THE ROAD TO DAMNATION
by Brian Craig

LUIS QUINTAL WATCHED admiringly as Memet Ashraf turned in the saddle and drew back his bowstring. The Arabian took aim as carefully as he could, given that his horse was at full gallop. As soon as he released the arrow the bowman turned to regain full control of his mount. It was left to Quintal to note that the arrowhead flew straight into the breast of an exceptionally ugly orc mounted on a giant boar.
'One more down!' the Estalian cried, exultantly. Then he raised a fist into the air, and said: 'They've finally had enough! They've given up!'
The remaining orcs were bringing their boars to a halt, and their goblin companions encouraged their wolves to do likewise.
The two human riders reined in without delay, knowing that they had to preserve the strength of their animals. Their horses gladly slowed to a canter, and then to a walk.
'They haven't given up,' Ashraf growled. 'Orcs never give up. They're playing a game. It's a wise move - no pig, however monstrous, could outrun a horse over a short distance, but even a running man can out-stay one if he's prepared to keep going day and night. If they don't lose our trail they'll catch up eventually - the orcs might be too stupid to work it out, but their goblin friends will put them right.'
The ill-assorted band that had been chasing the two companions since dawn was by no means large: numbering no more than eight orcs - two of which had been killed or disabled by Ashraf's arrows - and half a dozen goblins. But Quintal knew that he and the Arabian would soon be overwhelmed if they had to fight at close quarters. A long career as a pirate had given Ashraf a useful education in many kinds of fighting, and Quintal was unmatchable with a sabre, at least by any greenskin. However, the two men could not defend themselves against twelve mounted enemies save by a very careful war of attrition.
'Surely we're not worth that much effort?' Quintal asked, dubiously. 'If we were worth robbing we'd hardly be deep in the Badlands following rumours of treasure.'
'That's the kind of calculation a man would make,' Ashraf told him, 'but orcs think differently. Even if I hadn't shot two, they'd still come after us. It's not the means to an end for them: the murder of a human is an end in itself, an accomplishment worth every effort.'
Quintal shook his head. He found it difficult to credit such an absurdity. 'It's not as if we are trespassing in their territory,' he said, 'This desert is incapable of supporting any kind of life. No orc tribe would bring its herds through here.'
'That's not a concept that all men would understand,' Ashraf observed. 'Estalians think in term of territorial rights, but in Araby we have more than our fair share of useless land and we are born to a life of piracy. We're not nomads because we seek grazing for our herds; we're predators, who must live off the herds of others. These orcs don't care that this useless land is shunned by the majority of their kind - they're outcasts, forced into the margins of their own society. Whatever purpose they had before they stumbled across our trail is forgotten. Now they have but one: to hunt us down. Their goblin hangers-on might give up if the task becomes too challenging, because their wolves will find it very difficult to hunt in these parts. But remember orcs and their boars can go without food, water and rest for far longer than humans and horses.'
'Suppose we were to double back behind them, and try to pick them off one by one,' Quintal suggested. He felt uncomfortable proposing a plan that the bowman would have to execute virtually single-handed.
'Impossible,' was Ashraf's judgment. 'That would be playing into the goblins' hands. Countering sneak attacks is one of their skills. We have no choice but to go on, and hope that we can find a way to give them the slip.' His tone suggested he didn't believe they could do it.
Quintal looked at the terrain before them, and knew exactly why his companion was so pessimistic. Like the deserts of Araby, this part of the Badlands was all sand and rock, and the sand was gathered by the wind into continually shifting dunes that limited their vision to a few hundred paces.
Although noon was long past the sand was still very hot and yielding; it was far from an ideal surface for steel-shod horses. Quintal and Ashraf had put leather socks over the hooves of their mounts, but that wasn't enough to save them from distress.
Quintal raised his water bottle and shook it. There was hardly any liquid left to rattle. He put it down again even though his throat was parched.
'If we don't find water by nightfall,' Ashraf told him, grimly, 'We'll be travelling on foot tomorrow. And if we don't find water tomorrow... it might be a blessing if the greenskins were to catch up with us.'
'So we keep going forward,' Quintal said. 'The one thing to be said for these dunes is that there's always high ground ahead.'
'And more dunes,' the Arabian muttered.
Quintal guessed that the odds were perhaps a thousand to one in favour of that judgment, but to his surprise, Memet Ashraf challenged it almost immediately. 'There was a road here once,' he said, pensively.
'I see no sign of it,' Quintal admitted.
'You're not desert-bred,' the Arabian reminded him. 'It is far older than any I've seen before, but it's definitely a road. The orcs are desert-bred, but they're probably too stupid to see it, so we'll lose nothing by following it. I wonder where it leads to?'
'To the city!' Quintal exclaimed, feeling a sudden surge of exultation. 'Elisio was telling the truth!'
'To damnation, more likely,' was Memet Ashraf's grim verdict. 'Even so, we have no choice but to follow it. There comes a time in every man's life when all roads lead to damnation.'
It was obvious to Quintal that Memet Ashraf had lost whatever faith he had had in their mission, and that even the discovery of the all-but-obliterated road could not reignite it. The Estalian could hardly blame him, for he had lost faith in the informant who had sent him on this mad expedition, and he could find little comfort in the news that there was a road here only detectable by an Arabian.
Even so, he thought, we might as well pray that Elisio was right, as we've little else to offer us hope.
Quintal was a native of Magritta, where noblemen were exceedingly proud of their naval traditions, and made great heroes of their explorers and privateers. Mindful of the bad example set by the smaller neighbouring city-state of Almyria, whose royal family were perennially engaged in murdering one another, the Magrittan nobility had found it conducive to political stability to put their younger sons in charge of ships commissioned to undertake expeditions to distant and dangerous parts of the world. A few returned very rich, but a greater number never returned. An even greater number brought their vessels home in ignominious states of disrepair, with nothing to show for their adventures but tales of treasures almost captured and battles almost won. These tales were usually discounted, but when one of Quintal's cousins, Elisio Azevedo, whom he had been careless enough to worship in his youth - assured him that no one but loyal Luis should hear the tale of what happened to his lost ship, Quintal had been very eager to believe him.
When the time came for him to take his own ship south, Quintal had been determined to take advantage of the knowledge that he alone possessed - if Elisio could be trusted. His cousin, alas, had suffered a fatal accident a few months after telling him the story. In spite of being warned of the dangers, Quintal had matched his cousin's losses. He had found himself stranded on a distant shore along with the sole survivor of the foundered ship that had sent his own to the bottom.
Had Memet Ashraf been an orc, they would doubtless have continued to fight one another until one of them lay dead. But Memet Ashraf was not an orc, and the two of them had been sensible enough to make a truce - which had turned quickly enough into a firm compact. Ever since they had stolen the horses they were now riding Quintal had been happy to think of the other man as a fast friend - although he knew that he would never be able to introduce him as a dinner-guest to any inn or home in Magritta.
At the moment, that was the least of his troubles.
Quintal wondered whether Memet Ashraf had ever believed a word of his second-hand tale of a city of roseate stone, almost buried by desert sands and so far south in the Badlands as to be perilously near the borders of the Land of the Dead. Probably not, he decided, but the Arabian had no destination of his own - however fanciful - and he was a desert man by birth.
At any rate, he had consented to be led into the desert, presumably thinking it was a place they were least likely to run into the orc and goblin tribes that were the curse of the Badlands.
Alas, it had not been unlikely enough.
'Perhaps we should have stolen boars instead of horses,' Quintal said, when they crested yet another rise only to see yet more dunes before them. 'Perhaps, if we're very careful, we still could.'
'An Arabian does not ride a pig.' Memet Ashraf's reply was hoarse but scornful.
Quintal looked back at the way they had come. Earlier in the day there had been a wind blowing which meant that their tracks in the soft sand might be obliterated, but the evening was utterly still and the route they had followed could hardly have been marked more clearly. It could not be helped. There was nothing to do but continue until the horses collapsed - then there would be nothing to do but continue on foot, until he and Ashraf became incapable of moving on.
Quintal would be the first to fall, and he knew that however firm his new friendship was, Memet Ashraf would then go on without him, perhaps cutting his throat so that he would not fall into the hands of the orcs and goblins alive. Goblins had a reputation for ingenious and effective torture even in Estalia, whose inquisitors were legendary throughout the Old World.
Well, Quintal thought, at least I shall never have the opportunity to pass the tale on to some younger cousin in Magritta who knows no better than to take it seriously. What could I have been thinking? Buried cities older than the desert sands! Temples raised to evil gods when the Land of the Dead was still the Land of the Living! Horned idols with enormous gems mounted in their foreheads! How could I have been so gullible? And yet... my desert-bred friend says that we are following a road. It must lead somewhere solid, even if it is to damnation as well.
Memet Ashraf's raw voice cut into his reverie: 'Look there!'
For a moment, Quintal's carefully-balanced cynicism fell away, releasing a flood of delirious hope. But then he saw that the pirate was pointing up towards circling vultures, and his optimism faded again.
'Have they come for us already?' he moaned. 'Is the odour of death already upon us?'
'Not yet,' the Arabian croaked. 'They have more urgent work to do. There's something up ahead which is not quite dead.'
'And if we get there first,' Quintal said, 'we can hold the birds at bay and claim the prize for ourselves!'
'Perhaps,' said Memet Ashraf, urging his horse to one last effort.
Quintal made to follow him, but his horse made no response at all. The sun was setting, and the twilight would not last long. His horse was finished, and the Arabian's mount was almost as bad, although it was slightly ahead. There was no danger that Quintal would be left far behind.
The dunes were smaller and steeper here than they had been before, and the low ground between them a little stonier. Even Quintal could see signs of a road now, it was no longer straight - but it made good sense for Quintal and Memet Ashraf to follow the meandering course of the ancient path, even though they could hardly see thirty paces in front or behind.
Ten minutes passed before they came in sight of the vultures' quarry. Quintal's first reaction was to groan in disappointment. He had been hoping to find another human traveller - preferably a pretty woman who had fainted from the heat even though she still had a full water bottle - or, better still, a barrel in the luggage borne by her sturdy and patient packhorse. Instead they found a boar bred by the orcs for transportation, milk and meat. It carried no saddle or harness, but it was almost certainly an escapee from orcish domestication rather than a natural inhabitant of the region. It was lying down, presumably stricken by thirst and exhaustion. Its eyes were open, and they fixed upon Memet Ashraf as he rode forward. The creature seemed incapable of movement, save for a reflexive spasm in one of its hind legs.
Trying to look on the bright side, Quintal told himself that the animal was meat. But meat was not what he needed most; water was. He wondered, briefly, whether horses could be persuaded to drink boar's blood, and whether they would benefit out of it if they did. Having failed to convince himself in respect of the horses, he then wondered if he could drink boar's blood, and whether it would benefit him.
He was surprised that Memet Ashraf was a great deal more excited by the discovery. 'Is it really worth fighting the vultures for?' he asked.
'Boars have good noses,' the Arabian told him, briefly. Quintal, looking down at the animal's incredibly ugly four-horned snout, and realised that good evidently did not mean handsome. 'Look at its tracks!' the Arabian went on. 'Its path has converged with ours. I don't know where it started, but I do know that it would not have come this way if there were a better way. If there's water anywhere, this is the signpost that will lead us to it.'
'If it's more than a few hundred paces off, it might as well be on the other side of the world,' Quintal said.
Memet Ashraf had dismounted now. 'But it's not!' he said. 'It's right here, but the poor creature couldn't get to it. It's a well, my friend. A covered well! That's why the road suddenly became so round-about.'
The Arabian was using his booted feet to brush the sand away from a rounded stone. Its emerging shape declared clearly that it was no mere boulder. It was a sculpted capstone - and what could it possibly be capping, if not a well?
'Help me!' the Arabian demanded.
Quintal was not slow to oblige. The capstone was heavy, but its weight had been carefully judged so that one man alone would be able to slide it away in case of dire necessity. They shifted it together without undue difficulty.
Night was falling, but they would not have been able to see far into the pit even in full daylight. Memet Ashraf picked up a pebble no bigger than a knucklebone and dropped it into the darkness. The splash was somewhat delayed, but clearly audible and satisfyingly sonorous; it promised reasonable depth.
'We don't have a bucket, but we do have a rope,' the Arabian said, exultantly. 'One of us can let the other down, with a bottle in each hand. It might take four or five trips, but we should be able to bring up enough to put new life into the horses.'
'I'm lighter,' Quintal said, 'and you have the stronger arms in any case. But the water's a fair way down - is the rope long enough, and will it take the strain?'
'Only one way to find out,' his companion told him, rummaging in his saddlebag for the rope.
Quintal took off his belt, his sheathed sword and his pouch, and passed them to his companion.
'These are all my worldly possessions - everything I have and everything I am is in this belt,' he said. 'Look after it, I beg you.'
Ashraf nodded, and muttered: 'You'll be back in three minutes.'
Alas, it required only two minutes to ascertain that the rope was not quite long enough, and that it would not take the strain of Quintal's weight. As he reached its limit, bracing himself as best he could against the walls of the well, a worn section of the rope snapped where it was looped around his chest, and he fell out of the noose.
He could not find a handhold or a foothold in the wall, and scrabbling after them only served to bloody his hands. He told himself that he could not have far to fall, and that he would not hurt himself because he was falling into deep water.
He was right, although the second part of his conviction had better grounds than the first. He fell less than three times his own height, scrambling at the walls as he went, but when he hit the water the impact seemed adequately cushioned.
He was astonished to find that the water was cold - and more surprising, had he only had time to consider the matter - it was far from still.
Before Quintal hit the water, the circle of light at the well mouth had shrunk alarmingly. Then he was immersed in total darkness, and by the time he had struggled back to the surface the current had carried him away.
He was not at all disappointed to be wet, or to have filled his mouth with water, but he knew that he was in dire danger. At any moment the flow might dash him against a rock or carry him into a bottleneck where he would stick fast and drown. He gulped as much air as he could, knowing that he might not have the opportunity to do so for much longer. He fought to swim against the current, hoping to bring himself to a safe pause if not to get back to the well shaft. But he was weaker than he had imagined. Magrittans were famed in Estalia as strong swimmers, but even the strongest of them would have floundered had he been brought as close to dehydration and exhaustion as Quintal.
So far as he could judge, the tunnel through which he was being carried was almost level, and there was at least an arm's-length of clearance above the surface. It was filled with stagnant but breathable air. He was wise enough to know that water does not flow as fast as this along a level course unless there is a cataract ahead. He could already hear the cascade. It might be as high as a man was tall, or it might descend half way to the centre of the world; all he could do was make ready for the drop and hope.
The water hurled him over the edge, and for a moment he almost came clear of the stream. Then he hit the pool below the waterfall, and the breath was knocked out of him.
The pool was even colder than the flood that had dumped him into it, and he was grateful for the slight additional shock. He was grateful too that the pool was relatively still once he had drifted away from the cascade. It must have an outflow somewhere, but it was relatively tranquil.
He was able to swim now, albeit weakly. He dared not make haste in any case. He had to be wary of swimming into an unforgiving rock face or catching an arm or leg on a jutting spur.
When his hand finally touched something solid, it felt like a ledge. In fact, he soon discovered, it was one of a whole sequence of ledges arranged in series.
No! he thought, feeling another resurgence of optimism. Not ledges - but steps!
He was right: a flight of stairs had been cut into the rock that lead down into the water. He was able to stand up, albeit very shakily, and climb out. Once clear of the water he sat down to rest. He squeezed the cloth of his shirt to release the water it had trapped. The pain in his hands as he increased his grip told him that he had lost a good deal of skin.
I'm in a bathhouse! Quintal thought.
He scrambled up the whole flight of steps feeling steadier on his feet. The water he had taken in had made him feel slightly sick as well as slaking his thirst.
He began to walk away from the head of the staircase, taking one careful step at a time with his hand extended in the darkness before him, wary of meeting a wall. He found one eventually, but it was not set squarely across his path. It was set aslant, as if the area at the top of the steps was triangular rather than square.
Of course it narrows, he told himself. It leads to a corridor of some kind. And if I follow the corridor carefully, I shall find more steps... steps that will eventually lead me all the way to the surface, for I must be in the cellar of a building - a building in a roseate city lost for thousands of years in the worst of the Badlands, where even orcs and goblins will not go. Oh, Luis, Luis, how could you ever have doubted dear Elisio's word?
Quintal was shivering now, and his teeth were chattering. He would have been very glad to find another flight of steps at the far end of the corridor into which he came, but it opened out instead into another wide space, of which he could see not a single detail.
Rather than marching forwards he followed the wall, running his hands along it even though his fingers became thickly beslimed with something horrid. He paused to wipe them on his trousers, but the slime was difficult to dislodge even on the wet cloth.
When he came to another narrow opening he had no way of knowing whether the tunnel would lead him up or down, but he tried it anyway. There was a wooden door at the further end, which seemed to have been barred. He could find no trace of a handle or a lock, but it would not yield to a tentative push. What gave him hope, though, was the fact that the invisible surface seemed to be covered in slime and fungal nodules. He concluded that it must be rotten, and if he could find its weakest point he might be able to make a hole. If he could not dislodge the bar after that, he could probably gradually widen the hole, until it was large enough to crawl through.
It was hard work for a man in his depleted condition. When the wood finally began to splinter it produced dagger-sharp pieces. They would have been easy enough to avoid had he been able to see them, but under cover of darkness they stabbed his hands and forearms, reopening the cuts he had sustained in the well and making several new deeper ones. Even so, such was his desperation and determination that it took him less than an hour to break through.
The other side of the door was dry, so Quintal assumed that the air beyond it must be contiguous with the desert air through which he had been riding for days. The prospect of dry warmth suddenly seemed welcoming, so he set off with a will into the darkness, hoping for a glimpse of starlight.
The wall he was following took him right, then left, then right again, eventually delivering him into yet another open space. Here at last, he saw chinks of light far above him, let in by narrow horizontal slits unlike any window he had ever seen before.
In here the still air was much warmer, and so dry that the water began evaporating from his clothing.
Quintal might have felt less disappointed by the fact that the floor was still lost in darkness if his ears had not become active again. It was not the flutter of lazy wings that disturbed him, even though they probably belonged to roosting vultures; it was the sound of serpentine scales slithering on stone, and the click of insectile feet that might belong to scorpions. They seemed to be heading towards him, but when he froze and pressed himself against the wall he realised that they were just passing by. It was not the scent of his sluggishly flowing blood that had attracted them but the draught of cool moist air that had followed him from the broken door.
When he moved on, Quintal eventually came to a raised stone platform. Its slightly concave surface was as broad and long as a princely bed, and it seemed quite clean. It was a welcome discovery, for it seemed quite safe from snakes and scorpions alike, as they had no way to climb its smooth sides.
Desperately tired and weakened by the loss of blood from his hands and arms, Quintal hauled himself up on to the slab and stretched himself out. Utterly exhausted, but no longer wringing wet or frozen half to death, he fell unconscious almost immediately.

MEANWHILE, A FRUSTRATED and annoyed Memet Ashraf pulled the broken rope back up. It was only a couple of feet shorter now than it had been before, but there was no obvious place to secure the free end. He knew that if Quintal were alive and unhurt, the Estalian's curses ought to be clearly audible, but there was nothing. He must have been knocked unconscious, and possibly drowned.
It was a dire, uncomfortable thought. The chances of two men outwitting and outfighting six orcs and six goblins were not good. The odds against one alone were tremendous - and they would be astronomical if he could not bring up water for himself and the two horses.
Ashraf knew that he had to extend the length of the rope far enough to be able to dangle a bottle in the water. Eventually, he contrived a considerable extension by using his own belt, the sword-belt that Quintal had prudently taken off and the reins of both the horses. He found, then, that by leaning over the edge of the hole, with his arm at full stretch, he could get a bottle down to the surface of the water. But filling it up was a different matter. The only bottles he had were made of stiff leather, and they were not heavy enough to sink beneath the surface - and there did not seem to be anyone down there who could push them under for him.
In the end, the best Ashraf could contrive was to send down his shirt and bring it back wet. He was glad, though slightly puzzled, to find that the water was not at all foul or bloodied. But he did not have time to waste in wondering what could possibly have become of Luis Quintal. He wrung enough water out of the garment to fill his mouth twice over and moisten his head after only one immersion, but satisfying the thirst of the two horses was a task of a very different order. Having no alternative, he set to it with a will, as glad of the cloak of darkness as he was of the light of Morrslieb and the stars, which made it less than absolute.
When he finally felt that he and the two animals were capable of moving on, the Arabian carefully replaced the capstone on the well and concealed it as best he could. He buckled both belts about his waist, making sure that Quintal's sheathed sword and pouch were quite secure. Then he killed the boar. He dragged its body some distance away before butchering it. He loaded up the best of the meat, and left the rest for the vultures.
Ashraf did what he could to obscure the fact that he had lingered so long, but he knew that his pursuers would need to be unusually stupid not to realise the fact. If the orcs and goblins found the well, they could afford to occupy the spot indefinitely, and leave it guarded while they sent search-parties after him. He, alas, could not risk staying nearby. But there was a well here as well as a road, he thought, so there must once have been a village, or a town... or even a city like the one the crazy Estalian had heard rumour of. The dunes must have covered the ruins of its buildings hereabouts, but if it had been a big place there might be walls still standing only a little further on.
He was glad to have a reason to proceed, and a reason to hope that he might still evade his pursuers. Even a city fallen into ruin thousands of years ago might offer useful hiding-places. With luck, it might be a place where traps could be set, and a war of attrition waged with a chance of success, even by one clever warrior pitted against a dozen.
Ashraf found that there were walls a little further on. The sand had covered most of them, but the stumps of hundreds of fallen columns still projected from the rubble. What must once have been an arterial road was littered now with all manner of stony debris, but it was easy enough to pick a moonlit course towards the few distant buildings that seemed more-or-less intact.
There were far more signs of life here than there had been among the dunes, but the creepers that overgrew a few of the columns and the thick-boled trees beside the ancient highway were understandably parsimonious in the matter of putting forth foliage or fruit. The moon was not quite full, but its face seemed unusually large, clear and ominous as it sank towards its setting-place. Memet Ashraf was glad that he was heading south-east and did not have to look at it. The silence was oppressive. Any nocturnal hunters prowling among the ruins would take care to be discreet. But Ashraf doubted that there was vegetation enough to support a great many rats and lizards, which would in their turn support precious few snakes and jackals.
He headed towards the buildings because they offered the best chance of a hiding-place where he might safely sleep, but the closer he came to them the less welcoming they seemed. Their sand-scoured walls seemed uncannily bright and baleful by the light of the setting moon, and when the moon actually went down their dark bulk seemed even more ominous.
The Arabian reined in and looked back. For the last thirty paces or so the horses had been walking on smooth bare rock, leaving little or no sign of their passage, and there was more bare rock ahead. If the orcs and goblins followed him to this point, they would assume that he had gone straight on towards the buildings in search of shelter. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to make a detour.
He set off at right angles to his former course, sticking to the smoothest and hardest ground he could find until he had put a good distance between himself and the ancient roadway. Then he cast about until he found a convenient covert between two fallen columns, where even a man with two horses would be invisible to anyone more than twenty paces away.
Satisfied that he could not be found except by the most monstrous stroke of ill-fortune, Memet Ashraf unburdened the two horses and threw himself down on the ground to sleep.

LUIS QUINTAL WOKE with a start as a spider ran across his face. He could feel the warmth of a gentle ray of sunlight on his face, but when he sat up he lost the sensation. His eyes were glued shut and he had to rub them before he could begin to force them open. The knuckles he rubbed them with were covered in something glutinous, and when he finally got one eye open he saw that they were caked with a horrid mixture of blood and dried slime.
The light that filtered through a dozen high-set cracks was bright, but the space in which Quintal found himself was so vast and so cluttered that most of the rays seemed to be soaked up and nullified, so he paid it scant attention at first.
He inspected his hands and forearms more closely, then his clothing. He was a sorry sight. His shirt and trousers hung in tatters, and the bare flesh was scraped and cut wherever it showed through. The panic he felt when he saw that he did not have his sword-belt was only partly assuaged when he remembered that he had taken it off in order to make his brave descent into the well. He remembered that he had taken off his pouch, too, and that all his worldly possessions - such as they were - had been entrusted to the care of an Arabian pirate. He sighed, but he was not too dismayed - the Arabian in question was, after all, his friend.
He forced the other eye open at last, and then looked around.
Quintal realised immediately that he was in some sort of temple. Two rows of fluted columns extended before him to either side of what must have been the area in which the faithful made their devotions. The floor had been covered in tiles; all but a few had been displaced - some, apparently, by violence, the rest by the upthrust of sprawling roots. The open space had been colonised by six gigantic thick-waisted trees of incalculable antiquity, their crowns remarkable for their patchiness. Wherever a beam of light shone through the broken walls there were leaves gathered to receive it. They formed arcs that mirrored the sun's path across the sky, but where no sunlight shone through, the branches were bare and shrivelled.
Quintal knew that trees needed water as well as light. If it was astonishing that these sprawling excrescences had grown so massive with such a meagre supply of light, how much more astonishing was it that their roots must extend deep into the ground to the underground river that had carried him here? He had opened a passageway by breaking a door, but these trees had enjoyed no such luxury: they obtained their nourishment the hard way, by burrowing through stony foundations and the rock beneath.
Between the pillars there were statues. They were almost totally obscured by the trees that grew around them, hugging them lovingly with their branches. They were certainly idols of some sort. It was almost impossible to make out their shapes, but Quintal got the impression that some resembled squatting toads with heads and horns like cattle, while others were like seated apes with the ugly heads of pigs, and horns on either side of their snouts. All of them, however, had a disturbing look of humanity about them, as if they were chimerical hybrids of human and animal elements.
Quintal took particular note of anything that resembled a horn, however faintly, because his cousin Elisio had mentioned horns in connection with gems. Unfortunately, there was no trace of a gem in any of the places where the foreheads of these creatures might have been. All that Quintal's inquisitive eyes could discern among the labyrinthine branches was that each of these figures appeared to have a single huge breast. It was as if they were female on one side of the body only.
It would have been difficult to confirm this hypothesis even if he had been able to see the groins of the statues, and he did not try. Instead, he scanned the trees for signs of edible fruit, but he found none. Then he peered at the distant walls, his anxious gaze scanning for a doorway or low window. The temple appeared to be octagonal, although it was difficult to be certain with so much dead vegetation shielding the walls.
He could just make out the place where the main doors of the temple must have been, but it appeared to be blocked. It was easier to see where the windows had once been, but they seemed to be blocked off too, at least in their lower reaches. The shafts of daylight he could see were entering through gaps just under the eaves or actually in the fabric of the roof, at least three times his height from the floor.
He was not overly worried by this discovery, because the trees were extending their sturdiest branches to all those points of ingress. There were several that would be easily accessible to an agile and determined man, and there would be time later to consider the problem of getting down on the outside.
It was only after a while that Luis Quintal looked down at the shallow bowl in which he had curled up to spend the night. He guessed that it must have been an altar: a sacrificial altar, in which far more blood must once have been spilled than the few clotted droplets he had recently shed... He studied the mess he had made, and concluded those dried-up libations seemed a far from trivial loss.
Having realised that the platform was an altar, he turned around to look at the previously unseen figure that loomed above it - and this time, the panic raised was not so easily quelled.
Unlike the smaller figures in the colonnade, this vast idol was not overgrown, nor had its shape been eroded by the ages. The representation was of a clothed figure rather than a naked one, and it was more like a human in other ways. The outline of a single huge breast could be seen on the right side of its body. It was only partly hidden by an open-necked jacket intended to resemble a knitted garment, or perhaps chainmail armour. The left half of the torso was, however, unmistakably masculine in its musculature. Residual flecks of colour suggested that the carved clothing might once have been painted in vivid pinks and blues.
Its face was strangely beautiful, in spite of its asymmetry; it was surrounded by a lush mane of hair. The forehead bore two pairs of horns, and again there was no jewel set between them. On the other hand, there was a cluster of red gems decorating the head of the sceptre set in the idol's right hand. The shaft seemed to be made of green jade.
Quintal was instantly avid to possess those gems, but he could see that the sceptre would not easily be snapped off, nor the individual gems easily prised loose. Nor could he help wondering why the sceptre had not been snapped off long ago, or the gems broken away if this temple had been here for thousands of years.
There were, in any case, more urgent needs to be attended to before he could make plans to improvise a sledgehammer or a lever, and a platform from which to work. Most important of all, he needed something to drink. He knew that abundant water was not far away, and he had no alternative but to grope his way towards it in the dark. He could have made up a bundle of dead twigs easily enough, but he had no means of lighting it because his flint and kindling-wool were in his pouch.
Quintal let himself down from the altar, and looked around for the entrance to the corridor that would take him - if he could remember the turns he had made - to the door that he had broken. He saw his footprints easily enough, limned in blood and slime, but one of the shafts of light that illuminated them winked out - and then another.
He looked up at the holes and saw to his dismay that two of them were partly occluded by broad green heads with exceptionally ugly faces. Half-hidden though he was, the orcs saw him almost immediately, and began calling to one another in triumphant excitement.
Quintal realised, to his horror, that the same branches that he could climb up might easily allow the orcs - or their leaner companions, at least - to climb down. Given that he had no weapon, and had been so badly bruised when he fell into the underground river, he could not possibly make a stand against them.
For once, he could not rouse his previously-indomitable optimism to a new effort.
It seemed that he was doomed.

MEMET ASHRAF HAD left the horses hidden when he found the tracks along the highway at first light. He cursed, realising that the orcs and goblins must have travelled through the night, determined that their prey should not escape. What was worse, he could only find traces of four wolves and two boars; two wolves and four boars must have been left behind - almost certainly at the well.
The discovery that the enemy forces were evenly divided would have been encouraging had Quintal been there, but the odds against him would need whittling down before any fight came to close quarters. It was the fact that those at the well would be on their guard that made Ashraf turn towards the buildings whose pink roofs were already catching the sunlight.
His approach was a model of stealth, but he cursed when he found that the attention of the orcs and goblins was directed elsewhere. A great deal of sand had been piled up against the west-facing wall of a large building - an octagonal structure markedly different from the architectural styles of Araby. There was so much sand in fact, that Ashraf assumed there must have been a substantial amount of rubble there already, perhaps to seal doors and windows. One of the orcs and one of the goblins had climbed to the top of this treacherous slope, where there were cracks that allowed them to peer through. They were calling excitedly down to their friends, and demanding tools with which to make the cracks wider.
What can they see there, Ashraf wondered? What could distract them from their vengeful hunt of him?
He remembered what the Estalian's cousin had said about idols encrusted with gems, like eyes in their heads. It was the standard stuff of travellers' tales - he had heard dozens of similar tales in the souks of his native land. But there were cities buried in the desert sands, even in Araby. The world was ancient; it had been inhabited long before the rise of human civilization, perhaps long before the rise of elvish civilization. The abandoned cities of Araby had been looted long ago. The Badlands however had long been the province of orcs - whose rise to civilisation had yet to begin. These goblin allies would know the market value of gems, as their ancestors had learned their value from humans, perhaps less than a dozen generations ago. It was just conceivable that this temple had been here for thousands of years, and that its existence was known only to uncaring orcs who had insufficient brains to make them efficient looters.
This is foolish! he chided himself. There is only one reason why treasures remain unlooted, even by scavenging scum like the greenskins - and that is that they are well-guarded. But Elisio Azevedo had sworn - again, after the invariable fashion of tale-telling travellers - that although he had clearly seen the gems, he had been quite unable to reach them, for fear of venomous snakes and monsters like crocodiles that walked. The last, at least, had to be false - not so much because Ashraf had no reason to believe that there was any such thing as a crocodile that walked erect, but because there was every reason to believe that there was no water here to support such creatures even if they did exist.
Whatever their motive, the orcs and goblins seemed to be making a concerted effort to widen the cracks, in order that some of them could pass through. Memet Ashraf was glad to observe that his earlier calculation had been correct - there were two orcs and four goblins, and each had a mount appropriate to its kind. Ashraf was pleased to note that if four contrived to get inside, only two would remain without.
Given that he had all the time in the world to pick his spot, the Arabian was confident that he could put arrows into two orcs before either had a chance to reach cover. Within minutes, however, his plan was upset by the fact that one goblin had scrambled down the slope, mounted his wolf and rode off in the direction of the well.
Ashraf was not unduly worried. Reinforcements would not arrive for some time, even if they came in a hurry, and the cracks were almost wide enough now to allow the remaining goblins to squeeze through. Well, he thought, I hope you step straight into a nest of horny asps, or spitting cobras.
He moved swiftly to his selected position. He wasted no time once he was there, bending his bow to secure the string before taking an arrow from his quiver.
As he had anticipated, one goblin slipped through the gap into the temple - though not without difficulty - followed by another. The two orcs hardly paused before renewing their assault on the ancient cement that had bedded down the roof of the huge stone building.
Memet Ashraf took careful aim, and let fly.
The shot was perfect: the arrowhead ploughed into the target's back, tearing through the orc's tunic and scaly skin.
The greenskin fell backwards and rolled down the slope.
Had the other orc turned round to see what had become of its companion it too might have slipped back, but at that very moment it scored a success in his own task. An entire roof-block fell away, its supporting structure having been fatally weakened. It must have caught the makeshift digging-tool that the orc was using, and the greenskin was pulled through the hole it left behind, into the building.
What does it matter? Ashraf was quick to reassure himself. It'll be dead anyway.
But he could not be sure of that until he looked.
Before climbing the slope, Ashraf cautiously approached the place the orcs and goblins had tethered their mounts. The wolves snarled at him and the boars watched him malevolently, but he had Quintal's blade in his hand now, and they did not attack. When he released their tethers and menaced them, they were quick enough to run away, scattering in three different directions.
Fortunately, the goblins had unloaded their packs, and their water bottles were still full. Ashraf took a long draught from one of them, then attached the fullest to his own belt. His waist was rather crowded now, but not inconveniently so.
When he looked closely at the slope, Ashraf saw that his earlier surmise had been correct. It had, indeed, been contrived by several sets of human hands - or humanoid hands, at any rate. It seemed, if his analytical eye could be trusted, that this had once been a solid and carefully constructed barrier - stone blocks positioned to barricade the doorway of the edifice. More recently, the ancient debris had been disturbed; apparently hastily rearranged, and piled up to form a steep ramp. Had Elisio Azevedo and his companions been partly responsible for that work? Perhaps - but if so, those companions had not survived to tell the tale.
Ashraf regretted leaving the rope with the two horses, because it seemed now that it would have been useful to have once he reached the top of the slope. He wondered, briefly, whether he ought to return to the horses anyway, and redirect his violent attentions towards the guardians of the well. If more than half of them came back here with the goblin who had gone to summon help, he might win the supplies he needed to make good his escape.
After considering the matter briefly, he decided that he must at least take a look at the interior of the temple. Sheathing Quintal's sabre and making sure that his bow was secure, Memet Ashraf began to climb. He went warily, keeping the gap in view at all times in case one of the goblins should have been called back by the sound of the orc's fall.
The slope was harder to negotiate than it looked, but even a seaman can climb a face that a clumsy orc can negotiate, and Ashraf reached the top soon enough. There was no goblin there, but when he looked down into the gloomy interior he could see no fallen orc either.
He paused for a moment to take advantage of his lofty viewpoint, and looked out over the sand-drowned ruins. From here it was much easier to make out the contours of the dead city. He could see other octagonal shapes sketched out in the sand and he could trace the remains of vast colonnades. He saw now that the structures which protruded furthest from the dunes were stepped pyramids and the stubs of broken statues.
Beyond the city was a further expanse of barren plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. That plain extended into the Land of the Dead, where armies of bleached skeletons, animated by liche priests, were said to march under the command of Tomb Kings, accompanied by giants and chimerical monsters. Ashraf knew of no one who had ever fought such an army and lived to tell the tale, but the stories were persistent and had grown more urgent of late. He wondered whether the empire ruled by the Tomb Kings had ever extended as far as this - and, if so, whether the city that he looked down on was an outpost of the Land of the Dead. But more urgent matters demanded his attention, and he turned to peer into the temple's interior again.
A huge tree had directed the strongest and leafiest part of its crown towards the crack, and some of its branches had provided a safety net for the falling orc. The lumpen creature must have crashed through, but his fall had been slowed and the branches had offered abundant handholds.
Instead of falling to its death, it seemed the orc had made a slightly more measured descent.
But where was it now?
It was difficult to see through the clustered foliage, but there seemed to be statues set between the columns supporting the roof, and one unusually large one set against the far wall of the building. It was impossible for Ashraf to discern the shape of the idol from his vantage point, but one hand was clearly visible. It held a sceptre whose gem-studded head was fiery red - not because it was reflecting a fugitive shaft of sunlight - but because it was glowing.
It was, Memet Ashraf thought, almost as if it were advertising its presence to anyone who might peep through this particular aperture.

LUIS QUINTAL MOVED into the dark corridor anxiously, knowing that he was likely to be at a disadvantage when his enemies came after him. The greenskins - who would outnumber him - were well-armed, and he had nothing with which to defend himself but his sore hands. They would also have the means to strike a light. When they followed him into the darkness, as they undoubtedly would, they would be able to see where they were going. He could not.
He went anyway, knowing that he had to find his way back to the pool from which he had emerged on the previous evening, to have a drink.
It's not so bad, he told himself. If they can light their way, then I shall see them coming before they see me. If these corridors are labyrinthine, they may split up - and who knows what might have been stored behind the door that I was the first to go through in a thousand years? There might be weapons.
He did not remind himself that there might be other things that Elisio had mentioned, such as poisonous snakes and monstrous crocodiles. Had he not already navigated the underground river and the pool in perfect safety, despite being unable to see? He groped his way along the wall, wincing at the friction on his cuts and grazes. He turned without hesitation whenever he came to a junction, but by the time he had made five such turns he knew he could not be retracing his steps.
He paused and took stock of his position, listening quietly and trying to detect a draught in the air. He could hear sounds, presumably from the temple, where the goblins had now made their descent along the tree-branches. But he could also feel a cool current in the air, which must surely be coming from the vaults below.
Quintal turned to face the airflow, and every time he reached a junction after that he paused to consider the possibilities carefully. Within a quarter of an hour he had found the door again, and had not yet seen a flicker of light behind him.
After that, it was easy enough to find the first flight of steps, and then the second.
He picked his way down very carefully, until his feet were in the water, and then he knelt to drink.
At that moment, nothing else mattered.
After he had drunk his fill, Quintal could hear loud sounds, which echoed strangely in the subterranean corridors. It appeared that his pursuers were arguing over something. He heard the clink of metal on stone, and guessed that the blades in question were being plied in earnest - perhaps against scorpions, or snakes, that he had been unable to see.
His eyes were straining for the first hint of torchlight - but that was not the kind of light he eventually saw.
It was a red spot, bright and by no means diffuse; a spot like a cyclopean eye burning with its own inner light. He had no doubt that it was looking at him, perhaps to taunt him.
He might have cried out but for the certainty of attracting goblins. As things were, he had no alternative but to hold himself very still and silent, waiting to throw himself into the water as soon as he felt a touch of any kind.
What would I give to have my sabre now, he thought? I'd give all the gems in that sceptre!
'The price is higher than that,' a voice whispered in his ear, making him start violently, 'but the reward is greater.'
Quintal raised his arm and passed it back and forth in an arc. It met nothing but empty air, even though the whisperer could not have been more than a hand's-breadth away from him.
Luckily, he had the presence of mind not to make a sound as he asked: Can you hear my thoughts?
'The first gift is sight,' the voice went on. 'The second... Well, you'll see what the second is when you have the first. But the fee you have so far paid is but a tiny drop of water in a large and thirsty throat. You must offer the rest freely... and you have no more than half a minute to decide before your pursuers appear. Be aware that you will not easily pass through the ranks of the ushabti for a second time.'
Fee? Quintal thought. What fee? And what in the world is a ushabti? But the first question was rhetorical, because he already had an inkling as to what the voice meant by ''fee'', and because he knew that he had no time to strike a better bargain.
He did not have to frame his consent in words, even inaudibly. Before he had completely reached his decision, the red glow moved, dividing in two as it rushed upon his eyes, entering both his dilated pupils simultaneously.
Then the whole place was lit by an eerie red light, unlike any ordinary illumination and Quintal did not doubt for an instant that it was his and his alone to use, for the purpose of seeing.
What he saw by the power of this uncanny vision chilled him to the bone, more than freezing water could have done.
His eyes were level with the top step, and the floor-space beyond, which was some twenty paces wide at the stairhead. He had walked across that space twice, keeping near to the wall on each occasion, but it seemed impossible that he could have done so, for the space was littered with what appeared to be crocodiles - eighteen of them, every one half as long again as a man was tall. When he looked at them more closely, though, he saw that they were chimerical creatures, with as much human in them as crocodile. Although there was skin covering their skeletons there seemed to be precious little flesh between scale and bone.
Now I know what a ushabti is, he thought. They looked as if they had been dead for centuries, but they also looked as if they might be remarkably resilient if ever they were reanimated - and he had a horrid suspicion that might be at any moment. Obviously, he had stepped between them, and occasionally over them. They had not stirred, but they were not asleep: their eyes were open, glinting red. While he looked down at them, their heads began to move. They moved slowly, as if long unaccustomed to movement. Perhaps, Quintal thought, they had not been animate a few moments ago, but they were certainly awake and animate now.
Mercifully, the heads were not turning towards him. They were facing the opening of the corridor where a light was now beginning to show. The light seemed bright and sulphurous to Quintal's unnatural sight.
He saw the flame before he saw the first goblin. If the goblin saw him, it didn't matter, because its improvised torch was directed at the ushabti.
Quintal had always accepted the common rumour that goblins are cowards - cunning cowards, but cowards nevertheless. Perhaps this one was an exception, or perhaps his cunning was sufficient to outweigh his cowardice for a few vital seconds. The goblin howled in anguish, as any creature would have done, and did not linger, but it had the presence of mind to lower the torch before it fled. It placed the torch very carefully across the entrance, so that the flames swiftly spread along the whole length of the bundle, forming a barrier that no ordinary crocodile would ever have dared to cross.
But these were not ordinary crocodiles.
Irritated by the flame, the lean monsters reared up, standing on their hind legs. Their hides were black instead of green, to be sure, and their snouts were much longer than any orc's, and what their teeth lacked in mass they made up in profusion. There was definite malice in their eyes, which seemed to Luis Quintal to be entirely orclike.
None of the ushabti turned towards Quintal; instead, they moved as one toward the corridor where the goblins were fleeing. Their leader stamped on the burning twigs, extinguishing the flames with the hard pads of its hind feet.
All eighteen monsters moved after the three goblins, unhurriedly but with every appearance of steadfast purpose.
Quintal knew that he ought to feel relieved, and even thankful - but he could not. All he could do, for the moment, was wonder exactly what price he had offered for the privileges he now had, and how long it would take him, in what kind of occupation, to clear his debt.

ONCE MEMET ASHRAF'S eyes had adapted to the dim light inside the temple he was able to make out the form of the limping orc, forcing its way through the tangled branches towards the idol behind the altar. It was almost as if the creature were drawn towards the glowing sceptre, although Ashraf thought it unlikely that any magic would be required to make that happen.
Ashraf touched his bow, but he did not have a clear shot from where he was. He knew that he would have to descend to the temple floor to find a better place from which to aim, but he hesitated when he saw the orc climb up on to the altar.
Although the greenskin was tall, with considerably long arms, the sceptre was still frustratingly out of reach. Even a goblin would have had difficulty climbing on to the statue's arm, so the orc had to formulate another plan. It unsheathed a heavy iron sword, with a blade just long enough to make solid contact with the sceptre.
Even an orc would realise that hacking at a solid object with a sword would ruin the blade irreparably, but greed could be a powerful motivator in those who were slaves to their baser appetites.
Why not let it dislodge the sceptre's head, if it can, Ashraf thought? He had been a pirate long enough to know that it was best to let others do the heavy, dangerous and tiring work, so that he could conserve his own strength and weaponry for the final moves in the game. So he leaned back on his heels and watched the orc swipe at the sceptre, trying to crack its shaft with a series of sharp blows.
The blows had no apparent effect. Ashraf even felt slightly frustrated, although he took some pleasure from the knowledge that the orc had ruined his blade for no obvious reward.
Then things began to go awry.
Ashraf realised that his patience had turned against him. He heard a cry from behind and looked back to see the other four orcs and their two goblin companions approaching as rapidly as their mounts could carry them. He had already been seen, and knew even as he slipped through the opening into the crown of the tree that it would not be long before he was followed. He cursed his carelessness.
While he moved from the gap in the eaves into the foliage he was mindful not to disturb any more masonry - for he had noted that the edges of the hole made by the orc were ragged, and that cracks were spreading from it. The roof of the temple had resisted collapse for a very long time, in spite of the external erosions of windblown sand and the internal corrosions of the patient trees, but now that the roof had been rudely breached it was distinctly precarious.
The orc on the altar was not yet aware of Ashraf's presence, but the possibility of getting to a position to put an arrow into the greenskin's back became remote when three goblins emerged from a dark doorway to the right of the altar, in a state of high panic.
Ashraf moved more swiftly then, knowing that he had to hide himself before the goblins discovered him. He had to find somewhere in the crowded temple where he could put as many of his enemies down before they combined forces to rush and overwhelm him.
The Arabian knew that his prospects of long-term survival were relatively poor, and they did not seem to have improved when the situation became still more complicated. The goblins were being followed by a scaly and skeletal monster - half-crocodile and half-human - walking on its hind legs.
The monster was unarmed, but when it was greeted by an arrow and a javelin in its lightly-armoured breast, it continued to waddle forwards regardless of its wounds. And it was not alone! A second came after it, then a third. Ashraf knew that the goblins would not be so panic-stricken if they had merely been surprised by the unnatural sight of a thin crocodile walking erect. There had to be a great many of the creatures, and they had to be uniquely terrible. He continued to scramble along a branch towards the heart of the largest tree.
Ashraf knew that there would be no point in trying to deploy his bow until he was securely positioned. But now he could not decide which sort of creature he ought to aim at. He lost count of the marching monsters long before they stopped emerging from the doorway. It made sense to put one or two of them down so that the orcs and goblins would stand a better chance of further reducing their number.
On the other hand, the Arabian thought, the crocodilian monsters were unlikely to be able to chase him through the crowns of the trees, like the goblins could, despite their ability to stand upright. Was it conceivable that they might be capable of gratitude, if he were to shoot down a few goblins on their behalf?
Meanwhile, the orc with the ruined sword had jumped down from the altar, and was ready to cut and slash with its blunted and twisted blade. The goblins were hurling everything they had at their new adversaries, who had formed an arc and were closing in on them. At least six of the scale-and-bone creatures had been struck and wounded, but there did not seem to be any blood flowing from their wounds. Not one had fallen. Their progress was measured but inexorable.
Ashraf reached a position which satisfied him: crouched on the broad back of one of the more batrachian idols, where he was half-hidden from both the altar and the gap in the roof by a barrier of branches. The goblins of the second party were now on the top of the ramp outside the temple wall. They could see what was happening well enough, but they were in no hurry to assist. Ashraf knew that the bonds of loyalty between goblins - even if they were brothers - were weak at the best of times, and the goblins confronted by the walking reptile-men were certainly not enjoying the best of times.
Not one greenskin had fallen as yet, but that was because the crocodilians had such short ''arms'', and bore no weapons. They were showing their teeth now, snapping at the heads of their tormentors, but they seemed to be doing so merely by way of intimidation rather than with murderous intent. The orc was by far the tallest of their opponents, and he was wearing a spiked helmet that would make it very difficult to crush his skull. The goblins were trying desperately to reach the branches of the trees, so that they might make use of their agility. They had wasted too much time inflicting ineffectual wounds. The bony horrors were encircling them now.
Ashraf came to a decision. If he were to intervene at all, it would be best to do so on behalf of the greenskins. It was obvious by now that they needed all the help they could get.
The Arabian brought his bow from behind his shoulder, and reached back to his quiver for an arrow.
Then he froze, trying with all his might to be as still as the statue.
While he had been biding his time a tiny snake had coiled itself around his bow, and another had somehow contrived to wind itself about the shaft of his selected arrow. Each snake had reacted to its sudden displacement by setting its mouth threateningly agape, showing needle-sharp fangs moistened by the gleam of some viscous secretion.
Ashraf dropped both the bow and the arrow, but he had time before they fell away to see that each snake had two little horns on its head, above the eyes. He had never encountered such horny asps before, but he was not deluded enough to think that their miniature size would make their venom any less deadly.
Suddenly, the network of branches surrounding him seemed horribly unsafe.
Neither snake had struck at him fortunately. And he considered himself doubly fortunate because he could see no more of their kin in the branches above his head, but he had to move to a clearer space, and be far more vigilant in future.
He looked around for a more suitable location, forgetting the three goblins and the orc who continued to hack at their adversaries with desperate abandon.
They were inflicting cut after cut, but to no avail. The slender crocodile-men still did not bleed, neither did they fall.
As Memet Ashraf moved, he observed that the greenskins in the roof-cavity had begun to fire arrows of their own. The goblins were making their way through the canopy of the indoor forest, and the orcs were hacking at the crumbling fabric of the roof, so that they could follow two abreast, firing arrows as they went.
It was not bravery that impelled them, Ashraf realised, but the same greed that had brought the first orc to the altar. They too were trying to even the odds, because they hoped that the last survivor of the conflict would have a clear run at the glowing red sceptre.
The Arabian reached a far safer spot, close to the wall of the temple and far from the gap through which he had gained entrance. There were branches nearby, but they were all dead and desiccated, offering no useful cover even to subtle serpents. He had a clear view of the space around the altar, and of the conflict that raged there.
At long last the crocodilian monsters had been able to bring their forepaws into play - but they had no fingers or thumbs, so their ''hands'' were exceedingly clumsy, and their blunt claws were no use for stabbing or tearing. They had struck the various weapons from the goblins' hands, and the sword from the orc's, but had inflicted no wounds. In the end, each of the four greenskins was seized by one of the crocodiles in what might have seemed in other circumstances to be a loving hug. They were held tightly, but they were not crushed.
No matter how extravagantly the greenskins wriggled, they could not get free. Like parents restraining unruly children, the creatures that held them quelled their struggles in a conspicuously gentle fashion.
The crocodile monsters that were still unburdened turned away from their kin, and directed their attention towards the newcomers. But two of them had finally fallen, disabled at last by their bloodless wounds. The four captive greenskins immediately began shouting advice to their free companions instructing them to aim at the eyes and the hind legs of the monsters.
Ashraf realised that the two snakes that had threatened him might have been adopting the same attitude as the crocodile-men were to the three goblins and the orc: they had not even tried to strike. Perhaps their real purpose had been to capture him, or to prepare him for capture. There was, after all, a sacrificial altar here, and there might also be a priest with a sacrificial knife, yet to emerge from the darkness.
Memet Ashraf had always laughed at men fearful of evil magic thinking that they took ominous delight in proclaiming that there were fates worse than death. Now, for the first time, he wondered whether they might be right.
This place was a trap. Its treasure was intact, because it was too well guarded to be taken away, but it was on display as a lure to tempt thieves and soldiers of fortune.
The Arabian took great care to remind himself that it was certainly not an inescapable trap... But he could not help wondering whether Elisio Azevedo had really escaped, even though he had found his way home to Magritta. The alternative possibility was, of course, that Quintal's cousin had been bait: bait better by far than a glowing sceptre that had long since ceased to be the stuff of legend, even in the world of men.

LUIS QUINTAL HAD no difficulty at all making his way back to the temple, now that he could see perfectly in the deepest darkness. Nor had he any fear of so doing, given that the ushabti had not made the slightest move against him. He did not suppose that the goblins posed any danger to him now, even if there were six of them waiting, with six orcs to back them up.
Even so, when he came to the doorway he hung back, content to remain in the shadows while he watched the progress of the battle.
He watched the ushabti close in with mechanical efficiency upon their immediate prey, not caring in the least whether they were cut about the belly. They did not act as individuals, but as components of the same intelligence. He deduced that they were not really alive; they were merely reanimate instruments of the evil god that had been worshipped here thousands of years before. Perhaps they were patchworks of the corpses of men and crocodiles, neatly sculpted into their new forms and placed in a state of suspended animation, like a kind of death without decay, from which they might be roused as puppets to do the bidding of their preserver.
I know you, Quintal said, silently, as he saw them remove weapons with clinical efficiency, from the greenskins' hands. The greenskins had not known what kind of battle they were fighting, and they had wasted their thrusts, realising far too late that no anatomical elements were necessary to the movement or the nature of their monstrous adversaries.
Quintal really did feel that he knew something of the being into whose untender care he had delivered himself. Estalia was a ragged patchwork of rival city-states, but its best ports had long histories of trade with a rich variety of nations. Elves of the kingdoms of Ulthuan had been entertained in Magritta, as well as elves of a darker kind, who were more inclined to gossip.
Quintal knew that there were many names attached to malign gods by their various and multitudinous followers. The names referred to a mere handful of great powers, each one of which reflected a different kind of primal force: violent wrath; self-indulgent greed; intellectual ambition; and bilious envy. He had often said that if all roads led to damnation - as they certainly seemed to do - then he would rather follow the one that took him by the most luxurious route. Now, he felt that his unholy wish had been granted.
The captive greenskins continued calling to their free companions, advising them how to fight their uncanny opponents. Quintal knew that they had no altruistic motive in doing so; they were hoping for rescue. The advice was nevertheless good. The second party of goblins and orcs had only two bowmen, neither of them as accomplished as Memet Ashraf, but they were working at close range and the thick hind legs of the ushabti were more sizeable targets than their lean bodies. None of the other four had yet released a spear, they were cleaving to the branches of the half-dead trees and using their javelins to stab at the eyes of the monsters.
This strategy was far better than the one the captive greenskins had unthinkingly adopted. Three more ushabti fell on all fours as the wiry ligaments in their legs were cut, and a further three began to blunder about as their eyes were blinded.
I had best not take my own eyes for granted, Quintal thought, for this new power of sight is a treasure to be carefully guarded.
He had counted the greenskins: there were four captive and seven still free. An orc was missing. It may have been left behind to guard the boars and the wolves, or even to guard the well. But it could have been killed before it had the chance to climb down into the temple. Quintal knew what an ingenious man Memet Ashraf was, and he was prepared to believe that the Arabian was also hereabouts, watching from a position of relative safety.
As he formed this hope, Quintal began to wonder whether his truce with the Arabian was still in force - or whether it could endure even if it were.
I suppose I am some sort of priest or a magician, now, Quintal said to himself. And Memet Ashraf might not be the kind of man to form alliances with the favoured servants of maleficent gods.
'There are only two kinds of men,' the tiny voice in his ear informed him, reassuringly. 'Great fools, and little ones. In either case, your friend is mine.'
Quintal knew that he had already bartered his soul, and was not in a position to ask questions, but he hoped that his protector might be the kind of god who would respect a proper measure of imaginative daring. Instead of having the temerity to wonder how an entity so powerful could have allowed an entire city of worshippers to vanish from the face of the Earth - leaving nothing behind but a snare for exhausted travellers and stupid soldiers of fortune - he boldly set out to find the logic of the situation himself.
If I were a god, he thought, with incalculable power and potentially-eternal existence, my greatest enemy would be boredom. If I were a god of wrath, I might take the edge off that boredom with never-ending orgies of violence. If I were a god of envy, I might become a connoisseur of disease, decay and all the other forms of catastrophic change. If I were a god of intellectual ambition, I might become a creator and solver of intricate puzzles and bizarre games. But if I were a god of lust and luxury, a proud creature dedicated to sensual self-indulgence, I would always be vulnerable to satiation. I would have no option but to give in to my boredom, again and again and again, amusing myself with every toy for a little while and then putting it away, but the advantage of the situation would be that whenever boredom struck, I would have a storehouse of old instruments of amusement available for resurrection. Any one of them might have regained its potential for amusement during the long years... or the millennia... of its neglect.
Satiation is, after all, a temporary thing even for men. Hunger, thirst and lust, no matter how successfully they are appeased, always return; every appetite fed always gives way to an appetite renewed in the fullness of time. So it must be for the gods, with their vast appetites. I believe that this city has served its interval of neglect, and is making ready to be born again - in which case, I am no mere priest or magician, but a veritable redeemer, whose role will be a thousand times more glorious than that of my silly cousin.
Quintal noticed that the balance of the skirmish in the temple had altered yet again. The three goblins and the four orcs were tumbling from the branches where they had had the advantage of height. It was as if they had been frightened half to death by some invisible menace. They were all on the floor now, close to the surviving ushabti, who had already grabbed two of the orcs in their unloving embraces.
The other two orcs were stabbing wildly at the monsters' faces and feet, but it was the agile goblins who were doing the most damage as they had got the measure of the fight. One had been knocked down and hurt, but the other two had easier targets now that the ushabti were not so seamlessly massed into a single organism.
Quintal knew that it was time to take a hand. He moved out of the dark mouth of the corridor and picked up a brace of discarded weapons: a light sword and a mace. The single-edged sword was far cruder than his own sabre as well as shorter, but it had been nicely honed. He had never wielded a mace, as he considered such weapons far too brutal for a gentleman's use. But he had picked it up in preference to a javelin because he was even less of a gentleman now than he had been before.
He moved smoothly to support the undead crocodilians, aiming to take on the two goblins who still had weapons in their hands. They must have been astonished to see him coming, and they were genuinely uncertain as to whether he had come to attack them or to attack the unnatural monsters assailing them. They were not long in doubt. As soon as he moved to engage them they were quick to retaliate, making rapid progress away from the groping ushabti in order to concentrate their attentions on him.
The Estalian parried their blades easily enough, and thumped one over the head before either of them had time to organise another thrust. When the second thrust came from the one still standing, he met it easily with the shaft of the mace, and smashed the blunt side of the swordblade into the side of the goblin's head. That one went down too, stunned, but by no means dead.
Ushabti gathered both of them in.
The larger of the two orcs, howling with anger, broke off his engagement with a ushabti to come at Quintal in a berserk rage.
Quintal's only anxiety was that he might have to run the ugly brute through in order to stop it, but he need not have worried at all. The ushabti lifted up one of its feet and swept its tail along the floor to trip the charging greenskin. The orc fell so heavily that the impact seemed to make the floor shake.
The fight was over; every single orc and goblin had now been seized, although there was not a single effective pair of scale-and-bone arms to spare.
Every one of the green-skinned invaders was ready for sacrifice.
Luis Quintal dutifully looked around for a blade even sharper than the one he already held.

MEMET ASHRAF WATCHED in fascination as his erstwhile ally took up a position behind the altar. Quintal looked to be in a parlous state - as might be expected of a man who had fallen down a well - but he was moving with an alarmingly mechanical sense of purpose. His clothes were in tatters and he seemed to be carrying at least a dozen superficial but bloody wounds. On the other hand, his eyes were gleaming with a fervour that could not be entirely explained by the light of sunbeams flooding through the damaged roof.
It seemed to Ashraf that there was a peculiar redness to Quintal's eyes, more profound than if it merely reflected the glow of the sceptre as well as the glare of the sun.
Ashraf's first impulse on seeing his companion had been a glad one, but when he saw the way Quintal had tackled the goblins he was not so sure that he had any reason to be delighted.
Whatever miracle had preserved the Estalian's life seemed also to have transformed him - as his cousin might also have been transformed.
Ashraf had always been too cautious to entirely trust his enemy-turned-friend; it seemed safer now to proceed on the assumption that he could not be trusted at all. So the Arabian remained hidden in the shadows, watching carefully to see what would happen next.
One of the monsters came forward to the altar, clutching a terrified goblin. Its forepaws were woefully inefficient as hands, but once they had a grip they maintained it. The creature had been cut in a dozen places, but it had not lost a single drop of blood. It lifted the goblin on to the altar, and carefully changed its grip to hold the greenskin, stretched out in a supine position.
Luis Quintal cut its throat, and stood over it as if mesmerised. He watched arterial blood rise up in a fountain before falling back into the shallow bowl. Ashraf knew that goblin blood was dark green, but this was so dark as to seem jet black in the uncertain light. While it gushed extravagantly the black blood bathed the Estalian's face and breast, but once the flood had slowed to a trickle every drop had drained into the concave surface of the altar.
Until this point, Ashraf had not heard any of the chimerical monsters emit the slightest sound. But now they sighed in unison, opening their mouths wide to display unnaturally white teeth and sturdy grey tongues. Even the ones that could no longer stand erect, and those whose eyes had been put out, so that they could not see, joined in the sigh.
'My faithful ushabti,' Quintal said, in a voice whose timbre was unfamiliar to Ashraf, 'this is a new beginning. Greenskin blood is by no means rich and by no means sweet, but as the old saying has it, ''every great crusade must start with a single step''. Blood is blood, after all, even if it is black - and had I not shed a little of mine, voluntarily, into this same avid receptacle, we might have contrived nothing here today but a petty massacre. While we are celebrating the wisdom of ancient proverbs, we might also take note of the one which observes that even the greatest treason tends to begin with a single petty act of self-betrayal.'
The creatures that Quintal had called ushabti made no reply, but they sighed again when the first goblin was cast aside, the blood having been wrung from its body by the monster's patient massage. Another was brought forward to supply a second dark fountain.
'You have been bloodless far too long, my patient pets,' Quintal went on. 'We have all become thirsty while the desert was our bed, but the roads will soon be clear, and the traffic will come again, as warm and wet and foolish as ever. Nothing is ever lost, my cryptosaurian soldiers; every favourite that has been set aside becomes beautiful again. Periods of absence renew her lovely unfamiliarity.'
Again, the bipedal crocodile-men made no reply, but they sighed again when the goblin was replaced by an orc, which bled blackly with astonishing generosity. Its unusually powerful heart stubbornly refused to admit that it was dead.
Ashraf could not see what was happening to that portion of the orc's blood that flowed into the shallow bowl. Not a drop spilled over the sides and when the used-up corpses were thrown aside, their clothes were by no means soaked. The Arabian could see well enough, however, that even though Luis Quintal had been liberally bathed in exceedingly dark blood, he did not seem to have been significantly stained. Only the red glow in his eyes had become more glaring.
If Quintal did not come here by the same route as the rest of us, Ashraf thought, there must be a passage of some kind connecting the bowels of the temple to the bottom of the well. If it is navigable in one direction, it must be navigable in the other. If the trees are infested with snakes, no matter how hesitant to strike they might be, there is probably no safe way back to the hole in the roof. But the dark doorway from which Quintal emerged would be easy enough to reach if there were fewer monsters in the way. What I need is a distraction that would give me time to make a run at it.
While the fourth victim was donating his blood to the thirsty altar, Ashraf took stock of his remaining equipment. He still had Quintal's sabre, but there was little to be done with it. Apart from the sabre, his own dagger, quiver of arrows and the stolen water bottle, all that he had was Quintal's pouch, whose exact contents he had not yet bothered to ascertain.
As the crocodiles sighed yet again, Ashraf took the pouch from his second belt and tipped out its contents to ascertain the sum of Luis Quintal's worldly goods.
There was an embroidered handkerchief, the key to a lock that was presumably more than six hundred leagues away, a device for extracting stones from horses' hooves, a mummified hare's foot, a small pair of scissors, a tangled ball of thread but no accompanying needle, a spare belt-buckle, a screw of tobacco but no pipe, a whetstone, an ill-made flintlock with a wispy hank of kindling-wool, a short length of twine and three brass rings which could be used for the attachment of various items to bridle and harness.
Memet Ashraf was a simple man, who did not believe in carrying clutter, but he was suddenly glad that Luis Quintal took a different view of the accumulation of personal possessions.
'If I get out of this alive,' Ashraf muttered, 'I'll never laugh at another effete Estalian, no matter how many of them I might have to murder in the course of my piratical pursuits.'
So saying, he took up the flintlock and the kindling-wool, then moved sideways until he was in close proximity to a substantial aggregation of ancient branches, that had been dead and dry for hundreds of years. He struck a spark, which immediately set the kindling-wool alight - and when he set the kindling-wool among the branches, they caught fire with amazing alacrity. It was as if they had been as hungry for fire as the altar had for blood.
Ashraf retreated from the gathering blaze, making his way swiftly to an empty angle of the octagonal temple, which was almost as far from the cramped and twisted foliage of the ancient trees as the dark doorway was.
There were two possible routes to that doorway from where Ashraf now crouched, neither of them quite straight. He could go to the left of the altar or to the right. There was far more space to the right, but that area was crowded with emburdened ushabti. Behind the altar there was, for the moment, no one but Luis Quintal - who might well have moved by the time Ashraf made his dash, and might not be inclined to stop him even if he had not.
While Ashraf made ready to run, the fire made rapid headway.
Not one of the six trees that had taken root in the temple's interior had been growing for less than a thousand years. Each one had fought long and hard for every drop of water its questing roots had dragged from the stony earth below. Their patterns of growth had been built into their seeds, and they had had no alternative but to put forth branches in every direction, even though those which could not find sunbeams to nourish them had withered and died in consequence.
Trees have no eyes with which to see, and no minds with which to plan, so they had continued putting out new branches wherever there was space, even if they would never find a ray of light to bring forth leaves from their living heart.
The fire leapt from one branch to another with an appetite that would have been incredible in a man or an orc, perhaps even in a god. White smoke billowed out in churning clouds, but could not choke the flames, which hurled themselves upwards and outwards: towards the roof-space filled with warm and moistureless air, and towards the gaps where more air could be sucked out of the desert sky.
The gaps were not easy to reach because of the living and leafy wood that clustered about them, but the fire was burning hotter with every second, and nothing could stand in its way.
The ushabti were dead and dry too. The stricken ones that were stretched out horizontally lay close enough to the woody litter on the floor beneath the trees to be caught in the sudden rush of fire that swept across the paving stones.
Blades had not hurt the creatures, but avid fire could. The recumbent ushabti burst into flames first, followed almost immediately by the ones still standing.
Unfortunately for the goblins and orcs, the animate torches were too stubborn to release their iron grip upon their scaly captives, even though they were on fire. The greenskins had been silent while they waited churlishly for the knife, but they could not be silent now. They began to scream. Ashraf had always thought humans were good screamers, but he had never weighed up the opposition. He wasted no time in privately conceding that orcs were very good screamers indeed.
Five greenskins had already died on the altar, but it was obvious that the remainder would not be donating their blood to the ambitious idol or its zealous new disciple. It was obvious, too, that Memet Ashraf could not remain where he was for a second longer, else there would be nothing left to breathe in the smoke-filled air.
Ashraf began his dash with a blade in each hand, hoping that Luis Quintal would have sense enough not to get in his way. He might even abandon his recently discovered vocation and revert to his former career as an honest thief and plunderer.

IN ALL HIS twenty-three years, Luis Quintal had never felt better than he did when he plunged his borrowed dagger into the flesh of the first sacrifice. The good feeling began before the first drop of arterial blood touched his skin, but there seemed nothing strange in that. Common men, as he knew only too well, found it easy to distinguish between anticipation and fulfilment, but he was no longer a common man. Gods, he presumed, had sufficient will power to alloy intention and reward into a perfect whole, and this facility must be one of the echoes that resonated in the souls of their favourite acolytes.
The Estalian did not feel the black blood raining upon his face even when the huge-hearted orc was offered to him. It was already a part of him. He did not thirst for it because he did not need to; it had already undergone whatever process of digestion had been necessary to convert it into the fabric of his own being. The tattered remnants of his shirt did not become soaked, for the sacrificial blood - no longer bound by the common laws of fluid dynamics - passed right through the material and into his breast.
Quintal felt wonderful, and knew that it was because he was full of wonders. He knew, of course, that they were evil wonders, but he had never made any conspicuous effort to be a good man and his only regret was that he had wasted his whole life trying to embrace evil as it needed to be embraced. He knew now how trivial the record of his petty thefts, murders and treasons had been. Now he knew the luxury of wholehearted self-indulgence.
One consequence of Quintal's new-found inability to distinguish anticipation from fulfilment was that he had become incapable of surprise. Events could no longer astonish him, even when they were genuinely unexpected or inconvenient. He was above annoyance now, and beyond fear, so when the fire leapt up like a berserk giant to consume the paradoxical trees that were more dead than alive, the questions that sprang to his mind were utterly casual, though they did contain a measure of wonderment at the quirky ways of fate.
Did I request a holocaust, he asked, flippantly? Do I require an orgy of conflagration? Is this necessary to the renewal of my amusement?
Quintal watched, more bewildered than irritated, as the ushabti burst into flame. The excessive heat of their combustion caused the blood that was still confined in the intended sacrificial victims to boil, and then to degrade into odorous black tar.
The space behind the altar filled up with cloying smoke, but the clouds did not obscure Quintal's new power of vision. His blood-fed lungs drank in the particles without difficulty, as if they were a mere spice lightly sprinkled on the healthful air.
Something came hurtling out of the shadows to the right of the altar: something blind and mad, impelled by panic and determination. The thing had two arms and two legs, but it was too long-limbed to be a crocodile and not green enough to be an orc. It carried a blade in each hand, one of which bore an uncanny resemblance to the sabre that had once been Quintal's most prized possession. But neither hand made any attempt to cut him down. The racing form seemed quite content to knock him out of the way so that it could run past, heading into the shadows on the opposite side of the altar.
A human, obviously, Quintal thought, as he landed flat on his back, feeling neither jarred nor bruised, nor even unjustly insulted by the tumble. What else is human life but a blind flight from one shadow to another, impelled by helpless panic and mistaken determination, supported by borrowed weapons in whose use one is woefully inexpert?
But when Quintal rose to his feet again he remembered that even humans were not complete fools. Sometimes, there were good reasons to flee madly from shadow to shadow. There may be adequate intellectual justification for an insane hope that the shadows might contain a safer exit than those they had forsaken. Sometimes - for example, when a temple roof began to fall - there were good reasons why even an acolyte of a god of luxury might forsake the altar upon which he had been reborn. There might be a kind of safety to be found in mundane shadows.
Quintal had to suppose, as he looked up at the falling roof, that only a miracle of sorts had kept it from collapse. It must have been considerably weakened by the passage of the centuries - and it was, after all, an item of human manufacture, however divinely inspired. Nothing built by humans could last forever; the miracle was that it had lasted any time at all. The orcs had obviously brought the ancient roof to the very limit of its endurance - and the unexpected holocaust that had so rudely interrupted his sacrificial ritual had administered the coup-de-grace.
So now the roof was falling.
Perhaps, Quintal thought, I ought to get out of the way.
Ordinarily, it would not have been the kind of decision that warranted careful consideration or in-depth discussion, but the Estalian did not move immediately. He formed the intention to move, but intention was still strangely entwined in his consciousness with fulfilment. He felt - oddly enough - that he had already moved.
He also felt - perhaps even more oddly - that there was something else that had yet to happen before he moved.
So he waited, and watched the stony fabric of the roof disintegrate as it fell, like a thundercloud turning precipitately to rain and hail.
He watched modestly sized blocks descend upon the statues in the crumbling colonnade, smashing their ugly heads and misshapen bodies. And he saw other blocks, of an altogether more immoderate magnitude, descend upon the huge idol which loomed above him still, pulverising its head and breaking both its arms - including the one that held the gem-encrusted sceptre.
When the severed forearm hit the stone floor the hand shattered into thousand shards - but the jade sceptre rolled away, seemingly immune to all injury.
Luis Quintal walked calmly away from his station behind the altar, ignoring the lumps of stone that were bursting like bombs as they hit the unforgiving floor on every side. He picked up the sceptre, and rested the glowing head on his right shoulder. Then he marched, with military precision, into the dust-shrouded shadows which concealed the doorway to the underworld.

MEMET ASHRAF HAD fallen twice in the pitch-black corridors, and had rapped his knuckles a dozen times against invisible and unforgiving walls, but he had kept on relentlessly and he had refused to drop either of his blades in order to liberate his fingers.
Had it not been for the fire he might have become irredeemably lost. The fire was so fiercely avid for air that it sucked a considerable wind from the underworld beneath the temple, and all that the Arabian had to do was keep his face to that wind. That was not a hard thing to do, given that the wind was so cool, so clean and so moist.
In the end, the draught brought him to the flight of steps that Luis Quintal had climbed in the wake of his misadventure in the well. Ashraf might have stumbled on the steps, bruising himself badly as he tumbled into the water, but luck was with him. Although he could not see anything at all he was able to set his blades safely down beside him, within easy reach. He seated himself on a step with only his booted feet in the water, so that he could scoop up water in his cupped hands and pour it gratefully upon his head.
He drank a little, but only a little - he had no wish to make himself sick.
He lost track of time while he sat there, exhaustedly, but he was glad to do it. Time did not seem to have been on his side in the last few days, and he was pleased to have an opportunity to set it aside for a while. Perhaps it was kind of time to let him do that - or perhaps the concession was one more trap to catch and torment him. Either way, he did not look up again until his eyes were stimulated by light.
As soon as the red gleam appeared Ashraf was seized by the fear that he had lingered too long. He ought to have plunged himself into the subterranean river immediately, no matter how desperate a move it had seemed.
The red light showed him the bare space which he had crossed in order to get to where he was, but it also showed him the walls that slanted towards the aperture from which he had emerged.
The walls were covered in fungus and strange dark-blooming flowers, whose blossoms were nests for scorpions the size of his hand. The scorpions seemed to be prey, in their turn, to the kinds of leeches that preferred insectile ichor to vertebrate blood. No part of this revelation could or would have frightened him, had it not been for the eerie quality of the red radiation. There was something about that glow which invited terror. Ashraf felt the beat of his alarmed heart increase, and knew that he was in trouble.
The light came from the sceptre that had formerly been held by the idol in the temple: the sceptre that had been adequately protected from theft for thousands of years. Luis Quintal had it now.
The artefact must have been heavy, but Quintal seemed quite comfortable with it.
The Estalian was resting the glowing head of the device upon his shoulder, but Ashraf doubted that he was doing so to obtain relief from its weight. It seemed to the Arabian that Quintal simply wanted to keep the glow as close to his face as possible, to maintain the light in his own glowing eyes.
'Memet Ashraf,' Quintal said, in a perfectly level tone. 'It's good to see you again. Do you have my sword and pouch?'
'Yes,' Ashraf said, rising slowly to his feet as he spoke and adjusting his stance so that he could face the newcomer squarely. 'The blade is as sharp as it ever was, but the pouch is a little lighter. I fear that your supply of kindling-wool is quite exhausted.'
'No matter,' Quintal said. 'We are partners in this enterprise, after all. We must pool our resources as well as our rewards.'
Ashraf was mildly surprised by this statement, but he was reluctant to take it at face value. He had a suspicion that Quintal was offering him more than a half-share in the gems that starred the sceptre's head, and he was not sure that the treasure would be easily divisible.
The Arabian stooped to pick up Quintal's sabre, taking hold of it by the blade so that he could extend it hilt-first to his companion.
Quintal accepted the offering, and waited for Ashraf to take off the belt, the sheath and the pouch as well. When Ashraf tried to pass them to him too the Estalian raised his elbows slightly to indicate that his hands were full. Then he turned slightly, using body-language to indicate that Ashraf might loop the belt around his waist and fasten it, so that the sabre would be safely sheathed.
Ashraf knew that this would be his last chance. If he intended to attack his former partner, the best thing would be to do it now; it would be far more difficult to do it later. There did not seem to be any urgent necessity to do so... but to what was he committing himself, if he accepted the resumption of their association?
The Arabian hesitated. 'You have the black blood of an evil god within you,' he observed, mildly. 'I saw you sacrifice the greenskins.'
'I suppose I have,' Quintal admitted. 'But it was only answering a thirst I already had... a thirst that all men have, though there are some who take perverse delight in refusing to give way to it. We came here in search of enrichment, my friend, and we have it. Are you not ready, after all we have suffered, to claim the entirety of your inheritance?'
'If you will pardon me for saying so, Luis,' Ashraf said, gently, 'you do not seem quite yourself since you fell into the well. I am not quite sure what to make of you.'
'You are not required to make anything of me,' Quintal countered. 'I am a self-made man, as all proud Estalians desire to be. The question is: what will you make of yourself?'
Ashraf glanced around at the walls that were a-swarm with exotic vermin. He remembered that he had passed his hand along those walls, and had come away with nothing worse than the slime of crushed fungus upon them. The scorpions had refrained from stinging him, and the leeches from sucking his blood, just as the horny asps had refrained from biting him. This was not the nature of such creatures; they were obviously operating under some alien influence.
Other men might have accounted that influence generous as well as kindly, but Memet Ashraf was a pirate; he had ceased to believe in kindness, let alone in generosity.
'I have never had the slightest ambition to be a priest or a magician,' Ashraf said. He had not known that it was true until he said it. But it was true. He had not known that it was irrelevant until he said it, either. But it was irrelevant.
'If you attack me,' Quintal pointed out, equably, 'you will need to be quick and clever. Perhaps you can run me through before I can bash out your brains, and perhaps not. I think not, but you might disagree so I shall not press the point. Instead, let us look calmly at the possible outcomes. In one case, I would die and you would live; in another, you would die and I would live; in the third, we would both die. Consider only the first and best: what will you do when I lie stretched upon the staircase, with the sceptre tumbled from my hand? Will you pick it up, or leave it where it lies? Perhaps you would be a hero if you killed me, and perhaps a fool - but in either case, what would you be thereafter? What will you become when you stand here all alone, with the sceptre at your feet?
'What will you make of yourself, Memet Ashraf? I make you no promises, although I could. I could promise you wealth, power, and luxury. I could promise you an empire - and more than that, all the joy and triumph of building an empire, of shaping its nature and future. I will not do that. I promise you nothing, except a chance to make something of yourself that is more than you are now.
'As for the fee you must pay... well, I shall play the honest trader and admit to you that it is exceedingly high, and it may not be haggled down.
'Now you know all that you need to know, and you understand more than most men are ever privileged to understand. So tell me, Memet Ashraf: what will you make of yourself?'
Still Ashraf hesitated, but he knew that the hesitation was only a display. He already knew what he had to do, and what he was. He supposed that he had known since the moment just before he had turned in his saddle to put an arrow into the breast of one of the pursuing orcs. That was the moment when he had first realised that there was a road of sorts across the desert: a road as yet invisible to Luis Quintal, but clear enough to a desert-bred man.
He had known as soon as he began to make out the ancient traces of that route that it was a road to damnation - and that every road he had ever followed in his entire life, by land or by sea, had been directed to intersect with it. He understood, now, that he had passed the crossroads, and that only a human capacity for self-delusion had kept him from knowing that the gap between anticipation and fulfilment is always an illusion of time and thought.
Memet Ashraf was not a hero - and if he was doomed to be a villain, he thought, why should he not play the part properly?
Ashraf placed the sword-belt around Luis Quintal's waist, and buckled it for him.
'We have no time to waste, my friend,' the Arabian said, as the Estalian sheathed his sabre. 'We have to find a safe way out of here as soon as we can. This crooked road has a great deal further to take us, and we had best be on our way.'