“Who did this to you?” Edeard whispered to Kristabel, the words barely leaving his mouth.
“His men came at dawn three days ago. Homelt and our guards fought valiantly. But the guns, Edeard; they had these terrible guns. None could stand against them. They killed our guards. My cousins and the maids were raped, old and young; they spared no one as they made their way up the mansion. They forced their way onto the tenth floor. Daddy and I tried to hold them off, but they were too strong. Edeard … I jumped. I wasn’t going to let them do that to me. All was lost. Daddy and I and Mirnatha held hands and jumped from the very top of the stairs. Did we do wrong?”
“No, my love, you did no wrong. I should have been here to protect you. I am the one who failed.”
“Daddy and Mirnatha have gone to the nebulae in search of the Heart, Edeard; they follow the songs. Mommy will be there waiting for them. I stayed. I knew you would come. I had to see you one last time before I go.”
“What?” Buate asked. His farsight was probing the courtyard, trying to discover who Edeard was talking to. “Who is there?”
“Who is there?” Edeard repeated numbly. “My wife is here. My friend is here. My mother and father are here.”
Kristabel smiled at the souls of Edeard’s parents. “He is yours?”
“He is,” Edeard’s mother said.
“I loved him so.”
“We know. He never knew happiness or contentment like that before you.”
“I see no one,” a badly frightened Buate stammered.
“Permit me to show you,” the Waterwalker told him.
Buate was lifted from the ground. His guards watched in dread as he began to shake violently in midair. Then he flung his head back and howled, his mind flooding the courtyard with excruciating pain. Tiny blooms of blood appeared on his robes, swiftly progressing to rivulets that dribbled down to splatter on the courtyard. That was when the guards turned and ran. They had to go a long way before the screams no longer plagued their ears.
Eventually, Buate’s soul looked down on his corpse as the Waterwalker dropped it to the ground.
“Do you see now?” Edeard asked.
“You have lost,” Buate said. “This is all you can do now: kill. In doing that, in seizing power back in such a fashion, you become us.”
Tears filled Edeard’s eyes again as the soul slipped upward. Buate had spoken the truth. There was nothing left for him. Owain and his kind had won. Killing them now would achieve nothing. The world was theirs. It wasn’t one he wanted to live in.
Macsen and Kanseen drifted through the courtyard wall.
“Bijulee and Dybal are dead,” Macsen said. “Bise came back to Sampalok.”
“Our baby is lost,” Kanseen’s soul declared. She was fainter than her husband. “He may be in the Heart. I cannot stay. Not here. Not even for you, Edeard. I have to know if he’s there. I have to know my son.”
“I understand,” Edeard told her.
“My friend, I must go with my wife,” Macsen said.
“Of course you must.” Edeard raised a hand in farewell. “You will be the first of us to reach Odin’s Sea. Keep watch for us. We will all join you there eventually.”
“That will be the day we smile again.”
Edeard watched them dwindle into the sky, then turned to the souls who remained. “We have lost. I have lost. There is no one left but myself.” His hand went down to the pistol holstered on his belt. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Salrana,” Dinlay said. “He said that Salrana was still alive, that they would have her.”
Edeard’s head came up. “Oh, Lady.” He sent his farsight flashing out toward Ysidro district, not daring to hope.
Ysidro’s church had been pressed into use as a temporary hospital. Several rows of injured people were lying on makeshift beds in front of the Lady’s statue. Three harassed, tired-looking doctors moved among them, doing what they could to treat the bullet wounds. Novices scurried, helping the doctors with dressings and offering comfort where they could. The church’s Mother, a kindly gray-haired woman over halfway through her second century, moved through the clusters of parishioners who sat fearfully on the pews. She offered what blessings she could, but it was plain from her face that she was as shocked and frightened as everyone else.
The church doors were shut. Fearful relatives of those who lay inside formed a defiant protective line outside, waiting for the inevitable return of the militiamen or, worse, the Weapons Guild guards who swaggered around the streets brandishing their lethal new guns. So far, the sanctity of the church was holding.
Edeard rose smoothly through the floor of the church. People gasped at his appearance. Except Salrana, though she let out a single piercing note of joy and ran to him. He hugged her tight.
“They said you were dead,” she sobbed.
“No,” he said. “It’s not that easy to kill me.”
“Oh, Edeard, the regiments shot people. There are men with awful guns, just like the ones at Ashwell, who say they were appointed by the Mayor himself.”
“I know,” he said, hugging her tight. Her novice uniform was stained with blood, some of which was days old. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Edeard, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you after—”
“Hush,” he said, and stroked her brow.
“I was so stupid, so stubborn. You’re my friend.”
“It’s over now. Are you sure you’re all right? Has anyone come looking for you?”
“No. I’ve been helping the doctors. So many have died. Everyone is so worried the Mayor’s men will return. Can you stop this?”
Edeard bowed his head. “I cannot. Anything I do now will only make this worse. I’ve endangered everyone in this church just by coming here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Her fingers stroked his cheek. “My darling Edeard, you did everything that’s right.”
“They’ve killed everyone I know, everyone I love. Except for you. And they’ll come for you eventually.”
She gasped. “Your wife?”
“Yes,” he whispered through the pain. “Kristabel is dead.”
Salrana’s head rested on his chest. “This cannot be happening.”
“But it has happened. I want you to come with me now.”
“Edeard!” She gave the injured a frantic look. The Mother was standing in front of the Lady’s statue, a sympathetic expression on her face. “They need my help.”
“They will manage.”
The Mother gave Salrana a brief nod of encouragement.
“But—”
“Hold me tight,” he instructed. “This will be strange at first. But you have nothing to fear. I will be with you.”
“Always?”
“Yes, always.” He gave Kristabel’s soul a guilty glance, but she smiled in understanding.
Edeard and Salrana slid down through the floor of the church. He felt her tighten her grip on him. Then they were standing in a small tunnel beneath the church, with water trickling past their feet. “There is farther to go,” he told her, and they continued on their way down to emerge into one of the dazzlingly bright tunnels far below the city streets.
“Edeard! What is this place?” Salrana’s head turned from side to side, trying to take in what she was seeing. There was surprise in her voice but no fear.
“I’m not sure. It’s a way to travel across the city. A very old one. I think some of Makkathran’s past inhabitants used it, but I don’t really know. It isn’t connected to any of the buildings on the surface. So it probably wasn’t the inhabitants before us.”
“Oh,” she said with a short laugh. “Edeard, what have you become?”
“I don’t know,” he said lamely. “Whatever, in the end I was no use.”
“Don’t say that.” She kissed him. “Why are we here? Where are we going?”
He sighed and scratched the side of his head. “Away, I suppose. Out of the city. Then … ex
ile. We’ll find some distant province. I’ll grow a beard. You don’t have to stay with me.”
“I think I had better, at least to start with.”
“Thank you.” He checked the souls that remained with him. Kristabel, Dinlay, and his parents were all waiting silently a little way down the bright tunnel. They seemed content with his lead. Right now he wasn’t going to tell Salrana about them; she’d had enough shocks. He reached down into the substance of the tunnel walls and let them conduct his farsight. He’d always known the network of tunnels extended out underneath the crystal wall, but he’d never really bothered to see where it led.
Down, he saw now, a long, long way down. The multitude of tunnels merged, then merged again and again in a funnel-like web whose last few strands extended for tens of miles beneath him, down to where the true mind of the city lay.
But … there were a few branches that stretched out horizontally under the Iguru plain. He asked the city to send him there.
“What’s happening?” Salrana asked, abruptly clutching at him as she felt the tunnel tilting.
“It’s all right.” He grinned reassuringly. “We’re going to fly.”
“Fly?”
They began to skid along the tunnel as it apparently shifted up past forty-five degrees. Then they were falling. Salrana let out a long wail of shock.
“It’s all right,” Edeard assured her, shouting. He attempted to stroke her back; that didn’t work very well when the skirt of her novice robe started flapping up, trying to wrap itself around her torso. So he applied his third hand, pressing it down again.
“We’re going to die!” she shrieked.
“No, we’re not. I always use these tunnels like this.”
She buried her face against him. The flight went on for a lot longer than Edeard was used to. The tunnel was obviously carrying them a long way out of the city. He didn’t know where exactly.
Before long Salrana calmed a little and started to look around. “We’re not going to die?” she gasped.
“We’re not going to die.”
“Where are we?”
“I’m not sure. Outside the city by now.”
The tunnel began to curve sharply. Edeard hadn’t experienced that before. And somehow they weren’t falling downward but rushing up. They started to slow. Edeard glanced up. The tunnel ended a few hundred yards above him in a blaze of scarlet light.
“Hang on,” he instructed, and suddenly they were through and into a simple circular room with red-glowing walls. There were no windows. The hole below their feet quickly irised shut, and they were standing in the middle of the floor.
Salrana didn’t let go of him, though she was peering around curiously. “What now?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I don’t know what this place is.”
A black circle expanded on the wall. It vanished, leaving an equally black opening. Edeard and Salrana shared a look and walked over to it. Some of the red light seeping out exposed what looked like rock walls beyond. Edeard extended his farsight and confirmed that there was some kind of cave outside. They stepped through cautiously onto a sandy floor. The air was dry and stale. Edeard’s farsight couldn’t see far through rock, but the cave extended for some distance. After they walked a few steps, the red light began to fade. Salrana spun around in time to see the circular opening seal up. She let out a little squeal.
Edeard held up a hand and did the spark trick Kristabel had shown him back at the beach lodge. A layer of cold white flame licked around his fingers, throwing the cave into stark relief.
“But it’s just rock,” Salrana exclaimed, studying the hole that had closed.
“I don’t understand the city,” Edeard said. “I just talk to it.”
“How?” she asked, a strong flash of curiosity shimmering through her veiled thoughts.
“Well …” He shrugged. “I just do, really.”
“This is like before,” she said, and shivered. “You and me hiding alone at the bottom of a hole while outside our lives are destroyed.”
The fatigue really hit Edeard then. It wasn’t just his body that was exhausted by the ride back to Makkathran; the emotional turmoil he’d suffered was even more debilitating. He just wanted to curl up and go to sleep for a very long time. The light scintillating around his hand began to fade.
“Edeard,” his mother said. “Don’t give up. Not now.”
He took a moment. “All right,” he said miserably.
Salrana looked at him.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see where this leads us to.”
The cave wasn’t always as wide as where they’d entered it. In some places they had to squeeze and push their way along. The cave took them upward, which worried Edeard. After farsighting the tunnels diving down into the depths of Querencia, he wondered just how far underground they were.
It took an hour for them to squirm and worm their way through the cave before Edeard finally saw a pale sliver of daylight up ahead. They had to crawl up a steep slope with a roof of rock barely three feet high before they emerged into a level cave. The entrance was curtained by a thick layer of eaglevine whose red and green leaves muted the afternoon sunlight.
Edeard sent his farsight probing through the lush vegetation to discover that the cave mouth was halfway up a vertical cliff. He could sense no one outside, not even an animal. When he pushed the strands of eaglevine apart, he found himself staring northeast across the Iguru plain, with the Donsori Mountains in the distance.
“This is one of those little volcanoes,” he told Salrana. Far below him, a verdant forest of palms and vrollipan trees boiled around the lower slopes before giving way to the rich fields that divided the plain. He twisted his head and looked up. “The top of the cliff is closer than the bottom. I think I can get there okay.”
“Edeard! Be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. His farsight was examining the rock below the swarm of eaglevine. It was a rugged surface, providing innumerable handholds and footholds. He stretched out and secured a grip, then began to climb.
“I’ll scout around ahead,” Dinlay’s soul said, and drifted upward. For the first time, Edeard began to envy the dead. The climb was not so easy. He had to use his farsight to locate every grip, then shove his hands through the scratchy vines. It was even more difficult to get his feet through; he was constantly having to use his third hand to part the ancient ropelike cords.
Over ten minutes after leaving the cave, the tips of the vines gave way to bare rock. The cliff began to curve, and Edeard scrambled his way up off the rock and onto the slope of thin soil and reedy grasses.
He used his longtalk to tell Salrana: “Made it.” His third hand gripped her carefully, and he lifted her out of the cave and up through the air.
“I can’t see anyone,” Dinlay said. “And there’s a pavilion a quarter of a mile around the mountain, where the ground flattens out a bit. Nobody home.”
“Thank the Lady for that,” Edeard muttered.
He settled Salrana gently beside him. She produced a nervous grin. “I think that was worse than the city tunnel,” she said apologetically.
“We need to take cover and decide what to do,” Edeard said. “This way.”
The pavilion was exactly as Dinlay had indicated. Belonging to some Grand Family, it was perched on a moderate slope with its front looking toward Makkathran some fifteen miles away from the base of the volcanic cone. Built mainly from wood, its frontage was a long veranda with an overhang supported by a series of wide arches. Small polygonal turrets on each end had high sweeping roofs. Its white paint was starting to fade, splitting open to peel away on some of the long boards. Green spores were taking hold in the cracks and corners.
The doors were closed but not locked. Edeard and Salrana entered to find a home that already had been closed for the winter. Furniture had been covered in thick sheets. Shutters were bolted, the oil lamps drained. Bedding, carpets, and rugs had been taken away. Tin
saucers of poison had been laid out for vermin.
“Not a lot of food in the kitchen,” Salrana called out as she explored. “Jars of fruit preserves and some flour. I suppose I could bake a loaf if you like. There’s some wood and coal for the stove.”
Edeard had gone through the only bedroom and out onto the veranda. The slope outside was in shadow now; the sun was low in the sky on the other side of the volcano. He leaned on the handrail, staring out at the city. Just the sight of it produced an ache in his heart; he longed to return, to put things right. But too much had happened; Owain had destroyed everything of value. “No fires,” he said. “Or lights. They’ll be looking for us.”
She came out onto the veranda and put her arm around his shoulder. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking. What do we do?”
“Get away,” he said. “Travel into the east and find a province where the Waterwalker is just a tale from the city that nobody really believes.”
“Aren’t you going to stay and fight?”
“No. Owain and his kind are in power now.”
“Nobody wanted them. People will expect you to do something.”
“Buate was right; all I can do now is kill. That’s not the answer.”
“But Edeard—”
“No.”
“I understand,” she said solemnly. “Come inside.”
He let her lead him back into the big bedroom. Edeard settled back on the fat mattress, staring up at the ceiling, while Salrana went back to rummaging in the kitchen. Now that he’d stopped moving, the pain in his legs and buttocks began plaguing him. The horse ride back to Makkathran had been brutal. When he probed his tender flesh, he found his trousers were damp from blood and skin fluid. It hurt, making him wince.
“I sensed that,” Salrana said, standing in the doorway, holding onto a couple of large fruit jars.
He knew her farsight was concentrating on him and didn’t protest.
“Edeard! What have you done to yourself?”
“I had to get back here,” he said. “We thought I might still have time.” He knew the tears were going to spill out again. Even now he didn’t want Salrana to witness that.
“Eat something,” she said, and put a jar on the bed beside him. “I’ll have a hunt around for some medicine; there’s bound to be some here somewhere. And if not, I saw some falanpan leaves outside. I can make a poultice.”
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