Gods of Opar (v1.0), page 42
Trumpets blew. The troops on the right opened, and six soldiers and a prisoner came through the narrow avenue.
Hadon cried “Methsuh!” and heard the name echoed despairingly by his father.
Methsuh, looking much like Hadon, his hands behind him, his face bloody and puffed, was thrown down on the pavement. Gamori gestured and the trumpets and drums were loud. The crowd became silent. Gamori roared, “A trade, Phebha! A trade! One traitor for another!”
Her voice was clear but weak. “What is this, Gamori? Who is a traitor? You are the only one / see!”
“Not I!” Gamori bellowed. “I am not conducting warfare against you, wife! I am only asserting the right of Resu to primacy, the order of things as they should be!
But I am not here to debate with you! I want that traitor, Hadon! Our Emperor has informed me that he should be arrested and sent back to Khokarsa!”
“There is no legal Emperor!” Phebha said. “Our Empress, High Priestess Awineth, has declared Minruth a traitor and blasphemer and profaner! So, Gamori, you have no legal basis for your claim! In fact, by pressing the rebel Minruth’s claim, you proclaim for all to hear that you are a rebel and a blasphemer and a profaner! And so great Kho frowns on you, Gamori! And She frowns on all who support you! Death and destruction will visit those on whom Kho frowns!”
“Silence, you mangy lying bitch!” Gamori bellowed. His face was very red, but the faces of the soldiers near him were pale. “I am not here to discuss religion or politics or indeed anything except an exchange of traitors. I want Hadon! And if he refuses to surrender himself, or if you refuse to throw him out of the temple, then I will execute his brother! Now! Before his eyes and yours! And before the eyes of the deities! Methsuh’s blood will be on Hadon’s hands, on your hands!”
“You do not order the high priestess of Kho to be silent, nor do you insult her-— and thus Kho—without retaliation!” Phebha said. Her voice was louder now, her anger having overcome her weakness for a moment.
Kumin, standing by Hadon, groaned. He said, “Great Kho, do not do this to me! I have lost my wife only two days ago, and now I will lose one or the other of my only sons!”
Methsuh was on his knees only twenty feet from the doorway. Two officers stood with drawn swords behind him. Gamori was to one side and about ten feet behind them. The nearest ranks of spearmen were about thirty feet from each side of the doorway.
Hadon wondered if the spacing had been arranged to tempt him to dash out and try to rescue his brother. Probably.
There was silence for a moment. Gamori, still red-faced, his lips open and his teeth clamped together, paced back and forth. Then he shouted, “Well, Hadon! I will not wait long!”
“You will, of course, do no such thing,” Phebha said to Hadon. “It would be a brave and noble deed if you gave your life for your brother’s. Also, an extremely stupid and selfish deed. The fate of Opar and the course of true religion in Opar depend on you. No one else can rally the worshipers of Kho as you can. You are a hero, winner of the Great Games—”
“I know all that!” Hadon said loudly, daring in his anger and grief to interrupt her. “I know that Gamori does not really expect me to sacrifice myself for Methsuh! What profit would there be in that except for Gamori and the cause of Resu?”
Kumin said, “It is cruelty which inspires Gamori to do this. He cannot violate sanctuary, so he is killing Methsuh to hurt us! He hopes that one of us will not be able to endure witnessing Methsuh’s death and so will run out to save him!”
“You will not do that!” Phebha said sharply.
Kumin shouted, tore Karken from Hadon’s hand and was out of the doorway before Hadon could grab him. Hadon started after him then, but a soldier by the Queen’s chair thrust his spear between his legs and Hadon sprawled out of the doorway. Spears were instantly hurled toward him. He rolled back into the doorway. Two spears passed over him, one so close its shaft banged against his ribs. A third struck the pavement just in front of him, its tip digging into the cement. He scrambled to the protection of the wall beyond the doorway, and no more spears were thrown.
He bounded back three seconds later, determined to see what was happening even if it meant dodging more missiles. He saw the two officers who had been guarding Methsuh lying on the street, their throats gashed. Methsuh was on his side, but struggling to get up. Gamori was defending himself with his sword against Kumin’s bloody weapon. Though Kumin had only one arm, he was using Karken as if he held its hilt with two hands. And then the inevitable occurred. Spears thunked into Kumin from both sides and from behind. He staggered and fell, though still swinging at Gamori.
The King stepped up and brought his sword down against Kumin’s neck. Blood spouted, washing Gamori’s feet, and Gamori leaned down and picked up the head by the hair and held it aloft, crying exultantly.
Hadon, shouting, seized a spear from a soldier and cast it at Gamori.
It flew almost true, catching Gamori in the shoulder. He dropped the head and fell into the pool of blood, clutching at the shaft.
A soldier thrust his spear through Methsuh. Other soldiers, forgetting in their rage and excitement that they were committing sacrilege, threw their spears at the doorway. Several just missed Phebha and Hadon; one struck a priestess in the stomach. A second later the portcullis dropped and the door was slammed shut.
Observers in the windows of the upper stories of the temple reported later that Gamori was carried away at once. The spear did not seem to have inflicted a fatal wound, unless infection set in. But Gamori had given an order before he left, and it was carried out with ruthlessness: the civilian witnesses were massacred, though a number escaped. And civil war began in earnest throughout Opar.
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Phebha said, “I have just come from the Chamber of the Moon. Lalila’s labor pangs have started again. She is now an ordained priestess, and I have ordered that the news be spread that she will be our new queen. And that you will be the new king.”
“How can you do that?” Hadon said. “No public criers will venture into the street. They would be killed.”
“We have our ways,” she said. “Lalila will have to learn them; she has much to learn, in fact. I will teach her what I can before I die. After that, Klyhy and Hala and the others will teach her.”
“It is too soon to talk about that,” Hadon said. “First we have to get rid of Gamori.” “Which shall be done before the night is over, Kho willing,” she said. “In two hours it will be midnight. I have sacrificed a cock and found the omens good, if somewhat ambiguous. But aren’t they always? Midnight is the best time to start. Klyhy will be your guide, since your father is no longer available.”
Hadon tried not to think of Kumin or his brother. There was no time for grief now. There was only time for thoughts of vengeance.
He walked to the window and looked out. It was a cloudy night, when the city would normally have been dark except for the torches of patrols. But now the flames from the burning tenements of the freemen to the north and the slaves’ quarters ro the south and some large buildings in the city itself lit up the night. The clouds were red, reflecting the fires below. Here and there torches bobbed, looking at this distance like fireflies. Most of the fighting had died down for the night, if the reports were to be believed. The majority of the population had fled the city itself, avoiding being ground between the Queen’s men and the King’s. Many civilians, however, had either joined one side or the other or had plunged into looting. The wooden areas outside the walls were destined to burn completely. No one was trying to quench the flames; all fire fighting was confined inside the walls.
Since most of the city was built of massive stone, the fires there were limited. Much furniture had been carried out to the streets and set up as barricades, however, and these had been torched. Hangings and furniture in many buildings had also been heaped and set on fire in order to create diversions.
Gamori had surrounded the vast temple, leaving about a hundred men at each entrance. Then he had started the citywide slaughter which had sent the civilians into a panic. The stream of refugees had kept the Queen’s men from fighting through to the temple for a long time. They could make no headway against the mass headed for the riverfront and the jungle behind the city.
Gamori had been taken to his quarters in the Temple of Resu and treated there. According to Phebha’s spies, he had not left his apartment, but he was conducting operations through his general, Likapoeth. If the report could be believed, Gamori would be on his feet by late tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Likapoeth had twice stormed the Door of the Nine, battering it with heavy bronze rams. At the same time soldiers had tried to get into the windows of the second stories. Flaming oil had been poured on them; the ladders, pushed aside or out, had fallen with their shrieking burdens. The rams had failed to beat in the double barrier of portcullis and door, and oil from the windows above had discouraged the attackers.
Then the portcullis and door had been opened, and Hadon had led a sally outside. This had resulted in his forces being driven back with heavy losses. He had suffered several minor wounds and once almost been captured.
Later, a force of about three hundred of the Queen’s men had fought their way through to the doorway. Hadon had again led his men out to help them, and two hundred of the reinforcements had gotten into the temple.
Phebha had sent messengers to the port to order at least half the troops there, six hundred men, to come to Opar. But it would be several days before the messenger could get there, even if he traveled night and day. And it would take heavily armed men four days to get to Opar with forced paddling. Moreover, Gamori was sure to have the river watched, so there was no guarantee that the messengers would get through.
There were about five hundred soldiers inside the temple now. Unfortunately at least half of them were casualties. After eating the soup from the great kettles in the kitchen, two hundred and fifty had gotten very sick. Within an hour, almost a hundred had died in agony. The others had survived, but they were too sick to be of any use. Phebha started an investigation within half an hour after the first dozen became ill. By then the culprits, two chief cooks, had disappeared. Ropes dangling from third-story windows revealed their escape route.
“Gamori is not as stupid as I had thought him, though he is even more vile,” Phebha said. “Well, he has hit us hard. But if you succeed tonight, Gamori and all his ambitions will go up in his funeral pyre.”
Hadon was shocked. “You are going to burn him?”
“Why not? He deserves the fate of a traitor and blasphemer. Would you have me give him a hero’s burial and erect a pylon over him just because he once sat on a throne and was my husband?”
“It’s just that it’s seldom done,” he said.
“If you are to be a good king, you will do many things that are seldom done.”
“I have been learning to do such things,” Hadon said.
He excused himself and went to his apartment. Abeth and Kohr were asleep in an inner chamber, watched by an elderly priestess. She looked up as Hadon stuck his head into the room. She smiled and made a sign that all was well with the children. He went to his own bed but was unable to sleep at all. After tossing and turning, he rose and drank several cups of hibiscus-tea. Then he paced. After a long, long time the water clock indicated it was time to leave.
Klyhy met him outside the door of Phebha’s quarters. “She is asleep,” she said. “There is no need to wake her; we know what to do.”
Klyhy’s slave was carrying a large jar of some black stuff. She opened it, and Hadon and Klyhy stripped and smeared themselves with the ointment. Then they dressed, though there was not much to that. Each wore a tight black loincloth, antelope-skin moccasins and a belt holding several sheaths and metal hooks. Pouches dangled from some of the hooks. A loop in Hadon’s belt held a curious T-shaped device of iron. During this time four men, all also covered with black ointment, entered. They carried coils of rope over their shoulders, and their sheaths held knives and short-handled axes. Pouches hanging from the hooks held lead double-coned missiles. Their leather slings were secured through loops on their belts. '
Hadon had met these four that afternoon. He had gone over the diagrams with them and Klyhy until all could redraw them from memory. Like the other men, Hadon had sworn an oath never to reveal what he had learned from the diagrams. He had also sworn not to allow himself to fall alive into the hands of the enemy.
Fully accoutred, Hadon and Klyhy led the others down the hall, past a sentry around the corner and down a small side hall. At its end Klyhy drew a large iron key from a pouch and unlocked a small iron door. Inside the room, she groped around until she found torches in brackets. Using a flint and iron and some tinder, she got a tiny fire going and then dumped the tinder on the oil-soaked torch. Two others also lit torches.
The room was ostensibly used for storage. The priestess went around behind a pile of wooden boxes, the others following. There was a space between the pile and a single large box set against the stone wall. The wall itself was composed of stone blocks, each a three-foot square. Klyhy opened the lid of the box, revealing that it was half filled with rolls of papyrus. Klyhy told them to remove these, which they did. On the bottom was an ingot of lead weighing about forty pounds. They lifted that out and a plate of bronze rose a few inches from the bottom.
“The lead block holds the plate down,” she said. “Lift it and the plate comes up, and counterweights behind the wall start to work. Quickly! Into the opening!” A section of the wall had swung open and out. The others quickly moved through it into a tunnel beyond. Hadon, at her orders, pushed up on a huge wooden lever within the opening. Klyhy replaced the weight, threw in the papyrus rolls, closed the box lid and went through the opening. Hadon took the pressure off the lever and the stone section pivoted back.
“Only the Queen has the key to the storage room,” Klyhy said. “Only she and two priestesses at any one time know the secret of this room. Now you men know because this is an extreme emergency. But Kho will blast you if you should talk about it. If we can use it to get at our enemies, they can use it to get at us.”
The tunnel was about ten feet wide and eight feet high. It was well ventilated, though the source of the air was not visible. The torch flames bent toward the far end of the tunnel. Klyhy went first, turning to the left. There was no need for them to know where the right passage led, so they had not been told. The left was a lower, narrower passage. It ran for about a hundred yards, turning often, apparently going between the walls of rooms and corridors. Occasionally there were niches in the walls, some of which held skulls.
“They are supposed to belong to the slaves who built these secret passages,” she said. “I doubt that, though, since they would be seven hundred years old, and I think a skull would rot in that time. The walls are thick, but they are damp. Personally, I think they’re the relics of enemies of the high priestesses of the past few generations. But if that’s true, where are the skeletons?”
Those who could answer her questions were also dead.
The men made a sign to ward off evil spirits as they passed each skull.
Occupied with his own thoughts about the skulls, Hadon trailed Klyhy. All of a sudden he bumped into her, causing her to gasp and then curse.
“You clumsy hulk!” she said. “Watch where you’re going! You, almost knocked me down that!”
She pointed at the open well just below her feet.
Hadon said nothing. She was right. He should have been paying more attention. If he did not forget everything except the work at hand, he was likely to forget everything for all time.
The torchlight struck water far down. It also showed a bronze ladder affixed to the stone. Klyhy lowered herself over the edge and went down it swiftly. A man called Wemqardo held her torch out so she could see all the way to the bottom. Reaching it, she swung around the ladder and disappeared into an opening. Wemqardo lowered the torch to her at the end of a rope and then went down himself. Within a few minutes all six were inside another tunnel. This one curved rapidly to the left, taking them for a quarter of a mile in a path like a snake’s. On coming to what seemed the end of the passage, the priestess pushed against one side of the wall close to the corner. It pivoted ponderously, requiring Hadon’s weight to move it. The bronze pins squeaked loudly, causing Klyhy to curse.
Cold, wet air struck them. They advanced through the opening onto a curving piece of granite which held a boat just large enough to accommodate six adults uncomfortably. Though small, the boat took up almost all the room on the projection. A river, dark and greasy, lapped a few inches below the surface of the stone. Hadon lifted his torch to get a better view. The other side was at least three hundred feet away. The ceiling and walls formed an arch which glittered in the light; there were many veins of quartz in the granite. The highest part of the ceiling was about thirty feet above the water, though its height would vary further along.
Wemqardo said, “I have heard of this river deep under the city. It is said that the Cold Snake dwells at its bottom in the thick mud, and when—”
“Quiet, fool!” Klyhy demanded. “Would you scare everybody to death!”
Wemqardo said nothing more, but he had started a series of thoughts in the minds of the others. Hadon thought of creepy tales he had heard when a child, horrifying stories of the demons of the rock, of the things, half-gorilla, half-worm, which were supposed to haunt these tunnels. It was said that the slaves who dug for gold in these deeps often unaccountably disappeared. Or their fellows saw them being dragged away by things dark and misshapen... It was good not to think about such monsters, but how did you not think about something?
They got the boat into the water and themselves into the boat, though they came close to overturning it. They drove it downstream with the short-handled paddles stored in the craft. Brackets on the prow and stern held torches; the third had been extinguished. Their flickering light revealed niches carved into the walls, each of which held a skull. It also showed, now and then, a sudden boiling of the water when a paddle dipped in. Hadon, in a low voice, asked Klyhy what caused this phenomenon.
