‘If we jump guards,’ answered the Saffid lad, as he toiled. ‘Noon break. Should be possible if we try together.’
‘Good idea.’ Tymon breathed in relief. ‘Once you’re out of the mine, find the quickest way off this branch. Nurian dirigibles will be scouting the canopy for you. They’ll pick you up in a few days’ time, at worst. I’ll spread the word to the others.’
He did not wait to attract the notice of the guards, but struck out across the pit towards the next gang. He spied another unfamiliar Saffid youth at work on the beam and halted beside him, whispering his warning once again, as well as the directive to attack the guards at noon. Although they had never spoken to each other before, the second boy accepted the prophecy with comparable calm to the first, exhibiting the same unquestioning trust. Indeed, Tymon began to be glad of the Saffids’ peculiar beliefs, for it made an evacuation far easier. He did not have the energy to argue or persuade others of the danger at this point. He continued moving across the floor of the pit from gang to gang, speaking to the Saffid wherever he could, pushing his luck as far as it would go. He did not care now if the guards caught him. He was determined to get the message to as many people as possible.
His luck ran out after the fifth conversation. An overseer spotted him talking to the workers and hurried over with a shout; what in the name of the Tree’s black heart did Tymon think he was doing, and what gave him the right to hold up production? The young man’s rehashed excuse of seeking out the chief overseer did not win over this new adversary, a hulk of a fellow dressed in nothing but a leather thong, his slave’s number tattooed proudly across his chest. The giant took hold of him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him bodily up a ladder to the huts, telling him that he would indeed see the chief, and enjoy explaining his pretty little houseboy’s mission directly to him. Tymon was thrust into one of the larger buildings which he guessed was reserved for the guards, and shoved down on his knees on the floor, in front of Gul.
They would not believe him. He repeated, he pleaded that they must leave the mine, that only three hours remained before the cave-in. But they refused to countenance the possibility that he might be telling the truth. They took him for a spy; he was on a mission to subvert Lantria, they claimed. He had allowed himself to be captured and brought to Chal on some mission of mischief. Why else would he waste time talking to mineworkers? Their questioning of him was oddly perfunctory, however, even bored, as if they did not much care if Lantria were subverted, or were acting out their bullying roles simply because it was expected of them. They tied him to a chair in the guards’ hut and split open his lip, but did not do much else. After several rounds of desultory interrogation, they left him alone in the one-room building. He was abandoned there a long and exasperating while. As the minutes ticked by and noon drew ever nearer, his only consolation was that Tahu would never think of looking for him here.
But he had underestimated the efficiency of the hierarchy governing the slaves of Chal. Someone must have been dispatched to the House to inform on him, for barely an hour later the door opened, and the Lord himself strode into the room. Behind him, the overseers crowded anxiously in the entrance; he slammed the door in their faces.
‘Good morning,’ he said to Tymon coldly.
‘The mine —’ began the young man, before Dayan cut him off.
‘I suggest you consider what you’re about to say to me with great care,’ he snapped. ‘You have one last chance to save your miserable, treacherous life. You can answer the question I put to you yesterday to my satisfaction. Or you may face the consequences. Speak.’
‘I haven’t been able to answer your question yet,’ sighed Tymon. ‘But it won’t matter once you hear what I have to say. I had a vision —’
‘Won’t matter?’ The Lantrian frowned. ‘I should say it matters a great deal. It’s all that matters right now.’ He stepped closer, looming over Tymon in his chair, his expression hard. ‘I have indulged you up till now,’ he said, ‘because I thought you might have something special to offer me. Because I believed in your powers. I was hoping very much that you would not disappoint me.’
At that, Tymon’s patience deserted him. ‘What’s the use of powers,’ he cried, ‘if nobody listens to my predictions? You all just want to hear what you want to hear. Even if it means you’ll die.’
The Lord gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘You would have me believe this trumped-up crisis, this ridiculous story of a cave-in. I’m no fool, my fine little prophet. You were seen with Tahu this morning. And I have my own mystic abilities: I don’t have to rely on standard reports to know which tunnels are safe, and which servants are turncoats.’
He rummaged in the pocket of his own coat and, before Tymon’s astonished gaze, withdrew a small bag of green velvet, reaching into it to retrieve a fistful of what appeared to be painted shards of bark.
‘You’re a fraud, Tymon of Argos,’ he said, stepping closer to Tymon’s chair with the fistful of bark held high, as if it were precious. ‘You weren’t able to do as you were asked, and now you’re scrabbling for a way out. Did you think I was nothing but an ignorant yokel you could impress with tales of doom and disaster?’ He drew himself up, pride flashing in his eyes. ‘I have made a study of all five schools of divination, I have been initiated into the Mystic Lodge and risen to the rank of Grand Master. You didn’t know that, eh, novice? I’m no prophet myself, but I know when others have the true Power.’
Dayan bent down and shook the handful of shards beneath Tymon’s nose, as if they proved his point. The pieces were carved to mimic the spear-shaped foliage of the World Tree, the young man saw, painted white and green. On the flat upper surface of each was a stylised rune he recognised immediately.
‘The Letters are formal,’ declared the Lord. ‘There is no danger to the mine.’
‘You think these are the Leaf Letters?’ Tymon laughed in his surprise. ‘That’s superstitious trash. I’ve Seen the real Tree. Not this physical one, where we live, but the Tree of Being, in the world of the Sap. That’s where the Letters are —’
Dayan abruptly struck him across the face with his hand, silencing him. Tymon’s split lip left a smear of red on the mine-owner’s palm.
‘You’ve had your chance, and made your choice,’ snarled the Lord, slipping the shards back into their pouch. ‘I’m done with you.’
He turned and quit the hut, leaving the door open. Tymon heard him give the guards outside a perfunctory command in Lantrian. ‘He’s all yours,’ he said, as he disappeared into the eternal twilight of the mine. ‘Have fun.’
‘What time is it?’ Tymon asked the three overseers when they entered the hut.
The guards beat him, then. They beat him with the methodical brutality of those for whom violence is simply another language, a grammar made of sinews and bone. They told him, in this tactile language, that today was a day like any other day, and that seeing his pain lessened their own. They told him that they were real, not shadows to banish with a hope and a prayer, like the Envoy’s birds. Their fists debated eloquently that some were born to rule while others suffered and died; they untied him so as to better kick him to the floor, in a final clincher to the argument. They did not tell him the time.
When Tymon was finally able to raise his aching head from the floor, he saw that the hut was empty. He realised he must have lost consciousness for a while, for he did not know when the guards had left him, and had not registered the cause of their departure. He had no idea how much time had passed. His whole body throbbed, the old wounds on his back torn open and bleeding afresh, but he could still move. As he staggered to his feet, swaying, he heard the far-off sound of a hardwood bell clanging an alarm, and remembered the slaves’ revolt. It must be noon, or some time past the hour. The mine catastrophe would be upon them at any moment.
He tottered unsteadily out of the hut, clutching at the door jamb to keep from tumbling down the steps. There were no guards in sight: he guessed they had returned to the central pit, for
a clamour of voices arose from that direction. He began limping away from the noise, towards the road out of the mine. His injuries prevented him from moving fast enough, however. He had not yet reached the ramp before the first faint tremor passed through the bark beneath his feet. It was followed by a sharper jolt. The collapse had begun!
Tymon broke into a run, ignoring the stabbing pain in his back and sides. But his shambling, awkward progress was unequal to the oncoming collapse. He had hardly stepped onto the foot of the ramp before the shaking of the branch became a continuous roll, almost knocking him to his knees on the planks. Behind him, the shouts and orders from the pit turned to cries of alarm; Tymon stared upwards, aghast, to see the top of the ramp begin to detach itself from the crater wall, a thin black tendril clearly visible against the bright circle of sky overhead. There was no escape, not this way at any rate.
Sections of torn planks from the ramp were already plummeting about his ears as he turned and lurched back across the floor of the shaft. Several figures, guards and workers both, dashed towards him from the direction of the huts, then stopped in consternation as they saw their path out of the mine cut off. Larger sections of the crater walls were falling down now with a screech and crash of timber, a sound Tymon remembered all too well from his vision. High above and to the north, the grand arc of the dock-bridge had begun to rock on its vast pillars.
He made his way back to the huts, for there was nowhere else to go. Some of the guards called to him as he passed, but he ignored them, and they did not follow him. He struggled on across the shaking floor of the mine, barely able to think in the continual din. Then, all at once, Zero was beside him, holding him up, shouting in his deaf ear. Tymon could not hear what he said, but allowed himself to be led towards the workers’ pit. Everyone else was scrambling in the opposite direction, attempting to scale the sides of the collapsing crater, but Zero helped him descend a ladder, into the lower level of the mine. They staggered together in stops and starts towards the south side of the trench, across the shuddering wilderness of half-finished beams left behind by the workers. Tymon was relieved to see that none were chained to their posts, though he did not know what had become of them.
At last, to his joy, as they were nearing the south wall of the pit, he glimpsed a group of about twenty workers sheltering in one of the tunnels leading to the enclosed levels of the mine. Most were Saffid, though there were a few other Nurians there, too, waiting a short distance inside the tunnel-mouth. The side of the crater immediately above had already begun to groan and crack apart as Tymon and Zero reached the tunnel, the bark showing great rifts. The mine-passage was the best shelter they could hope for: its walls trembled, but held for the moment. When Tymon limped up to the group of workers, leaning heavily on Zero’s arm, the first two Saffid boys he had spoken to that morning threw themselves on the trembling bark at his feet.
‘You save us, Lord,’ they cried.
‘Oh, for the love of the Tree,’ muttered Tymon. ‘We’re not through this yet.’
He pulled the youths up from the floor. It was not only the Saffid who gazed at him as if he were the answer to their prayers, however. Other mineworkers, ordinary Nurians and even two Lantrians, fixed ardent, awestruck eyes on him as they crouched in the gloom of the tunnel. They had heard about the Syon’s prophecy and seen it fulfilled. Now they awaited his guidance. He swallowed dryly.
‘Where’s Nightside?’ he asked. A moment’s scrutiny was enough to confirm that his Saffid friend was not present.
‘We haven’t seen him.’ Zero shook his head. ‘I don’t think he made it. He wasn’t as evil as us, you know.’ But as Tymon’s face fell with disappointment, the Marak boy added, ‘Dawn’s here. The guards left her out to die this morning, but we found her. She’s sleeping.’
He indicated a rough bier made of woven bark positioned further down the tunnel. It was comforting for Tymon to see the thin form bundled in a blanket upon it, though he doubted Dawn’s sleep at this point in her illness was a great cause for joy.
‘What now, Lord?’ put in one of the youths who had thrown himself at Tymon’s feet. ‘How do we get out?’
The Saffid stood beside him, peering out of the tunnel-mouth, at the chaos on the floor of the shaft. The entire crater was crumbling away, Tymon realised. They did not have much more time; he could tell from the position of the leaf-forests far above that the gigantic limb had already begun to topple over.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he answered. ‘This whole branch is breaking off the trunk. It’ll fall, who knows how far.’
‘Where else is there?’ objected Zero, glancing at the black interior of the tunnel.
If you want to save them, then you must go down. Ashekiel’s words, forgotten in his haste to leave the mine, returned in a rush to Tymon. It was clear guidance. ‘Into the tunnels,’ he replied eagerly. ‘Now. Everybody.’ He turned towards the group of slaves huddled together in bewilderment, waiting for some miracle to save them. ‘We need to go deeper into the mine,’ he said. ‘There’s another exit. We can find it.’
He did not wait for an answer but, gripped by a sense of urgency, began limping down the pitch-dark corridor, feeling his way along the left-hand wall. Walking in complete darkness was not as difficult as he had feared: he had already accomplished a similar feat in the Tree-tunnels in Cherk Harbour, and this passage was easier to navigate, smooth-floored and wide enough for a wagon. Even with his injuries he was able to shuffle along at a moderate rate. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that the others were following him obediently. His last twilit vision was of two Saffid picking up Dawn’s bier and joining the end of the advancing line. Then the cavalcade was swallowed up in impenetrable darkness. The mouth of the passage became a grey point behind them, then disappeared.
The tunnel must have been used to transport cartloads of timber mined from the deeper levels. It spiralled steadily down and to the right, deep into the heart of the vertical limb. As they hurried on through the gloom, the tremors of the great branch lessened about them. The sounds of collapsing planks and beams became more distant, and the cries and screams from the mine gradually faded away behind them. But the floor had begun to tilt beneath their feet as the branch continued its slow, ruinous descent through the canopy. The movement was more subtle as they raced towards the base of the limb, but still noticeable. Finally, after perhaps a quarter of an hour of blind stumbling, the wall to Tymon’s left ended and the tunnel opened out into a wide, empty area. He stopped short, feeling the whisper of cool air against his face. He had not expected a choice of direction.
‘What’s this place?’ he whispered to Zero as the Marak youth halted at his heels.
The darkness seemed to demand that they lower their voices. From far above and to the right came the echo of a vast and booming crash; Tymon guessed that the struts of the dock-bridge had finally given way.
‘The entrance to the lowest levels,’ his friend replied. ‘I’ll ask the others about it. Someone might know more.’
Tymon remembered the hall in the abandoned mine where he had stayed with Jedda and the Oracle. The equivalent in Chal would surely be far larger and contain several exits. He had no idea which one to take, however. He wondered if any of the Saffid had been there before, and if they might help him choose the right path. It was not long before the answering whisper reached him, back up the line. None of the members of the group had been inside the tunnels. All they could tell him was that this was where corewood was mined, a secretive, closely guarded enterprise. The core-guards had long since abandoned their posts and climbed out into the chaos of the collapsing mine, so there was no one else to ask. The workers’ expectation was that the Syon continue to guide them simply by instinct. When Tymon suggested that Zero scout out the perimeter of the hall to find out how many exits there were, the Marak boy initially laughed.
‘Talk to your spirits,’ he responded, his candid voice full of confidence. ‘They’ll tell you where to go.’
Ty
mon thought of the Oracle with regret. He would have given much to have her guidance now. And then he remembered Ashekiel’s reproach, that he continually relied on others to See for him. Though this was no time for a Grafter’s trance, he had other means at his disposal.
‘Listen, Zero,’ he said carefully. He did not wish to dampen his friend’s zeal too much, for he guessed he would have need of it. ‘My spirits have left me for a while. They’ll be back, but for now we need to go on as if we’re on our own.’
After Zero had acceded to his request, Tymon leaned his hot cheek against one of the tunnel walls, feeling the dim rumour of destruction through the wood. The final wrenching crack that would snap the branch in two had not yet occurred, but they were still too close to the upper levels, too far from the safety of the main trunk.
‘Sap help me,’ he breathed.
He could have laughed at his predicament: that of a minor prophet who, having delivered his one reliable warning, was now required to lead his loyal followers out of further, unforeseen quandaries. They would not hear of him being as confused as they were, as ordinary and alone. Crouched there in the darkness of the mine, aching from the guards’ beating, he found himself suddenly and incongruously preoccupied with the fate of the Lord’s dogs. He wondered what had become of the foolish, innocent brutes, and whether they would die along with their horrendous master. A wave of dizziness washed over him; he rubbed his eyes.
It was an agonising interval before Zero returned. ‘Three ways out,’ he announced. ‘The left is small, I think only a service tunnel. The middle one is wide and goes straight down. The right tunnel also goes down, but it turns.’
‘Spiralling, like the one we just took,’ sighed Tymon. ‘Maybe that’s the one that goes to the deepest levels. Let’s try it. We might even reach the trunk.’
It was a bastard decision, neither entirely rational nor able to properly benefit from a Grafter’s intuition, but he knew he must not hesitate. The other escapees were fidgeting behind him, murmuring to each other; the group needed him to choose quickly, even if the choice was wrong. Besides, the branch groaned ominously now on all sides, boding further trouble. The final collapse, when it broke at the base, would be all the more devastating for the delay. His mind made up, he called the others to their feet, leading them around the right-hand side of the hall to the spiral tunnel. They continued on, trudging ever deeper into the depths of the mine.
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