by Shannon Page
“Viktor’s bedchamber and mine are not even in the same wing now,” sighed Arian.
They sat in pensive melancholy for a while.
“I am rested enough,” Sian said, climbing back up to her feet. The thoughts roiling through her mind now made her want to move. “Let’s get you back to Viktor. Just in case he does still need your help.” They smiled at one another as Arian stood too.
As they set off again, Sian struggled with this new frame Arian had given her through which to view her troubles with Arouf. Had she stifled him? Was she at fault for their waning relationship? The idea did seem somewhat compelling, and yet, she still felt very angry with him, though the reasons for that anger seemed more muddled now. She saw she’d likely had a part in their disintegration, but she certainly felt no new desire to go running back and apologize.
As focused as she was on this new line of questions, it became harder and harder to ignore her stomach. She found herself recalling every detail of that long-ago picnic on the unnamed island which had become Little Loom Eyot. Arouf had been so proud of his culinary prowess then, though he was a far more accomplished cook now. Not that she would ever taste his spicy sweetprawn stew again … A tear or two mingled with the dampness of the air on her face, though whether for the loss of her husband, or of his cooking, she was still unsure.
This reverie was broken by a quiet splash ahead, followed by a soft exclamation of dismay from Arian. Sian looked up to find her standing in an inch or two of water lying across their path.
Arian held up her globe of light, reaching as far forward as she could while peering into the gloom. “This is not welcome news,” she said softly.
“What’s wrong?”
“The path looks flooded up ahead.” Arian looked back at Sian anxiously. “Either it’s dipping down a bit — not for very long, I hope — or there is some obstruction damming up the waterway.”
“Is there some other way around?”
“I have seen no other passages, have you?”
“No.” Sian could not bring herself to ask aloud if this meant they must go back. She could not climb that ladder at the falls again. Not without a lot of food and much more rest, at least. Even then, she doubted she would make it. “What now?” was all she could manage.
“I think we had better just try pushing forward. It may not get that deep.”
“So be it,” Sian said, praying they would not be forced to turn around.
They sloshed through the grimy water for some time in silence. It was work just to concentrate on her footing now. A slippery carpet of some kind had formed across the submerged stone, sometimes pocked with small sinkholes of slimy mud. At least, Sian hoped that was what it was.
The water continued to deepen, gradually, until it came halfway up their shins.
Arian released a stifled scream, flailing her arms wildly. Sian cried out in sympathetic fright as Arian lurched toward the wall, both arms extended to fend off the impact as she splashed against it and regained her balance. “The edge!” she blurted. “Watch out for the channel edge! I almost fell into the stream!”
Sian pressed both hands against her heart, hoping to calm its fluttering beat.
“Stay well to your right,” Arian cautioned, pressing forward once again. “There’s no way to tell the streambed from the path through all this muck.”
Before too long, to their relief, the water started to subside again. Had they crossed to Bayleaf yet, Sian wondered, or were they still somewhere underneath tiny Meaders? It was impossible to know. They might be underneath the open seabed, for all one could tell here. Though where all this water flowed to underneath an ocean, Sian could not begin to understand. Everything about the Ancients seemed impossibly mysterious.
“Oh no!” groaned Arian, splashing forward through the now just ankle-deep flood to press her hands against a brick wall someone had erected across the entire tunnel. Not recently either, judging by its age-blackened mortar and the seepage stains across its surface. As Sian arrived beside her, Arian waved her light in all directions, looking for a way around or through. The water passed beneath the blockage through a metal grating set along its base, but not through any space that they could hope to fit through also. “This is what I feared,” said Arian. “Someone else who didn’t want these tunnels left unblocked to cause them trouble.”
“We could backtrack a bit …” Sian ventured.
“I guess we must.” Arian gave her a grim smile. “Whatever Father Het’s fanciful notions, I doubt there’s any way for us to walk through brick walls.”
“That’s not a power I have acquired yet, no.”
For a moment, Arian stared back into the gloomy distance they had come through, then sighed, “All right. Let’s go.”
Sian turned to follow, and saw something from the corner of her eye that they had missed while focused on the unanticipated wall. “Arian, wait! What’s this?”
As Arian came splashing back, Sian pointed down at a small iron door, more a hatch, really, set low into the wall.
“Oh, Sian! What good work!” Arian reached down to grasp the corroded iron hook with which it was latched. Flecks of rust fell to the water as she tugged at it, but the latch held fast. As Sian leaned down to help, Arian simply pulled harder, and the door burst open with a muffled clatter and a gurgling swish.
Sian caught the scents of stagnation, rot, and mold. Happily, there would be just sufficient room to crouch through the opening without having to touch their faces to the shallow water — if the passage led to anywhere they wished to go, that was.
Arian looked back at Sian, then set her jaw, and stooped through the opening, taking the light with her. “I think we’re saved!” her voice echoed from inside. “Come through. It’s safe. There is a staircase here!”
Sian ducked through the hatch as well, if less gracefully than Arian had, and found herself in a small, brick-lined chamber more than high enough to stand in. A narrow masonry stair twisted upwards into darkness above them.
“Looks like they didn’t want an army marching through here,” Arian mused. “They left themselves a way, though, just big enough for one person at a time. What good luck! I bet this goes up around the wall and comes out on the other side. I’m so relieved. I can tell you now, I guess, how much I didn’t want to climb back up that waterfall.”
“Nor did I.”
As they started up the stairs, Sian wondered why the dark itself seemed so much thicker here. Then she realized the truth. “The globe is running out, I think.”
“Oh!” said Arian. “Oh dear, I think you’re right. We have only two more left, and I don’t think that will be enough if this is all the longer they last. We simply must find a cache of powder flares before much longer.”
“That would be very nice,” Sian said, thinking of those mussels she’d let Arian toss aside … how long ago? “How much longer do you think it might take to find one?”
“I’m surprised we haven’t found one already. They seemed much more frequent when I came down here with Viktor. That was many years ago, of course, and a great ways from this part of the tunnel system. Still, that wall proves people have come down here too.” She shook her head. “Let’s just keep moving. I am sure we’ll run across one soon.”
Oh, I hope so, Sian thought, trusting Arian to know what she was doing here. She began to climb again behind her, willing dreams of roasting mussels to drive thoughts of endless darkness from her mind.
Reikos stood tensely beside Pino and Ennias, gazing up with them as yet another booming crash came rumbling through the dungeon ceiling. “What in hell is going on up there?”
Ennias shook his head, and went to peer out of their cage again. “Sarit!” he shouted. “Are you up there? Sarit?” For all their calling, they had neither seen nor heard any sign of their jailer since well before all the alarming noise upstairs had started.
“Where’s he gone?” Pino asked anxiously. “It sounds like something’s caving in up there.” He turned to
Ennias, eyes wide with fear. “Are they going to just bury us down here? Seal us in to keep us quiet?”
“Don’t be crazy, boy,” the sergeant said distractedly, his eyes back on the ceiling. “Why waste a building to do what any shovel would do just as well?”
“But what are they doing?” asked Reikos. “The lad is right. That sounded like a ton of rock being dropped. On what, though? Why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Ennias fell silent as another round of noise arrived, like heavy furniture being dragged around. “But, I’m thinking something … is going very —” A sudden swell of shouting was cut short by a deafening concussion from somewhere not far up the stairs.
All three men rushed to the bars.
“Sarit!” Ennias yelled again. “Anyone!”
“Is anybody up there?” Reikos shouted at his side.
Their calls were answered this time, by a clattering of feet inside the stairwell. “Sergeant Ennias!” came Sarit’s frantic voice. “I’m coming!”
Thank all the gods! thought Reikos.
“What’s happening?” Ennias demanded as Sarit came half-stumbling around the corner, and rushed toward their cell.
“The Hall has been attacked, sir!” Sarit gasped, fumbling for his keys as he arrived. “By troops from the Factorate! With cannon! Cannon! Half the building is in flames!”
“Gods!” Reikos blurted.
Pino simply gaped, first at Reikos, then at Ennias. “Is it the war?”
“It’s started, then.” For once, Ennias looked just as dismayed as anybody. “We’ve failed.”
Sarit was already twisting his keys in the lock. “I was called away when the Factor’s troops arrived. It’s every man to save himself now, I’m afraid. But I’ll not leave you men down here to starve, sir. Nor to burn. Got to live with myself, don’t I. No matter how all this may end.”
“Where’s Domina Kattë?!” Pino exclaimed. “And the Factora-Consort?”
Sarit spared the boy a baffled glance at that. They’d not told him any of what Ennias had revealed last night. “The Consort’s safe on Home, I would expect. Lord Alkattha’s cousin, I cannot vouch for.” He pulled their cell door open and stepped back. “Left with him, perhaps.”
“Escotte’s gone, then?” asked Ennias.
“No sign of him since late last night, sir.” Sarit shrugged. “Quatama tells me he was headed for the Factorate, but maybe he knew this was coming, and has just escaped somewhere. Like him to run off without a word of warning to the rest of us. Or maybe he is dead already. Out of our hands now; that’s all I know, and all I care. If the Factor is at war with his own cousin, then the world we knew is surely at an end.” Another roaring crash came from above, more indicative of falling masonry than cannon fire this time. “If you’re going, better get out now!” said Sarit, already running for the stairs again. “Best of luck, lads. The gods watch over you!”
They required no further prompting to be out and running upward after him, Reikos just behind the sergeant, with Pino at his back. At the top, they found Sarit trying with only partial success to wrench the upper door open. Ennias stepped forward to lend Sarit a hand, and the door swung in at last, now half blocked outside by fallen stone and broken timbers.
“Looks like I got the door shut just in time on that one, eh?” Sarit grunted, scrambling up and over the debris. “Such a pretty house to burn,” he tisked.
Ennias climbed up and out just after Sarit. Reikos waved Pino on ahead of him, having come to feel protective of the boy by now. Then he climbed out as well.
Even now, they were still in the great house’s vaulted basement, well below ground level, but evidence of just how savagely the Census Taker’s residence had been punished lay all around them. With a wary glance and a hasty wave, Sarit took off running for the nearest stairwell, but Reikos and the others could do nothing for a moment but turn and gaze around them in astonishment. Two gaping patches of fallen ceiling hung into the basement at its farther end, trailing mangled streams of once-elegant furniture, chandeliers, draperies and carpet from the rooms above, onto the piles of rubble fallen through them. In the opposite direction, flames licked along roof beams as the room above them burned, presumably. Several of the house’s huge foundation columns leaned askew now, fractured and sifting dust, staggered out of true by the violence done to upper floors. Shouts of conflict and continued crashing could be heard quite clearly now, without ten or fifteen feet of muffling stone to blunt them.
“I’ll go up to see if I can find the ladies,” Ennias said, breaking Reikos’s trance of disbelief. He started for the stairwell Sarit had taken. “You two get as far away from this as —”
“Don’t imagine we’re not going with you,” Reikos growled.
“That’s right,” said Pino, heading to the sergeant’s side. “Domina Kattë is our friend, not yours.”
“They were my friends too, however briefly.” The sergeant’s voice was surprisingly gentle, Reikos thought. “You two don’t know the house. I do.”
“And if you find them injured, or unconscious?” Reikos pressed, wincing at the scenes his mind was playing out. “You will carry them both out all by yourself?” Ennias gazed at him. “Which one will you leave to burn if you cannot return in time? Sian? Or your Factora-Consort?”
“All right,” said Ennias. “Come then. We can spread out and search faster this way.”
“Why are we still talking?” Pino asked, rushing for the stairs.
The sergeant turned to follow Pino. “We’ll try Domina Kattë’s guest room first. If it’s still there.”
“Yes, this is it.” Sian watched as Arian sat down and dipped her feet into the water, sliding them slowly forward. “Is this the floor, or … aha! It is!” She stood up and took several cautious, plashing steps around the flooded chamber they’d descended into, twin to that in which they’d started, as far as Sian could tell, anyway.
Sian was no longer able to see much of anything clearly, so wan had their light become. They had not wanted to ignite a new globe until this one was entirely exhausted. “Is it all right then?”
“Yes, come down — it’s not deep. Look, there’s the door.”
“I’ll take your word for that.”
Sian groped her way down the last few steps until she felt water on her toes, the stone grown slippery beneath them. She gripped the railing with one hand until she was sure she’d reached the bottom and her footing was secure.
“This way,” came Arian’s voice, from the left.
Sian moved slowly through ankle-deep water to where Arian crouched before another open metal hatch.
Arian bent even lower and slipped through. “It’s just fine,” she called from the other side.
After winding Het’s cape around her shoulders, Sian followed, on her hands and knees, heedless of the muck and water. Better safe and stable than sorry, and things seemed to dry out again down here quickly enough. On the other side, Sian found the plash of Arian’s footsteps almost easier to follow than her bobbing globe of dying light. “I can’t see anything, can you?” This wasn’t entirely true; she could sense that the tunnel grew deeper in the middle; and she could sort of make out the curving edges of a wall beside her, the cavernous ceiling above, as well as Arian’s dim figure before her. The mossy tunnel floor was more gentle on her feet again than the rough stone staircase had been, if far more treacherous to her balance.
“Not really,” Arian replied. “But we’re heading south again, I’m pretty sure.”
“That’s good, I guess. Should we perhaps take out that second glow float yet?”
“I can still see a little,” said Arian. “Come take my hand if that will help, but I think we dare not waste a single drop of light.”
As Sian was fumbling forward to accept her offer, Arian drew the failing light along the wall beside her, just inches from its surface, then paused. “Ah! There!”
Sian stopped where she was. “What’s happened now?”
“Powd
er flares!” After a bit more splashing in the dark and the grating wrench of rusty metal, Sian heard a scraping sound, then a brilliant, smoky flash of light burst up before her, followed by the smell of sulfur as the flare subsided to a dull white-orange glow. Sian blinked and gasped, covering her face with a hand until the spots before her eyes had faded.
“I’m sorry!” Arian said. “I thought you knew what I was doing.”
“I did — just not how bright it would be. I’ll be fine.” She blinked again and looked about. The powder flare burned low and steady now, not quite so bright as the globe had been when it was new, but far brighter than what they’d been making do with recently. It did seem they were back in the tunnel they had come from. Though its contours had changed: it was higher and more rounded than before. The tile faces were gone too. Near the spot where Arian had lit their flare, Sian could now see a tall metal locker mounted to the wall. “Is there food in there?”
“If there were, I doubt we’d want to eat it. Who knows how long ago these things were left here.” Arian walked quickly further down the passage, stopping at the intersection of a smaller side-tunnel, to study something on the wall. “And here’s a map at last!”
Sian waded after her to look. It just seemed a random jumble of hash marks to her. “If that’s some language of the Ancients, it makes no sense to me.”
“It’s a simple shorthand, really. Not that hard, though I remember less of it than I had hoped.” She scrutinized the marks a while longer. “All these are tunnels. And these dots denote the distance, while these angled shapes indicate directions of the compass, I believe. … I’m pretty certain this one means south, in which case, we’re still headed in exactly the right direction!” She turned happily to Sian.