He was silent, unable to contradict me. “But then – what under the sun are they?”
A very good question, which I couldn’t answer.
“Nothing that will help us, anyway,” I said briskly. “It is a mystery for another time and place. If ever we find ourselves in a decent library, we can look them up. For now, there’s no point worrying about it. There is much in this world that we cannot understand. Shall we rest here for a while? We can save the candles, since there’s plenty of light.”
We nibbled more cheese and finished the first flask of water, sitting with our backs against the smooth wall. Xando closed his eyes, but he wasn’t asleep, for his breathing kept its normal pace.
“Were you fond of him, your husband?” he said into the silence.
Ah, that. I knew we’d have to come to it eventually, but Xando was such an accepting man, asking so few questions, that I’d hoped he wouldn’t push the point. But he deserved an answer.
“Yes, I was fond of him.” A long pause. “But… it was a pragmatic arrangement, more than anything. Convenience. He was a friend of my father, he was in love with me and I needed a husband.”
One eye opened. “Needed?”
“I had to have – an outlet.” Demons, it was hard to explain to him. How could he possibly understand?
He turned to look at me fully, puzzled, but he said nothing, leaving it to me to explain, or not.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “I can’t shut out other people’s emotions. They assault me all the time. Whatever they feel, I feel too. Some of them are distressing; grief, sorrow, pain, loss. Some are difficult for me to deal with, like anger, but I’m not often exposed to violent anger.
“But desire – sexual desire – that is everywhere. You walk down any street in any town, and people are thinking of sex. While they groom a horse, while they chop vegetables, while they choose apples at the market. A man sees a shapely woman, and instantly his mind is full of sex. And so is mine, if I pass him by.
“One man with lusty thoughts – that I could cope with. I move past him, and I am free of it. But a whole street, a whole town, a whole city – there is no escape. And it builds up. Being exposed to it all the time – it burns inside me, fills me with desire too. I—”
Shame washed over me like a tidal wave. It was so hard to talk about it, to admit to the weakness I couldn’t fight. But he loved me and he needed to know the worst of me.
“I did some very bad things. I went out at night and found men… strangers, anyone I could find. It started when I was thirteen—” I heard his intake of breath. “By the time I was close to fifteen, I was jumping the servants, and I knew I had to do something. Carryl – my father’s friend – had been in love with me for a while. So I married him, and assuaged my need with him. It kept me sane, and brought him some happiness, too.”
“I see,” Xando said slowly, but I wondered whether he did, really. Could a man who felt no desire understand what it was like to burn up with it? “And then he died, so you became a companion-servant.”
“Yes. Although – he didn’t just die. I killed him.”
“And the son of the Most Mighty Prince Kru Hrin. And your father. From which I judge that it must have been a terrible accident.”
“Oh yes. That was anger. Prince Kru Karn – the son – developed a craving to add me to his collection of wives. If you know anything of the Hrandish and their ways, you will understand that I might as well have joined a brothel, so my father would never have allowed it. But… my weakness made me susceptible to his advances, and he believed I had agreed to it. When my father explained his mistake, he became aggressively angry.”
“And you became angry also.”
“Yes. I am not sure what happens, but it is like an explosion, with fire. It had happened once before, when I was nine, but this time the effect was much stronger. The Prince was injured, and we had to leave Hurk Hranda very quickly and go to Caxangur, where I married Carryl. And in time, of course, the Prince found me there, his anger undimmed, and this time the effect was much, much stronger. I destroyed a large part of the villa.”
“But you were unhurt.”
“Completely. I walked out of the devastation unscathed, stole clothing and money to fund my escape from the room of one of the servants who had died, and made my way to Crenton Port.”
“Poor, poor Sanya.” He reached out his hand, and I took it gratefully, as his affection seeped into me, warming my heart. “And the woman you tossed across the courtyard?”
“Oh, Janna.” I’d almost forgotten her. “That was anger, too, but that time there was no fire with it. Just the explosive force.”
“Interesting. It must be part of your connection to fire, of course, but perhaps because you have never learned to control it, somehow it breaks out in this destructive way. You will have to practise, now that you have learned to produce fire.”
I didn’t have to ask if my confession had made him think worse of me. His love was undimmed, although mixed with sorrow and sympathy. There was no blame, nothing but acceptance.
He lifted my hand to his cheek, and held it there for a moment. “Don’t cry,” he said softly.
I hadn’t been aware that I was crying, but there the tears were, trickling down my face. I turned and curled myself into his willing arms, and he held me very tightly for a long time.
“Are you feeling better?” he said eventually. “Perhaps we should think about moving on.”
“Quite right.” I sniffed, and wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “Choose a tunnel and let’s see if we can find a way out.”
~~~~~
We took the tunnel that seemed to be going east. After a short distance we again encountered side tunnels, but this time the branches opened in the direction we were heading, and we had to decide which fork to take.
“Left or right?” Xando said, chewing his lip in thought. “The left is more easterly.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He spun round to face me, eyebrows raised. “Do you mean that any one of them will lead us out of the mountain, or have you become so dispirited that you no longer care?”
That made me smile. “I’m neither so optimistic nor so pessimistic. Wherever they lead, I think they will all bring us to the same place eventually.”
“So how do you work that out?”
“In the pool chamber, there were nine passages, remember? We took one at random—”
“Hardly random,” he said. “We chose the one that got us away from the bloom the soonest.”
“Well, true. Then the tunnel wound about, and veered up and down, but there were no side tunnels until just before we reached the egg chamber. No choices to make. I think all those nine passageways ended up at the same place.”
He frowned, working it out. “But we only saw three—”
“Yes, yes, but if we had started from a different fissure, we would have seen eight or five or only one. Oh, never mind!” His bewildered face provoked me. Why couldn’t he see it? “Look, let’s do the exact reverse of what happened as we arrived at the egg chamber, all right? The last branch came in from the right, so it would be the left going outwards, so we take the right fork here. Then the left, then the right again. After that, if I’m right, no more forks until we get to – well, wherever we’re going.”
I had a suspicion about where these tunnels were taking us, but I didn’t want to confuse him any more.
“I have no idea what you mean, but do whatever you wish,” he said sulkily, and he muttered about it every step of the way. But after the third fork there were no more side tunnels, exactly as I’d predicted, and he grew quiet.
We stopped more often this time, but only for a short rest, with a sip of water and nothing to eat. The way was mostly uphill, although the slope was very gentle and not tiring, but I wanted to be sure we paced ourselves. At the fourth such stop, I insisted that we eat something and then lie down to rest properly. Xando slept, I think, but
my mind was too active to rest.
So I lay in the gloom of the flickering lamp, pondering the tunnels and the pool of blue water and the flickers, and tried to make sense of it all. Many mountains had dragon tunnels in them, but they were nothing like these perfectly symmetrical ones. The town at Twisted Rock was a mage-built refuge, so perhaps this whole network of passageways and chambers was a mage project, for some ineffable purpose. We would never know their intent, for the mages were all as dead as the dragons.
After a while, I sat up and checked the navigation stone again: still mostly eastwards. Perhaps more southeasterly than due east, but still generally the right direction. I began to think optimistically of how we would find our way down to the plains once we escaped from the mountain.
~~~~~
We walked on, our steps slowing with weariness, I suspect, since it seemed to take far longer than I expected to reach our destination. But then we rounded a corner, and Xando stopped dead, so that I almost crashed into the back of him.
“Oh no! Look where we are!”
I stepped round him and looked. There before us was a fissure, just like those surrounding the blue pool. But to my dismay, it was walled off. I’d forgotten about the bloom.
I swore. “Now we have to wait.”
“Wait here? What for? Surely we need to go back and try a different passage.”
“No, no!” I said with as much patience as I could manage. “We are in the right place.”
“The right place! We are exactly where we started, Sanya. Beyond these openings lies the blue pool.”
“There may be a blue pool, but not the blue pool. Not the one we know.”
His face was a picture of disbelief and confusion. “More than one? No! Impossible! We are back at Twisted Rock…”
His voice tailed off, and I could see him thinking it over and beginning to wonder.
“We went mostly north from Twisted Rock to the egg chamber. Then we went mostly east. This is a different place. It may or may not have a pool, but everything looks identical so far. We just have to wait until these walls disappear.”
“You think—? Oh.”
~~~
Impossible to tell how long we waited. There were no days or nights, no moons, no daily routine. We ate a little, slept a little, talked a little, then slept some more. We doled out the food in minute amounts, not just to make it last longer but so that there was always another tiny meal to look forward to soon. It broke the monotony.
I was glad I’d thought to bring a folding leather barge bucket with me. In natural caves there is always a corner to relieve yourself, but in these pristine passageways, it would have offended my sense of cleanliness to leave any unpleasant waste behind.
Xando still wasn’t quite convinced that we were not back where we started, but he gave up arguing and spent the waking hours telling me about the institute and what I should expect there. I was more concerned with getting out of the mountains, but I let him talk. It kept our spirits up.
And then I woke one time to a change in the air and a blue glow, and knew that the strange walls had gone. I jumped up and rushed to the fissure, gazing out at the blue water beyond. And it looked exactly like the one at Twisted Rock, calm and pale. Even though I’d expected that, it shook my confidence slightly. What if I were wrong? What if we were about to walk out of the mountain straight into the arms of the Caxangur and Hurk Hranda mob?
There was only one way to find out.
“Xando! Wake up – the doors are open.”
He was instantly alert, as if he hadn’t been sleeping at all, just resting with his eyes closed. We gathered everything together – we’d spread ourselves out rather, so it took a while – and then walked hand in hand past the pool and down the short tunnel to the flickers’ cavern.
Here all doubt was laid to rest. This was most assuredly not Twisted Rock. The cavern’s size and shape were identical, and the rock was pitted with a multitude of holes, just the same. But there were no extractors’ platforms, and here every hole was occupied. There were flickers clinging to the outside of the rock and all over the floor, climbing over each other in great heaps, their tiny lights pulsing with excitement. Instead of Twisted Rock’s hundreds, here there were thousands of the creatures. And they were all thrilled to see us.
My head was filled with the flicker equivalent of squeals of glee, cycling frantically through their colours. My own responded, but I was barely aware of them from the assault on my senses. Head down, I strode through the cave, trying not to stand on any of the writhing heaps, although I daresay they wouldn’t have minded.
Then down the short tunnel to the wooden door. It was closed, but I wrenched at it and shook it until it yielded to my temper, and I was free.
I stopped short. Instead of the natural cavern I’d expected, I was on a narrow stone balcony with stairs to one side. Some distance away, I caught glimpses of the glowing golden stone of the outer wall of the town, but below, all was in darkness.
“Well, that is very different,” Xando said, running up behind me and stopping abruptly. “There ought to be a town here somewhere. Is it below us, do you suppose?”
Impossible to say. If it was, it lay in deep darkness.
The lamp was still lit, so we made our way cautiously down the stairs. At the bottom, lamps on poles sprang to life, illuminating a wide square. In the centre, a fountain started playing, plashing softly. It was not a style I’d seen before, featuring some kind of four-legged beast squirting water from its mouth. Around the perimeter of the square stood large porticoed buildings, imposing and official-looking.
“Do you recognise anything?” Xando said softly. Somehow it seemed natural to whisper.
“No, nothing. The buildings are the same style, but the streets are different. And there are no people.”
“It must be night-time. Look how dark it is. Everyone will be asleep.”
“No. This is an undiscovered mine town. Those flickers have never been extracted. There are no platforms to reach the higher ones, and there are just so many of them. I doubt there is anyone here.”
“But we will be able to get out of here? Over the wall?”
“Maybe. If there is a crane, or materials to make one. But it depends…”
“On what?”
“Whether there is food here, mainly. If not, we will have to go back to the egg chamber and try another tunnel. But even if there is no food, there is one thing here of great interest to me.”
He smiled. “Wine?”
I laughed. “A greater attraction even than wine just now. A bathhouse. There – can you see the building over there with the little tower on top? That is just like the Twisted Rock bathhouse. We will try that, then find somewhere to sleep until the sun is up.”
“Very well. Lead the way, Gracious Lady.” Mostly we talked in Low Mesanthian, but it warmed my heart to hear to intonations of home.
It was not far, just across the square, but even so, I was glad to arrive. The place was so like Twisted Rock, yet subtly different. Even the emptiness felt oppressive. Apart from a few popular routes, most of Twisted Rock’s residents had stayed indoors and I’d had the squares and streets and alleys to myself, but I’d never felt as jumpy as I was now. It was as if we were being watched, yet I was sure the town was empty. We saw no signs of life, anyway.
The bathhouse was in darkness, but when I pushed open the main door, the interior walls began to glow. And there it was, just like the Twisted Rock bathhouse, the three pools, the galleries above, the strange little tables. And water constantly flowing. I had to search around for soap and towels, but then I tossed aside my grimy clothes and waded into the water.
It was blissful. I am not a natural peasant, grubbing in dirt all day and bathing in the river twice a year for festivals. I was used to my own bathing pool and clean clothes several times a day. I was used to servants running at my command, too, but I could manage without them. The lack of hot water was a much greater trial to me.
; Xando joined me rather tentatively. It was not embarrassment at my nakedness, or his own, that bothered him, for he seemed to feel no shame or modesty. It was more that Tre’annatha have strict segregation of the sexes, and I suspect he’d never before bathed with a woman. But he’d shared my bed, and it wasn’t such a big step to share my bathing pool, too.
It was so odd to me to bathe with a man who was completely unaroused, that I couldn’t resist teasing him a little. I soaped him all over, as I had with Petreon, then helped him rinse the lather from his hair. When that was done, I sat astride him and kissed him thoroughly, for a long time. And he was quite happy to let me do all that, while remaining as passionless as a child. He was getting better at kissing, but he was no nearer to being a man to me.
Since I was twelve or so, I’d been tossed about by the currents of men’s desires. Women’s too, come to that. I would have given anything to be free of it. Yet now that I was, when I had nothing but platonic love on offer, I found myself missing the intimacy of sex. I liked Xando very well now that I’d got to know him, but it tore at my heart that we would never share the delights of sex, sealing our affection in the most intense and beautiful way possible.
I dressed again in the cleanest clothes I had. I wasn’t sure how long it might take to find bedlinen, so we took a heap of towels and went to the nearest house that had a bed, made ourselves a towel nest and curled up like moundrat pups. That was the best night’s sleep I’d had for moons.
When we woke, it was still dark outside.
“Did we sleep right through the day?” Xando said.
“I don’t think so.” I peered up at the sky, and it struck me now that it was too dark. There were no stars, no clouds, nothing. “I think it’s worse than that. I think this whole town is underground.”
18: Buried
We went straight to the wall, and that told the whole, dreadful story. The wall itself was intact, glowing gently in the darkness, the stairs clearly visible. We climbed eagerly to the top, peered over the parapet and saw only blackness beyond. It was solid rock. We could reach over the parapet and touch it. There were cracks and crevices in it, but no sign of light filtering in. The rock was too thick. Arching away above our heads was a mountain, kept aloft only by the power of magic, whatever defensive shell the mages had left in place to protect their refuge. We were standing in a bubble of magic.
The Magic Mines of Asharim Page 17