here to see it on a night like this." So saying, he picked up his battered lantern and moved toward the curtain wall.

They had just gone through the curtain and were starting toward the tunnel's mouth when an extended burst of chain lightning split the midnight skies and threw a flickering bluish light on the figure just entering the crypt. Startled, Imel was unable to suppress a gasp at the sight of the looming cloaked figure silhouetted darkly against the lightning-blasted torrent. Arbas's words at their first meeting flashed through Imel's mind: Look for him in the Seventh Hell! Truly, this nightmarish scene could justifiably be that of a demon--or Lord Tloluvin himself--emerging from the Seventh Hell.

For the space of a heartbeat the lightning gave hellish illumination upon the figure. No features were discernible in the glare. He appeared only as a black shadow, the wind whipping his rain-drenched cloak and garments, his powerful body braced against the storm. His drawn sword glinted in the lightning, as did his eyes--sinister spots of fire in the darkness.

Then the lightning burst faded, and the figure stalked into the crypt. "Get that light under cover!" snapped Kane.

Arbas moved the curtain aside, and Kane stepped through, flinging off his sodden cloak and shaking a flood of water from his massive body. Cursing in some strange tongue, he poured himself a full cup of wine, drained it, and began pouring another. "A beautiful storm, but drying out from it in this dank hole is not to my liking," he growled between cups. "Arbas, see if that fire can be rekindled. The smoke won't be a danger tonight.

"Sit down and have some wine, Imel. It's excellent for cleansing the damp from your insides. These Lartroxians keep surprisingly good vineyards, I'll always grant them that." Pouring a third cup, he moved to where Arbas worked with the fire.

Gratefully Imel slumped into the chair and, seeing no other cup, gingerly drank the heavy wine from its bottle. He had been unnerved by the past hour's events, and the liquor warmed and steadied him Missions of this sort ran against his nature, and he wished again, as he so often had before, that he could have talked her into sending someone else. That despicable Oxfors Alremas, perhaps. Not that he cared to rate Alremas superior in his missions of intrigue and cunning diplomacy. Still the Pellin lord's self-esteem at times grew insufferable, and Imel wondered how Alremas's aristocratic sensibilities would fare under the abuse he had himself thus far sustained.

Arbas soon had the fire ablaze with the dry wood from the caskets. Most of the smoke was sucked without by the storm winds, and it was not too uncomfortable. The flames lit the crypt as it had not been before, and Imel was able now to get his first good look at Kane.

He was a large man, a little over six feet in height, although he seemed shorter because of the extreme massiveness of his body. Thick neck, a barrel chest, strong, heavily muscled arms and legs--everything created in him an aura of great power. Even his hands were overlarge and the fingers long and powerful. Less brutal, they might have been called an artist's hands. Imel had once seen such hands before--on a notorious strangler, whose execution he had attended. As an embellishment on the Imperial law, the severed hands had been displayed alongside the impaled head in Thovnosten's Justice Square. Kane's age was hard to guess; he looked perhaps like a man of thirty in body, but he seemed to be older somehow. Imel had expected to find an older man, so he estimated Kane to be in his fifties and well preserved. Kane's complexion was fair and his hair light red, cut evenly to moderate length. His beard was short, and the features of his face were rugged and heavy--too primitively coarse to be considered handsome.

Kane sensed Imel's inspection and suddenly locked eyes with him. Abruptly there returned the chilling sensation that had earlier pulsed through Imel during the lightning burst. The eyes of Kane were like two blue-burning crystals of ice. Within them stirred a frozen fire of madness, death, torment, hellish hatred. They looked straight through Imel, searching out his innermost thoughts, searing his very soul. They were the eyes of a maddened killer.

With a cruel laugh, Kane turned away, releasing Imel from the spell of his eyes. His mind staggered back, and it was with effort that he suppressed blind panic. In a daze, his hand groped for the wine bottle. Gladly he made use of the wine's restorative virtue.

She who sent him on this mission to Kane had always instilled in Imel a feeling of revulsion. She was but a twisted, broken vessel of hatred, kept living by her depraved lust for vengeance. To be sure, no man could approach her without feeling the dark fire of her insane hatred. But this revulsion was nothing compared to the terror that had blasted Imel when he looked into the eyes of Kane. Insanity gleamed there, but in complement with a cold murder-lust. Insensate craving to kill and destroy--consuming hatred of life. With such eyes would Death receive the newly dead, or Lord Tloluvin welcome some hideously damned soul to his realm of eternal darkness.

"Now then, Imel, what business do you have that concerns me?"

Imel snapped out of his musings as Kane addressed him. Looking up, he found Kane had quit the fire and was half-sitting on the table across from him. He was watching Imel closely, a mocking smile over his brutal features--the hellish blaze of his eyes subdued but smouldering still. His long fingers were toying with a silver ring. Imel assumed it was one from the pile of artifacts.

"I think you'd better have a very good reason for demanding to see me. Not that my time in this hole is in anything like short supply, but your coming here has put myself and Arbas in some danger." He held the ring to the light appraisingly. Seemingly he was intrigued with its intricate carvings. "You're sure, of course, that no one followed you..."

Casually Kane drew the lamp closer to him, the better to examine the ring. Imel frowned in vexation. "Interesting..." Kane muttered, extending the ring into the light. A soft violet glow emanated from the huge amethyst. Imel recognized the ring.

Cold fear seized him as realization dawned. Imel's hand streaked for the sword at his side. He had but touched its hilt when an arm whipped around from behind him, and a dagger point painfully tickled the flesh of his throat. Arbas! He had forgotten the assassin.

"Don't kill him just yet, Arbas," said Kane, who had not moved throughout. "You know, I think Imel knows that ring."

The assassin tickled his dagger point as the Thovnosian wanted to rise. Imel subsided. "Now how do you figure that?" Arbas asked with assumed bewilderment.

"Well, I think it's the way his face turned pale when he saw it. Or what do you make of that?"

"Could be he's just startled by that large a sapphire."

"No, I doubt that. Anyway, this is an amethyst."

"Same thing."

"No, I think you're on the wrong track, Arbas. I'll bet Imel was just thinking that the last time he saw this ring, it was on someone's hand he knew. Say, maybe that big skulking bastard who was following you two."