Megan turned to Tyril. The Sawl woman was watching their puzzlement with impassive unease.
“What’s this all about, Tyr?” asked Megan, though she recognized that careful blankness that came into Tyril’s manner when she didn’t want to understand what was said to her. Tyril’s brown eyes lowered briefly, flicked to the doorway and back to Megan. Megan had an image of a smooth lake rippled by disturbance from below.
Susannah balanced the little clay bead on her palm. “For khem?” she asked hopefully. “Is it for khem?”
Tyril nodded slowly, unconvincingly. “Lagri embriha. Nho arma Lagri.”
Megan’s eyes lit. “Ah, right.” She stroked the bright streamers. “These are Lagri’s associated colors. The colors of the Flame. But I hadn’t noticed them decorating doorways before.”
“Something special for us?” offered Susannah.
“Umm.” Megan lowered the lamp thoughtfully as Tyril moved on ahead. “But why should we be in particular need of Lagri’s attention?”
“And why just Lagri? Why not the other sister as well?”
“You weren’t listening to Stav’s lecture. Rainstorms are considered part of Valla’s weaponry. She’s a bit unpopular at the moment, as you can imagine.” Megan’s brow furrowed. She fell into a pondering silence. Susannah let her think in peace. She’d only be grouchy if disturbed.
They reached a more inhabited sector of the Caves, turning into a wider thoroughfare with high barrel-vaulted ceilings. Here the floor was worn smooth. It dipped toward the center where generations of Sawls had walked a path into the stone. Large oil lamps with painted bases glowed in regularly spaced niches, showing the walls to be of a pale, granular rock, enlivened with sculpted textures. In some sections, the rock appeared to be woven, in shaded strands that crisscrossed or herringboned. In others, a thousand tiny scorings dipped and swelled with the contours of the wall, like the furrows of a wheat field.
“Imagine what they could do in bronze,” Susannah murmured. She reinterpreted the phrase “living rock” as she trailed a hand across age-softened stone that seemed to breathe in time with the slow flicker of Megan’s lantern.
The big tunnel became brighter and more crowded as they went along. Guildsmen bustled by with big baskets strapped to their backs. Cartwheels rattled up ahead.
“Everyone’s up and about,” said Megan, emerging from her ponder. She extinguished her lantern and checked her chronometer. “This’ll be the second shift, if I have it right, or actually, the second just heading home to eat and the third going to work.”
“It’s a sensible way to organize things. Think how overcrowded the Caves would feel if they all lived on the same schedule,” said Susannah. “Earth could learn from the Sawls’ example.”
“Perhaps,” grumped Megan. “If you were brought up with it. I for one long for the old middle-of-the-night lull. Used to get my best thinking done then.”
The Sawls who passed smiled pleasantly or waved but did not stop to chat. A slim man wearing the sign of the WeaverGuild on his chest paced beside Tyril briefly for a murmured exchange, then bid goodbye and sped off down a side tunnel. The congestion of people and carts increased. They filed around a slow-moving two-wheeler laden with stacks of grain bags, hauled by a bright-eyed cart hakra the size of a large sheepdog. Its fleshy calloused hooves made no sound on the stone floor. Susannah was reminded to revisit the lower-level stables where the dairy herds were housed. Liphar had rushed them through that leg of his tour, showing a distinct dislike for the big cowlike creatures.
They passed through a residential area, where smaller corridors intersected at regular intervals. Children played a Sawl version of tag at the crossings, or gathered against the walls, engrossed in games that involved brightly colored stone counters being passed back and forth. Susannah saw one boy hunkered over a huge pile of stones. He sported a victorious grin. She nudged Megan.
“Even the children are gamblers,” she laughed.
Megan made a sour face. “So it would appear.”
Down each smaller corridor, five or six dwelling caverns opened onto a common tunnel. Old men leaned in their doorways, calling across the corridor to each other. Householders swept up the cycle’s deposit of straw and manure to dump into bins at the corners, A father called his children in to wash. Balls and small curly-haired animals tumbled underfoot amid shouts and laughter. The sounds and smells of cooking drifted down the side streets. The stares as the Terrans passed were brief or covert. There was no longer the pregnant hush that used to follow them wherever they went in the Caves.
With still-increasing traffic and bustle, they approached a major intersection. The crossing tunnel was as wide as an urban boulevard on Earth. Its arching vaults sharpened and magnified the clamor of voices, groaning axles and wheels clattering on stone. The racket was overwhelming.
“I always feel at home in the MarketHall,” Megan remarked.
“I always feel like I just got off a cruise ship,” Susannah returned.
Megan laughed darkly, “Fiix is a little out of the way, but it could make a proper addition to the commercial tours, I suppose. At least that would prevent CONPLEX from digging it up down to the bedrock.”
The MarketHall stretched several hundred yards to either side of the intersection. A honeycomb of two—and three-storied shops clung to the high cavern walls. Cloth awnings and banners hung from upper windows; signs painted above on the naked rock proclaimed product and proprietor in colored pictures and spiky lettering, Oil lamps flared from giant spoked rings suspended from the vaulting. They lit mountains of wares spread out on tables and carts. Susannah squinted like a surfacing mole. The open-fronted shops were bright with lamp glare, showing off shelves of glassware and ceramics, handwoven cloth, bright embroidery, paper and leather goods, wooden tools and painted toys. The raw materials were also offered: bulk wool and yarns, dyes, hides, select woods, clay, stones, and the strong plant fibers used for rope and straw matting and wickerwork.
“Don’t you find it odd to see no food for sale?” asked Susannah. “I mean, think of the cult of food-selling at home.”
“Food isn’t exactly a pastime here,” replied Megan. “Has to be more carefully regulated than that.”
Susannah made a circling gesture. “You think all this is what satisfies their commercial yearnings, which we know they have? I mean, enough to allow them to practice their classic Marxism where the food is concerned?”
“I’d guess survival here dictates a controlled distribution system. Communal food stores feed the greatest number most fairly, and allow for the kind of long-range supply planning they need to make it all last. What impresses me is how little corruption there seems to be within the FoodGuild.” Megan shrugged and smiled. “All that gambling helps satisfy the old commercial yearnings as well, I imagine.”
They moved through the midst of the bustle, Shoppers crowded in with baskets and multicolored two-wheeled carts, exchanging greetings and news and comments about the merchandise, but Susannah noticed very little buying going on, The proprietors lounged in the doorways of the various guild shops, They gossiped and listened to the reed-and-pipes of the street musicians, and watched dolefully as the shoppers fingered their wares and moved on. Some essentials were being purchased, a new wooden bowl or a wicker back basket to replace one falling apart at the seams.
“The buyers are in a cautious mood,” Susannah commented. Rations of the local green-amber beer were being distributed from the FoodGuild’s tentlike kiosks that were spaced regularly among the stores. It was sour and low in alcoholic content. Among the Terrans, only Stavros found it worth the trouble. Among the shoppers, it was going like hotcakes.
“Cautious, but cheerful,” Megan replied.
At the far end of the MarketHall, the cavern broadened even further into a vast interior plaza. Above it rose an open shaft that sliced upward through the many living levels of the Caves, all the way to the top of the cliffs. A clever system of deflectors and baffles drew ou
t the stale, smoke-laden air without letting in the rain or snow.
In the center of the plaza, a deep stone well gave up crystal water into a long stone trough. Animal and Sawl alike lined up to drink from the cold green sparkle. The air was rich with the smells of beast and manure. Tyril led the two women through the jam of carts and wagons. A priests’ apprentice stood in the center of a group of men wearing the Wheelwrights’ guildseal. His young face was sober as he collected a handful of bulging leather pouches.
On the far side of the plaza, the market boulevard split to drop toward the lower level on the right, and climb up a wide ramp to the left. Shallow flights of steps hugged each wall. Tyril turned upward, out of the hustle and noise. The incline was long and easy. At the top, she stood aside with an anticipatory smile to let Susannah and Megan pass by.
The light was dim, the air fresh and cool. It smelled of stone and wet clay. The walls opened up around them. Susannah stopped and let out a sigh of delighted awe. Her every sense was compelled upward, as in a Gothic cathedral, where wonder and architecture merge into a single experience. But the hall’s enormous loft gave an impression of narrowness that was misleading. It was uncolumned and as wide as the base of the Terran Lander. From where Susannah stood at the head of the ramp, it stretched resolutely into blackness to both right and left. Despite being carved of solid rock, it gave a sense of both lightness and light: in the faint shafts thrown low through open doorways, in the receding glimmer of a high row of blown-glass chandeliers that marched into the darkened distance.
Tyril murmured softly from behind, pointing upward. The chandeliers hung unlit but for a single lonely bluish flame that kept vigil in the center of each shimmering cluster of spheres.
“Something about when the lamps are lighted, I think,” said Megan in the same hushed tone.
Susannah imagined a Sawlish festival graced by a thousand blazing galaxies of glass. Each chandelier was individually shaped, like the galaxies, and each nearly as complex, a froth of opalescent bubbles caught in flight.
A look of peace smoothed Tyril’s brown face. She ushered them smiling into the hall. The marble floor was as smooth as a lake at twilight. It was set with square tiles of pale green and white and blue, in a large repeating pattern of three interlocking circles. Each center circle was missing some random section of its arc. The stone gleamed with the satin patina of age, spotlessly clean as if recently mopped.
A wainscoting of polished white marble ran along both walls, as tall as the average Sawl. It flared out into a bench at sitting height. On the seat, the high polish was worn away. The stone was warm to the touch, like skin. A painstakingly sculpted geometric band finished the top of the wainscoting with a gentle roll. Above that, the Friezes began.
Susannah gaped upward at a vast wall of sculpture. It was broken into separate panels and levels, one above the other, mounting into the darkness beyond the chandeliers. The figures were life-sized or bigger. They sprang into motion as if born from the rock itself. With precisely imagined detail of expression and anatomy, they laughed and wept and danced and stumbled along the walls. They moved in families or in multitudes, never alone, muscles straining, faces vivid with momentary joy or anguish.
Susannah had to back up against one wall to see the highest friezes on the opposite wall. There were stories to be read in the stone. Some were easily made out, a simple telling of a domestic event: a particularly rich harvest, a contest of athletes, a gathering of musicians and dancing. Other sequences were more obscure. They were haunted by dark imagery, by violence and suffering, anger, bewilderment, outraged innocence.
She felt Megan draw closer as if in reaction to the darkness marching through the Friezes.
“Don’t they look like they’re all waiting for something?” Megan whispered. “Even as they go on about their business? It’s like that in the entry friezes, too.”
“Waiting for what?”
“What do you wait for on this grand a scale? Either salvation or some final disaster.”
Throughout the dark chaos of the Friezes, two recurrent figures stalked in tandem, ever together, ever in conflict, always dominating the smaller figures of the multitudes. One was stocky and angular, the other sinuous as smoke. They fought without visible weapons, but the signs of unsettled weather shadowed them wherever they appeared: great billowing waters and towers of cloud carved in the rock, lightning scoring a ravaged stone landscape, fire, hail, wind and ice.
“Guess who,” said Megan, pointing.
The goddesses’ eyes burned dim malevolent fire.
Tyril did not look too closely at the Friezes as she drew her party down the hall. A distance along, a thin scaffold of lashed timbers climbed one wall. A rail-thin apprentice burrowed in the depths of a large wicker basket, then tied a slim leather-wrapped object to a rope hanging from the upper level and tugged on it gently. Atop the scaffold, a Sawl artisan perched with a lantern, chalking a new design across a stretch of virgin rock. The scaffold quaked alarmingly as he moved about, pulling up the rope to untie the little bundle.
The apprentice grinned shyly as Tyril greeted him and went back to burrowing in the basket. Susannah noticed a tunic-clad figure seated cross-legged on the shadowy bench along the opposite wall. She did not recognize him until he spoke.
“Hello,” called Stavros quietly, without getting up. “Welcome to the FriezeHall.”
Susannah thought he looked very much at home, and rather put out by their intrusion. This was obviously not his first visit, as it was theirs. She wondered how long he had known about this magnificent hall but could not think of a way to ask that did not sound accusatory.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Megan, not caring how she sounded.
“Watching,” he replied blandly.
The scaffold shook again as the stonecutter set aside his chalk, rearranged his light, then reached for his wooden mallet and tools. He unwrapped the leather bundle and took up a stout little chisel as if it were a sacred object. Stavros rose from the bench and ambled out of the shadows, pointing upward.
“See that tool?” His expression shared some of the artisan’s reverence for the rough-hewn sliver of black metal. “Probably belonged to his great-great-grandfather, at least. Back in his guildhall, there will be a record somewhere of all the different panels carved with this particular tool.”
“History as totem magic,” said Megan. “The tool’s past deeds surround it with good medicine, as my Indian friends would say.”
“It’s admirable, really,” he continued, his manner as ungiving as the rock itself and totally at odds with his subject matter. “So little metal available to them, and they use it not to make weapons or currency but to tell their stories, record their myths, to explain themselves to the future.”
“Very poetic, Ibiá,” said Megan dryly.
His jaw tightened stubbornly but his reply was to direct Susannah’s attention upward once more to the sculpted panel next to the artisan’s sketch. Two familiar figures carried on another phase of their endless battling. Touches of fading polychrome on hair and drapery hinted at an original brilliance of color, but now the natural pallor of the stone muted all but their eyes.
“Lagri has the red eyes, of course,” Stavros lectured. “And the lavender is always Valla, though sometimes she’s blue.”
“I noticed,” said Megan, “that most of the goddess figures have cabochon jewels, but in a few that look more recently carved, the eyes are faceted. We should be able to use that as a yardstick for at least one technological advance.”
Susannah studied the wall more carefully. “Jewels, did you say? Precious stones? Not glass?”
“Based on my layman’s knowledge,” answered Stavros with forced nonchalance, “I’d guess the lavender is amethyst; semiprecious, at least on Earth. But there are more exotic minerals that can produce a crystal that color. As for the reds, well, garnet has iron in it, which is rare on Fiix, so maybe they’re ruby. And the blue could be sapphire.”
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br /> Megan clucked her tongue. “Definitely not glass. Can you imagine what…” She glanced at Stavros then, and fell silent with sudden understanding.
Susannah was still peering at the dark sparkle above her head. “Whew,” she breathed, and decided that she no longer cared if she sounded accusatory. “How long have you known about this place?”
Stavros shrugged. “Awhile.”
Her suspicions blooming, she turned to face him sternly, wondering at Megan’s uncharacteristic restraint. “A long while? Since before the storm?”
His eyes met hers briefly, then shied away as if it hurt to hold her gaze.
“You told the Sawls not to let us in here, didn’t you?” she pursued.
He opened his mouth in automatic denial, then shut it. “You’d have preferred a diplomatic incident?” he growled. “Before we had half a chance to do what we came here to do? You know Clausen’s attitude toward the Noninterference Code! He would have been up on a scaffold prying out eyes in a second!”
Megan watched with interest as Susannah decided it was time to get angry. Tyril’s placid features slid toward concern.
“And I used to think Emil was paranoid to insist that the Sawls controlled our access to the Caves!” Susannah exclaimed.
“Our welcome here is less secure than you think,” Stavros defended. “So far, we’ve been accepted because we’ve behaved ourselves!”
“Or you’ve made sure we behaved ourselves. Kept us out of trouble, is that it?”
“Clausen was the problem,” Stavros insisted. “I couldn’t risk him knowing.”
“You couldn’t risk!” Susannah caught herself on the verge of shouting, sighed with the effort and backed off. “Look, I’ll assume you were looking out for our interests, and for the Sawls, but…” She stopped, finally unable to express herself without outrage.
The Wave and the Flame Page 15