One of the men saw them and yelled, and Stark flung himself upward toward the stone slab.
If he had counted wrong…
He set his hands on the stone in the way Balin had told him, and he pushed in the way Balin had told him, and for a moment nothing at all happened and the red-haired riders were racing toward them. Then the slab tilted with a sudden harsh groan. There was a puff of dead-cold, dead-stale air in his face, and the side of the tomb was open. He shoved Lugh into the dark aperture, glancing back as he did so at the riders. They were not quite going to make it, and both of them had their arms lifted for the throw. Behind them other riders were coming into sight, gathering to their shouts. Stark dived for the opening as the spears flew. One grazed his leg, cutting a gash across the back of the calf. The other came through the opening beside him, passed between him and Lugh and clattered harmlessly against the far wall of the tomb. “Close it up,” Lugh was saying. “Close it up, we’ll have the bastards in with us.” They flung themselves against the stone and it went back with a clang on its pivots, shutting out light and sounds.
They sat for a moment, getting their breath and their bearings. Very quickly there came a pounding on the stone and the faint shouting of angry voices.
“Can they open it?” Lugh asked.
“Not likely. The stone is cleverly made.”
The pounding increased, and now there were new sounds, of men clambering over the vaulted roof and probing with their spear-points for a likely crack. “They won’t get far with that,” Stark said, “but it won’t take them long to commandeer some men with picks and sledgehammers. We’d best be going.”
“What about light?”
Stark groped and fumbled in the darkness, remembering Balin’s instructions. “Even tomb-robbers need light to ply their trade. Here—if I can find it…”
He found it, neatly set out in a corner—a lantern, a supply of slow-burning candles, and a flint-and-steel lighter with an impregnated wick that gave out a tiny flame the second time Stark snapped it. He stuck one candle into the lantern and thrust the rest into his tunic along with the lighter. Let Ciaran’s men find their own. The banging and hammering on the outside was reaching a peak of angry frustration. Stark examined the gash on his leg. It was not deep but it was bleeding enough to be annoying. He stood while Lugh bound it up with a strip of dirty rag torn from some part of his garments, studying the tomb chamber in the dim glow of the lantern. It was quite large, and quite empty. The stone ledges had been used for nothing besides the storage of loot.
“All right,” he said, when Lugh had finished. “That stone over there, with the ring in it. It lifts aside.”
Underneath it was a pitch black and narrow shaft, with niches cut for the hands and feet. Lugh peered down it. Stark glanced at his face and grunted.
“What happened to your courage, fearless one?”
“It’s not the dust and the dry bones that bother me,” Lugh said. “It’s thinking what will happen if I miss my footing.”
“I’ll go first with the lantern.” Stark lowered himself over the edge, feeling for the niches, and started down, the lantern slung by a thong from his wrist. He looked up at Lugh. “Don’t miss your footing,” he said.
Lugh followed him, slowly and painfully, saying nothing.
It was a long way down. The upper part of the shaft had been constructed over many centuries, extending up through the layers of rubble as they formed. At the moment Stark had no interest in archaeology, but it was impossible not to observe the strata as he crept down through them. Then the shaft widened and the walls were of solid rock, and he knew that he was in the original, the gods knew how ancient, shaft. They had cut it deep, those long-gone builders, and Stark cursed them for every foot of it, the sweat starting on his forehead and his muscles aching, his attention shifting anxiously between his own next foothold and the soles of Lugh’s boots scrabbling uncertainly so close above his head.
He stood at last in the fine vaulted chamber at the bottom and waited for Lugh to stop shaking. The lantern glow showed the outlines of bas-reliefs as sharp and clear as the day they were finished. Otherwise the chamber was empty except for a few ambiguous fragments and a pinch of dust swept into a corner as though by some untidy housewife. The air was musty and stifling, though the candle burned well enough. Stark fought down a choking claustrophobia, holding himself firmly in hand. There was a doorway leading out of the chamber, crudely cut and brutally ruining one of the reliefs. Stark went through it, into a narrow rough-walled tunnel.
He had no idea how old this tunnel might be. Even more he had no idea why men would have gone to the immense and back-breaking labor of constructing it, unless every tomb it connected with was as rich as Tut-ankh-Amen’s, and even then it seemed as though it would have been easier just to work for a living. It did pass through a succession of chambers, all stripped bare except for an occasional heap of bones or potsherds. Side tunnels led off presumably to other tombs. Stark supposed that this tunneling had gone on since the first shaft grave was sunk in Kushat, and that had been time enough for a lot of expansion.
“Did you know about this?” he asked Lugh.
“There are tales about all sorts of holes and byways underneath the city. We never took much stock in them.” He added, “That’s only one of the mistakes we made, and not the worst, either.”
Their voices sounded dim and muffled in that place, and made little furtive echoings in the side passages. They did not speak again.
After a while Stark realized that it had been some time since they passed the last tomb-chamber. He guessed that they had now left the Quarter of the Blessed and were under the King City.
The tunnel became a doorway into a vastly wider space. Stark held the lantern high, peering into the dim-lit obscurity. And now he understood the reason why the tunnel had been built.
“The catacombs,” said Lugh, whispering. “The tombs of the kings of Kushat.”
The words scattered softly away in the hollow darkness. Lugh held out his hand to Stark. “Light a candle.”
Stark lighted him one at the stub in the lantern, and then replaced that with a fresh one. Lugh ranged ahead, looking here, looking there, his face shocked in the candle-glow.
“But they were so carefully sealed,” he said. “There are three levels, and each gallery was sealed so that no one could ever break into it…”
“From above,” said Stark. “Where it would be noticed. That’s what they did with the talisman. Camar must have come at it from below.”
“Oh!” said Lugh, shaken with indignation. “Oh, but see what they’ve done!”
The kings of Kushat had been buried royally, each one carefully embalmed and sitting upright on a funerary throne, presumably wearing all the trappings of kingship and surrounded by the weapons and the wine cups, the offertory bowls and the precious ornaments suitable to his estate. The beautifully polished stone of the ceilings and walls had been carved in reliefs showing events in the lives of the rulers, who had sat stiffly all down the length of that very long, wide hall, each in his own space. The remains of hooks set into the roof showed where rich hangings had once served to separate these throne-rooms, and Stark could imagine carpets on the cold floor, and a great deal of color. There were many holes for sconces, and he thought that it must have been a fine sight here with the torches blazing and the long procession of priests and nobles and mourning women following slowly as a king was borne on his long shield to the place where he would hold court forever. At the back of each room was a rock-cut chamber, equally splendid in its own way, for the queen and other members of the royal family.