The Snake Stone

116

Amelie fought the weight of her skirts trailing in the water as she zigzagged to and fro between the great columns, tracing their cold outlines with her fingers, searching for the sign she knew would be there.

Not five hundred yards away Yashim felt a change in the atmosphere of the tunnel, the dampness lifting as he blindly approached the cistern. He looked back: there was no doubt that someone was coming down the tunnel behind him now. He felt the faintest tugging of the thread in his hand, and saw the lamp swaying as it grew closer. Whoever it was could move faster through the cramped tunnel than he could. Someone practiced. Someone prepared.

Yashim hesitated. Sooner or later, the man would track him down-unless he found some side passage where he could hide. But in the dark his chances of finding one were slim. And what if he did? What if he saved his skin-and the waterman went on to discover Amelie?

He let the thread drop from his fingers. Without it he could move faster, trusting to luck that the tunnel would not fork again, or that when it did he would be able to retrieve the thread and find out which branch the Frenchwoman had taken.

His fingers trailed against the walls. For several yards he felt the rough serrated brick beneath his fingertips and then, quite suddenly on the left side, his hand trailed through the thin air. Gingerly he traced the opening with his fingers. He slid one foot, and then another, into the gap. There was a step up.

Yashim wasted no more time. He scrambled into the opening and up several steps, then flattened himself against the wall, and waited.

He saw the darkness gradually dissolve.

He heard the splash of the waterman’s feet as he ran through the shallow stream.

Then the light was blinding and Yashim could see nothing at all, only the light and the sparkle of the light as it bounced from the curving surface of a steel blade.

And somewhere, hundreds of yards away, up a bad-smelling side tunnel that had been blocked now for almost a day, a thin trickle of water began to seep through a bloated lump of meat and bone, and stones, and sodden wool.

Yashim flung himself back against the steps and kicked up at the waterman’s lantern with both feet. It exploded as it smashed against the roof of the tunnel and the light went out, but he and the sou naziry had recognized each other. As Yashim’s feet hit the ground he twisted and struck out with his right hand, knuckles bent.

He hit something, he couldn’t tell what, and whirled around. He slipped his cloak from his shoulders and held it out like a screen in the tunnel.

He felt the drag on his fingers as the naziry’s knife sliced into the cloth; then he brought both hands down as hard as he could, trying to bundle the man by his wrists and pin them to the ground.

But the naziry was quick: the bundle was empty. Yashim fell sideways on his knees, onto the steps, and felt the pressure of the naziry’s foot against the torn cloak.

He sprang for the steps again on one leg, the other kicking out into the darkness. It touched something, but without force. As he tried to pull it away the naziry seized hold. Yashim kicked down with his free leg, but his strength collapsed as a searing pain tore through his calf.

He bent forward, his outstretched hands colliding with the second blow aimed at his body. Yashim felt the blade slice through the joint of his thumb. He grabbed in the dark and found a wrist. For a second his grip held; he pulled up his right leg and slammed it down as hard as he could along the line of the naziry’s knife arm, catching him on the side of his head.

The wrist slid violently from his grasp. Yashim scrambled backward, up the steps, and listened, with one leg raised. In the other he could feel the blood pulsing through a wound in his calf.

He heard nothing: no breath, no splash. Nothing but a sound like a gentle smack that seemed to come from far away. A sound that meant nothing to him, couldn’t help him win.

And then silence.

A faint breeze hit his face.

Yashim kicked out with all his strength, into the darkness.

He realized that the naziry had been closer than he’d thought when he caught him on the shoulder before his knees unbent. He followed through with a mighty heave, and had the satisfaction of hearing the naziry fall back with a grunt.

Which was the last thing Yashim heard before the tunnel erupted with a roar that seemed to fill the darkness, echoing from wall to wall like a cannon shot. A foam-flecked wind rushed over him, dragging at his legs. Something struck at his foot. He heard a screech like metal.

Then nothing. Only a rumble, far away, and a soft gurgling in the tunnel below.

Yashim lay perfectly still. The event had been so sudden that he could not understand it.

But two hundred feet away Amelie turned in terror as a vast jet of water surged from the mouth of the tunnel, shattering against the nearest column in an explosion of spray and flying debris with a noise like thunder.

Bits of rubbish slapped into the water all around her, and then the water stopped. Something that could almost have been a human figure slid from the column, crashed onto the plinth, and toppled with a splash into the dark lake.

As Amelie reached up to brush a streak of slime from her cheek, she noticed something very pale and tentacled bobbing beside her in the water. She lowered her lamp for a better look.

Motionless on the hard steps, Yashim heard her scream.