Mendelson scrambled to be free of his master’s hold, his good leg pushing Carrion away from him, while his peg leg shook rhythmically in the air.
“I—I—I am loyal to you, Lord,” Shape sobbed. “I swear, liege, by all that’s dark.”
As quickly as Carrion had picked Shape up, he let the terrified man go. Shape dropped from his hands like a sack filled with stones and lay splayed on the step, his terror giving off an unmistakable smell.
“I wouldn’t have killed you,” Carrion remarked lightly.
“Thank…thank you…Prince,” Shape said, still watching his Lord from the corner of his eye as though at any moment the coup de grâce might still fall and his unhappy life be summarily ended.
“Come on now,” Carrion said with a brittle brightness in his voice. “Let me show you how much trust I have in you. Get up! Get up!”
Shape got to his feet. “I’m going to give you the Key to the Pyramids,” Carrion said. “So that you can have the honor of opening the door for me.”
“The door?”
“The door.”
“Me?”
“You.”
Shape still looked queasy about all this. After all, who knew what lay on the other side of that door? But he could scarcely refuse an invitation from his Prince. Especially when the Key was there in front of him, shimmering and seductive.
“Take it,” Carrion said.
Shape glanced over Carrion’s shoulder at Leeman Vol, who was staring at the Key. He wanted it badly, Shape could see. If he’d dared, he would have snatched it out of Carrion’s hand, run to the door and opened it up, just to say that he’d been the first to see what lay inside.
“Good luck,” Vol said sourly.
Shape made an attempt at a smile—which failed—and then went to the door, drew a deep breath, and slid the Key into the lock.
“Now?” he said to Carrion.
“The Key is in your hand,” Carrion replied. “Choose your own moment.”
Shape took a second deep breath and turned the Key, or at least made an attempt to do so. But it would not move. He leaned against the door, grunting as he attempted to force the Key to turn.
“No! No! No!” Carrion ordered him. “You’ll bruise the Key, imbecile. Step away from the door! Now!”
Mendelson obeyed instantly.
“Now calm yourself,” Carrion instructed him. “Let the Key do the work.”
Shape nodded and limped back to the door. Again he put his hand on the Key, and this time—though he was barely pressing upon it—the Key turned in the lock all on its own. Astonished, and not a little terrified, Shape retreated from the door, his work done. The Key was not only turning in the lock, it was slipping deeper into the door as it did so, as if to deny anyone a change of heart. In response to the turning of the Key, an entire area of the door around the lock—perhaps a foot square—began to grind and move. This was no ordinary mechanism: as its effect spread, waves of energy came off the Pyramid like heat from a boiling pot. The door was opening, and its shape echoed that of the building itself: an immense triangle.
A stench came out from the darkness on the other side. It wasn’t the smell of the long dead or the spices in which they had been preserved. Nor was it the smell of antiquity; the dull dry fragrance of a time that had been and would not come again. It was the stink of something very much alive. But whatever the life-form that was sweating out this odor, drooling it, weeping it, it was nothing any of the three had ever encountered. Even Carrion, who had a weary familiarity with the world in all its corruptions, had never smelled anything quite like this before. He stared into the darkness beyond the door with an odd little smile on his face. Mendelson, on the other hand, had decided that he’d had enough.
“I’ll wait in the barge,” he said hurriedly.
“No, you don’t,” said Carrion, grabbing hold of his collar. “I want them to meet you.”
“Them?” said Leeman Vol. “Are…are there many of them?”
“That’s one of the things we’re here to find out,” the Lord of Midnight replied. “You can count, can’t you, Shape?”
“Yes.”
“Then go in there, and bring out a number!” Carrion said, and pressing Shape in the direction of the door, he gave his servant a shove.
“Wait!” Shape protested, his voice shrill with fear. “I don’t want to go alone!”
But it was too late. He was already over the threshold. There was an immediate response from the interior; the din of an infinite number of carapaced things roused from invertebrate dreams, rubbing their hard, spiny legs together, unfurling their stalked eyes…
“What have you got in there?” Vol wanted to know. “Hobarookian scorpions? A huge nest of needle flies?”
“He’ll find out!” Carrion said, nodding in Shape’s direction.
“A light, Lord!” Shape begged. “Please. At least a light so I can find my way.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Carrion seemed to soften, and smiling at Shape, he reached into his robes, as if he intended to produce a lamp of some sort. But what came out appeared to be a small top, which he set on the back of his left hand.
There it began to spin, and in spinning threw off waves of flickering light, which grew in brightness.
“Catch!” Carrion said, and flipped the top in Shape’s direction.
Shape made an ungainly attempt to catch hold of it, but the thing outwitted him, spinning off between his fingers and hitting the ground. Then it spun off into the Pyramid, its luminescence growing.
Shape looked away from the top and up into the space that its ambitious light was filling. He let out a little sob of terror.
“Wait,” Leeman Vol said. “There can only be one insect that gives off a stench such as this.”
“And what would that be?” Carrion said.
“Sacbrood,” Vol replied, his voice ripe with awe.
Carrion nodded.
“Oh, Gods…” Vol murmured, advancing a few steps toward the door to get a better view of the multitudes within. “Did you put them in here?”
“I sowed the seeds, yes,” Carrion replied. “Countless years ago. I knew we would come to be in need of them in time. I have a great purpose to put them to.”
“What purpose is that?”
Carrion smiled into the soup of his nightmares. “Something mighty,” he replied. “Believe me. Something mighty.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” Vol said. “Mighty, yes…”
As he spoke, a limb perhaps eight feet long, and divided into a number of thorny segments, appeared from the shadows.
Leeman loosed a cry of alarm and backed away from the door. But Carrion was too quick for him. He caught hold of Vol’s arm, stopping him in his stride.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.
In his panic Vol’s three voices trod on one another’s tails. “They’re moving—oving—ving.”
“So?” said Carrion. “We’re the masters here, Vol, not them. And if they forget, then we have to remind them. We have to