D & D - Red Sands Read online

  Nungwun had to stoop his heavy frame to pass through the door. He set the meal on the table and approached Marix cautiously. Poking him with the narrow end of his club, he asked, "You sick?"

  "Shh!" Marix hissed.

  "What you do?"

  "I'm praying."

  "Why you pray?"

  "I'm asking my patron deity for a favor."

  "Huh! What favor you ask?"

  "I'm begging Tuus, the sun god, to drop a large rock on your head," replied Marix.

  "My head!" growled Nungwun. He stepped back involuntarily and looked up.

  There was Jadira, feet and shoulders wedged between the ceiling corbels, her face contorted with effort. She clutched a tenth-talent block of limestone broken from the wall. When the guard raised his lumpy face, she released the missile. Nungwun toppled like a great tree.

  you see," said Jadira when she was on the floor again, "the gods do grant favors to mortals. Even when the mortal nearly spoils things by causing the target to step back."

  Jadira rifled Nungwun's pockets while Marix stood watch at the door. The bulky guard had little on him they could use. One silver coin (with toothmarks), the cudgel, and a small notched iron rod were all he carried.

  "Keep that," said Marix, indicating the rod.

  "What is it?" asked Jadira.

  "A key. The hall is empty. Let us be off!"

  Marix bolted the door after Jadira joined him in the corridor. He pointed left and said, "I was brought that way and passed a guardroom as I came."

  "So we'll go the other way," said Jadira, moving quickly to the right. They kept close to the wall. The massive blocks bulged outward from their centers like great stone pillows. A rime of soft gray mold filled every crack. Now and then a fat brown rat squealed softly and scurried away into a black hole in the floor.

  The corridor curved to the right. They passed several • ells, bolted and silent. The sickly smell of death was in i lie air. Without a word, Jadira reached back and took Marix's hand.

  A new dark corridor opened up on Jadira's right. 1 learing voices drift down the passage ahead of them she ,md Marix pressed themselves into the shadows. Marix took the cudgel from the nomad woman. She nodded briefly toward the oncoming voices, and he signed his understanding.

  Two men, a Faziri soldier in mail and a leather-vested jailer, wielding a torch appeared in the tunnel. They were talking earnestly about dice when they spied Jadira standing proudly in their path.

  "The sultan," she declared, "is the son of swine!"

  The soldier snatched at the scimitar on his belt. He never drew it, for Marix burst from the shadows and bashed him across the neck. The Faziri's spiked helmet bounced and clattered on the paving. The torch-bearing jailer turned to flee, but in a flash, Jadira leaped on his back and bore him down. She cracked his sbaven pate repeatedly on the stone floor until he stopped struggling-

  More voices could be heard. As she quickly ran through the jailer's pockets, Marix retrieved the soldier's sword. He stuck it through his belt and said, "Get the torch."

  They ran into the dark tunnel. A faint breeze washed their faces and flickered their torch as they walked down the passage. There had to be an outlet somewhere ahead.

  They passed a series of niches in the walls. Jadira thrust the torch into each opening, looking for a way out. The niches held nothing but skeletons, some still

  clothed in rotting garments. All were chained to the wall. Spiders and other vermin crouched in their empty eye sockets, and the skull mouths hung open in unheard cries of silent agony.

  "Tuus preserve us," Marix muttered as the parade of the dead continued.

  Jadira steeled herself and turned to the next niche. This one was deeper than most. She stepped in—

  A dim figure rose up with a clanking of chains. Marix and Jadira shrank back, torch and cudgel to the fore. From the umber depths of the alcove, a voice said, "Peace, my friends. I am a helpless prisoner."

  Jadira pushed the torch closer. Chained to the wall was a portly man of middle age whose benign features and scalp lock identified him as a priest.

  "May the warmth of Agma find you always," he said. "Can you release me?"

  "I don't see how," said Jadira. "We have no tools."

  "And no time," Marix insisted. "Let us be gone!"

  "Don't leave me, I beg you! I am due to die on the morrow," said the priest.

  "For what crime?" asked Jadira.

  "For spreading the word of my god. I am Tamakh, reborn in the wisdom of Agma. The corrupt clergy of Omerabad imprisoned me, and they mean to take my life."

  "This is hardly the time to discuss religion!" said Marix. "Guards may come at any moment!"

  "Calm yourself. Even vultures take time to feed." Jadira examined Tamakh's fetters. "There are no rivets," she said. "How are they held together?"

  "They're locked," Marix said. "Use the key."

  Jadira was puzzled. She turned the iron rod over in her hands.

  "How?"

  "Oh, filth," said Marix in exasperation. "Let me." He look the rod, inserted it in a hole in a fetter, and turned. In short order, Tamakh was free.

  "My soul is rekindled!" he said. "Thank you! Surely Agma will bless—"

  "Can we go now?"

  "Yes, yes," said Tamakh. "As you so wisely said, let us be gone."

  Marix turned sharply on his heel, took two steps, and stopped. "Ah, which way should we go?"

  "Into the wind," said Jadira. She led the way past Tamakh's niche.

  The flow of air grew warmer and stronger. The floor began to slant upward. "I smell smoke!" Jadira said. That would mean they were near street level, where home fires were kindled.

  They came to a set of steps. Wind flowed down the stairwell, tormenting Jadira's torch. Marix handed the cudgel to the priest and drew his scimitar. As one, the three took a deep breath and fairly ran up the steps. At the top Jadira stumbled. The flaming pine-knot flew from her hand—and fell, end over end, down a deep cylindrical shaft in the floor at their feet.

  The men helped Jadira to her feet. Together they crept to the edge of the pit and peered down. Far below, the torch lay on the bottom, flickering feebly. The smell rising from the pit was horrible; not the odor of death, as in the corridor of skeletons, but more fetid and alive.

  "What do you suppose is down there?" whispered Marix.

  "I don't want to know," replied Jadira. She drew a fold of her headdress over her nose and mouth.

  "The palace holds many secrets," Tamakh said. "In Omerabad there are many strange cults, many purveyors of dark magic. Any sort of monster could be housed in the lowest levels of the dungeon." He stepped back. "It was into one of these pits I was to be cast on the next dawning."

  Jadira looked about. The pit filled the corridor from wall to wall, and beyond it was another solid expanse of stone. Truly a dead end. But where did the fresh air come from?

  She tilted her head back and saw. Three paces above them, a domed cage of iron covered a skylight directly over the pit. Brief wisps of smoke blew through the bars.

  "We must go up," she said.

  "But how? We have no rope, no ladder, no scaling gear," protested Marix.

  "Would you rather return to the dungeons?" Jadira unwound her headdress and coiled it around her arm. It was considered immodest for a Sudiin woman to uncover her head before strange men, but this was not the time for prudery. She studied her companions a moment, then said, "Your shin, Marix; is it silk?"

  "Of course."

  "Take it off and tear it into strips."

  "What!"

  "Do as I say! We need rope." To Tamakh she said, "Holy One, you can spare us your sash, can you not?"

  "Ha," Marix murmured. "There must be a good five paces of cloth there."

  The headdress and the sash of the plump priest made an amply long rope. Jadira had Marix tie loops of silk from his shirt at intervals along the rope.

  "How do we get the rope to the grill?" asked Tamakh.

  Marix
had an idea. He tied one end of the rope to the heavy club. Jadira kept hold of the other end as the fellow stood back and threw the cudgel with all his might.

  The club struck the iron bars with a loud clang and fell back into the pit. Tamakh frowned.

  "Less noise, I pray. It will alert the guards," he said.

  Marix nodded and tried again. Another miss. Jadira reeled in the cudgel and gave it to him for another cast.

  "Larsa the Hunter, guide my throw," he intoned, and heaved. The club passed between two bars and landed on the paving outside.

  "Bravely done!" said Jadira. She carefully pulled on the cloth. The cudgel turned sideways and caught on the bars. Jadira smiled for the first time in many days. "Now we climb."

  Tamakh cleared his throat. "I fear Agma did not intend me to climb threads like a spider." He patted his ample belly sadly.

  "Don't worry, Holy One. We'll pull you out," Jadira said. Marix looked more than a little doubtful.

  Jadira twined her hands in the silken loops. "Hold the end taut," she said. "I don't want to swing into the wall."

  The priest and the young nobleman braced themselves at the top of the steps as Jadira began to climb. Her arms shivered with strain and her starved body 1ramped as she hauled herself hand-over-hand toward the roof.

  The bars were far enough apart for her to pull herself through. She was on a causeway between buildings of the place complex. Finding no one in sight, Jadira collapsed and waited for her quivering muscles to calm themselves.

  Putting her face between the bars, she whispered, "Marix!" He was shortly beside her. His green jacket snagged on the iron caging and tore, but he made it.

  "That fat cleric will never get through," he said.

  "Can we shift the grill?" A quick examination dispelled that idea. The iron dome was pinned to the paving in a dozen places.

  "Hello?" called Tamakh hoarsely. "Why the delay?"

  Jadira lay on the ground with her face over the pit. "Holy One, there is a problem."

  "Soldiers?" he said.

  "No, no, it's this cage. I fear it is too, ah, narrow to allow you to get out," she said.

  "What is it made of?"

  "Made of? Iron, 1 think. Too stout for bending, I fear."

  "Haul me up," he said.

  "But, Holy One—"

  "It will be well. Haul me up."

  Tamakh tied the cloth under his arms. Jadira and Marix planted their feet against the grill and began to pull.

  "Oof! Religion is surely a weighty matter," Marix grunted.

  "No—jests! Just—pull!" Jadira gasped in reply.

  Soon Tamakh's shaven head bumped the bars. "Steady, my friends," he said, reaching his pudgy hands to the ironwork.

  "Never—pull them—out," Marix puffed.

  The priest spoke, but not to Marix. "Agma," he intoned. "Agmas, copit neda! Copit desram Agman!"

  Marix glanced at Jadira, but she was concentrating on retaining her grip on the ropes, Marix's puzzlement turned to amazement as the iron bars slowly, so slowly, began to bend apart.

  " Copit neda!' insisted Tamakh. "Agmas, suden copit desram!"

  Jadira's teeth were bared with the effort of holding the

  priest's weight. Suddenly, she felt the cloth of the safety line jerk in her hands. The knot holding the sash to the headdress was beginning to slip. "Quickly!" she gasped. "Get him out!"

  Marix, staring transfixed at the iron bars, shook his liead as if to clear it and took hold of Tamakh's robe, Tamakh squeezed through the gap and rolled ponderously onto the walkway.

  Marix reached out a tentative hand to touch the iron liars. They felt cold, solid, and as unyielding as ever. He snatched his hand back as Tamakh intoned his words of power again. The deformed grill slowly bent back to its original shape. The metal did not protest, but the entire process left their ears ringing.

  "I didn't realize you were a magician," said Jadira, digging a finger in her tingling ear.

  "I am not!" Tamakh replied with surprising verve. "I am not a vulgar sorcerer, confecting toad skins and bats' eyes. I am a servant of Agma, and the god sometimes grants me power to do his will. Iron is sacred to my god."

  "Forgive me, Holy One," she said, touching her forehead respectfully. She untied her headdress from the priest's sash and rewound it around her head. As they walked to the edge of the causeway, Tamakh wound the sash around his ample waist.

  "Say," said Marix. "If you can magic metal bars, how could the Faziris keep you fettered?"

  "It is a matter of metal," Tamakh said. "Iron is sacred to Agma and obeys his will. My bonds were bronze and outside his influence. The very priests who called me heretic for believing in a false god were the ones who made certain my bonds were not of iron."

  From the edge of the causeway, they could see the lower casements of the palace, and beyond, the city of

  Omerabad proper. A million stars salted the heavens. A million lamps twinkled in the city's windows. Cook-smoke hung in a blue haze over the houses, mixed with temple incense and a mist formed by the cool night air. In the distance, there was a song of glass bells. They each inhaled deeply. Free!

  But not safe. They were certain to be missed, Marix and Tamakh especially. The escape had only begun.

  The Menagerie

  The palace of Sultan Julmet was so vast, entire regiments of the Imperial Army could not have adequately patrolled its interior. Jadira and her companions gave thanks for that as they encountered no guards on the causeway.

  The path ended at a squat tower sheathed in burnished brazen scales.

  "Where to now?" said Marix.

  "We must get to the outer palace wall and over," Jadira answered. She scanned the sky. "I wish I knew how much darkness we had left."

  Tamakh cupped his hands around his eyes and looked up. He turned slowly on his flat sandals until he faced north. He pointed to a familiar constellation. " As I see the Chariot, it is not yet midnight," he said.

  "Then we should have time."

  They descended to the lower casement. From there to the street below was a drop of four paces, but the wall had such a pronounced slope it was no great feat for them to slide down. When Tamakh had bumped to the

  bottom (losing his footing and landing hard where he sat), they found themselves in a narrow cobbled lane between the palace and the inner wall. Jadira could smell that horses had passed by not long before.

  Tamakh spotted some steps rising to the battlements on the wall. Up they went, crouching low in the shadows. Jadira reached the top first. She dropped prone and carefully peeked around the corner. Coming straight toward her were two soldiers armed with halberds and walking side by side. Starlight glinted on their breastplates, and their white cloaks hung limply from their armored shoulders.

  Jadira put a finger to her lips and motioned for the others to move back. They slipped down to the street again and ducked under the stone risers. One Faziri tramped down the steps. At the bottom, he paused, leaning his halberd against the wall. After a quick look around, the soldier pulled a rattan-covered bottle from under his cloak. He uncorked it and drank deeply. The tang of cheap wine filled the air.

  Jadira felt Marix tense. She knew what he was thinking—as the Faziri enjoyed his illicit drink, he might rush out and take the soldier by sword. She caught Marix's arm and held him. He looked at her question-ingly. Jadira shook her head.

  The soldier replaced his bottle and walked on. Tamakh let out a wheezing breath.

  "Why didn't you let me drub him?" asked Marix.

  "You might have been seen, or he might have withstood your first attack," Jadira said in hushed tones. "Besides, we can't leave a trail of fallen Faziri guards wherever we go."

  "If the wall is closely patrolled, how will we get out?"

  The priest tugged thoughtfully on his scalp lock.

  " There's the garden," he said.

  "What garden?" asked Jadira.

  "The Garden of Rare Beasts—the sultan's menagerie," Tamakh explained. "It l
ies in that direction." He pointed south. "It would not be guarded at night."

  Jadira said, "Lead the way, Holy One."

  They went on in silence. Once the warning clatter of hooves and wheels forced them under a scaffold erected for repair work on the palace casements. A two-horse team pulling a light carriage trotted by. Filmy curtains of fjauze billowed behind it. A golden lion's head snarled from each corner of the curtained enclosure. Two fierce lancers rode behind the vehicle with weapons at the ready.

  "Interesting," Tamakh said as the carriage turned out of sight. "Unless I'm mistaken, we've just witnessed the passage of a royal concubine."

  "A what?" asked Marix.

  "Never mind. Where is this garden you promised?" said Jadira.

  Threescore paces farther along, they came to a low wall, plastered white and shining. Behind it grew a thick row of date palms, each twice a man's height. Tamakh rolled heavily over the obstacle. Marix vaulted the wall nimbly, and Jadira followed. They plunged into the trees.

  They emerged onto a luxurious carpet of green grass. Rows of orange lilies, their blooms tightly furled for the night, rustled and swayed in the breeze. A path of crushed stone wended through the flower beds.

  Tamakh moved surely through the garden, as if he'd been there a hundred times before. Chirping crickets fell mute as the escaping prisoners passed. Somewhere back in the green-black trees, a nightjar whirred its song. In response, a deep-throated growl reverberated down the starlit path.

  "What was that?" said Marix, alarmed.

  "Lion," replied Jadira.

  "Griffin," Tamakh corrected. "The sultan collects only the rarest and most exotic of animals." Marix expressed a hope that the beast was securely caged.

  The first of several oval pens appeared on their right. A large recumbent form lay at the rear of the enclosure, giving no hint of what strange creature it might be. Across from the first pen was a long rectangular cage, closed on the top. As Jadira passed in front, a large hairy arm shot through the bars and seized the trailing edge of her robe.

  Jadira tripped and fell, turning to look up as she did. Two brown eyes the size of her fists glinted out of the gloom. She didn't scream, but kicked madly at the grasping hand. Marix leaped between the cage and the fallen woman. His scimitar curved upward, biting deeply into the thick, hairy arm. The hand let go, and the beast scurried to a back corner of its cage. It blubbered with almost human anguish.