The Carpet People (8 page)

"In my city, too," said Brocando.

"You've got a plan, I hope," said Bane.

"There's another way into the city," said Brocando.

"I didn't know that."

"Didn't you?" said Brocando. "Amazing. All that trouble to build a secret passage and we forgot to tell the Emperor. Remind me to send him a note. Turn right into that little hidden track there."

"What track?"

Brocando grinned. "Good, isn't it," he said.

It looked like an animal path. It wound round and about the hairs. The dust bushes were much thicker here.

"Planted," said Brocando.

Eventually, when it was almost dark, they reached a small glade with another ruined temple in it.

"Temples don't last long around here, do they," said Snibril, looking around at the crowding hairs. Here and there were more statues, half covered in dust.

"This one was built to look ruined," said Brocando. "By the wights. For one of my ancestors. The one over there, with the bird's nest on his head and his arm raised-" He hesitated. "And you're a Dumii, and I've brought you to the secret place," he said. "I should have you blindfolded."

"No," said Bane. "You want me to fight for you, then I'm wearing no blindfold."

"But one day you might come back with an army."

"I'm sorry you think so," said Bane stonily.

"As me, I don't," said Brocando. "As a king, I have to think so."

"Ha!"

"This is stupid," said Snibril. "Why bother with a blindfold?"

"It's important," said Brocando, sulkily.

"You've got to trust one another sooner or later. Who are you going to trust instead? You're men of honour, aren't you?" said Snibril.

"It's not as simple as that," said Brocando.

"Then make it simple!"

He realized he had shouted. Even Glurk was surprised.

"Well, it's no time to argue," said Snibril, calming down a bit.

Brocando nodded. "Yes. Very well. Maybe. I'm sure he's an honourable man. Pull Broc's arm."

"What?" said Bane.

"Behind you. On the statue. Pull the arm," said Brocando.

Bane shrugged, and reached for the arm.

"First time a Dumii's ever shaken a Deftmene's hand," he said. "I wonder what it'll lead to-"

There was a grinding noise, somewhere under their feet. A slab in the temple floor slid aside, showing a flight of steps.

"It'll lead to the palace," said Brocando, grinning.

They stared into the square of darkness.

Finally Glurk said: "You don't mean ... into the Underlay?"

"Yes!"

"But ... but ... there's terrible things down there!"

"Just stories for children," said Brocando. "Nothing to be frightened of down there."

He trotted down the steps. Bane went to follow him, and then looked back at the Munrungs.

"What's the matter?" he said.

"Well ... " said Snibril. What shall I say? Creatures from ancient tales live down there: thunorgs, the horrible delvers, and shadows without number or names. Strange things gnawing at the roots of the Carpet. The souls of the dead. Everything bad. Everything you get ... frightened by, when you're small.

He looked around at the other tribesmen. They had moved closer together.

He thought: at times like this, we all have to forget old things.

"Nothing's the matter," he said, in what he hoped was a voice full of leadership. "Come on, lads. Last one in's a-"

"Never mind about the last one," muttered a voice somewhere towards the back of the group. "We want to see what happens to the first one."

Snibril tripped at the bottom of the stairs and landed on a pile of soft dust. Brocando was lighting a torch, taken from a rack of them on one wall of the little cave. One by one the band shuffled down. Brocando moved another lever and the statue trundled back over the hole, leaving them crowded shoulder to shoulder in the red-lit cave.

"All here?" said Brocando, and without waiting for a reply he ducked into a tiny crevice and was gone.

Nearly as bad as discovering all your worst fears are coming true, Snibril thought, is finding out that they're not.

The walls showed up brown in the torchlight, and were covered with tiny hairs that glittered as the light passed them. Sometimes they crossed the entrances to other tunnels. But there were no monsters, no sudden teeth ...

The path began to slope down and suddenly the light from Brocando's torch dimmed. Snibril started before he realized that they were entering a cavern under the Carpet, with walls so far away that the light was not reflected from them. They passed through many great caverns, the path narrowing and spiralling up around great columns of hair, so that they had to cling to stay on it. Sometimes the light sparkled on a distant wall. While they were edging along one place where the path narrowed almost to nothingness, and cold air rushed up from the depths below, Snibril slipped. Bane, who was next in line, reached out with great presence of mind and grabbed him by the hair just as he was about to totter into the darkness. But the torch slipped from his hands. They peered over the edge to watch it become a spark, then a speck and finally wink out. Something shifted in the dark depths of Underlay, and they heard it scuttle heavily away.

"What was that?" said Snibril.

"Probably a silverfish," said Brocando. "They've got teeth bigger than a man, you know. And dozens of legs."

"I thought you said there was nothing to be afraid of down here!" shouted Glurk.

"Well?", said Brocando, looking surprised. "Who's afraid of them?"

Anything else in the depths below would hardly have seen them, little specks inching along the roots of the hairs. Eventually Brocando called a halt on the edge of another abyss. There was a narrow bridge stretching across it, and Snibril could just make out a door on the far side.

The king held up the torch and said: "We are right underneath the rock now."

The roof of the cavern was gently curved towards its centre, bowed under the great weight above it.

"You are the only people apart from the kings of Jeopard to see this," Brocando went on. "After the secret passage was dug, Broc had all the workers personally put to death to stop the secret escaping."

"Oh? That's part of kinging, too, is it?" said Glurk.

"It used to be," said Brocando. "Not any more, of course."

"Hah!" said Bane.

When they had crossed the bridge Brocando pushed the little wooden door open, revealing a spiral staircase lit by green light filtering down from a tiny circle of light. It was a long climb up the winding staircase, which was so narrow that the boots of the ones in front tangled with the hands of the ones behind, and the torches made flickering shadows of giant warriors against the walls. Ghostly as it was, Snibril welcomed it. He hated the darkness under the Carpet.

Before it reached the circle of green light the stairway opened on to a little landing, just big enough to hold them all. There was another door in the wall.

"Where-" Glurk began.

Brocando shook his head and put his finger to his lips.

There were voices on the other side of the door.

There were three voices, so loud that they could only be a metre or so from the hidden door.

Snibril tried to imagine faces. One voice was thin and whiny, already raised in complaint.

"Another hundred? But you took fifty only a few days ago!"

"And now we need another hundred," said a soft voice that made Snibril's hair prickle. "I advise you to sign this paper, your majesty, and my guards will gather together this hundred and be gone. They will not be slaves. Just ... assistants."

"I don't know why you don't just take them," said the first voice sulkily.

"But you are the king," said the second voice. "It must be right, if the king says so. Everything signed and proper."

Snibril thought he could hear Bane grinning in the darkness.

"But no-one ever comes back," said first Voice.

The third voice was like a rumble. "They like it so much in our lands we just cannot persuade them to return," it said.

"I don't believe you," said First Voice.

"That does not really matter," said Second Voice. "Sign!"

"No! I will not! I am king ... "

"And you think that I, who made you king, can't ... unmake you?" said Second Voice. "Your majesty," it added.

"I'll report you to Jornarileesh! I'll tell on you!" said First Voice, but he did not sound very confident.

"Jornarileesh! You think they care what is done here?" Second Voice purred. "Sign! Or perhaps Gorash here can find some other use for your hands?"

"Yeah," said Third Voice. "A necklace."

Brocando turned to face the others, while the voices on the other side of the door alternately threatened and whined.

"That's my brother," he said. "Such as he is. Here's the plan. We rush in, and we kill as many mouls as possible."

"You think that's a clever plan?" said Bane.

"Sounds sensible to me," said Glurk.

"But there's hundreds in the city, aren't there?" said Bane.

"My people will rise up and overthrow them," hissed Brocando.

"Have they got any weapons, then?" said Bane.

"No, but the mouls have. So they'll start by getting their weapons off them," said Brocando placidly.

Bane groaned. "We're all going to die," he said. "This isn't tactics. This is just making-it-up-as-you-go-along."

"Let's start now, then," said Brocando. He put his foot against the door and pushed. It moved a fraction, and then stopped.

"What's the matter?" said Snibril.

"There's something on the other side," hissed Brocando. "There shouldn't be. Everyone give me a hand here."

They put their shoulders to it. It resisted for a moment, and then flew open. There was a shriek.

For a second the hall was motionless.

Snibril saw a throne lying on the floor. It had blocked the door. Now it lay halfway down the steps and a thin Deftmene was struggling underneath it, making pathetic little noises. Beyond it two mouls were standing, staring at the open doorway. One was big, wide-shouldered, with a pale face almost hidden in his leather helmet. He held a coiled whip in one great paw. Voice Three, Snibril thought. He even looks as though he should be called Gorash. Beside him stood a thin moul wearing a long black cloak and a grin like a wolf that's just had dinner. Voice Two, said Snibril to himself. He looks like he ought to have a name with a lot of esses in it-something you can hiss.

Both groups stared at one another for a second.

Then Brocando whirred forward like an enraged chicken, waving his sword. The thin moul leapt backwards and drew its own sword with disheartening swiftness. Gorash uncurled his whip, but found that Bane was suddenly between him and the king.

The Munrungs watched. There seemed to be two ways of swordfighting. Brocando went at it like a windmill, pushing the enemy back by sheer effort. Bane fought quietly, like some kind of machine-tamp, thrust, parry ... tic toe tic.

"Shouldn't we help?" said Snibril.

"No. Ten to two isn't fair," said Glurk.

The doors at the end of the throne room burst open and a dozen moul guards ran towards them.

"Oh. This is better, then, is it?" said Snibril.

Glurk threw his spear. One of the guards screamed.

"Yes," he said.

Snibril found that spears fought well against swords, if you didn't throw them. They could prod, and they could parry. And as more guards poured into the room, he realized that it also helped if you were outnumbered. It made it easier to hit an enemy, for one thing. And since there were so many of them, each one wasn't too keen to get involved, taking the view that there was no point in running risks when there were all these other people to do it for them.

This must be how the Deftmenes think, he told himself as he broke a spear over the head of a moul. Always pick a bigger enemy, because he's easier to hit ...

He found himself pressed up against the back of Bane, who was still fighting in his tictoc way, like someone who can do it all day.

"I've broken my spear!"

"Use a sword!" said Bane, parrying a thrust from a desperate guard. "There's plenty of them on the floor!"

"But I don't know how to use one!"

"It's easy! The blunt end goes in your hand and the sharp end goes in the enemy!"

"There must be more to it than that!"

"Yes! Remember which end is which!"

And then it was over. The few remaining guards fell over one another to get out of the door. Gorash was dead. The skinny moul dodged a last wild slash from Brocando's sword and dived through the open doorway to the secret passage. They heard it running down the steps.

Snibril looked down at his sword. There was blood on it, and he hoped it wasn't his.

"Well, that wasn't too hard," said Glurk.

"There's hundreds more out there," said Bane, gloomily.

Brocando went to the balcony. Early morninglight was flooding across the hairs. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"I'mmm baaaack! Brocandoooo!"

He picked up a dead moul, dragged it to the balcony, and pushed it over.

There were already some Deftmenes in the square below the palace. A shout went up.

The king rubbed his hands together.

"Help me with the throne," he said.

It took three of them to lift it up. Underneath it was Antiroc, who hung limply from Glurk's grip as he was hauled to his feet.

"Give me the crown," said Brocando, in deadly tones. "It's the thing on your head. The thing that doesn't belong to you."

"We thought you were dead-"

"You look overjoyed to see me back," said Brocando. His expression was terrible.