‘Good news!’ Water Woman called out. ‘The tunnel roads be-now safe. We travel-next-fast to meet the Great Mother.’
Warkannan had his copy of the Mirror, and Jezro had brought a thick pad of rushi and some pens to make notes as they hunted for Soutan. Otherwise, Warkannan decided, they might have gone half-demented shut up in that white room, and mostly because of the noise. The shiny flexstone surface absorbed so little sound that they were forced to whisper. During the day they left their blankets spread out in a corner and sat on them, but even the thick wool muffled few of the reverberations. Every time they spoke in a normal voice, their words echoed and boomed under the glittering ceiling.
The first day after their arrival, they’d mostly slept; when they woke, in mid-afternoon, they’d inspected their prison carefully only to arrive at the conclusion that they’d never be able to dig or climb their way out. The floor met the walls in a smooth curve of material rather than any sort of seam or join, giving the impression that a single sheet of flexstone had been folded and fused to form the cube.
At twilight, the lavender female appeared with a crude basket filled with greasy rounds of some grain-based baked thing and a chunk of roasted meat. When Jezro asked her for a lamp, she obligingly handed over a light stick. After a few false commands, Jezro succeeded in making it work, but its high setting made the walls glare like the heart of a fire. He spoke fast and returned it to a dim glow.
‘Not enough to read by,’ Warkannan said, ‘but that’s all right, I’m not complaining. How did the Settlers live in rooms like this?’
‘They hung the walls with panels and tapestries, I suppose,’ Jezro said. ‘And put rugs on the floors.’
‘That makes sense. Well, if we can’t read the Mirror, we’ve got to figure out something to do besides sit here and worry about Zayn and Arkazo. Too bad we don’t have a chess set.’
‘Yes, it is; or wait, we could make one out of rushi. You know, draw a board and write the names of the pieces on scraps.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
With their improvised game they picked up a tournament that had ended abruptly at Jezro’s supposed death. Warkannan was amused to realize that even after ten years, they each remembered the exact number of their wins and losses, a hundred thirty to a hundred twenty-eight, with Jezro in the lead. On the border all the officers had played for money, and the side betting had grown fierce, but considering the circumstances, they decided that this time, the winning itself would be enough of a reward.
‘I’ll never play with Benu – I mean, Hassan again, though,’ Jezro said. ‘It was humiliating how fast he beat me, and every damn time, too.’
‘It’s not like you were his only victim,’ Warkannan said. ‘Did he ever lose a game to anyone?’
‘Not that I ever saw. He must have won enough to double his salary. Well, now we know why, don’t we? It’s that memory of his. Between turns he could probably refer to every book he’d ever read about the game.’ Jezro paused, laughing. ‘And I’m going to give him hell about that, too, if I ever see him again, anyway. An officer and a gentleman, cheating at chess!’
‘Well, you could make a case that way, but it’s not like he could help it.’
‘True. It’s a funny thing, memory. I haven’t thought about those games for years, but seeing the pair of you again has brought it all back. I keep remembering Haz Kazrak, too, and how much I used to love it.’
‘I don’t see why you’re surprised. It’s your home.’
Jezro started to speak, then hesitated, his eyes abruptly sad. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Home. A powerful little word, home.’
Warkannan waited, smiling.
‘Damn you, Idres,’ Jezro said. ‘Let’s play. You can take white, just out of the goodness of my heart.’
They played chess all that evening by the dim glow of the light-wand. The next morning, when sunlight came through the windows, they laid the stick in one patch of light to recharge and continued playing near the other. The difficulty of moving one rushi piece without brushing others off the board was irritating, but nowhere near as irritating as sitting around trying to speak in whispers. Twice the lavender female appeared with food, some of which they simply could not eat because of the grease and the foul taste. The guards at the windows, however, were glad to take it off their hands.
The patches of light moved across the glittering floor and eventually disappeared. They sprawled on the floor at either side of their game board like children, talked little, and studied every move. Warkannan was considering castling when the floor suddenly lurched, fluttering the rushi pieces on the board.
‘Shaitan!’ Jezro muttered. ‘A quake!’
They managed to get to their knees, but by then the building was swaying too hard for them to stand. The walls groaned like a drunken cavalryman about to vomit. Warkannan mentally counted the seconds; at forty-one, the noise stopped, the sway turned to a tremble, and slowly, all too slowly, the building and the earth settled down.
‘The horses!’ Warkannan clambered to his feet and ran for the window.
Jezro followed, swearing under his breath. The guards had run off, but Warkannan could only get his head and one shoulder out of the narrow unglazed window. Jezro did the same at the other. They could see a long stretch of purple grass and the distant hills, but no sign of horse or ChaMeech. Jezro pulled his head back inside and trotted over to the front door. He pushed it, pulled it, slammed against it with his shoulder, but it stayed shut.
‘Try talking to it,’ Warkannan said.
‘Right you are.’ Jezro cleared his throat and spoke in Vranz several different words, pausing between each, then tried Hirl-Onglay. ‘Open. Slide back. Open up. Exit.’
Nothing happened.
‘So much for that,’ Jezro said. ‘It must respond to some command in ChaMeech. But then how come we never hear Miss Lavender opening it?’
‘She keeps her voice pitched too low for our hearing,’ Warkannan said. ‘I was hoping it would work in more than one language.’
‘Damn!’ Jezro returned to his window. ‘Here they come, anyway.’
The four ChaMeech guards were loping across the grass, leading the trotting horses back to pasture. The little female came hurrying around the corner of the building, then stopped to boom at them. From the way she raised her head up high and waved her pseudo-hands, Warkannan could tell that she was furious. The guards stopped and lowered their heads almost to the ground. Finally she ended her harangue and took over the horses. Warkannan hung part-way out the window and watched her tethering them until one of the guards trotted up, shaking his spear, and chased him back inside. Jezro was already sitting down by the chessboard.
‘Well, that was a nice break in the routine,’ Jezro said. ‘What next? Another game? You do know you were going to win that last one, don’t you?’
‘I had hopes that way, yes.’ With a sigh Warkannan joined him. ‘I wonder when they’re going to take us out of here?’
Jezro turned his hands palm up. ‘Inshallah.’
The sorrel gelding seemed resigned to its fate, this time, and gave Zayn no trouble as the carts trundled and clacked through the tunnels. He could give his full attention to thwarting his memory. If he studied both the territory and the ChaMeech – or the Chof, as he reminded himself – and memorized every detail he learned, then perhaps his accursed mind would be too busy in the present to keep taking him back to the past. He forced himself to memorize the shape of the carts, to organize his muddled information about the tunnels. Since he’d ridden back west after leaving the khan and Warkannan, he was retracing part of the route they’d all taken, but now he could notice details that had escaped him when panic had filled his mind.
At times they passed the mouths of what seemed to be cross-tunnels, though in the darkness he couldn’t even estimate how far they ran. He kept track of the air quality and noticed that it freshened considerably whenever they approached one of these openings. At other times they passed Vransi
c messages, moulded directly into the flexstone. None of them made much sense, and they might have been construction marks. They took the general form of a letter followed by a number or some directional word, such as ‘A27 Up’, nothing evocative, but he memorized them as possible clues to a general plan.
Soon, though, the tunnels stopped holding his interest. He wished he could hear what the Chof were saying; he would have liked to have learned their language, assuming of course that his throat and mouth could make the full set of their sounds. Now and then the males called out in a high enough register for him to hear their thrumming, which seemed to be patterned like speech. Maybe they were relaying messages to other Chof farther up the line, or perhaps warning Water Woman’s rivals to stay away. At other times, he could see their throat sacs inflate, then empty in puffs and bursts that seemed to measure out words and phrases.
Water Woman confirmed Zayn’s guess when they stopped at sunset to rest and eat. They climbed out of the tunnel to find themselves back beside the N’Dosha road. Not far away a pair of pillars gleamed in the red-stained light.
‘I’ve been here before,’ Zayn told Ammadin. ‘This is where Warkannan got his bright idea, and I played sick.’
Before Ammadin could answer, Water Woman came hurrying up, waving her pseudo-arms in excitement. When she first began to speak, Zayn could barely hear her, but she glanced his way and saw his confusion.
‘I speak-now in high voice,’ Water Woman did so. ‘You hear not hear, Zayn?’
‘I can hear you, yes,’ Zayn said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Friends tell-now me that Great Mother come-soon-next to meet us. We have need-not travel in hills. She bring-now her spear males, her servants, her people all of them, they come-soon to curse-stone station.’
‘Where’s that?’ Ammadin said.
‘At end of secret road tunnels. Where Zayn friends be-now.’ Water Woman glanced Zayn’s way. ‘So, you see-soon them. See-tomorrow most likely.’
‘Good,’ Zayn said. ‘How do you say thank you in your own language? Could I learn how?’
‘I see-not why not. Watch.’
Water Woman lowered her head and swung her pseudo-arms behind her. At the same time, she let out a hissing sound. When Zayn imitated her, she stamped a forefoot.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘We make-soon you into real Chur.’
‘Well, I’d really like to learn your language, but I don’t think I can. I can’t hear any of your men.’
‘Ah. You be-not a witchman.’
‘No, I’m a Recaller.’ The moment he spoke Zayn wondered why he’d used the word, but Water Woman seemed to understand.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘We find you Chiri Van or Chur An, because you have power to hear a squeaky young voice, and you learnsoon.’
In that moment Zayn realized two disparate things. The Chof language was heavily gendered; and he was no longer afraid. He also realized that while other men would consider the lack of fear the more important of the two, to him they held equal weight.
Just at sunset, the little lavender female brought Warkannan and Jezro greasy rounds of cracker bread and chunks of fatty meat on sticks. They picked at the meat for a few minutes, then handed it through the window to the grateful guards. Wiping their hands on their trousers, they came back to their chess game and sat down.
‘I get the general impression,’ Jezro said, ‘that the ChaMeech fry everything in old grease.’
‘At least it wasn’t raw,’ Warkannan said. ‘And there’s the bread. They must have learned how to grow wheatian from the settlers out here.’
‘Sounds likely, yes. Hmm, I wonder if we’ll end up deep fried or just tossed with a little oil in a shallow pan?’
‘You’ve learned too much about cooking lately, haven’t you?’
‘Living in the Cantons will do that to you. We might as well get back to playing chess. Only the Lord knows what recipe will mark our passing.’
They were just finishing the second game when they heard some sort of commotion beyond the door.
‘Sounds like our gracious hosts,’ Jezro remarked. ‘Let’s see what’s up. Maybe the banquet guests have arrived.’
‘I wish you’d stop talking about cannibalism,’ Warkannan said.
‘It isn’t cannibalism. They’re a different species. So if they eat us, at least they won’t be breaking any moral laws.’
‘How very reassuring.’
‘I thought moral questions mattered to you.’
‘Not when they concern what someone’s going to do with my corpse.’
From the windows they saw the lavender female standing in the midst of some twenty armed males, who were also carrying an assortment of sacks and bundles tied to their wide backs. The female, unburdened, was leading the horses. Warkannan watched her throat inflate and her lips move; sure enough, the door slid open.
‘Out,’ she said. ‘Ride.’ She pointed to their scatter of gear on the floor. ‘Bring.’
By the time they got everything into their saddlebags and bedrolls, and their horses saddled and bridled, the sun hung low in the sky. Warkannan took one last look around their temporary quarters and noticed a piece of rushi lying in a corner.
‘Leave it,’ Jezro whispered in Kazraki.
Warkannan could guess that it would indicate their presence, should anyone come looking for them. ‘Very well, young lady. We’re ready.’
‘Good,’ the ChaMeech said. ‘Ride.’
‘Where are we going?’ Jezro said. ‘If you don’t mind telling us, of course.’
She stamped a foot in amusement. ‘Lastunnabrilchiri next.’
‘Is that a place?’
‘No. It be her, big power woman. I be-only messenger.’
‘A power woman? You mean a leader of some sort?’
She turned away without answering and pointed to the horses.
They mounted up and rode out at a walk, surrounded by ChaMeech warriors, spears at the ready. With their long shadows leading the way, they headed east, but once they reached the cliffs, the lavender female turned north. She raised her pseudo-arms and boomed a signal to the males, who turned to follow, menacing the two H’mai with their spears to ensure they did the same.
The level ground of the valley gave way to a trail that threaded its way through tan boulders and broken, rust-coloured pillars, tumbled this way and that on the ground. Some long time past they must have eroded free of the cliff and fallen, most likely in an earthquake. Above them loomed the cliffs, gashed with fissures and pitted with caves, the slits and punctures so black with shadows in the sunset light that they looked like writing in some alien script. Along the rim stood tall striped pillars and piles of rock, carved by wind and water until they looked like sentries turned to stone by evil magic.
Up close Warkannan could at last grasp the scale of the hills. They stood a good thousand feet at the high points and stretched north and south as far as he could see. It was going to be impossible to take the horses up their jagged sides. He considered trying to tell this to the female, but she strode along fast and steadily at the head of the line.
Night had fallen by the time she turned east again, leading her men into a long narrow cul-de-sac between two slab-sided cliffs. Once the last ChaMeech had entered, she thrummed for the halt. Everyone rested while she rummaged through a pair of sacks tied to a male’s back and brought out lightwands, two for her, one for Jezro. By their light Warkannan could see their destination, a series of broad switchbacks much like the ones in the Rift, cut deep into the living rock.
Ahead, Jezro turned in the saddle to call back to him. ‘This road has to be Settlers’ work.’
‘Oh, definitely,’ Warkannan said. ‘I just hope it’s in better shape than the cliffs are.’
Riding at night on a road that hugs a steep cliff is not the most pleasant of experiences, even with lightwands for guidance. Jezro, riding directly ahead of Warkannan, let his dangle from his hand, pointing down to illuminate the trail on a setting low
enough to avoid blinding those coming after. At the front of the line, the little female turned the pair she carried to high. She tended to keep hers aimed uselessly at the cliff face above, except for the times when she’d turn and send the beams straight back. No doubt she was making sure that her hostages hadn’t escaped, but by blinding everyone she very nearly killed the pair of them and some of her men as well. Every time, the males would boom at a high pitch, and Jezro would yell and swear, but she paid attention to none of them, apparently, since in another few minutes she’d do it again.
Just as the galaxy was rising, they reached a cave mouth, such a perfect half-circle that only Settler tools could have cut it out of the living rock. With the wave of one pseudo-arm and a chirp of ‘careful, careful!’ the female navigated a tricky corner and led her expedition inside. They found themselves in a domed room whose walls and floor were as smooth and level as those underground but constructed of a pale grey substance that lacked the slickness of flexstone. On the opposite side, a tunnel ran into the cliff farther than the light from the wands could follow. Near the entrance, arcs of grey metal loomed, far taller than a ChaMeech, and beside them on the ground lay huge gears, half-covered with dirt but still in places gleaming white.
By then the horses were tiring, but when Jezro called to the little female, she ignored him. By shouting and swearing loudly enough Jezro and Warkannan did manage to stop the males behind them. The pause allowed them to dismount and sling their saddlebags over their own shoulders to spare the horses their weight. Up ahead the little female suddenly thrummed in alarm. The males behind them gestured with their spears, and the two H’mai started walking, leading their horses and hurrying to catch up. In only a few yards the khan began limping badly, despite his walking stick.
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