Corpses outside mewled and hammered at the doors, and scratched the panels with their talons.
And even as Roel and Celeste looked at one another, from above dim light came streaming down as portals at the backs of the niches opened, and the skeletal torchbearers, now holding their unlit flambeaus as cudgels, stepped onto a walkway high above.
Roel’s gaze swept the great chamber. Across a marble floor inlaid with arcane markings, to left and right and in the shadows at the far end stood open doorways to rooms beyond. To the back of the hall on either side stairwells rose up to the walkways above. Also in the darkness at the rear of the chamber a statue of a woman stood on a pedestal, but what she signified Roel knew not, nor at the moment did he care. “Celeste,” he called,
“the stairways afar, the liches must come down them to reach this hall. I will take my stand at the one on the right; take the left and use your bow to keep any from reaching the main floor.”
Celeste nodded and ran toward the left-hand stairwell, and she reached it just as the first of the torchbearers started down. Celeste took aim and loosed, and the shaft flew true and struck the creature in the chest. And it looked at the arrow jutting out from its ribs and laughed, and continued on downward.
Celeste flew another shaft, and it shot completely
through the dead being, leaving nought but gaping holes fore and aft in the taut, yellowed, parchmentlike skin.
Again the creature jeered, even as a second one of the beings reached the landing above and started down.
My arrows are useless. Oh, why did not the Fates warn-?
Of a sudden Celeste laughed, and she called out, “To kill and to not kill, that’s what Lady Lot said. I thought it only applicable to Cerberus and Achilles, yet here it is more to my liking.” And she nocked one of the blunt-tipped arrows, and taking careful aim, she let fly at the descending creature’s exposed pelvis. Whmp! The arrow struck, and brittle bone shattered into fragments, and the creature toppled over to come tumbling down the stairs, and when it reached bottom, nought was left of it but the rags of its garments and the cudgel it had borne all lying in a scatter of shards, and clattering down after came her arrow as well. A thin wail sounded, and an ephemeral gray twist in the air rose up from the splinters of the sundered being, and Celeste wasn’t certain whether it was a spirit rising or simply a whirl of motes lofted up from the fragments.
Celeste flew a second blunt shaft at the pelvis of the next torchbearer, and that creature, too, fell and tumbled down the stairs to become nought but shattered bone. Again and again Celeste loosed, each time slaying a torchbearer, and each time a faint keen and a wisp of gray mist arose from the strewn shards. Fifteen blunt arrows she loosed, and fifteen corpses died; no more were left on her stairwell. Quickly she turned to help Roel.
But he stood amid a pile of fragmented bones and rags and cudgels, and no torchbearers were left on his stairs either, and he looked over to see that Celeste was hale, and he grimly smiled.
Celeste took up her spent arrows, most of which had rattled to the bottom of the steps, though she had to climb up after a few.
As she fetched the last of the shafts, “Aha!” crowed Roel. Celeste turned to see him standing on the pedestal of the statue, and in his right hand he held an arrow. And he called out: “Celeste, this is not Tartarus but Senaudon instead, for the gray arrow: I have it!” Celeste darted down the stairs and to the plinth.
“Here,” said Roel, and he handed her the arrow.
Celeste examined it. The shaft was dark gray as was the fletching, and the arrowhead was of a dull gray metal. “It looks like plomb, ” said Celeste. She tested it with her thumbnail, leaving behind a faint mark. “Oui, indeed it is lead.”
“It was in her hands,” said Roel, gesturing at the statue.
Celeste looked up at the depiction. A woman stood, a crown on her head, her arms outstretched, palms up, as if in supplication. “She seems to be a queen,” said Celeste. “Mayhap the queen of Cymru.”
“Or the queen of the Waste City of the Dead,” said Roel. “I wonder why she had the arrow that slew Achilles?”
Celeste shrugged, and as she started to speak-
Thdd! Thdd!
The chamber doors rattled under massive blows.
Roel turned and peered at the juddering panels.
“They must have fetched a ram, and those simple brackets will not withstand such battering.” Celeste slipped the gray arrow into her quiver. “What will we do, my love? There are entirely too many for my blunt shafts and your sword.”
Thdd! Thdd! Bmm!
Roel frowned then looked ’round at the chambers.
“Mayhap there is a back way out.”
Quickly they searched, and the pounding went on, the doors quaking, the bolt rattling in its loosening clamps.
And the horses skittered and whuffed with each blow.
Dmm! Dmm!
Neither Celeste nor Roel found any other exit.
Bmm! Bmm! hammered the ram, and the doors began to give and thin wails and a mewling grew louder, as if the undead creatures anticipated victory.
Celeste shuddered, remembering the touch of one of the beings, and she looked down at her leg where the creature had clutched it, and she gasped, for her leathers held what appeared to be a scorched imprint of a hand, as if the grip was of fire. Yet no scald this, but rather one of intense cold, as she could well attest.
“Freezing!” said Celeste. “I felt a deadly numbness, a bitter chill, when one of those corpse folk grabbed me, Roel. Yet we ward cold with fire; think you flames will deal with these creatures?”
“Perhaps,” said Roel. “In fact, it might be our only hope.” With a few quick strides he went to the foot of the stairs he had defended and took up four of the unlit torches from the pile of splintered bones lying there. “I wonder if these flambeaus yet hold enough oil to burn?”
Bmm! Dmm!
“If not,” said Celeste, stepping to one of the geldings and fetching a lantern, “we have lamp oil here.” Clang! One of the brackets fell to the floor, and the door gave inward. Outside, the mewling of the undead mob pitched even higher.
As she poured oil on the torch rags, Roel said, “But where will we go once we are free of these corpse people?” Bmm! Bmm! Dmm! Clang! Another bracket fell, and the doors gaped even more, and now the crowd yowled.
Celeste glanced over her shoulder at the yielding entrance. She struck the striker on the lantern, and it flared into flame. “The only way we know out of this place is back through the gate whence we came.” Dmm! Bmm!
Roel lit the torches, and as Celeste extinguished the lantern and shoved it into a pack, Roel said, “Oui, yet that way out only leads back to Erebus-either to the Hall of Heroes or to the pit of Tartarus, and neither place will set us free or get us any closer to my sister.
And even should we get back across the Styx and the Acheron and find our way back through Thoth’s portal, that will but leave us trapped in Meketaten’s-”
“Oh, Roel, you have hit upon it!” called Celeste above the crash of the ram and the cries of the mob. “I think I know just how to get us out of here.”
“You do?”
“Oui.” Celeste laughed and said, “Thoth told us the way.”
Roel frowned in puzzlement, and Celeste said, “Trust me, my love.” And she grabbed two torches and leapt into her saddle, and cried, “ ’Tis time to flee through the gauntlet and up the hill whence we came.” And in that moment with a crash the doors flew wide, and the horde of howling corpses pushed inward.