The Ring of Winter - James Lowder [97]
"Can't you call in the other warriors?" Kaverin asked. He forced Rayburton to sit on the stairs at the queen's feet. "You said there were hundreds of smaller Batiri villages all over the area."
"They no come if we can't promise chow or good pillage," M'bobo replied. She pointed at the gory pile of bodies. "Hey! Hurry up and burn 'em. You want they should get up again?"
Kaverin's flame-red eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. "Get up again?"
After watching a warrior set a torch to the pyre, the queen said, "Yeah. Jungle full of walking dead. Sometimes Batiri get up if you don't burn 'em quick. Sometimes they don't, though." She brushed aside the topic with a wave of the scimitar. "So, can you promise chow?"
"Of course," Kaverin said smoothly. "If you gather enough warriors, I'll promise you all the Tabaxi in Mezro. There should be enough humans there to feed your warriors for a whole year."
Queen M'bobo licked her gray lips in anticipation and called for her runners.
* * * * *
Artus scratched furiously under the bandage on his shoulder. The arrow wound wasn't serious, but the poultice applied by the Mezroan surgeons felt like nothing so much as ants crawling over his skin. "Look," he said, "whatever his reasons, T'fima slid the gems into my pocket. I think he wants to help the city. He just won't admit it."
Sanda nodded her agreement, but Kwalu remained unconvinced. Since returning to Mezro a few hours past, they had been arguing the point-that is, when they weren't catching an hour of desperately needed sleep or being attended by surgeons. Now the three crossed the moonlit plaza surrounding the Temple of Ubtao, bound for the council chamber to see King Osaw.
"It was only a guilty conscience that made him give you the lightning gems," Kwalu noted sourly.
"We wouldn't have escaped the goblin camp without them," Sanda said. "At least they gave us a chance against Skuld."
Kwalu ran his thumb over a chip in his war club. Somewhere in the jungle lay a goblin's corpse with a corresponding dent in its skull. "Our own fighting skill freed us from the goblins, that and my father's warriors. If they hadn't arrived when they did, the goblins would have overrun us for sure."
That was something Artus disagreed with strongly, but there was no more time to argue. The temple door stood before them. No guards or attendants flanked the portal, no torches set it off from the dark crystal walls of the weird structure. Somehow, though, an inner radiance lit the yellowish brown wood. The inlaid panels depicted men and women living within a labyrinth of vines. Around some corners lurked dinosaurs, around others gorgeous fountains and quiet pools. At the center lay the temple itself-Artus squinted and leaned closer. Three tiny figures, positioned just as he, Sanda, and Kwalu were, stood at the temple door. The explorer was never certain if his eyes had deceived him, for at that moment the negus pushed the temple door open.
The eyes of Mezro's greatest heroes fell upon Artus as he entered the temple. Statues lined both sides of the long corridor, gigantic figures carved in glossy black stone. On one side of the door, a woman danced at the heart of an inferno, flames trailing from her hair and curling from her fingers. Across from her, a young boy held his arms to his side, soaring above stone clouds. Eagles swooped around him, talons extended, beaks open in joyous cries of war.
"These are the barae who have gone to Ubtao," Sanda whispered reverentially. "The ones on the right side are the seven original paladins."
As Artus followed her toward a darkened arch at the end of the hall, he glanced up at the other statues in the Hall of Champions. An old man held a hammer over an anvil, a razor-sharp spear tip in the making. Next to him a woman raced a jaguar along a stony path, both charging forward at full speed. Other men and women cast in equally fantastic poses looked down on him with steady gazes, unseeing yet full of understanding. There were empty pedestals farther up the hall, one on the