Princess of Blood Read online

  ‘In a magical labyrinth with multiple entrances that some have suggested is a form of contest ground. That sound we heard. That wasn’t something breaking – doubt it was a trap either. More likely it’s a signal of some sort – maybe that the contest’s begun. It wasn’t triggered by us or Bade getting into the upper chamber but it must have been something. My money would be on Bade having just opened the labyrinth proper, he’ll have needed magic to activate the door most likely and it sets off some sort of magical locking mechanism. But the Duegar wouldn’t have built this to imprison their own, they didn’t think that way. Locking everyone inside until someone survives to crack the secret of the place, however, that’s more than just possible. So we’re not in a tomb, it’s just another big space underground we need to navigate, nothing like a mine. No shackles, no guards.’

  ‘Just fucking relic hunters looking to kill us,’ Lynx muttered, ‘and some sort o’ labyrinth full of all sorts of nasty surprises.’ He scowled at her. ‘Explain how this is better?’

  ‘No maspids,’ Toil said firmly, ‘no gigantic magic-hungry monsters chasing us, no walking for days without sunlight. You can handle this, just like you did last time.’

  ‘Barely managed it last time.’

  ‘But you kept your grip all the same and that’s what counts.’

  Lynx raised his trembling hand. ‘Not much grip left.’

  Toil pulled his mage-gun from the sheath on his back and slapped it hard into his hand, closing his fingers around the forestock. She let go and leaned back. ‘Grip looks good enough to me – now on your damn feet, soldier.’

  Shakily, Lynx obeyed and allowed himself to be ushered back up the steps to where the rest of their party were waiting.

  ‘Lastani, should we be worried?’

  The young mage shook her head. ‘It looks like our test of faith has begun,’ she confirmed with a wan smile, failing to hide her anxiety. ‘Mistress Ishienne speculated something like this.’

  ‘Right,’ Toil agreed. ‘So the labyrinth is sealed until someone comes out the other side. Not the best news, what with most of our soldiers still outside, but this isn’t a children’s party and we’re not helpless or clueless.’

  ‘But we could be stuck down here for ever?’ Deern blurted out.

  Toil gave him a nasty grin. ‘If you think that’s the most dangerous thing about this place, you’ve not done this before.’

  ‘No one’s done this before,’ he pointed out. ‘Ain’t that the point? No one in the whole o’ bloody human history has opened it before this bint came along.’

  ‘Who is he again?’ Lastani asked, cocking her head at Toil.

  ‘The company jester,’ she explained. ‘Either that or a malingering curse from the gods upon the rest, I’m not really sure which. I assume that they find him amusing in some way – either that or they like being reminded there are worse bastards than them alive today.’

  ‘Oh you’re funny fer a red-headed—’ again Deern was cut off mid-sentence, but this time it was Teshen clouting him around the head.

  ‘Enough, Deern,’ the man growled. ‘You can fall off this walkway pretty easily you know, ain’t no Reft here to stop me. My head’s still buzzin’, doubt I could even feel bad about it if I tried.’

  ‘If you’re all finished now,’ Kas snapped. ‘Mebbe we can get back to work?’

  Toil nodded. ‘Listen to the woman,’ she advised them all. ‘Now – me and mine are going down this stairway to check out what’s below. You brave fighting types stay up here until I find us a way into the labyrinth itself – just in case that sound has told our friend Bade he’s got company down here. Last thing we need is some shite doubling back and firing burners down these steps after us.’

  When there was no dissent, Toil jabbed a thumb down the hidden steps. ‘Right then, Paranil, Barra, Aben – come on. Lastani, you too.’

  ‘And me?’ asked Elei, Lastani’s designated handler.

  ‘Yeah, and you. You’ve got the Monarch’s light in your pack there, right? Good. The rest of you, keep still and cover those oil lamps so Sitain’s eyes give you an advantage. Once we find the bottom I’ll send Barra back up.’

  She gave them all a brief, incongruous grin and started down the stairs. ‘Cheer up the lot of you, this is the fun bit!’

  Chapter 25

  ‘And what in the hairy holiest o’ holes was that noise?’

  No one replied. Bade watched the varying emotions play out on his comrades’ faces. Chotel was looking up, as though expecting the great rumble to herald the roof falling, while Ulestim watched the stairs, one hand on his pistol. Torril had shrunk nervously back against the great door’s jamb while, off to one side, Bug stood quivering with alertness – the runt maspid’s eyeless head angled up as well.

  The mages, Spade and Fork, both quailed, but they’d been pissing themselves over Bug for hours now so that was little change, while Sebaim, Bade’s gnarled tracker, was as unruffled as ever.

  ‘Thoughts, Ulestim?’ Bade asked, hoping the most learned man in the group might have an idea.

  ‘Very few, I’m afraid,’ the bespectacled man said in a distracted tone.

  ‘Even a few will do, old Sebaim here’s shitting himself,’ Bade joked, ‘so give it a try.’

  ‘Not ordnance, I’d say,’ Ulestim said, to nods from several others, ‘and nothing we did made any such sound.’

  ‘Rock falls don’t sound like that either,’ Bade added. ‘One single sound it was, echoing but clear and crisp for all o’ that.’

  ‘Indeed, so it was the labyrinth itself perhaps, something triggered by you touching the door.’

  Bade turned to the stone door. It was … Well, for a relic hunter it was a thing of beauty, but right now it was just in his way. Anywhere else and he’d have put an earther through it by now, but this wasn’t your usual city-ruin.

  ‘Or we got company down here,’ Bade said slowly, ‘and the fun and games have started.’

  They had descended no more than fifty yards before finding themselves on a half-moon platform set against a large stone block, two banks of Duegar script running all around it, while set into the centre was the doorway. The recessed arch was surrounded by more script, carved with an emphasis on beauty by Bade’s estimation, even by the elegant standards of the Duegar language. The mages and Ulestim agreed that they were simply invocations of blessings and prayers that followed the familiar form. It was the black metal door itself that bore the secrets of its entry.

  On the door were three stone circles set into the metal and marked with Duegar numbers, eight on each. In the very centre was a smaller disc, composed of silvery metal that shone faintly in the light and had the glyph for ‘gift’ inscribed on it.

  ‘Sebaim,’ Bade said, realising he had to make a decision. ‘Back up the steps while we work on opening this, fetch down the rest in orderly fashion. If we’re not alone down here I don’t want to find a regiment of Bridge Watch stumbling across them so get ’em out of sight.’

  The tracker gave a small nod and padded back up the steps as stealthily as a cat. He was a compact, ageless man who’d looked weather-beaten and greying when Bade had first met him, twenty years earlier. Even now Sebaim could run all day and spot a threat on the horizon before anyone thirty years his junior. He had no vices, expensive tastes or family to spend his money on. Bade had a strong suspicion that when he stopped bringing Sebaim to rare sights like this labyrinth, the man would just be gone one morning.

  ‘Boss?’ Chotel said, nudging Bade’s elbow.

  He nodded hurriedly, realising he’d been staring up after Sebaim as the man slipped away. ‘Got an idea?’ Bade said.

  ‘Spade does.’

  ‘Out with it then, we ain’t got all day.’

  ‘The prayers,’ said the fire mage hesitantly, ‘they contain numbers.’

  ‘Eh?’ Bade quickly scanned the writing around the door. His Duegar wasn’t as good as the others, he knew, but still it didn’t take him long to identify the
words that could correspond to the Duegar numerals on the stone circles. ‘Seems a bit obvious, don’t it?’

  ‘It’s only the front door,’ Torril remarked. ‘Easy to get in, harder to get out?’

  ‘Aye, true. Use numbers to keep the wildlife out, but if Hopper’s got a nasty surprise for us, he’d probably want us trapped in a box first.’

  ‘It don’t sound so reassuring when you say it like that,’ Chotel said with a snort.

  ‘I’ll hug you later, princess.’ Bade gestured to the steps. ‘Let’s not take any chances, though, the rest of you back up on to the stair in case there is some tricksiness.’

  ‘And you?’

  He grinned. ‘We’re about to open the fucking Labyrinth of Jarrazir itself, I ain’t hanging back from this! You all feel free to exercise caution, I’ll edit it out o’ the history books, don’t you worry.’

  With it put like that, none of the others made for the steps. From their faces, his enthusiasm was infectious – the pay was good, but Bade knew none of them did this job just for the money. Once the mage had pointed out the numbers, Bade quickly turned the stone circles until the correct numerals were at a marked point. The stone moved easily despite its age and in no time he rested a hand on the mage’s shoulder.

  ‘Off you go then, Spade – gift.’

  ‘Magic?’

  Bade nodded. ‘Bigger than the doors before I’d guess, a burst to kick-start ancient mechanisms. They’ll draw in more themselves after that, but they need to be woken up first and you’d have noticed if that was going already.’

  The nervous mage ducked his head in acknowledgement and placed his palm over the shining disc in the centre of the door. A brief flicker of orange flame washed over his fingers then was sucked down into the metal. The disc began to glow faintly with inner light and Spade grunted, his arm twitching as the disc began to draw hungrily. He left it a little longer then broke the flow of magic, jerking his arm away and stepping back.

  He rubbed his fingers and frowned at the disc as it continued to glow for a few moments longer. Eventually the light dimmed and Bade was about to ask what had gone wrong when the disc was suddenly edged in crisp white light.

  ‘It’s drawing magic like you said,’ Spade commented, the nervousness momentarily falling away from his face as he looked up in wonder.

  ‘What’s that?’ Bade said. He cocked his ear to the door then looked around. ‘Anyone else hear that, some sort of humming sound?’

  ‘It’s the mechanism,’ the mage replied. ‘Sucking in the latent energy in the air around it.’

  ‘We in danger?’

  ‘No, it’s gentle. There’s a slight pull on my own magic, but nothing that will leave me drained. It’s simply gathering whatever is in the ground here, it’ll take a while to build any great reserve.’

  ‘In the meantime, how do—’ Bade cut off as the door abruptly slid open to reveal a small room just a few yards across.

  Inside there was another stairway, this one rather more elegant than the plain steps they’d descended thus far. It was all still mage-carved stone, but now the steps were delicately scalloped, the rail a twisting braid supported by tree-shaped banisters.

  Bade took a cautious step inside. Nothing surged up out of the darkness to kill him so he clapped the mage on the shoulder.

  ‘Good work, Spade. Ready for the real fun?’

  Bade didn’t wait for a reply. With his Duegar lamp held high, he slowly advanced inside and on to the first step. Still nothing bad happened, but the light of the lamp illuminated the stairway ahead – a long, regular spiral walkway with a grooved floor for grip. He’d seen enough of those before to walk a little faster. It was typical Duegar construction, bar the fact the stonework was far more carefully done and there was a clear swirling pattern to the mineral within the rock that caught the lamp’s strange light.

  Each side of the slope bore the blue glowing swirl while the path was speckled with the mineral. The mage drifted along behind Bade and gaped at the slope. The man might not have been a relic hunter, but he was highly educated within the field of magic if nothing else and the Duegar were a fundamental subject there.

  The spiral sloping tunnel continued through a half-dozen turns then opened out abruptly on to a large black space. Bade lingered at the bottom, wary of stepping straight out before he’d got some sense of the room he was in. Fortunately, the usual Duegar illumination continued beyond the slope; a haze of faint, dark blue seams in the rock that looked more natural and haphazard. It offered enough for an experienced relic hunter to make out where he was, however. With the others close behind, Bade checked around as far as he could lean out before committing a foot.

  There was little to see, just a wide and very high room that had to be the interior of one of those cubes they’d seen earlier. It was entirely featureless other than two doorways, one in the right-hand wall and one on the left-hand, similar to the one they’d entered by. They were made of the same metal, wider and taller than normal doors with a half-circle arch at the top. Neither bore the stone circles, but each had the shining centre plate with the glyph for ‘gift’ inscribed. The only difference between these two were the inscribed symbols above each – more numerals.

  He realised he couldn’t linger so, seeing nothing at all on the smooth walls, ceiling and floor, Bade walked out into the room with his heart hammering. Still no fiery death engulfed him so he started to breathe once more and moved around the sloped tunnel to see what else there was.

  ‘Two doors?’ Chotel remarked as he followed Bade out of the tunnel. Behind him came Bug, the maspid skittering down and out past him with her usual deceptive grace. The first time they’d tempted Bug out of the catacombs she lived in had been a dark night and clearly Bug had been wary and unsure. The feel of turf under her spear-blade limbs was not something Bug enjoyed, but still she’d been fast enough to chase down a deer. Underground, Bade guessed she was faster still.

  ‘Aye – no, wait, there’s another,’ Bade replied as he skirted around behind the slanted shaft of the tunnel they’d entered by. The room was a cube just as they’d guessed, containing only the doors and the shaft running diagonally from the centre of the floor to the top of the rear wall. Behind that featureless projection was another block of stone with a third doorway set into it.

  ‘And numbers,’ Torril pointed out, ‘hey, look, above where we came in, too.’

  Bade did just that and, as Torril described, there was the Dueger numeral for 1 carved into the stone above where they’d come out of the tunnel.

  ‘The others?’ Ulestim said. ‘Thirty-three and seventeen. How about round the back?’

  ‘Twenty-five,’ Bade said. ‘They mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said as he went to see for himself. ‘Door looks the same. We should light a proper lamp and inspect the room before we do anything else.’

  ‘Aye, Spade and Fork – you keep away from the doors and don’t do any magic until the rest have caught us up, understand? If the “gift” is a trigger for the doorway, it might shut the other one behind us.’

  Chotel pulled an oil lamp from his pack and lit it with a sulphurous match rather than risking any further spark of magic. With the wick turned up it cast an acceptable light around the cube after the hours they’d spent in near darkness, but it only revealed the room was indeed plain other than the doors.

  ‘Douse the lamp,’ Ulestim said after a while, ‘there’s nothing to see and we don’t want to turn the air bad.’

  ‘Don’t think that’s a problem,’ Bade replied as Chotel turned the wick down. ‘The air’s musty, but we’re breathing fine. Must not be as sealed as it looks, otherwise the air’d be bad already in this box.’

  A voice called cautiously down the slope and Torril went to answer it, cheerily bellowing up Kastelian’s name to give the soldiers a fright. There was a slight clatter that sounded like someone dropping their gun but nothing else so, other than giving Torril a baleful look, Bade just waited
for the soldiers. Bug attempted to clamber up one sheer stone wall, maspids being able to exploit the most unlikely of footholds, but was defeated and resorted to stalking the unoccupied area to the rear of the room.

  ‘Should we be in a closed box with Bug?’ Chotel asked softly as Kastelian’s dragoons clattered into the room.

  Bade turned to watch the maspid. Clearly she wasn’t entirely happy, but was used to the company of humans to some degree at least. He hadn’t paced out the room, but it was a good forty yards in each direction. Not vast but, at the same time, not small enough to force them all together. Even with a fat tunnel shaft in the centre, there was plenty of space.

  ‘We’ll manage,’ Bade decided. ‘I lead her back up, she’s running free in the upper chamber but there’s no certainty she gets back out again.’

  Chotel lowered his voice further, not wanting the dragoons to hear him. ‘Still, she could go for one of us. Strange smells, startled by traps … she ain’t a dog you can put on a leash.’

  ‘Yeah, but she ain’t going for either of us first, if she does snap,’ Bade pointed out. ‘Unlikely any o’ the crew. If we need to put her down, we do it. My biggest worry will be some grunt firing wildly, but one less soldier ain’t going to lose me sleep.’

  Chotel accepted Bade’s point and stepped back, not wanting to draw any more attention to the matter.

  ‘So which door then?’ he said in a normal voice.

  ‘Dunno. Ulestim, what do you reckon?’

  ‘If there’s a key, I can’t see it,’ the tall man declared, looking frustrated. ‘There’s no way of knowing what those numbers meant to the Duegar.’

  ‘So we pick one at random? Sounds safe.’

  Ulestim shrugged. ‘You’re the one who saw this place from the outside, got a preferred direction?’

  Bade paused, hands out in front of him as he looked at the spiral slope and tried to work out how he’d been positioned.

  We turned a few times. The steps ran that way, straight down to the platform which was at an angle. The labyrinth was positioned there, we came to it from there.