"Niluzîr? Where are you?"
My voice echoed into the hollow dark, thinner and more tremulous than I remembered; no answer came back to me. Niluzîr had vanished, leaving me to wonder what horrors could befall a man in these catacombs where even the bravest explorers of Ordâkh were forbidden to go.
Despite the edicts of Church and Empire, it was plain to me that the Vaults could not have been abandoned completely. A plinth crowned with a single brazier rose out of the darkness; illuminating motes of dust that drifted in the ghostly light. Beside the fire sat the charred stump of a torch. Had Niluzîr lit the way for me, or had some other traveler wandered through?
I lit the torch and ventured into the hall. In the darkness, the catacombs' immensity was unknown to me; each chamber could have been spacious as a palace or scarcely wider than a fox's burrow. Yet as I strode forth with firebrand in hand, the vastness of the Vaults made my head spin. Great stone galleries carved with sinuous reliefs loomed over and around me. Between their pillars I spied shadows twisting on the walls, writhing like serpents before they vanished into the blackness above. Was this place a creation of the Témamir, built from the bones of the mountains where the wise Dwarves once made their homes? Or had Kamrabezûr, like so much of old Umbar, been carved by my own forefathers? The alabaster vestiges of their empire which yet remained in Umbar suggested that the sea-lords of Yôzâyan had been compelled to build on a scale which suited giants better than Men.
My musings on the history of Kamrabezûr turned to sand as I heard the clatter of metal on stone. I turned on my heel, brandishing my torch as I searched the shadows for an assailant. Just as I had followed Niluzîr into the Vaults, a stranger could have followed me. Yet no hidden blade shone in the dark. Only when a stray lock of hair brushed the back of my neck did I realize what was wrong.
Hunting for the gleam of a fallen hairpin, I found the floor smothered by a carpet of dust. Interspersed amid the detritus of many years were whitish shards. I hoped they were only broken pottery. When something twitched at the light's edge, I looked up, afraid of what I might find crawling just beyond my sight, only to be answered by a cadaverous face. Sallow in the half-light, with hollow cheeks and sunken pits for eyes, it recalled a skull clad only in the thinnest veil of skin. My chest tightened; I stumbled back, clamping a hand over my mouth.
Something shimmered in those hollow eyes, gray and glimmering with laughter. As Niluzîr stepped fully into the light, the shadows which had carved his boyish face into a skull thinned, then vanished as he smiled. Although his journey into the Vaults had been far swifter than mine, he had no bruises or scratches to show for his haste; his clothes, artfully rumpled, remained untorn. Before I could ask him why he had not waited for me, he pressed a finger to his lips. "Hush! Lest you wish to wake the centipedes, it would be wise to remain quiet."
I felt my stomach twist. “Don't say that, Niluzîr! You mean to frighten me."
"I do not," he insisted. "I do, however, happen to know that you harbor no particular fondness for them." He wriggled his fingers like a centipede's legs, recalling a summer evening in the pantry that I had spent years trying to forget. "Do you want to hunt for centipedes, or would you like to come with me? The others are waiting."
“I won't keep them any longer," I said. "But before we go, what happened to my hairpin?"
“Your hairpin?"Mirth turned to bemusement in his voice. "It is said that the Church of the All-Seeing sends men down here to search for heretics and seditionists, neither of whom emerge alive, and you are worried about a pin?”
Shame prickled at my cheeks. “And what if a priest found it and knew I came here?”
“Things get lost in the vaults every day,” Niluzîr said airily. "But so long as you stay close, your brother shall keep you safe."
If he had meant to comfort me, his words were little help. Where once I had found only darkness, I now saw centipedes writhing in every fissure and crevice. Robed priests, faceless beneath their hoods, beckoned to me from every shadow.
Plucking up my skirts, I hastened my steps to keep up with him. "I feel like someone's watching. Have you seen them here?"
"Seen whom?"
"The priests of the All-Seeing Eye," I whispered. "In all your journeys to the Neaths, have you encountered even one?"
"No." Niluzîr answered my fears with an insouciant smile. “For all I know, the Ugikh-Hûti are merely a story made to scare naughty children.”
The hall branched into two corridors splayed like the outstretched wings of an eagle. I followed Niluzîr to the right, into a chamber redolent of moldering dust. Stone columns, yellow as old bone in the light of my torch, rose around us like the ribs of an enormous beast. In the far wall were carved a series of alcoves—all shadowed hollows, save one. There burned another torch whose orange light illumined three figures whom I knew immediately for my brother's friends, each on the cusp of man- or womanhood and eager to take to the sea. They must have spied us as we did them, as Aphir—the eldest of the three—stood and waved us over. "What delayed you, Niluzîr? We had believed you lost."
"Lost? Have you no faith in me?" Niluzîr grinned. "No great mariner would lose his way in a mere mole-tunnel! I was delayed only be our gentle guest," he said, squeezing my hand, "whose gentle company shall soon beguile you into forgetting any slight on my part."
This time Khelêx spoke up. "Then do us honor and take a seat." To do otherwise would have compelled the others to remain standing for the sake of etiquette. I had listened in on enough conversations between my brother and his friends to know that courtly manners often yielded to congeniality among his would-be crew, but I was not Niluzîr. I sat and he followed.
While Niluzîr traded pleasantries with Aphir and Khelex, I found my gaze drawn to the stone slab, flat as an embalmer's table, where a scrap of sailcloth had been unrolled. There sat Isân, sketching with a stump of charcoal in one strong, square hand, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"Isân! How fare you this afternoon?"
Her lips curved into a sly smile. "Well enough. I should ask after you—Lady Ûrikali, come all the way down from Rahal Ghôl to grace us with her presence! Might today be a special occasion?" She gestured to the nape of her neck. "I like how you've dressed your hair. It suits you?"
I felt at the single tress that had sprung free from its confines, tumbling loose down my shoulder. When embers of amusement sparked in Isân's black eyes, all pretenses of eloquence left me. "You are most kind! If visiting a friend constitutes a special day, perhaps it is." I glanced over to Niluzîr and the others. Aphir was quick to smile as always, but Khelêx was lost in thought; he stroked at the sparse tufts of hair on his chin with all the seriousness of a bearded philosopher. "Visiting friends. But let me not bore you with idle chatter, Isân, for I know you dislike it. Would you share your drawing with me?"
Isân added another stroke to her maze of interlocking lines. "It's a map of Kamrabezûr. Each time we venture down here, I add another tunnel." She traced one of the lines with a finger. "Aphir and I took this path today. It wound down from the east side, beneath the arena."
I recalled that her home was on the other side of the city. "You came a long way from the Sail-Haven."
"We did," she conceded, "but your brother so kind as to give us ample notice. Besides, I like visiting the Tor-Gardens. I've heard that my friend's sister studies there…"
Before I could answer, Niluzîr cleared his throat. "How fortunate I am to have all my dearest friends together this evening! I presume you all know that I gathered you here for a reason."
Isân put down her charcoal. "Your never skimp on ceremony, Niluzîr. Did you grow bored of gathering outside the Golden Gate?" She grinned. "There are easier ways to find a change of scenery."
Nilûzir suppressed a smirk. “Very clever. If I wished merely to share the company of friends, we could have gathered in a coffeehouse instead. I know it would have been easier than climbing down into the bowels of the city.” I wondered if he could have picked a less grotesque metaphor. “Our association is no secret. It simply behooves me to ask you all to gather here, where even the All-Seeing Eye is blind, so we may speak plainly.” Only children and fools needed to be told why the Church might not look kindly on that.
Aphir leaned forth in his seat. "What's so important that the Church can't hear of it?"
"The Church has already heard," said Niluzîr. "A fortnight ago, I went to the shrine in the Upper Ward in search of answers. A single priestess tended the fire there; she offered wisdom, for a price. I told her of the queer dream I had the night before: A giant wading through red waters, smashing the Harbor-master's tower to rubble on a starless night. She said it was just an idle fancy; I am inclined to disagree." He rested his elbows on the slab. "Such an ill omen leads me to wonder what has gone amiss in Umbar Baharbêl. If we share the strange happenings we have witnessed in the city, we may find a pattern or perhaps an answer."
Khelêx had been sitting straight as a soldier ever since my brother mentioned the dream. "Might I go first?" When Niluzîr nodded, he began, "All manner of queer rumors come to me at the Cat's Grin."
"You listen to gossip while mopping floors?" Isân clucked her tongue. "You'll miss a spot."
"Khelêx's work is unobtrusive and therefore well-suited to this task," I said. "No one suspects the scullery boy of listening in."
He nodded his thanks. "The old sailors in the Cat's Grin while away their shore leave arguing about everything under the sun: news from Ordâkh, attempts to predict the weather, the old days. If they can agree on anything, it is that Gondor has been quiet in recent weeks. Little news has come that concerns the northern shore, and no ships flying the White Tree have been sighted as of late.
Aphir snorted. “How is that noteworthy?”
“It is odd,” said Khelêx. “Rare is the year when Northron ships are nowhere to be seen."
Niluzîr answered him with a dismissive wave of his hand. "That is hardly surprising; Gondor has long been in decline. Her last king, called Azrubên the Mariner among the heirs of the West, was slain nearly a thousand years ago. His prowess in battle was the subject of legends, his sword-arm like a giant's, but he met his end in some distant land. The fleets of the North were diminished ever after, never to achieve a shadow of the strength they had boasted in bygone years.”
A lazy smile spread across Aphir’s face as he looked to Khelêx. “If you quake in fear of Gondor and her fleets, you should ask the Harbor-Master. Does he fear Gondor, I wonder? Or does he regard her as we do: an old dog who cannot summon the strength to swat away flies, let alone wolves?”
And what of you, Aphir? Have you any strange news?”
“I remain convinced that the captains of the Fleet-Fast are keeping a secret.”
Isân pursed her lips. “Why so?”
“There are strange comings and goings at all hours, but particularly at night, when the cover of darkness allows for furtive passage to and from the shipyards. Perhaps they are concealing someone from us. I asked my father, but he claimed to know nothing of it. That is exactly what a man keeping a secret would say!”
“A man who knows nothing would say the same,” I answered. "Why are you so quick to impugn your own father’s motives? Perhaps what you say is true: there is some manner of subterfuge in the Fleet-Fast. Why accuse Kâhir of playing a part in it?”
Before Aphir could answer, Niluzîr spoke up once more. “Perhaps we may learn the answer—if indeed there is a conspiracy—soon. We could enter Jâshadar and investigate these rumors ourselves.”
“They will not allow me entry on the grounds of my age and station,” Aphir protested, glowering in the torchlight. “What business in the Fleet-Fast is so important that it cannot be witnessed by a young man aspiring to sail the Sea?”
“They will not deny you for much longer,” said Niluzîr. “So long as you go with me, none shall refuse you.”
In a flash of bright steel, he unsheathed a sword. Lustrous whorls of inlaid nacre, the careless hue of spume, shimmered along its blade and over its gilded guard and pommel. Short and broad-bladed, its edges were whetted to cruel sharpness. To common eyes, it would have resembled a long knife; as a daughter of the West-men, I knew it for an eket. In antediluvian days, the men of Anadûnê had borne such swords aboard their tall ships and across battlefields. My father had received one from his own forefathers, a reminder of the legacy he was pledged to uphold. Now he had seen fit to bestow another such family heirloom upon Niluzîr.
Yet as I studied the blade, I saw dark cloudlets shifting over its surface like shadows in a silvered mirror. Had Niluzîr noticed them too? Could our friends hear the distant crackling, not so different from the hiss of our own torches, that I heard in the hollow halls of Kamrabezûr?
“This sword was a gift.” In the torchlight, my rangy brother stood as tall and proud as Father, radiant with the same undimmed “Now that I am a man, my father has invested authority in me.”
“And what, exactly, does that entail?” Khelêx asked, scratching at his chin.
Before Niluzîr could answer, I heard another hollow echo from beyond the alcove, a scuffing on stone. My heart leapt in my chest; I could not bear to be silent. "We are not alone!"
“Of course not,” said Aphir. “We are together.”
"Surely we are not the only ones to have visited Kamrabezûr." I spared a trepidatious glance toward the mouth of the passage whence my brother and I came. "Something—someone—is coming."
Niluzîr offered me a smile. "Worry not, phazâni. The Vaults play tricks on us."
He turned to face the others. “None shall bar me from the Fleet-Fast when I am captain of my own ship. If you go there as my companions, none shall bar you entry. We shall pursue those comings and goings, Aphir, but why stop there? The world beyond Umbar is rich in treasures and secrets. From the western strand of Gondor to the gold-rich South, we can claim them all…"
As he trailed off, I spied a halo of light shining in the chamber's entrance. With the light came shadows rippling from around what I knew was the corner of a brief corridor. I overturned my torch, quashing the flame.
“Ûrikali!” Niluzîr hissed. “What are you doing?”
Before any of the others could respond, I swept Khelêx’s torch from his hand. Its flame guttered out in the dust. “We need to hide," I said, pointing to the light.
Isân crumped up her map, shoving it into the folds of her jacket as the five of us shrank into the alcove. We squeezed behind the stone slab which had once served as a table, pressing shoulder to shoulder, cheek to knee. I could hear my brother's breath grow shallow and fast. Then the pounding of my own heart filled my ears, stealing the air from my lungs in its furious haste.
I watched as a font of ghostly light swelled to brighten the far end of the hall, striping the floor with a procession of shadows that swayed ever closer to our hiding place. These were no silent ghosts. The hiss and crackle of torches was accompanied by the shuffling of uncounted feet. A procession of crimson-robed figures strode into the chamber. Whether they were men or women I could not say, nor could I discern the shapes and hues of the faces beneath their brazen masks. A terrible droning pervaded the Vaults, echoing in every apse and alcove, as they sang:
Hail the All-Seeing, the Gift-giver,
Bringer of victory! Spare us thy
Pestilence; lend us thy fortitude,
Vigor to vanquish our enemies,
Wisdom, discernment and keenness to
See the Unseen and invisible.
Their hymns echoed between my ears, praise and dread intermingling; their inexorable tempo was the beat of my own heart.
I held my breath until they vanished, plunging the hall into darkness.
