Dagger

The furnishings were simple. A metal reading stand, high enough for use by a standing man and empty now, waited near the center of the room.

To its right stood an elaborate bronze firebox on four clawed legs, a censer rather than a heating device. The flat sides of the box were covered by columns of incised swirls, more likely a script unknown to the caravan master than mere decoration. The top was smooth except for a trio of depressions-an inch, three inches, and six inches in diameter. Aromatics could be placed there to be released by the heat of charcoal burning in the firebox beneath.

At each corner of the top was a decorative casting. They were miniature beasts of the sort which in larger scale could have modeled the censer's terrible clawed legs. The creatures had catlike heads, the bodies of toads with triangular plates rising along the spine for protection, and the forelegs of birds of prey. Serpent tails curled up behind them, suggesting the creatures were intended as handles for the censer; but anyone who attempted to put them to that purpose would have his hands pierced by the hair-thin spikes with which the tails ended.

There was no other furniture in the room, but a pentacle several feet in diameter was painted or inlaid on the concrete floor to the reading stand's left. It was empty. The floor and white-stuccoed walls were otherwise unmarked.

Khamwas' lips pursed.

"Go ahead," said Samlor with a shrug. "Maybe your stone's on the ceiling where we can't see it."

"Yes," said the Napatan, though there was doubt rather than hope in his tone.

Khamwas thrust his staff as far into the mauve light as it would go while his hand on the tip remained above floor level.

Nothing happened, but Samlor was not fool enough to think it had been a pointless exercise. His companion was doing what he had promised, concentrating his talents- better, his knowledge-on the task at hand.

Still holding out the staff in his direction of travel, Khamwas backed awkwardly down the ladder. The ferule banged accidentally on the censer as he turned. It made Khamwas jump back but did not concern Samlor, who saw what was about to happen.

The crash and shattering glass from upstairs spun the caravan master, his teeth bared and his left hand groping for the throwing knife in his boot sheath.

"The wind," murmured Star, the first words she had spoken since the trap door rose. She wasn't looking at her uncle or at anything in particular.

But she was right. A door banged shut, muting a further tinkle of glass. One of the window sashes had not been secured properly. A gust had slammed it fiercely enough to shatter the glass.

"Are you all right?" called Khamwas.

The question impressed Samlor, for it sounded sincere- and in similar circumstances, he would have been worried more about his own situation than that of his companions.

"We're going to get drenched when we leave here," the caravan master said. "Leaving 11 still feel good. Any luck yourself?"

The Napatan grimaced. "The room's empty," he said. "The brazier's as clean as if it was never used. I'm not sure it's here at all."

"Do not ask advice of a god and then ignore what he says," snapped Tjainufi. He was rubbing his tiny face on his shoulder like a bird preening.

"Step back," said Samlor. "I'm coming down."

He turned to his niece and said, "Star, dearest? Honey? Will you be all right for a minute?"

She nodded, though nothing in her face suggested that she was listening.

The quicker they found what Khamwas needed, the quicker they-Samlor-could sort out his niece's problem.

He jumped into the cubical room without touching the ladder.

Samlor landed in perfect balance, feet spread and his left hand extended slightly farther than the right so that leverage matched the weight of his long dagger. Despite Samlor's care, his hobnails skidded and might have let him fall if Khamwas hadn't clutched the Cirdonian's shoulder. The floor was dusted with sparkly stuff, almost as slick as a coat of oil.

Jumping might not have been the brightest notion, but the caravan master hadn't liked the idea of doing exactly what an intruder was expected to do.

The concealed room had an underwater ambiance which wasn't wholly an effect of the glowing sea urchin trundling across an invisible bottom at waist height. The mauve light rippled, but neither the furniture nor the two men cast distinct shadows on the walls.

"What does your-" Samlor said, making a left-handed gesture to indicate either Khamwas' staff or nothing at all – your friend say about what you're looking for?"

"That I've found it," Khamwas replied, turning his head to view surroundings which were no less void on this perusal than on earlier ones.

Samlor stamped his foot. Sparkling dust quivered, but the concrete was as solid as the bedrock on which it was probably laid.

Then he kicked the nearest wall.

Stucco blasted away as the hobnails raked four short, parallel paths and squealed on the stone beneath.

"Well, I think we know where t' look," said the Cirdonian in satisfaction.

The stucco his boot had scraped was covering two distinct blocks of stone-a slab of polished red granite and another of marble shadowed with faint streaks of gray. Both stones were inscribed, though on the softer marble the markings had been weathered and further defaced by Samlor's boot.

He brushed at the stucco with his left hand, flaking away a patch his kick had loosened. The writing on the granite slab was Rankan but of a form so old that the doubled consonants and variant orthography made all but a few words unintelligible to the caravan master.

"Why, this is wonderful, my friend," said the Napatan with a smile brighter than the mauve glow as he bent over the cleared patch.

Tjainufi beamed and added, "There is no good deed save a good deed done for one who has need of it."

"We're not outa the woods yet," said Samlor with a dour glance at the walls around them. If they had to clear all the stucco, or even half, if their luck were average (which it probably wouldn't be), it was going to take a lot longer than the caravan master wanted to spend in this place.

"No, that's all right," explained the Napatan with the uneasy hint of mindreading which he had displayed before. "I'll use a spell of release and the covering will come away at once. He must use the ancient writings because they focus the power with which the years have embued them."

Maybe that was what Setios used to do with them, Samlor thought as his companion knelt before his upright staff again, but he'd bet Setios hadn't much use for them or anything else in the world just now.

Khamwas was whispering to himself and his gods. Samlor looked at him, looked at the dagger-saw that the watered steel blade was only that, only metal; probably all it ever was, except in his mind.

"Star?" he called toward the rectangular opening. "You all right, sweetest?"

He could barely hear the reply, ". . all right. .," but a couple of the pastel jellyfish were drifting over him in placid unconcern. She'd be fine, Star would.

If any of them were, she'd be fine.

Samlor squatted and squeezed up dust from the floor on the tip of his left index finger. It was colorless (save for the mauve light it reflected) and much too finely ground for him to be able to tell the shape of the individual crystals.

A caravan master has plenty of opportunity to examine decorative stones, jewels and bits of glass cut and stained to look like jewels in the dim light of a bazaar. The dust could be anything, powdered diamond even; but most likely quartz, spread in a smooth layer across all the flat surfaces in the room.

Except for streaks-shadows, almost-stretching from the reading stand and the legs of the bronze censer. The dust seemed to have been sprayed violently from the direction of the pentacle in which Khamwas was almost standing. "K-" Samlor began in sudden surmise. The Napatan had been whispering, but now his voice rose in a crescendo. Khamwas' eyes lifted also; they were wide open but obviously not fixed on anything in the room.