Of all that immeasurable splendor, the tunneling thieves of Kushat had taken every crumb. Even the metal sconces had been dug out of the walls. Nothing was left, except the thrones, which were stone and immovable, and the kings themselves, who were not worth the carrying. Stripped of their robes and their armor and their jeweled insignia of office, the naked corpses shivered on their icy thrones, and the irreverent thieves had placed some of those that were still sturdy enough in antic poses. Others were broken in bits and scattered on the floor or heaped like kindling in the throne seats.
“All this time it’s been like this,” Lugh was muttering. “All this time. And we never knew.”
“I expect that by now Narrabhar is in much the same case,” said Stark, and added, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
He blew out Lugh’s candle and hurried on, treading once or twice on the brittle fragments of royalty.
From the catacombs the way led straight enough, with only two side tunnels leading off to some other sources of plunder, perhaps the other catacombs Lugh had mentioned. Stark moved as fast as he dared, in a tearing rush to get out into the world again. At the same time he was calculating how long it would take Ciaran’s men to break into the tomb and follow them, and how long it would take Ciaran to think of sending patrols out around the city. In any case, the sooner he and Lugh got clear of this rathole the better.
He came to the end of it almost before he realized it. He had been watching for daylight and there was none, or so very little of it that he did not notice it at once. It was a change in the air, a fresh clean smell that warned him. He blew out the candle, and then he was able to see ahead of him a ragged patch of darkness much less absolute than that surrounding them. He touched Lugh’s arm, enjoining caution, and moved much more slowly and carefully to the end of the tunnel.
It opened into the bottom of a deep cleft in the rock, where the shadows were already black. Overhead he saw the sky with pale sunlight still left in it. There was no sight or sound of anything human nearby. Stark emerged from the tunnel, breathing deeply and covered suddenly with a cold sweat, as though he had just escaped some deadly peril.
“There is a path,” said Lugh, pointing to a narrow thread that slanted up the side of the cleft.
They climbed it, coming out at length in a sheltered place among the rocks where the plain sloped upward from Kushat. Here for thousands of years thief and merchant had met to bargain over the furniture of kings and rich men and the golden hair-pins of their wives. Now Stark and Lugh looked out between the rocks and saw the black smoke rising from the city, and heard the voices, thin and distant down the wind. Lugh’s chin quivered like a child’s.
“The Festival Stones lie there,” he said, and led off at an abrupt trot.
Stark turned to follow him. And high above him on his right hand, so close now that he could hear the huge whistling of the wind in its stony throat, was the Gates of Death.
XI
The festival stones, a broken ring of cyclopean blocks, stood alone on a great space below the pass, a space so flat and smooth that Stark knew it must have been leveled artificially. And he knew that whatever the original purpose of the stones might have been, it had nothing to do with sun-worship. He recognized them, with a lifting of the hair at the back of his neck, as soon as he could see them clearly. They were the foundation courses of a tower like the one in which Camar had died. The rest of the structure, apparently shaken down in some ancient cataclysm, lay tumbled over the rock, the cut stones so worn now by time and frost and the gnawing wind that they had lost their precise shapes and might have been only a casual scattering of boulders.
The circle was full of people, and more were coming, straggling in little bands across the plain from Kushat. They were, on the whole, quiet, but it was a bitter, angry quiet. From time to time an eddy of the wind brought a taint of smoke from the city.
Lugh looked around, estimating the numbers and the ration of women and children to men. “Not much of an army,” he muttered.
“It will have to do,” Stark said. He moved through the huddled groups, searching for Thanis, and he was beginning to get panicky when he saw her. She was helping some other women patch up the wounded, her face pulled into a deep frown of weariness and concentration. He called her name. She started and then ran to him and threw her arms around him. She did not say anything, but he felt the tightness of her grip and the way she trembled, and he held her until she drew a long unsteady breath and stood away from him, half smiling. She began to unbuckle the belt from around her waist, as though she could not get rid of it fast enough.
“Here, you can have this back,” she said. “It’s too big for me.”
Stark took it and put it on, feeling a great number of eyes watching him. “Where’s Balin?”
“Out with some others, rounding up refugees. Some got away that were not from our Quarter, and he thought they might be useful.”
“Every man helps.” He smiled briefly. “Yes, even he.” Thanis was looking at Lugh in a way that should have felled him on the spot. Lugh bore it patiently, without resentment, and presently Thanis shrugged and dropped her gaze.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “We’re all here together, now.”
Stark said, “Yes.” He put his hands on the boss of Camar’s belt and turned and looked at the people who were gathered there inside the great circle of stone. He looked up at the pass high above them, with the long rays of the sun touching the icy rocks to flame so that it burned as it had when he first saw it, with the sullen fires of hell, and it seemed to him that the wind that blew down from it carried a hint of strangeness that plucked at his nerves. He remembered with a sudden and shocking vividness how the talisman had glowed between his hands, and how from somewhere far away the tiny unhuman voices had spoken.
He clenched his hands firmly around the boss and walked to the center of the ring, where a kind of altar had been made by piling together some of the fallen stones. He stood on this and called to the people, and while they came closer to hear him he watched the smoke rise up from Kushat and thought of Ciaran and the lash and the dark axe, and hardly at all of night-black hair and white skin and a beautiful woman’s face.
He said aloud to the people, “Most of you know that the talisman of Ban Cruach was stolen by a thief named Camar.”
They did, and said so, and many of them cursed his name. And some others said, in an ugly mood, “Who are you, outlander, to be talking about the talisman?”
Two of the men that Stark had seen in the taverns on the night before the attack climbed up on the altar beside him. “Balin vouches for him,” they said. “And he has something to say that you would do well to listen to.” They sat down on the top of the altar, their knives bare in their hands.
Stark went on. “I was a friend of Camar. He died on his way here, to return that which he had taken. Because I owed him a debt, I finished the journey for him.”
He opened the boss, and took from it the bit of crystal wrapped in silk.
“Most of you knew, or guessed, that the so-called talisman in the shrine was only a piece of glass put there by the nobles to hide the loss.” He waited until the angry growl had quieted, and then he held up his hands, with the crystal cupped between them. And he said, “Look now at this.”
He laid back the covering of silk. The level sunlight struck against the crystal, and it seemed to draw the light, to feed on it, to suck it down and down into its many facets until each one glowed with a separate radiance. Stark caught his breath sharply and held himself rigid, watching the crystal brighten into a small sun between his hands. It was warm now. It dazzled his eyes.