Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  Most likely, it was an artifact or collection of artifacts. Something powerful. Something more miraculous and dangerous than even the incredible wealth of artifacts to be found in the Sacred Vaults. Her mind whirled with possibilities.

  What she really needed was a second lead tapestry—one to stay here, and another to carry with her into the hidden chamber—but she didn’t dare leave. She was already at risk of raising the curiosity of other cabalists, and she couldn’t simply abandon the portal shifter while she searched for another tapestry. Instead, she spent time folding the one in her possession using one gloved hand, while holding the artifact on its edge with the other. Finally, she had the portal shifter standing atop the folded tapestry, and figured she could just slide the thing forward with her.

  Naila carefully maneuvered the door-shaped object into position against the far wall, while she took position behind it on her hands and knees. She began to push. Almost at once the device began to open a hole in the stone. Crawling behind it on her knees, she kept pushing as the stone vanished ahead of her, with the lead tapestry maneuvered along beneath the artifact to keep it from sinking.

  The portal shifter burrowed through several feet of rock, then suddenly broke through. There was a whiff of stale, cold air that rushed past her to escape through the newly opened hole in the wall. The artifact fell forward now that it had nothing to push against, and landed silently on the floor.

  Naila had made a critical mistake. In her haste to get in, she’d forgotten entirely about light. There was a brief, illuminating gleam of the lamp to her rear reaching its light into the chamber, and she caught a glimpse of the artifact, already sinking.

  She made a lunge for the makeshift handle, and grabbed hold of it just as the stone was drawing the whole thing down through the floor. She pried it out, slid the lead-lined tapestry that she’d dragged in with her into place, and got the door propped on top of it. For a moment, she knelt in the dark, her heart pounding and her hands trembling so hard that it was hard not to let the door slip from her grasp. Inside the gloves, her hands were slick with sweat.

  By the Elders, that was close. The portal shifter would have dropped through the floor and vanished, leaving her trapped in the vault to suffocate as her air slowly turned stale.

  She didn’t dare move. The blackness was absolute, and she hadn’t spotted anything in the chamber before the opening closed behind her. If she changed position at all, it was likely she’d get the door out of alignment and be unable to find her way back out again. The safest thing to do would be to turn around, kneel behind the door, and push it back through the stone in the same direction from which she’d come.

  The underworld bracelet! Naila had forgotten about that. Still holding the door with her right hand, she peeled back the left glove with her teeth to reveal the bracelet, which she rubbed vigorously against the back of her neck to warm it. As it heated, a cool blue light emerged. She gasped with relief to see herself inside a room just as she’d imagined, vaulted and stone lined. It was full of what she could only imagine were artifacts, stacked against the walls and lying in place on the floor.

  The light wasn’t as bright as what she could summon in the presence of a witherer or a lemure. Not only was the bracelet useful for concealing her from them, but as a last resort she could harness the cold energy of those creatures to draw a bright, burning light out of the bracelet to stun them long enough to escape. In this case, her body heat had drawn just enough light to cast the room in deep shadows instead of blackness.

  It was unclear what she was looking at, but there seemed to be tubes of some kind lying slacked on the left side of the vault, with boxes down the center pressing toward the rear, and a variety of hoops and long, slender sticklike things to the right, as well as a number of lumpy objects that were even less well defined to her straining eyes. She had to get closer to see what secrets this place contained, and so she risked holding up the portal shifter long enough to unfold the tapestry. Once it was opened, she carefully laid the portal shifter on top.

  When Naila was convinced it wouldn’t sink through the floor and leave her trapped in the vault, she made her way to the tubes stacked on the left side. She listened for buzzing or movement, or some other indication of danger. Nothing happened, so she risked touching an object, and finally removed one of the gold-foil wrapped gloves to feel it with her bare hand.

  She first touched a cool tube, and as she ran her hand down its length, slowly realized it was a gun. In fact, there seemed to be a large pile containing dozens of muskets. How disappointing. If there was one thing the city didn’t need, it was weapons; de Armas kept several well-stocked armories in Dalph and along the Quintana Way. The watch had its own stockpiles of guns and powder.

  The only real surprise seemed to be that the weapons had been secreted away in the temple. The Luminoso of the era must have feared attack, or perhaps had been planning to—

  A red light flashed on the gunstock of one of the weapons. It blinked rapidly several times, then turned yellow, and finally flashed blue, accompanied by a strange whirring sound. She touched the stock again, and realized she’d flipped some sort of knob. She flipped it back the other way and the light blinked red and turned off, even as the whirring sound died with a sigh.

  Quickly now, she felt the other stocks, and realized that each of the guns had the same sort of knob. What’s more, the barrels weren’t metal, but some sort of ceramic, as were the gunstocks.

  As she moved across the room, she took in some of the other objects: squat or long, some the size of small cannons, yet apparently designed to be carried in hand, and others that didn’t appear to be weapons at all, at least not in any way that she could recognize. And she realized what she’d stumbled upon. These were no ordinary muskets.

  Naila had found the armory of the Elders.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was early dawn when Lord Carbón crossed the Great Span on foot. Because it was still dark, it was easier to control his vertigo, the awareness of the tremendous height of the bridge and the sensation that the slight swaying would turn violent and throw him into the Rift. The faint glow from the eastern horizon was enough to light his path, but not enough to see over the edge and into the gloom below.

  Cook fires sent smoke trailing into the air from the work camp that sprawled along the rim of the far side of the Rift. Gray figures were already moving through the forest of tents and shacks. A clanking sound rang forth from one of the blacksmith shops. Two men led a mule team down from the road, pulling a wagon train.

  Watching the camp stir to life held Carbón’s attention until he was close enough to the far side that he no longer had to face his fear of heights. As he reached the end of the bridge, he spotted the solid figure of Anne Grosst leaning against her cane, waiting for him.

  She studied him with narrowed eyes as he approached, and there was a grumble in her voice as they exchanged pleasantries. “You said you’d be here before dawn.”

  Carbón frowned. The sun was burning the horizon orange, but hadn’t yet appeared. “What do you call this?”

  “About an hour too late. I have work to do.”

  “You’re the one who called this meeting. Should have been more clear about the time if that’s what you meant. Or spoken to one of my agents.”

  “No intermediaries—I need to talk to you directly. I would have gone up to find you, but . . . well, you understand.” She waved the cane that was her constant companion since losing part of her foot to a witherer. “I’m trying to limit the hobbling I do, yeah? Especially on those blasted stairs.”

  “Is this about money again? It is, isn’t it? How much gold are you asking for this time?”

  “We’re on budget for once. In fact, I’m hoping for no more unpleasant surprises.”

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “It’s about the Rift.”

  “Oh?” He kept his tone neutral.

  “I know what you’re up to. I want in.”

&nbs
p; “If I were up to something, how would you possibly know?”

  “Be serious, Carbón. My guild has hundreds of quintas on the line, yeah? You’re at war on the frontier and draining our workforce to throw men into the army. If you fail, maybe the Scoti come flooding north. Maybe Quintana falls and we don’t get paid. Maybe the barbarians even threaten Basdeen.”

  “You could always help with that,” he pointed out. “Take that steam ship you’re always messing around with out of the harbor, haul it down to the Cheksapa, and sink some Scoti raider ships with your cannon. Maybe they’d go back to the north country and leave us all alone.”

  “Don’t change the subject. The point is, I’m paying attention. And I’ve seen your men underneath the bridge on the city side, lowering rope ladders and the like. You’re going into the Rift, and I don’t have to think very hard to guess what you’re planning to do down there.”

  Carbón followed Grosst’s gaze into the chasm, where a column of steam rose through the gray morning air, rising from the artifact next to the river.

  “It’s been six months since it burned its way out of the mines,” Carbón said, “and I want to know what it’s doing down there.”

  “Naturally. And quite naturally, I’m curious, too. And I think you owe me. I went with you into the mines to speak to the artifact. I helped Lozada build the sluice that washed away those false watchmen trying to take the city. I’ve done right by you with the bridge repairs. And like it or not, Basdeen and Quintana are tightly coupled. If the coal stops flowing, if there’s anything to disrupt trade between us, we’re both in trouble.”

  He gestured at her foot. “You want to go down with that? What was that about limiting your hobbling around?”

  “Limiting it to important stuff, yeah? I’ll make do.”

  “What about when we get to the bottom of the Rift?”

  “I’ll manage there, too.”

  “You must be awfully curious.”

  It was light enough now that he noticed there was a knapsack at her feet. “You’re planning to go now?” he asked.

  “No, you are.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Isn’t it all arranged? Aren’t the others already gathering to meet the urchin girl?”

  “Is that how you found out, by slipping the girl a few coins? What’s in the sack?”

  “Something to test the artifact. The guild has our own thoughts, and maybe some ideas to help us both. Are you going to take me, or insist on being difficult?”

  Carbón fell silent. A whistle sounded far away to the west, carrying all the way from the mines on the plateau. Several miles from here, invisible from their vantage, the rail cars were preparing to ship out, carrying coal and exhausted miners down into the city.

  Everything Grosst said was true, and there was no real reason why he shouldn’t share information with her. It wasn’t entirely a secret, anyway. Mercado knew they were going into the Rift. Thiego from the Luminoso knew, too—he was the prime organizer of the expedition, in fact—and perhaps that meant that Naila Roja was privy to the visit, as well.

  “I have to warn you,” he said. “The Rift is dangerous. And I’m not talking about slipping on an ancient staircase and falling to your death, although that’s a risk, too.”

  “You’ve been down before?”

  He nodded. “Once, when I was a boy. There are dead zones at the bottom—even walking across them can make you fall sick and die.”

  “I know what that’s like. We have the glass beach on the coast north of Basdeen, where thousands of dead crabs wash ashore, and the gulls die when they try to eat them. I can help you with that, too. I have a device that will find the poison before we step onto it.”

  “The cabalist has that part covered. Do you still have your special sense for artifacts?”

  Her eyes gleamed. “A gift from the Elders—yes, I’ve got it. Will it be necessary?”

  “Who knows?” Carbón glanced back across the Rift to where the Great Span jutted from the edge of the Thousand Terrace. The others would be there already, waiting for him. “All right. Let’s go.”

  #

  Their guide from the dumbre was a girl no more than twelve years old, with a pinched face and darting, rat-like eyes. She wore no shoes and the bottom of her trousers were shredded all the way to the knee on one side, showing bony legs. She seemed nervous in the presence of the four adults, but there was defiance in her eyes, too, and she didn’t seem awed by the presence of the Great Span sweeping above them from the hillside.

  Carbón took one look at the girl and turned to his three companions: Iliana, Thiego, and Grosst. “Does anyone have food? Maybe a sausage roll or piece of bread to give this kid before she faints?”

  He’d only brought a waterskin, figuring that he’d already eaten before leaving the house, and anything else wouldn’t sit well in his stomach anyway, but the part about food wasn’t exaggeration. So thin and hungry looking, the poor kid. Would she be strong enough to manage the next few hours without something in her belly?

  “I can spare a bit of cheese,” Grosst said. She propped her cane against a clump of brush and retrieved a smelly lump wrapped in cloth from the side pocket of her satchel.

  The girl wrinkled her nose, then wrinkled it some more when she took a piece and sniffed it. Nevertheless, she stuffed it in her mouth and swallowed it in an instant.

  “What’s your name, child?” Iliana asked, her tone kind.

  “Kessie,” she said.

  Iliana nodded. “Where do you live?”

  “The lower terraces,” she said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. When Iliana raised an eyebrow, she added, “In the shacks beneath the Wood Road.”

  Carbón was surprised. “People live below the Wood Road now?”

  Nothing like that had existed in his day, which meant that the dumbre must be growing in number. Admittedly, it had been many years since either a famine or pestilence had struck, and Puerto kept the city well supplied with food. Prosperous times had the ironic effect of increasing the number of poor.

  “Aye, and it’s a nasty place, too,” Kessie said. “The filth washes onto the road every time there’s a rain and drips through the slats onto our roofs. But I ain’t living down there ’cause I’m poor. It’s ’cause there’s a good way to get down the hillside from there without nobody seeing you.”

  Maybe so, but looking at her lick the last of Grosst’s cheese from dirty fingertips, and the way her thin shirt revealed her bony ribs and collarbone, she wasn’t down there because she was rich, either.

  “I have more food for later,” Iliana said, and patted her satchel, “but I’d just as soon get started, Your Grace. We’re out in the open, and someone might get curious if we’re spotted.”

  Grosst hooked her thumb at Thiego. “That someone being this fellow’s master. I’m with your chancellor, yeah? Let’s get going before that woman takes it in her head to dump boiling oil on our heads as we’re descending.”

  Carbón had more practical concerns, starting with the rope ladder fixed to the side of the hill. Kessie was already scrambling down, with Thiego following, and Iliana ready to go after them. Grosst hobbled along with her cane, laden down with her satchel and a machete-sized knife in a sheath at her belt. He offered to carry something for her, and she reluctantly handed over her cane, holding onto the knife and the satchel.

  He tugged at the top of the ladder when it was his turn, though he had no reason to think that the men Iliana sent to fix it into place had done a sloppy job nailing pins into the rock. They were experienced workers, and fixing a couple of ladders was trivial.

  But he didn’t like the height to the next ledge, the swaying of the rope ladder as he put his weight on it, or the way it gave a violent shake when Grosst climbed off below him and left him alone only halfway down.

  “Are you all right, Your Grace?” Iliana asked.

  “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t look down, just keep your ey
es on the rock face.”

  That might have worked if not for the gusts coming up from the Rift. It was worse than walking across the Great Span, and more so because it dredged up memories. When he got down to the next level, the others had already followed the ledge along the cliff face to the top of the next ladder. This was one was longer, at least eighty or ninety feet before it reached a narrow lip of stone, itself no more than two or three feet wide. There, one of his miners had hammered pins into the rock—the cuts were still fresh—and hooked a rope through a series of loops.

  Iliana, Thiego, and Grosst were already clinging to the ladder by the time Carbón joined them. He didn’t spot Kessie at first, but there she was, already having scrambled down the cliff face. She stood balanced on the lip of stone, not even holding onto the rope.

  “By the Elders,” Thiego said as he worked his way down, with the wind gusting his robes. “I feel like I’m going to faint.”

  “Hold your tongue,” Iliana said. “You’ll make Lord Carbón’s vertigo worse.”

  “His vertigo. What about mine?”

  Grosst nudged the cabalist with her boot toe. “Don’t just hang there blabbing. Follow that kid so we can get the hell off this ladder.”

  Meanwhile, Kessie wasn’t waiting for them, but had taken the rope pinned to the wall and was edging her way along the lip of stone. By the time Carbón joined the other adults at the bottom of the ladder, the girl had reached the end of the first rope where it stopped at a fissure, and swung herself across to a second rope.

  Carbón couldn’t even speak by the time it was his turn to change ropes and step across the empty space between the narrow trails. The others had already followed the girl’s lead, and he thought he would be frozen here forever, unable to move until someone came back and pried his fingers loose.

  Ironically, most of the lower terraces—including the Wood Road—were still below them to the south as the city spilled down the flattest parts of the hill. On this northeast-facing edge, it was practically cliff all the way to the bottom, with knobs of stone, jutting fins, and deep fissures only making the mountain seem more formidable.