Authors: Brian Lumley

Iced On Aran (21 page)

BOOK: Iced On Aran

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Even as he spoke these words Hero could have bitten off his tongue; he realized it must seem that his hopes were fading along with his sensitivity. Which they were,
but no good to let Ula know it. And so he added: “Except, of course, that we'll be out of here long before then.”

Seated beside him, she shuffled closer, hugged his arm. “Don't be afraid of despair, lad,” she said, reminding him strangely, at one and the same time, both of his mother (whom he really couldn't remember, for she'd died long ago, when he was a boy in the waking world) and of Eldin. “As my father used to tell us: when you're right down there's only one way to goâup! Where there's life there's hope, remember?”

“Oh, yes,” he nodded, then turned and gently kissed her. “Life! Hope! Of course â¦”

“It's just that they've a long way to go to break through to us, that's all.”

“The throw of a knife, actually,” Hero replied. “Except knives don't fly too well through solid rock! We must hope Gan's greed is stronger than the barrier between him and what he believes to be a treasure-chamber, eh?” And he gave a sardonic, barking laugh. Then, as Ula snuggled closer yet and rested her head on his chest, he began to think again of what they'd found below.

The spiral of stone stairs had opened into a second and final chamber, at first taken to be circular. But later, examining the walls, they'd discovered the crypt's sides were formed of twenty-three identical panels, three feet wide and ten high, which was the height of the ceiling. There were no joins, however, so that either the twenty-three sides were thickly plastered on the inside, or the entire chamber had been hewn from the solid bedrock. Nine of the almost two dozen panels had shoulder-level brackets holding prepared torches, now fossilized; and on the floor beneath each one of these, large stone jars which had once contained perfumed oil. Hero had seen
such in the temples of Ulthar; sprinkled on the flames of ceremonial flambeaux, the oil made a blue, scented smoke. Of course
these
jars had been here countless centuries; there'd be no oil in them now. He'd broken one anyway, and in its base â¦ a bowl-shaped block of amber resin! Oil, condensed and hardened by the ages.

All of this, though, had been after Hero and Ula's introduction to Yath-Lhi: the Black Princess herself, and six of her men-at-armsâmummies now in their upright sarcophagi. But
what
mummies!

Seven of themâin coffins of stone stood on end, evenly spaced in a circle and all facing outward from the foot of the stairwellâand Hero and Ula had held their torches high to examine these grim, gargoyle guardians of the place. And they'd seen, too, that Yath-Lhi and her people had been a race of giants. Their slaves had been ordinary dream-folk, ayeâsmall men and women, generallyâbut Yath-Lhi â¦

Eight feet tall; those stone coffins, with funnel-shaped apertures in their tops, directly over the mummified heads of those within. And though the sarcophagi were massive and at least three inches thick at top, bottom and sides, still there was little room to spare. Yath-Lhi and her men-at-arms, even shrunken by the aeons, were close to seven feet tall. Giants, then, those seven gaunt guardiansâbut guarding what? The staircase? For of treasures there were none at all, unless one considered the three emeralds Yath-Lhi woreâone on each hip, the other in her navel: a world's ransom.

Or was the Black Princess simply â¦ waiting? Had she expected, perhaps, some marvelous reincarnation which never came to pass? Certainly there seemed an air of implacable patience about her â¦

Hero, no midget himself, had gazed up wonderingly into the faces of the seven. And that was another wonder:
that after all these years they had faces at all. Or anything else of muscle, sinew, flesh and bone, for that matter. But there they stood, black and wrinkled as prunes, the men-at-arms with their belts and kirtles and swords of bronze; and Yath-Lhi proud and regal, her black hair braided and falling to her shoulders, dressed only in ropes of gold-painted cowries at her loins, with her empty breasts lying flat upon her chest. And in the flickering torchlight it seemed that at any moment their eyes might pop open or blackened tongues wriggle forth from stony lips, and so Hero and Ula had not gazed long upon them.

It had been then, though, staring up at the mummified figures in their stone coffins, that Hero had noticed overhead the necks of seven bottles of fired clay protruding from apertures in the ceiling. There was one bottle for each coffin, its neck directly over the corresponding funnel in the top of the sarcophagus. They must have been incidental to the burial ceremony; perhaps it had been intended that they should drip their contents (some time-forgotten preserving fluid?) on to the heads of the seven after interment, presumably to “anoint” them preparatory to their long voyage down the stream of time. Of course, the bottles would be quite empty now â¦

And yet it seemed to Hero that the age-blackened corks were intact.

Using an upturned oil jar as a stepping stone, and the stone coffin of one of the soldiers for support and balance, he reached up and finally wrested a bottle free of its hole. Its base had been cemented into place, but the cement was brittle as chalk now, and had given in to Hero's persistent tugging. And wonder of wonders, within the bottle's opaque, fragile bodyâsomething sloshed!

At which time, frightening the explorers almost witless, had commenced that singular and repetitive sound for which they'd named the crypt the Booming Chamber. But more of that anon.

Finally, all done in the burial vault and eager now to be out of there, the pair carried their prizes of oil-lump and miraculously preserved bottle and contents back up the winding stairs, where Hero smashed the bottle's slender neck against the wall. And if they had been at first astonished to discover anything still liquid in the bottle, picture now their utter amaze at the heady, aromatic fumes which on the instant began to escape from it!

Wine, certainly, but of what rare and incredible vintage? And palatableâthey'd nursed the bottle between them from then till now, and one sip at a time had warmed their innards while reducing the wine's level by at least two-thirds. In between, Hero had nerved himself to return below, broken the remaining oil jars, carried their precious fossil fuel lumps back to the tomb of the slaves. He'd tried the rest of the bottles, too, but alas, these had been fixed in their ceiling-holes more securely than the first. Finally he'd again admired (indeed, confiscated) Yath-Lhi's jewelry â¦

As for naming the crypt the Booming Chamber, that had come about like this:

When Hero had got down from taking the bottle from its hole in the ceiling, and just as he'd given it a shake and determined that there was still a full measure of liquid inside, so there had come the first of a long series of thunderous reverberations.

So sudden and startling was the sound, he almost dropped the newly acquired bottle. Ula threw herself into his arms, and as the booming echoes receded she tremulously began to ask:

“What on earthâ?” Only to be cut off as a second crash sounded, again filling the chamber with thundering echoes. But as the booming continued regular as clockwork, so reason replaced fear, and the answer dawned: this could only be the work of Chief Regulator Raffis Gan. This place was, after all, Yath-Lhi's tomb; and hadn't Gan boasted that he'd solved the maze, reached the core, and was now seeking to breach the treasure-chamber itself? Obviously the system he employed was that of the battering-ram or -rams; but while the concussions were thunderous, still they caused no more than trickles of dust to fall from the ceiling. Hero's conclusion was that these walls were tremendously thick; the sound of the battering itself carried through them, but nothing of the slaves who worked the machines, or of their overseers. Even in the upper chamber the booming could be heard, so that Hero and Ula had been quite dizzy with it when finally the assault stopped. The pair couldn't know it, but that was when the day-shift had gone off duty, tramping back through the labyrinth to the outside world.

Since when â¦ the silence had become more unbearable than the booming! Had Gan given up? If so â¦ but that didn't bear thinking about. To
avoid
thinking about itâabout dying down here, and becoming a crumbling corpse like the many littered aboutâHero now said:

“You were saying? Er, âwhat on earth'? Something you don't understand? What, exactly, don't you understand?”

“Several things,” Ula answered at once, so quickly indeed that Hero was given to wonder if she'd been thinking along the same lines, and so was grateful that he'd broken the silence. She glanced at him in the flickering firelight. “This wine, for instance. I mean, how
could they possibly forget to pull the corks, or prick them, or whatever?”

Hero shook his head. “Maybe it was for them to drink in the afterworld.”

“What?” she gave a snort. “And they'd have to go piggy-back to get at it? Undignified sort of afterworld that, isn't it?”

“Umm,” said Hero. “I suppose it is, a bit.”

“And what of the treasure?” she went on.

“You mean the un-treasure,” Hero corrected her.

“The un-treasure, then. Where is it?”

“Don't look at me!” Hero protested. “I was with you.”

She obliged him with a grin. “That's the first funny thing you've said in ages! Now I know we'll be all right.”

“Must be the wine,” Hero scratched his chin. “But actually you're right: I do feel a bit better about things. I mean, what else can happen to us, eh?”

Rather than answer
that
one, she said: “Don't change the subject. We were talking about things we don't understand.”

“Like, f'rinstance?”

“Like: why did Yath-Lhi advertise the presence of her burial chamber by building a damnâexcuse meâgreat maze around it? I mean, it was bound to be found. But who'd have tried to search out a simple little hole in the ground, eh?”

“No one,” Hero answered. “They wouldn't even want toâunless they thought there was a fantastic treasure buried with her. You know, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Yath-Lhi â¦ that she wanted â¦” He faltered to a halt, short hairs stiffening on his neck.

“That she
wanted
to be found?” Ula said it for him.

And slowly, oh so slowly, the pair turned their heads to stare wonderingly at each other. At which precise moment the Booming Chamber boomed again. Except that this time it was louder, and the rock beneath their feet gave a small but very definite lurch, and the dust didn't merely trickle, but began to come down in veritable rivulets!

An hour earlier â¦

Eldin had seen the night-shift of slaves go on dutyâand he'd seen Raffis Gan, Zubda Druff, Narrow-eyes and Egg-head go with them. His vantage point was a deep, dry ditch crammed with kegs of gunpowder, which ran from the foot of the cavern barrow to the lake, almost. But certainly it
would
run all the way, when this lot went up! Eldin had been obliged to dive into the ditch head-first when the torch-bearing procession had come weaving out of the underbrush toward him. And, as the long snake of slaves had passed by, he'd heard Gan's raised voice warning:

“Careful with those torches, there! Only drop one in that trench and we'll all be blown to blazes!” Which happened to be a thought very close to the Wanderer's own, so that he might even have considered itâwere it not for all those poor blameless slaves. He did jiggle his firestones in his pocket a bit, before putting the idea firmly out of mind. Life wouldn't be a hell of a lot without David Hero around, but it would be better than nothing. Oh, he wanted Gan dead, all right, but that wouldn't be much good if he, Eldin himself, wasn't around to enjoy it.

Also, the Wanderer now found himself with a bad case of cat's diseaseâincurable curiosity. He was curious about two things: Yath-Lhi's curse, and Yath-Lhi's
treasure. It might be amusing to steal some of the latter while doing his damnedest to bring down all of the former on Gan. And if he couldn't bring down the curse on him, maybe he would bring down the roof after all.

Which was why, when the slave-gang had tramped out of sight into the barrow's throat, and all that remained of them was the faintest flicker of the hindmost torch, Eldin found a keg with a fuse, tossed it out of the ditch and climbed up after it. With the keg on his shoulder and approaching the mouth of the excavation out of the shadows, he called out to the solitary Kledan guard:

“Ho, there!”

The guard, seated on a boulder, looked up in surprise. “Eh?” he said.

Keeping his face half-hidden behind the keg, Eldin moved closer, grunted, “Keg, see?” He gripped the small barrel between both hands, held it chin high.

Now the guard got a glimpse of his face, jumped to his feet. He drew breath and yelped: “Whoâ? Whatâ?”

“Keg!” said Eldin again, straightening his arms and ramming the keg forward into the black man's face.

“Uk!”
said the guard, as his flattened features bounced off the keg and he flew backward, striking the wall of the tunnel with his head.

BOOK: Iced On Aran

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