Beneath Ceaseless Skies #15

by Butler, S. C. ; Ahmed, Saladin

  “No. He fall in water after I hit him. He run to Teekee. But we make fine catch today if you catch man. Glommer be very happy.” Hubley heard the sissit climb back into its boat and begin paddling toward the far shore.

  “Maybe we eat this one,” suggested the far voice.

  “No! No!” Obahed answered quickly. His splashes quickened. “Glommer not like that at all.”

  “Glommer not know.”

  “Glommer know everything,” Obahed insisted. “We make Glommer happy, we stay happy. Glommer not eat us. But Glommer know about human. Glommer know everything.”

  The new voice grunted at this wisdom, apparently convinced.

  Hubley listened as the creatures loaded her younger self into their boat and paddled back to the middle of the lake. Their paddling stopped, and a low, grinding sound began that she felt more than heard. When the sound stopped, she guessed the magician’s lift had surfaced, and the sissit were now loading her unconscious body inside.

  The grinding resumed. When it was gone the cavern was silent again. Hubley waited in the tunnel mouth, her heart beating. Events had been taken out of her hands yet again. Somewhere down there, at the bottom of the rusty lake, she was being trussed to the pipe in the magician’s workroom. Obviously now was the time she was supposed to rescue herself; no other Hubleys seemed to be showing up. Finding the sissit in the tunnel would have to wait. Again. She curled her fingers anxiously around the handle of the axe at her belt and wondered if she was supposed to swim out to the mechanical island. But, no: she hadn’t been wet when she’d come to her own rescue. Better to keep waiting.

  Half an hour passed. The grinding resumed, followed by the sound of a single grumbling sissit clambering into one of the boats.

  “‘Go, Eebul,” Obahed say. ‘Go find other sissit.’” The sound of its low muttering floated clearly across the lake. “Always going for Eebul. Never eating.”

  Hubley came quietly down to the beach as the sissit paddled itself ashore. The bottom of the boat ground against the rock, then the creature’s feet slapped against water and stone as it hopped out. With a word she caused her staff to flare. The sissit shrieked and held up its hand against the glare. She knocked it unconscious with a single blow from the back of her axe.

  Taking its boat, she paddled out onto the lake. The light of her staff revealed the other coracle tethered to a low island in the midst of the water. She tied her boat beside the first, then opened the trap door on the floor of the lift and climbed inside.

  Two levers stuck out from the wall beside her. Grabbing the one on the right, she closed and locked the upper hatch, and pulled. The lift clanked downward. When it stopped, she stooped to listen at the lower door. Hearing nothing, she turned the wheel. There was a rusty creak, then the mechanism spun freely and the door fell open.

  She expected no one, and she was right. Had she been caught by surprise before, she doubted she would have been able to sneak up on the magician the way she had. She dropped down into the room, her boots clanging on the floor. Carefully she hefted her axe and waited for someone to challenge her. But water dripping into pools from the ceiling was the only sound. Still holding the axe at the ready, she closed the hatch and advanced cautiously down the hall. Everything in this strange cave was just as she remembered; the dank, metallic smell, the reddish water puddled everywhere. Another corridor ran off to the right, turning almost immediately and disappearing.

  She came to a quick stop at the sound of footsteps approaching from the tunnel in front of her. She darted into the side passage and around the turn, her heart in her throat. The footsteps padded softly forward, bare feet slapping on the metal floor. She held her axe tight against her chest. Then the sound was past, fading down the corridor toward the room she had just left. With a sigh of relief she cautiously started forward again.

  Another several steps brought her to the magician’s workroom. Glommer was standing with his back to her, arranging his grisly tools. Beyond him Hubley saw herself chained to the pipe on the wall. A moment of anger rushed through her and she charged forward, banging the axe down sharply on the magician’s head. He sprawled across the floor, his skull crushed. She felt a sharp thrill of relief—she was reenacting the past! And for the first time it was working!

  She grinned. “Hi, sis! I’m back!”

  They snuck up on Obahed in the room with the trap door just as they’d done before. When the sissit was dead, Hubley gave her younger self a minute to pull herself back together. She’d already been through that bout of nausea once and this time was much less moved. Until she brained the magician, she’d never killed anyone by hand before, but the fact that she’d seen herself already do it made the act much less of a shock. Loops within loops. And now she’d taught herself how to kill sissit without actually knowing how.

  Her younger self still looked a little green around the edges as she led her back through the trap door in the ceiling and showed her how to operate the lift. Outside again, a faint breeze brushed her cheek.

  “Where are we?” the younger Hubley whispered.

  “On an island in the lake.”

  “What lake?”

  “The one at the end of the tunnel. You were standing in it when the sissit grabbed you.” Hubley tugged impatiently at her younger self’s sleeve. “Hurry. You have to go back again. I don’t know what happens next, but there are more sissit coming. I’ll take care of them. And don’t forget that knife, or the axe!”

  A spot of movement in the darkness struck her eye. A small light had appeared high up in the cavern to her right. She guessed this would be Teekee and the rest of the tribe. Another light appeared, then a third, and now there were enough to cast a glow around the far wall of the cavern. The sissit were arriving from the left-hand tunnel. She reached out to touch her younger self, but she was already gone, back to the past. Eagerly, she faced the approaching sissit instead. Her chance to stop them had finally come.

  Brushing a loose strand of hair from her face, she noticed the soft breeze had picked up to a steady wind. Across the cavern the line of lights twisted down to the lake like spots on an uncoiling snake. When the line had come close enough to reveal Hubley standing on the island, the sissit began to jabber excitedly. The leader stepped out of the crowd, and Hubley recognized him by his shield. The emblem of Ydderri.

  “Obahed! We see you! Tulum come back, tell sissit everything! We know you try kill him! We not afraid of Glommer any more. We kill you and Glommer!”

  Hubley decided she could use Glommer to her advantage now that he was dead. The sissit were acting bravely now, but one whiff of power and they would turn tail immediately, scampering back to their smelly holes. All she had to do was scare them off and her problems would be solved.

  An arrow whistled out of the darkness, passing close beside her. She raised her arms so that her cape spread ominously around her, and lit her staff with a thought. “Foolish sissit!” she called, trying to think of what a magician like Glommer might say to scare them. “I am not Obahed. Obahed is dead. He failed me. But do not be so rash as to think you can challenge me as well!”

  Raising her staff, she pointed it threateningly. A word, and a bolt of fire flashed over the sissits’ heads to splash in a shower of sparks on the cavern wall. Half the torches vanished as their owners decided that a magician was more than they’d bargained for and melted back into the darkness.

  But the leader wasn’t cowed. “Puny fireman!” it called brazenly. “Sissit knows that magic!” It launched a fireball of its own. Disdainfully, Hubley caught the weak casting with her staff and tossed it into the water at the leader’s feet. A puff of steam hissed up, and a few more sissit disappeared. The leader took a few steps backward and shook its staff.

  With a roar of noise a greater burst of wind grabbed Hubley’s cape and nearly lifted her off her feet. Most of the sissit torches were blown out, but the light from Hubley’s staff was enough to show her what was happening. Small waves had begun to dance madly across the
lake’s black surface, both with the wind and against it, breaking the water into a churning boil. Another blast, and Hubley had to draw her arms back in and wrap her cloak around herself, or she would have been blown into the water. The coracles pulled free of their moorings and vanished.

  A strange current started swirling. The metal island shuddered and thrummed in time with the waves. On shore the sissit were either cowering on the ground or crawling up the hill to escape the surging water. The wind blew even stronger.

  Hubley threw herself down as well and scrabbled to open the trap door. There would be no more cowing of sissit now. The quaking waves stretched and joined together, circling in a huge eddy that occupied most of the water between the island and the shore. With a great sucking sound and a deeper roar of wind, the center opened. A whirlpool formed; the lake rushed round and round. Waves drenched her. A sudden, twisting wrench knocked the island forward and Hubley would have been pitched headfirst into the whirlpool had she not been gripping the top of the trapdoor. As it was she was left splayed across the surface of the tilted island while she tried desperately not to slide off.

  Finally she wrestled the hatch open and threw herself inside. Clamping the door shut, she spun the wheel tight and collapsed on the rumbling floor. She lay there panting, feeling the strain of the chains that anchored the lift to the bottom as they were rattled by the power of the whirling water. Then they broke and the whole chamber hurtled forward, pounding her flat against the floor as if a huge hand was squashing her chest. The island spun and twisted and jumped as it was caught in the grip of the current. Every inch of Hubley’s body was banged and bruised as she rolled about like a die in a cup. She covered her head with her arms and tucked her face against her knees, trying to take all the bruises on her legs and back.

  Then the fury slowed. She felt her little chamber get caught in the final swirling of the funnel itself, spinning round and round in the whirlpool. A sudden lurch, her head banging against one of the iron wheels, and she passed into jarring unconsciousness. Again.

  * * *

  6

  When she woke, Hubley decided the pounding must have stopped soon after she passed out or she’d never have survived. Her whole body ached; her head was bloody and her ears rang. At least her arms and legs seemed to work. The roaring of the whirlpool and the waves was gone, but she thought she still heard the sound of running water. Or maybe that was just her ears. After a moment’s groping in the dark to find her staff, she set a small glow burning coldly.

  The first trapdoor she tried to open wouldn’t budge. Judging from the dents in the walls, the lift seemed to have been banged about as badly as she’d been. Using her staff as a lever, she tried the wheel again. For a moment nothing happened; then, with a sudden grinding of tired metal, it spun free. She let the door fall open and peered outside.

  Torches gleamed across a muddy plain. Small pools of water glinted in the hollows; rocks and boulders lay scattered about. Sissit scrabbled in the mud, grabbing something from the slime and stuffing it into their filthy shirts. Fish. But where was the lake?

  And where was she? Had the whirlpool carried her off to some new cave? Then she recognized the hill above the muddy plain. It was twice as tall as before, but it was the same hill where she’d found the coracles. The beach was now halfway up the slope, where the mud turned to dry rock forty feet above her head. The lake itself was entirely gone. She had no idea what had happened, but she guessed that, by killing the magician, she’d also released the magic that held the lake in check.

  The sound of water at her feet made her look down. The metal island hung above a large, deep hole. To her left a small stream dropped into the darkness in a thin plume of muddy water. Pure luck had caught her at the edge as the lake had drained, instead of sending her spiraling down into the darkness. A massive Dwarven chain, each link thicker than her arm, dangled into the hole, all that remained of the lift’s anchor.

  She ducked back inside before the sissit saw her and thought about what to do next. There was no way out through that door. She would have to try the other.

  The second wheel swung open more easily than the first. She found herself staring at a wall of rusted metal just beyond her reach. Carefully she poked her head out and looked around, but the metal wall curved to block her view. The lift appeared to have wedged itself against the structure, whatever it was. That explained why she hadn’t been sucked down the massive drain. She guessed immediately she was looking at Gommer’s lair, revealed on the lake bottom now that the lake was dry. The metallic smell was the same.

  She pulled her head back inside and cast a quick spell. With her body groaning just as painfully now that she was invisible as it had before, she climbed out the trap door and up the metal wall.

  It was an easy climb. The metal surface was mottled with lumpy bulges that made for excellent hand and foot holds. From the top she could see the whole structure was actually a statue of a giant frog, crouching on its belly with the drain caught between its two front legs. The eyes that bulged from the top of its head were made of thick glass, but so covered in ancient grime as to be completely dark. When she finally got back home, she was going to have to ask Nolo why the Dwarves had built a giant metal frog at the bottom of a lake.

  Above her, the lake bed sloped up to the tunnel that led back to the Sun Road. The mud in between lacked pools and fish, which meant the sissit were only scrabbling in the slime behind her. She had a free path all the way out.

  Half-climbing, half-sliding down the back of the metal frog to the ground, she began to slog her way through the slippery ooze. The thick muck stuck to her boots, and she had to keep her eyes on her feet as she trudged along. Had anyone been close, they would certainly have heard the loud squelching each time she pulled her feet out of the slime and took another step forward. But no one was and, by the time she reached the high curb that marked the edge of the lake bed, she was well away from the sissit.

  She’d just finished hoisting herself over the curb when a large sissit barreled out of the tunnel and banged straight into her, knocking her back into the mud below. She rose, covered in slime. Beneath the mud she was still invisible, but the layer of lake bottom she now wore outlined her as clearly as if she’d been wearing brown paint. The sissit that had knocked her over spotted her at once. With a great cry it brandished its club over its head and jumped from the ledge to finish her off. But its feet slipped out from under it as it landed and, being much larger and heavier than Hubley, it went rolling down the slope beyond.

  She scrambled back over the curb as quickly as she could. The big sissit flopped futilely, its curses attracting the attention of every other sissit in the cave.

  “There!”

  “By tunnel!”

  “Is Glommer!”

  “Yes, Glommer!”

  “Kill!”

  A shower of poorly aimed arrows clattered around her as she ducked into the tunnel. She ran up the dark passageway as fast as she could, splashing through the rank water, waving away the grabbing growths. By the time she reached the stairs she could plainly hear the sissit behind her. Banged up as she was she wasn’t sure she could outrun them. She wasn’t sure she was thinking too well either. But there was no time to rest. She stumbled over the first step in the darkness because of her slippery boots, then was climbing the steep steps on all fours as quickly as she could.

  She’d been climbing for some time when arrows started clanging around her once again. The sissit were gaining. With a desperate burst of speed she scrambled out of range. Below her the creatures shouted in rage.

  Her heart pounded and her legs ached. Her panting grew so loud she could no longer hear the sissit behind her. She barely had the strength in her thighs for each step. Then she stumbled badly, falling hard on the sharp stairs, and almost dropped her staff. The sissit whooped and shook their torches.

  “We get you, Glommer!” they taunted. “You not get away now!”

  The thought of capture sent a f
inal surge of strength through her burning legs. In a moment she was over the last stair, with only the gentle slope of the passage before her. The sissit gave a maddened cry and fired another volley. But she was too far ahead of them now. Another fifty paces and she would be out in the main tunnel.

  She dashed forward, and crashed head first into something stretched solidly across the passage. She lay stunned for a moment on the cold stone floor, the cries of the sissit suddenly very far away. Then, in a daze of memory, she realized she’d run headlong into the wall her youngest self had cast. She was leading them out into the Sun Road! The Timing was exact!

  In a sudden terrible insight, she saw that, far from changing anything, she’d been the cause of everything! If she’d only left it all alone, none of this would ever have happened.

  But there was no time to think. If she stayed where she was, the sissit would rip her to pieces. Staggering to her feet, she dismissed the spell before her with a word. There was a loud crack as her casting was broken, then she lurched on down the tunnel. The loway loomed just ahead, the glow from the oldest Hubley’s staff plain beyond the tunnel’s end. An arrow whizzed past her ear, and then another. The sissit were almost upon her. Only five more steps remained. An arrow struck her in the back, sticking in her like a great pin. Two more struck her, their poison already going to work, and she tumbled forward onto the floor of the wider passage. How could she die now? The Hubley who’d sent her off on this wild goose chase was much, much older. Where were the years in between? Had she changed everything after all? Then the pain stopped, the poison grabbed her heart, and the cold stone floor of the Sun Road closed to darkness around her.

  * * *

  7

  She woke again, this time in her own bed in her own tower. Her entire body ached, but there was some relief in giving herself up to warm sheets and the smell of fresh brewed tea. A gray-haired Hubley was sitting in the chair by the window, waiting for her.

  She remembered why she was there, and wondered if this was the same version of her older self who’d visited her before.