'What do you think,' he replied through gritted teeth, 'they made me see?'
'…What?' She felt as though something deep within her had exploded, yet so far away that she had only heard the hollow knock of it, that the main force of it was still travelling towards her.
'What do you think was the moment in my life they took me back to, if not that? The one moment of them all that I would take back if I could. Not your bastard sister and her father destroying me in Helleron. Not killing my own mentor for some Rekef General's whim. Not my own kind turning on me outside Collegium. Not that bitch Felise Mienn with her blade held at my throat, or being strung up in Armour Square, ready for execution. Not my pain at all, but yours. They used their Art, or whatever, to make me hurt you, in my head, and I could not endure it. It would have destroyed me if you had not broken their hold.'
The breath whooshed out of her, and she felt the razor slip from her hand. It left a shallow cut on her thigh as it bounced from her leg, and then clacked onto the oily floor.
'Help me,' she whispered, and Thalric took her hand, pulled her up towards him and held her tightly. She sensed Accius moving forward, until he stood beside Thalric, and belatedly she realized that this was because the Masters were now frowning at them.
She hugged Thalric briefly and then turned to them, and their glowering expressions. The awesome disappointment and disapproval she saw there nearly dried up the words in her mouth. She finally got out, 'I thank you for your offer, your generous offer, but I am not the person you take me for. I am not fit to serve you, surely. We must return to the city. I have friends there.'
Elysiath regarded her sourly, almost petulantly, and Che wondered whether she was the first person to ever refuse the Masters something they wanted. 'Return?' the woman said drily. 'Return to Khanaphes Above?'
'We must, all three of us,' Che said, with more strength. 'I'm sorry.'
The Masters exchanged looks from the corners of their eyes. 'Perhaps you are right,' Elysiath said. 'You are not fit to serve us, if that is what you believe.'
'You have heard entirely too much of our secret histories,' added Lirielle, but Elysiath actually interrupted and spoke over her: 'These two with you, the savages, were doomed from the moment they stepped into our resting place, but you, you had a chance to become something greater than you are. Yet you have turned your back on that chance. You were born amongst the slave races, and now you shall die amongst them. Think only how you could have been more.'
Thalric tensed, hand poised to sting, and she saw Accius bring his sword up. Elysiath laughed, as the Jamail might have laughed when it destroyed the Scorpions. 'Your weapons are nothing here,' she told them patiently. 'Though our dominion may have shrunk from the height of its greatness, you are within it now, for we still rule these halls.' The great pressure of their collective minds hung over the three intruders. Che saw Thalric's hand shake, his Art trapped within it. Accius's face was shiny with sweat, his sword motionless.
'You are not the first to come and steal our secrets,' Elysiath said, raising a hand. 'Nor shall you be the last to pay the price for it.'
'Secrets?'
Che started at the voice, for it belonged to the Vekken beside them.
'Our knowledge is our treasure, and no thieves shall take it outside these halls.' Jeherian told him.
'You have kept no secrets here.' Accius's expression suggested that the worst had befallen him, and he was meeting it joyously. 'Slay me and you set your seal on nothing. You cannot keep us from knowing.'
'What nonsense,' Elysiath said scornfully, but Accius grinned, teeth gleaming brightly in his dark face.
'My brother is at large in the city already. Not you nor all your servants shall catch him. And what I know, he knows.'
A dead silence fell between them, the great Masters regarding the defiant Ant-kinden with what Che realized was dawning puzzlement. At last it was Jeherian's expression that changed, sagging with bitter weariness.
'The old Art,' he acknowledged. 'The old Art of the savages. It has been far too long and we have forgotten too much, how they were in each other's minds, the folk of the Alim and the Aleth.' Che saw realization ripple through them all, stripping away their majesty and leaving a sad bewilderment behind. She found that, despite their malevolence and their vast power, she still felt sorry for them in some strange way — atavisms that remembered only ruling a world that had long passed them by.
'What could we say?' she said. 'Who would believe us anyway? We will return to the sun, and say nothing. There would be no profit for us in being dubbed liars or madmen. We leave you to your rest. Do not think ill of us.'
The Masters of Khanaphes regarded them stonily for a long moment, until Jeherian nodded minutely and said, 'Go.'
Che would remember for ever the sight of them as she glanced back one last time: beautiful by an alien aesthetic, huge and commanding and gleaming in that bluish light. The immortal Slug-kinden, the Masters of Khanaphes.
She led the way back. Thalric tried to at first, but he went off course over and over, leading them in circles through the maze of halls by the light of Accius's quisitor's lamp. The true path to the light was clear only to Che and, once they had finally accepted that, she led them confidently until they found the corpses.
There were four of them there, three close by and one at a distance. Che had not quite identified them when Thalric knelt down beside the middle one of the three. She heard him take a long breath, and only then recognized the corpse as Osgan's.
'Oh,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Thalric. Really I am.'
'I left him behind,' Thalric said. 'He was in pain, but I left him behind.'
'We should go,' Accius said shortly, still very anxious. Thalric looked up at him balefully and Che recalled how it was only because Accius had been abducting her that Thalric had abandoned Osgan to his fate.
'No fighting, no disagreement,' she ordered them flatly. 'We leave here at once, or the Masters may change their minds. Thalric, I'm sorry, but we should spend no more time here than necessary.'
'You're right, of course,' he said, standing up. She took his hand and led them on, past the final corpse, that was twisted, both face and body, into an attitude of unbearable horror.
The thought she had, crossing into the next hall, was, We must be close now. There is his armour on the throne. She thought that until she saw the head lift, and the dead eyes of Garmoth Atennar stared out at her. Even then the others did not see, not until she flinched back against them, dragging them round to watch the colossal metal-clad form stand up, sword in hand.
'Garmoth Atennar,' she declared. 'Lord of the Fourth House, whose Bounty Exceeds all Expectations, Greatest of Warriors.' She could remember every word of it. 'We are leaving your realm.'
'I know of your words with my peers,' he boomed. 'Even as our slaves have diminished, so has the foolishness of the Masters grown. Not mine, though, and I care not if you have a hundred listeners. They shall know first-hand the fate that awaits trespassers into these halls.'
The might of his mind oppressed them, but Che found it weaker now that he was alone. She could shrug it off with ease, ward it off from the others, thinking: Is this magic? Am I a magician now?
Garmoth Atennar took one great stride forward. His sword dropped towards her ponderously and Thalric pushed her out of its path. His stingshot struck shards from the Master's Mantis-crafted armour. Garmoth changed his grip on the sword and swung it in a scything blow towards him, but Thalric took flight briefly and avoided it, leading the sword point upwards. Accius darted in and rammed his sword into the huge man's knee.