The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 14: Below Munazyr, Part 4

 The end of the game seemed to be the cue for the six of them to continue. Ammas took the walking stick and commanded the spirit to focus its light forward as the rest of them gathered up their supplies and hoisted packs over their shoulders. Barthim was so loaded down he really did look like a mule, but Ammas supposed as long as his hands and feet were free he should be able to fight. Hopefully, that wouldn't be necessary.

The cistern chamber turned out not to be circular so much as a long oval, closely echoing the shape of Kyrantine's Odeon on the outskirts of the city. Every so often rather than a graven face or an elaborate column, the masonry wall was interrupted by a metal portal like the one through which they had entered the place. Ammas counted them off, stopping at the sixth one, turning to address them before leading them through it.

"As you all saw, we were not alone in there. We are really not far below the streets right now. Some of the city's older cellars go even deeper than this." Ammas peered into the portal, which had been jammed open like its fellow, only with a chunk of stone rather than wood. The corridor here was wider, and branched off in several directions. "But from here on we will be going deeper, to abandoned regions and more dangerous ones." He looked at each of them in turn, but seemed to pay special attention to Casimir and Denisius. "You must do as I say. Do not touch anything without asking me. Try not to touch anything at all. Do not speak to anyone you might see. Speak softly, if you must speak. You all know what happened in this city. There are places where the Yellow Death still waits to kill. Other dangers wait as well, and no one knows them all. But be cautious, follow me, and we'll see daylight before too much longer. I will do my utmost to make sure no harm comes to any of you."

Denisius swallowed hard. Vos looked troubled but not surprised. Casimir seemed unwilling to move at all until Ammas had lightly touched his shoulder and offered his apprentice an encouraging smile. Casimir answered it, raising his lantern. Denisius tried to raise his torch as well, but it was hard going, and he settled instead for drawing his blade, at which Ammas nodded approvingly, drawing his own skymetal dagger. The spirit, at Ammas's command, shone its light onto the left hand passage, which dropped steeply down an ancient but solid stairway. The cursewright paused at the top, beckoning Carala over to him, bending close so only she could hear his words, soft but urgent.

"I was not humoring you when I spoke of the advantage of having you on our side. Stay close to me. If you smell anything that alarms you, tell me."

"What should I expect?" Carala whispered, her heart tripping rapidly. This was something she hadn't expected, but not unlike Casimir she did not want to disappoint this man.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't ask." He hesitated. "Anything that smells of death or corruption. A sweetish smell. Or the odor of sulfur. That above all."

Carala nodded, the look in her eyes not much different from that in Denisius's. But she remained at Ammas's side, his left hand as Casimir was his right. Behind them the others walked three abreast, Vos and Barthim flanking Denisius.

The stairs plunged deep into the earth, into a thick aroma of mold. Every twenty risers or so the stair switched back, the walls sometimes slimed with niter and moisture, presumably indicating the outer wall of the cistern. Here and there, tiny stalactites could be seen, not much more than a few inches in length. More images of human figures graced the wall, clad in ancient mail and bearing antique weapons, their faces fierce and threatening -- warriors in stone, here to guard the waters. Carala recognized the Munaz crest adorning each of these graven soldiers: an open hand with an eye in the palm, against an image of the Malachite Throne itself. 

At the stairway's base a wide, brick-lined tunnel led off into darkness. The stonework here was older but less skillful, though that was difficult to discern: graffiti was scrawled across the walls, some recent and some ancient, nearly all illegible. In the halo of the airy spirit's light, a rat rose up on its haunches, twitched its whiskers at them impertinently, and scampered off into the dark.

The tunnel took them deeper under the city on a perceptible downgrade (Barthim began to complain of his ankles hurting), and soon they were in a vastly different subterranean realm. Ancient storerooms still packed with rotting goods; sunken cellars from buildings long destroyed; vast columned halls whose purpose could not easily be guessed; row upon row of decayed sarcophagi; abandoned heaps of war-engines from times the Sultan had occupied the city: these things and countless more they passed as they made their way through the underground reaches. 

At the beginning, every so often, they glimpsed a pale face watching them, or caught a furtive movement of a half-guessed figure in the shadowy reaches beyond the edge of the spirit's light. None of them lingered. Ammas, Denisius, and Vos had all drawn their blades; Carala kept one hand on her dagger hilt. Barthim muttered that it was unnecessary; even if he weren't there to protect them, none of these strangers -- either truly desperate beggars or individuals hiding from some terrible predicament in the city above -- would dare challenge half a dozen people, even if one was a boy and one a small woman.

"A cursewright's apprentice and a werewolf, I think you mean, Barthim," Carala whispered back with a fierce glitter in her eye.

Barthim grinned. "A royal werewolf, no less. I am honored to be in her company." 

Ammas told them both to be still. He was much less sure of the benign nature of the figures who spied on them. But after three hours they hadn't seen another living soul, and would not for the remainder of their time in these dark and forgotten roads.

For hours they marched past the ruins of the city depths. At some point the brickwork floor had given way to ancient, weathered cobblestones. Both Ammas and Barthim were sure this had actually been a city street, likely centuries ago. Whether it had been intentionally buried or merely lost, only a historian could answer. Every now and then they would pause while Ammas drew from his cloak a large scrap of parchment, on which was sketched a rough map of the places below the city. For the most part it comprised merely a series of lines, arrows, crude illustrations of landmarks, and cramped notes on various paths in the cursewright's hand. They paused when Ammas thought he recognized an especially noteworthy landmark: once a gigantic siege tower that looked like it might tumble over at any moment; once an incredibly elaborate well with four pumps, each sculpted to resemble a different incarnation of the Sultan; and once an unfinished memorial statue of Empress Meriwell Deyn I. Barthim insisted on comparing this incomplete figure to Carala, but there wasn't much of a resemblance. She favored her mother, after all, who was not a Deyn nor related to them by blood.

Twice they slept, Ammas allowing them six hours of rest. The first time they stopped in what looked to have been a banquet hall. Smashed tables and chairs littered the floor under a layer of dust. The walls were adorned with faded frescoes of lush feasts and boisterous revelers, many defaced with obscene graffiti. A vast, cold hearth stood at one end of the grand chamber. 

Denisius suggested building a fire there, but Ammas forbade it, on the grounds that the chimney was no doubt clogged with debris. "We'd only end up suffocating ourselves, Lord Marhollow." 

That first rest only Barthim and Vos stood a watch, Ammas collapsing into a dead sleep. Carala might have fully recovered from the trauma of the failed cure, but Ammas harbored a lingering weariness from his use of the spirit salve, and found himself cursing Mielle Thalia for chasing them out of the city. His dreams were full of the terrible doors and howling wolves, those howls becoming cries of terror as the doors creaked open.