identifiable – suggesting that an entire façade had once existed directly above them. The scaffolding became a true ladder here, and off to the right, three man-heights up, gaped the mouth of a cave, rectangular, almost door-shaped.
Udinaas stood regarding that dark portal for a long time, before he turned to the others. 'I suggest we try it.'
'There is no need, slave,' replied Fear Sengar. 'This trail is straightforward, reliable—'
'And getting icier the higher we go.' The Indebted grimaced, then laughed. 'Oh, there're songs to be sung, are there, Fear? The perils and tribulations, the glories of suffering, all to win your heroic triumph. You want the elders who were once your grandchildren to gather the clan round the fire, for the telling of your tale, a lone warrior's quest for his god. I can almost hear them now, describing the formidable Fear Sengar of the Hiroth, brother to the Emperor, with his train of followers – the lost child, the inveterate Letherii guide, a ghost, a slave and of course the white-skinned nemesis. The White Crow with his silver-tongued lies. Oh, we have here the gamut of archetypes, yes?' He reached into the satchel beside him and drew out a waterskin, took a long drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'But imagine all of it going for naught, when you pitch from a slippery rung and plunge five hundred man-heights to your ignominious death. Not how the story goes, alas, but then, life isn't a story now, is it?' He replaced the skin and shouldered his pack. 'The embittered slave chooses a different route to the summit, the fool. But then,' he paused to grin back at Fear, 'somebody has to be the moral lesson in this epic, right?'
Seren watched the man climbing the rungs. When he came opposite the cave mouth, he reached out until one hand gripped the edge of stone, then followed with a foot, stretching until the probing tip of his moccasin settled on the ledge. Then, in a swift shifting of weight, combined with a push away from the ladder, he fluidly spun on one leg, the other swinging over empty air. Then stepping inward, pulled by the weight of the satchel on his back, into the gloom of the entrance.
'Nicely done,' Silchas Ruin commented, and there was something like amusement in his tone, as if he had enjoyed the slave's poking at Fear Sengar's sententious self-importance, thus revealing two edges to his observation. 'I am of a mind to follow him.'
'Me, too,' said Kettle.
Seren Pedac sighed. 'Very well, but I suggest we use ropes between us, and leave the showing off to Udinaas.'
The mouth of the cave revealed that it had been a corridor, probably leading out onto a balcony before the façade had sheared off. Massive sections of the walls, riven through with cracks, had shifted, settled at conflicting angles. And every crevasse, every fissure on all sides that Seren could see, seethed with the squirming furred bodies of bats, awakened now to their presence, chittering and moments from panic. As Seren set her pack down, Udinaas moved beside her.
'Here,' he said, his breath pluming, 'light this lantern, Acquitor – when the temperature drops my hands start going numb.' At her look he glanced over at Fear Sengar, then said, 'Too many years reaching down into icy water. A slave among the Edur knows little comfort.'
'You were fed,' Fear Sengar said.
'When a bloodwood tree toppled in the forest,' Udinaas said, 'we'd be sent out to drag it back to the village. Do you remember those times, Fear? Sometimes the trunk would shift unexpectedly, slide in mud or whatever, and crush a slave. One of them was from our own household – you don't recall him, do you? What's one more dead slave? You Edur would shout out when that happened, saying the bloodwood spirit was thirsty for Letherii blood.'
'Enough, Udinaas,' Seren said, finally succeeding in lighting the lantern. As the illumination burgeoned, the bats exploded from the cracks and suddenly the air was filled with frantic, beating wings. A dozen heartbeats later the creatures were gone.
She straightened, raising the lantern.
They stood on a thick mouldy paste – guano, crawling with grubs and beetles – from which rose a foul stench.
'We'd better move in,' Seren said, 'and get clear of this. There are fevers . . .'
The man was screaming as the guards dragged him by his chains, across the courtyard to the ring-wall. His crushed feet left bloody