Kawasi began to talk, slowly and quietly but in a precise way, speaking as of something learned by rote. She described the outer appearance and size of the Forbidden. It was one gigantic construction, one building that was a city. Johnny had told her it was what was called a citadel. It was a fortress-city above the country below. The walls were sheer. The Lords of Shibalba and the Varanel each had their own apartments, yet each was restricted to an area and there were no areas in common.
“If same number exist as of old, there are twenty-four Lords, and five hundred of the Varanel. No man knows how many servants, and they not allowed to cross over from one area to another.”
Slowly, trying to forget nothing, she told him what was known. It was little enough and all very general in content. Obviously the place was an intricate maze of passages, tunnels, and rooms, some of the rooms said to be all of glass reflecting one’s own image a thousand times but also reflecting all the other mirrors, glass walls, and seeming openings, until one went mad searching for a way out. The description reminded him of the Glass House sideshows from his old carnival days, but obviously on a much vaster scale.
“And the prison area?”
“There is none. None we know of. All we know we piece together, little by little, from legends maybe wrong or out of date. Prisoners were just taken to a room and left to be questioned by the Varanel. But we know so little. And that little may not be right and true. When little is known, much is imagined.”
The fire crackled cheerfully and he added a stick or two. It was, he admitted to himself, vastly comforting just to be with Kawasi, to sit quietly with her and not think too much about what was to come tomorrow.
“What is it like among your people? How are you governed? What is your role?”
“I am leader—what you call chief. Among us there is no name of position, no what you call title. One is because one is. One is not born to be leader—”
“Yet you said you were descended from He Who Had Magic?”
“That does not matter if I am not wise. Among my family there have been many who were wise. So, many leaders. But we cannot command. We can only advise. If we are often wrong, they no longer listen. It is very simple.
“Much was settled long ago. There are things done and not done, and if something new comes, a council is chosen to decide what is to be done. Often, I sit in council. Now, by their choice, I speak for them. How long this will be, I do not know.”
She paused. “There are some among us who believe we should follow The Hand, that we should abandon our mountains and go to live among the others. I do not believe this.
“They look down from the mountains and see green fields that lie below. They see orchards and water. Often for us there is small water, and our fields grow dry and crops wither. Then the numbers grow who would go down to The Hand.
“The Hand has people among us who talk trouble, who speak against me and those who are with me. I do not know what is to happen.”
“Don’t they know how rigid is the control by The Hand?”
“They do not believe, or they shrug and say what does it matter if we eat well? Some shrink from decision. The Hand means power to them. They hope to have some of that power for themselves. In truth, they have been promised so.”
Mike Raglan leaned against the old wall. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. It was a relief just to relax. Yet his mind would not rest. It prowled the edges and corners of the problem like a hound on a scent.
The Forbidden was apparently a maze, a labyrinthine system of rooms, corridors, and halls, connecting and interconnecting, and built over a space of centuries. If what Tazzoc told him was true, it was possible that no one person now knew the entire area. The organization within the system had been set in motion ages before and proceeded to function from sheer inertia. No children were allowed within those sacred precincts, for children have curiosity which could only be stifled with time and continual conditioning.
Undoubtedly, even as the Hall of Archives was no longer visited, there were other areas abandoned or forgotten. He knew much of mazes. It had begun with the Glass Houses in the carnivals with which he traveled as a magician’s assistant. His Lebanese friend had told him the story of King Minos and the Minotaur. Ariadne had given Theseus a ball of thread, and, fastening one end of the thread, he had unwound it as he found his way through the maze en route to his fight with the Minotaur, half-man, half-beast. He had used Ariadne’s thread to find his way back.
Undoubtedly that was the most famous labyrinth, yet the largest by far was one, long destroyed now, that existed in ancient Egypt. A vaster work by far than the pyramids. Herodotus and Strabo had both written of it: a place of more than three thousand rooms, vast colonnades, enormous halls covering an area estimated to be one thousand feet long by eight hundred broad, and on at least two levels, one of these below ground. The Forbidden, he gathered, was at least twice that size, judging by all he heard, yet even that might be a gross underestimate.
“Kawasi? I am going over tomorrow. Will you show me the way?”
She got up and walked outside and he followed, fearful that she would leave him once more. “Kawasi? I must go.”
“I know, but how can I send you to death? For there is no way—no way he can be freed.”
“Will you show me? Or must I chance the kiva?”
“Oh, no!” She hesitated again and then replied, “So be it. You are stubborn. Nothing I can say—”
“Nothing.”
“I will show you. I will take you over with me, but then I go to my people. What you shall do, I do not know. One thing: There is one whom you must fear.
“He is tall, taller than you, and very strong. He has great power also. He enters the Forbidden as he wishes, and we fear he knows much of us. We think he controls the spies among us and influences those who talk of leaving to join the Lords of Shibalba. You will know him if you see him. He has presence, a commanding presence. No one disobey him.” She paused. “He sent for me by one of his people. I refused, but he sent word he was coming for me and to destroy us.”
“He has a name?”
“Zipacna. Whatever you do, beware of Zipacna!”
XXXI
Tomorrow!
There was no more to be said. He was committed. Leaving Kawasi in the inner room, he bedded down near the drafting table with Chief at the opening, near him. There he could look out at the stars, perhaps for the last time.
What kind of thinking was that? Nonsense! He would make it. He would find Erik, and they would come back, and so would whoever Erik had with him, no matter how many. Yet this might be his last night on earth as he had known it, for when he returned, if he returned, would it ever seem the same again?
He smiled grimly into the darkness, and said, half-aloud, “You’ve been a damned fool before, Mike, but this one takes the cake!”
Looking across the river at the vast bulk of No Man’s, he shuddered. The shudder was involuntary, brought on by what unknown presentiment of fear he knew not. No Man’s, black, ominous, mysterious. The time was now.
Nothing, not even the wild windswept vastness of the Chang-Tang would be like this, nor even those strange trails he had followed to the hidden monasteries of the Bonpo, nor his visit to the lost castle of Kesar of Ling. Nothing could be like this.
There had been magic there, too, and he had not known then what to expect, yet it somehow had seemed fated from his first meeting with the wizened little man in the streets of what was then called Suchow, east of the Jade Gate.
He had walked knife-edge ridges, followed trails that skirted a gorge three thousand feet deep, with nothing but death promised at the journey’s end. He had survived, and he would survive now. But this was a story he would never write, as he had not written those others. There were some things a man kept to himself, always. Some stories had to remain buried inside you. Before that trip into the Kunluns, he had not believed that, but now he knew it was true.