He shuffled backwards toward to the palace. Every screamed in blind incomprehensible rage, put his knife in his teeth, and reached up to grab the ropelines. Esek laughed at him and turned to run to the palace.
“Are you sure we need Esek to escape the island?” Deborah asked.
Proctor looked at the time-worn ship with its puzzle of lines and masts and sails. “Most likely.”
“Then you better go save him. If you cannot save them both.”
Every had already reached the far shore where he dropped nimbly to the rocks and chased Esek into the marble palace. Proctor checked the tomahawk, hung at his belt, the only weapon from his militia days that he carried with him. Then he spit on his hands, reached up, and grabbed the ropelines.
He let his weight hang on the unfamiliar ropes and felt them sag.
This passage was much wider than the one between the ship and Every’s island, and the drooping ropelines dunked Proctor in the waves until he was soaked halfway to his waist. When he reached the far shore, he saw two sets of wet footprints. Esek’s heavy boots followed by the faint and fading print of Every’s bare feet, converging on the large and ornate archway of the marble palace.
Proctor paused before it.
The building itself was wrong. Up close there was no sign of workmanship in the stone, and the ornate details seemed vague and fuzzy whenever he tried to focus on them. It was less a building than it was someone’s memory of a building. And it felt less like a palace and more like a tomb. The finial on the dome was topped with a crescent moon. The real moon, also a crescent, hung in the sky behind it. Proctor realized it had not moved since their arrival.
The sooner they escaped from here, the better.
“Esek, Every,” he shouted. “Come on out — we can work through our differences.”
He heard their voices arguing far away, as if down a long corridor. With a glance back over his shoulder at Deborah, he loosened the tomahawk in his belt, and went inside.
There were no fires, no candles or lamps of any kind, but the broad interior corridors were suffused with a cool light that emanated from the marble walls. Less like natural light and more like someone’s memory of a lit room. The building was large outside, but certainly not much larger than the Old North Church in Boston. And yet the corridor led him on and on, appearing straight in front of him, though whenever he looked behind it twisted and turned.
He ignored the side doors and passages as he followed the voices toward the center of the building. Just ahead he spied a transept, a crossing of major corridors. He heard a cough around one of the corners, and he ran forward. “Esek, is that you? Proclaim yourself—”
The command died on his tongue as he rounded into the new hall.
The tiger stood at his feet, dripping a pool of water on the floor. It stared at Proctor curiously, as if its deep yellow-brown eyes were taking the measure of his soul. It leaned forward and licked the dried blood from the cut on his hand.
Raspy tongue had barely touched bare skin when Proctor spun away and sprinted into the other hall. He dodged into the first side door that opened for him, and then again into a narrow stairway, which he climbed three steps at a time. Every time he glanced back, he saw shadows moving on the wall and heard the soft pad of feet, until he was running blind, not looking back at all. The corridors were narrower here, and darker, with many more branches, and several of the rooms were dead-ends. He stopped in the third of these, braced himself in a corner, and fumbled at his belt for his tomahawk. He held the weapon before him, twitching in anticipation of an attack that might come at any moment or never.
After a while, his panic subsided and he caught his breath.
He was lost. His shifted his feet and felt them squish in wet socks. At first the noise seemed impossibly loud, a trumpet blaring his location. But then he realized it might be his rescue. He dropped to the floor to trace the breadcrumb trail of water drops back to the original entrance.
Hope faded like dew in the sun. The floors felt unreal, like a plaster model of barely remembered floors. There were no drops to follow, not even in the corner where he’d just been standing. The surface swallowed them up the way sand swallowed water.
He stood and peered cautiously around each dim corner. He made his way slowly, choosing the wider corridor every time paths diverged, looking for a staircase down to the first floor again. But the labyrinth frustrated him, and he found himself back in the narrowest of hallways which ended in a plain arched doorway. When he looked back, all the other doors and passages were gone.
He wracked his brain for a verse that he could use as a spell. But all he could think of was First Samuel, And the asses of Kish Saul’s father were lost…
Maybe the only way out was through. He tiptoed forward, as quietly as he could in wet shoes, paused in the door, and peered into the room.
A person dressed from head to foot in dark robes, knelt before an eastward facing window, with forehead, nose, and palms touching the ground. Though he could not understand the words, the voice was unmistakably that of a woman.
“Alaahumma baarik ’ala Muhammadin wa ’alaa ali Muhammadin. Kaama baarakta ’alaa Ibraaheema wa ’alaa ali Ibraaheema. Innaka hammedun Majeed.” She glanced over her right shoulder. “As Salaamu ’alaikum wa rabmatulaah.” She glanced over her left shoulder. “As Salaamu ’ala—”
She noticed Proctor there and faltered. He held up his hands to indicate his peaceful intent.
Only one of his hands was clutching a tomahawk.
He quickly slipped it back into his belt.
“—ikum wa rabmatulaah,” she finished.
With her hands cupped, palm up, at chest level, she said something that only she herself could hear. She had to be one of the women Every had kidnapped. When Esek called them whores, Proctor had imagined exotic women in shameful clothing, flaunting themselves. But this woman reminded him of a pious goodwife or some popish nun. He wanted to speak to her, but something told him it would be wrong to interrupt. Finally, she wiped her face with her palms and stood. She turned to face him. Her skin was dark but her features delicate and perfectly formed. Her amber eyes considered him, thoughtfully but fearlessly.
“You must be a most earnest and good-hearted man to find your way through these corridors,” she said in lilted English. “In all this time, no other man has found me here.”
“To be honest I wasn’t looking,” Proctor said.
“That explains it,” she said. “If you were, you would never have succeeded.”
“Do you know the way out?”
“Of course. That is why you came, to escort me away from this place. Come, we must hurry.” She walked past him, and he turned to follow her, his head spinning with questions.
But the questions quickly disappeared. The corridors that had been twisting and ever-changing before were now straight and solid. She paused and pressed a finger to her lips. “We must stop somewhere on our way out,” she said softly. “There are dangerous men here, and we must be careful to escape their notice.”
Contradictory choices raced through Proctor’s head. On the one hand, they still needed Esek in order to escape. On the other hand, if this poor woman wanted to avoid the notice of a pirate and a smuggler, he felt obligated to help.
She led him down a narrow stairway into a room that looked like the nave of an old church, ringed with high arches. A balcony arcade circled the second story. In the middle of the floor sat a box that Proctor would have taken for an altar had not the top been knocked off to reveal an empty casket. The rest of the room was filled with the emperor’s treasure, or what was left of it. Bolts of brightly colored silk, silver plates and statues, casks of coins and jewels lined the walls. Many were cracked open, or lay empty, the pieces scattered.