by Ann Maxwell
She clung to her Bre’n and waited to die.
There was a long time of silence. Then The Luck began to laugh softly, triumphantly. “It seems I’m not other after all!”
Cautiously, Kirtn took a deep breath, then another. With a whoop of joy he swung Rheba in a circle. “There’s air, fire dancer. Breathe it!” he commanded.
Fssa’s glad trill echoed in the confined spaces of the tunnel. Rheba breathed. The air was thin but sweet, and not so cold as she had expected. Nonetheless, she shivered after the warmth of the mover. Immediately, Kirtn shrugged out of his cape and fastened it around her. She did not protest. Bre’ns were much better equipped to withstand cold than Senyasi.
There was air, there was some warmth, but the only light came from cracked, yellowing discs beneath their feet on the tunnel floor. The light did not reach an arm’s length into the tunnel.
“Fssa,” said Kirtn. “What’s ahead of us?”
Darkness presented no barrier to the Fssireeme’s opalescent sensors. He directed a soundless stream of energy down the tunnel, reading what was ahead by the returning patterns. “The tunnel breaks up into a rubble barrier. There are openings, but they are far too small for Fourth People. They’re even too small for a Fssireeme.”
Silence grew in the wake of Fssa’s summary. Then, “How solid is the barrier?” asked Kirtn.
“It’s permeable to air,” said the snake. “Otherwise you would have suffocated and I’d be uncomfortable.”
“It is cemented, or just a jumble of rock?” asked Rheba. “Was it built or did it just happen?”
Fssa’s sensors pointed back down the tunnel. Rheba could almost sense the energy he used, but it was like the next instant of time, always just beyond her grasp. The snake turned toward them and reported in crisp Senyas.
“A jumble, probably the result of a cave-in. Accident, not intent. The air you are breathing comes from the far side, as does the warmth. I therefore postulate the existence of an Installation. However . . .” Fssa’s sensors darkened. He was not pleased with the rest of what he had to tell them.
“An Installation,” whistled Rheba in lilting Bre’n. Though she said no more, the emotional language told of relief.
Kirtn, seeing the snake’s sensors almost dim to invisibility, waited.
Fssa made a subdued sound, protesting that he had to puncture Rheba’s happiness. When he spoke, it was in Senyas. “I suspect that you are thinking of moving the rubble, thereby gaining passage to the Installation beyond.”
The snake’s prim speech made Kirtn grateful for the darkness. He did not want Rheba to see his expression. Whenever the Fssireeme retreated into scholarly sentences, there was trouble ahead. “Yes,” Kirtn said, “we’re going to go through the rubble.”
The snake sighed and his sensors winked out. “I fear not, my friend,” he whistled. Then he reverted to Senyas. “The rubble is loose, yes, but some of the rocks are quite large. To move them would require heavy machinery or a command of force fields such as the Fourth People have not seen since the Zaarain Cycle.”
“Or a determined Bre’n,” said Kirtn.
Fssa said nothing.
Kirtn turned to go down the tunnel. He had walked no more than a few steps in the blackness before he tripped over a piece of rubble. Instantly, Rheba made a ball of light to guide him. He wanted to object to the drain on her strength, but did not. He needed the light even more than she needed his cape.
After a first, startled sound, Daemen accepted the light that Rheba had created. He was fascinated by it. He peered at the blue-white ball from all sides, enchanted to discover that it was as cool as the darkness it lit.
Rheba set a tiny ball of light on his nose, dazzling him. His eyes glowed with admiration and reflected fire-dancer light. She smiled, then she took back the energy before Kirtn noticed. He would object to her wasting her strength, and he would be right.
The barrier was not far away. The random stones that had turned beneath Kirtn’s feet became hand-sized chunks of rock carpeting the tunnel floor. The rubble became thicker, deeper, raising the floor level so much that first Kirtn, then Rheba and Daemen had to bend over to avoid the ceiling. Amid the slate-colored stones was an occasional ivory shine. Kirtn looked, then increased his speed subtly.
“What was that?” asked Daemen, hanging back.
“Bone.”
“But we don’t have any animals to die in the tunnel. Oh . . . the Seurs. The Seurs who didn’t come back.”
“A fair assumption,” said Kirtn neutrally, not wanting to think of how those people had died, because thinking about it would do no good.
Daemen had more chance than he wanted to examine bones. The farther Kirtn led them over the rubble, the more often they found silent skeletal huddles. There were a few tatters of clothing, but no more. The Seurs had died as anonymously as any men ever had.
Not surprisingly, most of the bones were piled around the barrier itself. The desperate Seurs had clawed futilely at the cold stone. They had succeeded in creating a space in which to stand and work. And then they died.
“Can you give me more light without tiring yourself too much?”
Rheba laughed shortly. “I suspect that death is very tiresome, mentor.”
Kirtn’s laugh was softer than hers had been. He touched her cheek. Her hair floated up, curling around his wrist. “I suspect it is, fire dancer. But I don’t want to tire you. I just want to reconnoiter. When I start digging, I’ll need your light even more.”
Fssa made a small noise, a Fssireeme bid for conversation.
Reluctantly, Kirtn shifted his attention. “What is it, snake?”
“I’d like to probe the barrier. I might be able to tell you where to dig.”
“Go ahead,” said Kirtn, waving his hand toward the rocks piled across their path.
“It might hurt Rheba. Some of the energy configurations I want to try are similar to those I use with Rainbow. I can’t hold down the volume if I hope to penetrate all that rock. Even as tightly as I can control direction, there will be scattering and backlash.”
“I’ll survive,” she said curtly, but knew that her tension was transmitted by the hand touching Kirtn’s chest.
“Be as gentle as possible,” said the Bre’n to Fssa, “or I’ll hammer your flexible ass into the tunnel floor.”
Fssa’s sensors darkened. His friends knew that only Fssireeme pride—not flesh—was vulnerable to harm. Silently, the snake wished that it were the other way around. Pride healed so much more slowly than flesh.
Kirtn stroked the Fssireeme’s sinuous body. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Not quite.”
Fssa hissed and stroked his chin over Kirtn’s hand. “Would you put me about halfway up the barrier?”
“You’ll get too cold,” said Rheba quickly, remembering a Loo cell where the Fssireeme had nearly died. Fssa could take—and enjoy—appalling heat. Cold, however, made him shut down to a state the Fssireemes knew as “dreaming.” A few degrees below that state was death. “It’s almost as cold as that dungeon was.”
Fssa brightened until traceries of silver raced his length. “I’ll be all right,” he said, his voice almost shy. “We lasted for quite a while in that dungeon. I’ll only be out of your hair for a few minutes. But thank you.”
Reluctantly, Rheba handed Fssa over to Kirtn. As always, she was amazed that he weighed so little in her hair and so much in her hands. He had told her once that he took her dancer energy and twisted it around him so that he would weigh less. When she asked how that was possible, he had sighed and told her she did not have the words to understand.
Kirtn lifted Fssa to the barrier and held him until he changed shape enough to hang on to the rock. Kirtn watched him struggle, tried not to laugh, then suggested, “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just held you up?”
“Of course it would,” snapped the snake, slithering from one cold crevice to the next, “but the energies I’ll use might turn your brains to batter. Assuming that you
have any brains to—” Fssa’s muttering stopped abruptly as he changed shape again, swallowing up the mouth he customarily used to communicate with his friends.
Kirtn drew Rheba back from the barrier. He nearly stepped on Daemen, who had been waiting with diminishing patience while they spoke in languages he could not understand.
“What’s the snake doing?” asked Daemen.
“Back up,” was Rheba’s only answer. She sent the light ahead of them, for Fssa certainly did not need it for his work.
They stood slightly bent over to avoid the ceiling, and waited.
Rheba was in front of Kirtn. Lines coursed uneasily over her body. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her against him, comforting and supporting her. Reflexively they slid into the special rapport of an akhenet pair. Light began to glow around them, fed by her lines until they became so dense that her hands and cheeks were gold.
When the first pain struck her, she built a cage of fire around herself and her Bre’n, unconsciously trying to shield both of them. Fire shimmered up and down her arms, transparent fire that could burn unprotected flesh to the bone. But not Kirtn’s flesh—never his. He pulled their bodies closer together, glorying in the barely leashed energies that the two of them could call.
Each time Fssa slid into a shape of communication painful to her, fire leaped up, disrupting the painful backlash from Fssireeme energy constructs. Fssa did not notice, for Rheba’s shield interfered only with backlash energies, not with the tight probes he sent into the barrier in front of him.
While Daemen watched at a safe distance from both akhenets and snake, the Fssireeme changed shapes endlessly, illuminated by dancer light conjured out of otherwise very human flesh. Behind Rheba loomed Kirtn, eyes molten gold, fixed on dangers and joys that the Luck could barely suspect, much less comprehend.
Fortunately—or perhaps, inevitably, considering his heritage— Daemen felt no pain from the backlash of Fssireeme energy constructs.
At length, Fssa changed back into his snake mode and whistled plaintively to be rescued from the cold rocks. His sensors picked out Bre’n and Senyas united inside a protective shield of energies. Intrigued, he changed shape rapidly, probing the shield as he had probed the barrier. But more delicately, much more delicately. Fourth People’s flesh was much more fragile than stone.
Before he had time to try more than a few shapes, Kirtn realized that Fssa was no longer probing the barrier. The Bre’n touched his Rheba’s neck lightly, calling her out of her dance. Fire shifted, then was sucked back into her akhenet lines. She looked toward the barrier, where Fssa’s sensors made tiny pools of opalescent light.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
Fssa whistled agreement.
“Good,” she muttered as they went back to the barrier. “But it wasn’t nearly as painful as I’d expected,” she admitted, scooping up the snake and weaving him into her hair.
“Thanks to your talent,” whistled Fssa, “and Kirtn’s. Together you bend energy into fascinating new shapes.” He preened slightly and his sensors brightened. “You don’t have the range of a Fssireeme, of course, but what you create . . . ah, that is extraordinary.”
“What,” said Daemen in forceful Universal, “are you babbling and whistling about?”
Rheba realized that they had rarely spoken Universal since they had awakened on the mover. With few exceptions in the last hours, Daemen had been left alone among strangers who did not even have the courtesy to speak his language.
“I’m sorry,” she said, touching Daemen’s cheek with a hand that was more gold than brown. “We’re not used to speaking Universal when we talk to each other.” She turned to Fssa and murmured in Senyas, “Translate for him if we forget to speak Universal.”
“Translate some of it,” amended Kirtn.
“How much?”
“Pretend he’s Seur Tric.”
Rheba looked at Kirtn, surprised by his continuing suspicions of Daemen.
“We only have Daemen’s word that he was drugged when we were,” pointed out Kirtn. “Neither one of us saw it happen.”
“What possible benefit could he get from spying on us?” she countered.
“I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” said Kirtn with a sideways glance at the handsome, smooth-skinned Daemen.
Fssa’s sensors swirled as he looked from one of them to the other. Then, without comment, he began lecturing in Universal on the strengths and weaknesses of the barrier. “The rocks are crystalline, quite heavy, and not easily broken. The barrier itself is nearly three times as thick as Kirtn is tall.”
Daemen measured Kirtn’s height and made a gesture of despair. The Bre’n was nearly half again as tall as Daemen. “No wonder they died,” muttered the Luck.
Kirtn said nothing, but his glance was enough to galvanize the snake.
“The rocks are piled loosely,” Fssa added quickly, “which is both help and danger. I think there is a way through that will avoid the heaviest stones.”
“You think?” snapped the Bre’n.
“I won’t know until I see whether the rubble shifts when you dig into it,” said Fssa apologetically.
“Shifts!” cried Rheba, looking from the pile of rock to her Bre’n. “But you would be crushed if all that rock—” She stopped, seeing her own reflection in his eyes. He had discovered that danger long before she had, and accepted it.
“Fssa will monitor the rocks,” Kirtn said. He did not add that Fssa could not guarantee to sense movement in time for Kirtn to escape.
“Can you do that?” she demanded, pulling the snake out of her hair so that she could watch his sensors as he answered.
“Yes,” he said. But his sensors darkened.
“You’re lying.”
“I hope not,” whispered the snake.
Kirtn snarled soundlessly. The Fssireeme had a million mouths but he could not lie to Rheba out of any one of them. The Bre’n turned toward Daemen. “You can help Rheba move the smaller rocks out of the way. And when I tell you to get back, make sure she goes with you!”
Fssa slid out of her hair and dangled from her neck. Kirtn draped the snake around his own neck and turned to face the barrier. Rheba sent light ahead of him, a light that was much brighter than it had been.
Kirtn examined the barrier in the new light. Some of the rocks were bigger than he was, others were obviously in precarious balance with their surroundings. The rockfall reeked of weight and danger, and bones of dead Seurs gleamed whitely at its base.
“All right, snake,” said the Bre’n. “Where do we begin?”
XIV
“On the left,” said the snake softly. “The rockfall is thinner on that side.”
Kirtn strode up to the dark pile of stones that went from ceiling to floor. “Here?”
Fssa hissed agreement.
Kirtn began digging with his bare hands. The rocks were cold and sharp. He worked steadily, stacking stones to one side for Rheba and Daemen to haul away.
Almost immediately he encountered the rock that had defeated earlier Seurs. Jagged, two-thirds his height and half as wide, the boulder lay securely wedged beneath a thin blanket of smaller rocks. Kirtn studied the position and mass of the boulder. Light followed him, brightening in answer to his needs.
“You’re sure that’s the best route?” asked Rheba dubiously, peering underneath his arm as he pushed against the enormous rock.
The boulder did not budge. “Fssa said it was the best,” grunted Kirtn. “He didn’t say it would be easy.”
Kirtn leaned against the slab of stone. Muscles bunched from neck to heels, bulging beneath the few clothes he wore. Rainbow swung out from his neck and rattled against the slab. A trickle of grit fell down one side of the boulder. He grunted and heaved harder. The slab gave fractionally. He sighed. “Any advice, snake?”
“The rockfall is more stable on the right side of the tunnel. But if you dig around the left of the boulder, the rocks you encounter will be
smaller.”
Wordlessly, Kirtn put Rainbow around Rheba’s neck and began removing stones from the left side of the boulder. He soon discovered that “smaller” did not mean small. He rocked, dragged, shifted and lifted stones that weighed as much as he did. The rocks that were too big for Daemen and Rheba to handle he carried out of the way himself.
Daemen looked from the barrier to the tireless Bre’n. He was doing the work of ten Daemenites. His unusual suede skin-fur was dark with sweat and his breath came in deep gasps, but his pace never slowed.
Rheba saw beyond Kirtn’s strength. She saw that the rocks he handled were marked by blood. She redoubled her own pace, trying to save him any unnecessary effort. If she could have lifted the bigger boulders for him she would have, but she could not.
Kirtn flexed his back and shoulders, trying to shake off the fatigue that was gathering on him like invisible weights. With a deep breath, he knelt and attacked the slab of rock that he had dug around. The boulder had to be moved if they were to get through the barrier.
His bloody fingers found no purchase on the huge stone. There was no way to lever it aside. He swore and wished aloud for a pry bar.
“How long a bar?” asked Fssa.
“All lengths,” snapped Kirtn. If he was going to wish futilely, he might as well wish big.
“I am all lengths,” said the Fssireeme simply.
Kirtn swore like the Bre’n poet he had once been. He pulled Fssa off his shoulders. The snake became a bar as long as Kirtn’s arm and one third as thick. The Bre’n stared, amazed. “Are you sure this won’t hurt you?”
Laughter hissed out of the bar. “I’m Fssireeme.”
Kirtn used Fssa tentatively at first, then with greater confidence. He pried around the edges of the slab. The slab quivered slightly.