Naar rose slowly to his feet, looking bored, and brushed the dust off his coat. The coat-gems under his fingers lit up, and to either side of him his line of cannon-bearing automata stirred, straightened, and raised their heavy guns. One of them stooped and hoisted Naar to a perch atop.

Ull said to Yndelf, “Whence originates the signal?”

Yndelf was pointing his glittering pistol at the sarcophagus, or at the body of Montrose paralyzed and helpless atop it.

All this conversation was in Iatric. So it was that when Soorm, in an absolutely serious tone, and with no expression possible on his fixed, seal-like and goggle-eyed face, shouted, “Quickly! The real Judge of Ages is here! He is angered! Rescue our translator Beta Anubis from the magnetic curse of the coffin before it flings him again! Undo the paralysis!” the Blue Men not only understood him, but Preceptor Yndech, much less accustomed to trickery and deception than a Hormagaunt of Soorm’s age, actually commanded the dog things Menelaus had attacked to come to his aid. In the same moment, Yndech’s coat gems lit up, and Menelaus felt a tingling, burning sensation start from his lower spine and spread throughout his trunk and limbs and head.

Menelaus, head lolling, arms flopping, allowed the helpful dog things to pull him to his rubbery feet, but he could not suppress the laughter that welled up from his lungs.

The dogs near him shrank back, alarmed by that laughter, which rang with madness.

Docent Aarthroy, the boy, whose coat was almost a solid mass of glittering gems, raised his hand and spoke. Menelaus had not heard his voice before. It was oddly flat yet rhythmic, just like the triune voice of the three Locusts, Crucxit, Axcit, and Litcec, had been. “Forgive if it happens to disturb. Significant information is apprehended. Relict of coffin labeled Beta Sterling Xenius Anubis, Proven in Battle of Mt. Erebus, Genetic Unknown, Line Unknown, Possibly Crotalinae, interment date A.D. 5292. Identified oddity! Relict possesses/employs third-order logic crystal energy system, multivariable channel neuroemission transponder and responder node, devised post-condition, object tracing number 6AS-46A-W5-BB963, technology comparable to object found in coffin Locust labeled Linderkeirthlin Laialin Inquiline Northeastern Region interment date A.D. 8866.” As he spoke, with one hand he pointed at Menelaus, and with the other at Keirthlin.

Naar peered calmly down over the edge of his machine, and said in a bored tone of voice, “I confirm Docent Aarthroy’s reading. Mentor Ull and Relict Soorm are mistaken. Relict Anubis is himself the source of the signals. He has primitive first-order short-range cybernetics channeled through a Linderling third-order node.”

“Too late!” laughed Menelaus, clutching for support at the supine image of his own head atop the sarcophagus lid, using the golden nose as a convenient hand grip. “Too slow on the uptake! Checkmate!”

There came a loud clattering from the walls and stalactite-shaped chandeliers. All of the pineapple ornaments banged open, one after another, with a noise like a hundred mousetraps snapping, and stubby little gunbarrels, their camera-eye lenses glittering, poked out of the openings.

12. Grand Entrance

They were interrupted by a commotion from the great doors. Now came a rumble, as of a slow drum, pounding. There was a murmur of awe from the gathered prisoners when a Giant stepped across the threshold.

The Giant strode forward on his immense legs, and the floor trembled at his footfall. It was like seeing an avalanche stride, or an iceberg on the northern seas. He ducked his head slightly to clear the vast doors, stepped within, halted, and drew himself up, casting his gaze over the room. His head was above the level of the chandeliers near him, so that while his massive shoulders and Herculean chest were brightly lit, his head was in half shadow. In this gloom, his yellow eyes glimmered, catlike.

The ten dog things escorting him were brought up short, and, seeing guns in the ceiling, bristled and whined. At their noise, alarmed, one hundred or so dogs, nearly half of the number in the chamber, turned and leveled weapons toward the Giant.

He stood at least fifteen feet tall. The tallest of the Witches was only level with his waist. Even Menelaus, who was tall for a man, was less than a child to him.

The Giant was not a pretty creature. The feet were toeless pads, and the legs were elephantine cylinders. The torso was disproportionately squat, and the chest and shoulders abnormally thick and wide. The hands were muscled, the fingers long and strong, but the last joint of the pinky of either hand was split like a Y into two smaller digits, flagella so fine that a watchmaker would envy them. The neck was a ring of muscle and flab that made the creature look like he was wearing a turtleneck sweater. Coarse hairs like the bristles of a rhinoceros stuck out from here and there from his flesh, which was the consistency of an orange peel. The head was an astonishing globe, large even for a body this size, in proportion as if the head of a baby had been perched on the body of a monster. The flesh of the scalp was thickly webbed with blue arteries like river deltas, implying a brain that needed more blood than a human brain. The facial features were coarse and gathered near the chin, making the beetling brow and vast dome of the skull even more grotesque.

It was hard to say which part of the face was more uncomely. The chin was weak and small. The mouth was a pouting rosebud of quivering red membrane. The nose was upturned and piglike, with vast nostrils, and two additional artificial nostrils penetrated the cheeks like metal plugs, one to each side of the nose. The continual hissing and suction of the breathing bespoke the immense amount of oxygen the three-foot-wide brain required. The ears were disagreeable nubs of flesh.

The eyes, however, were large and lustrous and golden, great orbs set in round sockets, with pupils like bright wells. The irises were yellow speckled with green, and the rapid dilation and contraction of the pupils as the Giant looked from one to another of the aspects and fixtures, men and dogs, in the vast chamber before his feet hinted at a brain able to absorb tremendous amounts of visual information quickly.

The Blue Men had returned his clothing to him also. In the hand of the Giant was an immense staff on which he leaned for support. His headgear was the jawless skull of a saber-toothed tiger, and the tawny pelt of leopard-spots, still attached, swathed his upper limbs as a stole, clawed feet and tail dangling down like tassels. Beneath, he wore the traditional suit lined with flexible vertical smart-piping, hydraulically stiffened to help support his frame, and the pipes flexed and tensed like muscles as he moved.

Strange gold eyes stared down above a curious double nose, a puckered bud of a mouth, a nub of a receding chin, a ghastly neck of layered flab.

Neither Scipio, nor the others in the chamber, could meet that gaze, only Menelaus.

He spoke in flawless Intertextual. “Forgive me for taking so long to deduce your language, but your forms are complicated, even for me. I am Dr. Bashan Christopher Calligorant Hugh-Jones, interment date, Year of Our Lord 3033. I speak all the languages of all within the chamber.

“Ull Ynglingas, you should be aware that the Xypotech protecting the Tombs was invaded, damaged, and switched to standby; but it was switched from standby to lethal defense seventeen minutes ago. Surrender now and submit to the justice of the Judge of Ages, or be destroyed.”

Mentor Ull stared at him. “Insufficient explanation! We have been battling the coffins and associated weaponry for weeks! We have won sixty-nine coffins from the Tomb with minimal losses.”