Kingmaker

by Eric Zawadzki

CHAPTER 39

  After they each took a deep breath, Butu confirmed no one waited for them. Lujo put both his hands in the hole and pulled. The stone melted around them, creating an opening big enough to slip through. Butu took a deep breath of the cool, musty air, welcoming the more open space. He clapped his hand quietly on Lujo’s shoulder.

  “See anything around us?” Lujo asked. “I can feel the tunnels, but not any people in them.”

  Butu shook his head before recalling the futility of the gesture. At this close range, he could see Lujo as if the sordenu were carved of stone — enough to make out facial expressions but not enough to note fine details or colors. Lujo, he knew, couldn’t even see that.

  “Not much. I can see through canvas and sand, but not rock.”

  Lujo frowned, but he said, “At least the same is true for our enemies, even if they share your talent.”

  “What about Pisor? Can you feel it?”

  Lujo smirked and tugged his earlobe. “I’m afraid not. There’s way too much metal and rock in this mountain. I wouldn’t be able to tell Pisor from a vein of silver down here until I’m really close to it.”

  “This is going to be a lot harder than we expected,” Jani said.

  She and Butu laughed bitterly.

  As if we’d expected it to be easy.

  “My sense of stone is flickering like a torch, too,” Lujo confessed with a nervous laugh. “I can move the rock, but I can’t always feel through it. That’s why I was sent to the sordenu, you know.”

  No boasting, this time. He’s too terrified to invent a story.

  Butu laid a hand on Lujo’s shoulder. “We must hold onto our magic for just a few more days. After that, we’ll have Pisor and be well on our way back to Jasper.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Lujo said, and started down the tunnel, one hand brushing the smooth wall. Butu grabbed Jani’s hand and followed him quickly.

  “How do you know it’s this way?”

  “It slopes down, and the rock that way feels different,” Lujo explained. “Not basalt, like the rest, but something lighter.” He paused, lifted his hand from the wall, and then put it back. “This wall isn’t natural.”

  We should be quiet, Butu thought as they marched. I can’t see through the rock, but sound carries even in the dark.

  Jani’s hand gripped his in the darkness, palm sweaty. He squeezed it reassuringly.

  “I don’t like not being able to see,” she whispered.

  “I’ll be your eyes,” Butu whispered back. They stumbled along on the uneven floor.

  “The mountain above us is riddled with tunnels,” Lujo whispered after a few minutes of silence. “Tunnels in basalt! Even with the magic of first- and second-cyclers, it must have taken centuries to carve them all.”

  “Basalt is the black rock outside, right?” Jani asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s the lighter rock you say we’re moving toward?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but it isn’t basalt. It’s not even directly under the mountain.”

  “Then why are we going this way?” Butu asked. “I thought Pisor was in Urgaruna.”

  Lujo’s excitement was palpable. “Because legends of Urgaruna describe a city made of crystal, and you’re not going to find a lot of crystals in a giant slab of basalt. The rock up there is just the gatehouse. We’re looking for a city.”

  Urgaruna was described as a city made of crystal, but why would someone hollow out a mountain to build a city? Butu thought. Living underground, with no sun — they’d have no idea of the time, and what would they eat?

  A sensation of people moving interrupted his thoughts, and he grabbed Lujo and Jani and pulled them to one side. Jani grunted as she hit the wall, and Lujo opened his mouth to speak. Butu let out a sharp hiss, and they fell quiet.

  Torchlight blossomed a few yards away, and a head appeared from a crack in the wall. Someone muttered something, and then the torch vanished and continued on.

  Butu blinked the spots from his eyes, and crept to the crevice. Tensing, he stuck his head through. He took a quick look before pulling back.

  “They’re gone,” he said. “This must be the main tunnel.”

  “Which way did they go?” Jani asked.

  “Up. We won’t have to think about them.” He stepped through the crack, followed closely by Jani and Lujo. He glanced after the guards, then looked the other way. The tunnel obviously bent downward here. “There’ll be guards at the end of this.”

  “Maybe,” Lujo said. “Maybe not. The army is behind us, and they’ll expect no one to get through that. Let’s go.” He sounded less than enthusiastic.

  “Wait,” Butu said. Something that had nagged him came to the fore. “I feel water up ahead.” As soon as he said it, he lost the feel of it.

  “How far?” Lujo asked.

  “I don’t know. It felt like a lot of water, though — more than we saw anywhere in the shanjin.”

  “The Urgarun Wail,” Lujo murmured, inhaling deeply. “We’re practically there.”

  Butu caught a whiff of brine in the air. He felt the water again, flickering briefly in his awareness, just around the bend in the tunnel.

  Enough water to support a town the size of Jasper, Butu thought. Maybe even enough to water a city. The feeling passed as soon as he acknowledged it.

  Lujo started walking, hand dragging against a wall and feet shuffling slowly. Butu followed, guiding Jani as best he could.

  Lujo cleared his throat. “When the king’s army killed the last defenders of Urgaruna, the children of the city wept without stop for many days. By the time the soldiers reached the city, they found it surrounded by a moat. The army was thirsty from the march and siege, so they filled their waterskins from the moat. It was not until they began to drink that they learned the water was salty — a sea made from the tears of the children whose parents the soldiers had so mercilessly slaughtered. Many died of thirst, because salt water only makes you thirstier.”

  “Shanubu,” Jani breathed.

  Butu shuddered at the thought of drinking from a pool of tears — especially the tears of children the soldiers later helped their king murder.

  We are sordenu. Would we disobey our kluntra if he ordered us to kill children?

  “I think the tunnel curves to the right,” Jani said.

  Butu blinked. She can see?

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Lujo whispered.

  “There must be light up ahead,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  Butu frowned. He couldn’t tell a difference. “It must be very dim. I still can’t see color. Or is everything down here still black and grey?”

  “We’re out of the basalt and into the first layers of limestone, now, so it’s probably a slightly lighter grey,” Lujo said softly. “I definitely feel crystal up ahead, though, and I’m pretty sure it’s salt.”

  “In the water?”

  “No. I can’t feel salt dissolved in water. This is rock salt — lots and lots of it.”

  “I thought the city was made of diamond,” Jani said.

  Lujo shrugged. “Maybe it was. Maybe the curse changed that, too.”

  “And the light?

  “I don’t know, but it’s getting brighter.”

  Butu could see a difference, now. Beyond having a sense of his surroundings, he could see the slight sparkle of tiny crystals covering the surfaces of the tunnel. The air became distinctly salty as the passage opened into a vast cavern. The ceiling vanished high above their heads, and the path they followed became a rounded, stone bridge over black waters glittering below.