by Karen Myers
In fact, it was difficult to draw any conclusions at all about their captors. The wizards they’d fought at the compound of the chained wizards had seemed… well, the only word that came to mind was criminal. Not to put too fine a point on it, they felt like thugs to Najud, wizards or not.
Certainly their only visible jailer seemed to be cut from the same cloth. Were they the ones that had organized the attack and carried them off?
That question had gone the rounds all day today, and the consensus was that these were hirelings. Which left the issue open—who was in charge? Who had planned all this, and what did they want? Had they made any demands yet?
What Vylkar had said about their wizard attackers falling dead certainly had the ring of Penrys. Why weren’t they incensed about losing so many in the attack? He knew he’d done damage, and he was sure his cellmates had, too. Someone was paying a lot to capture and hold them, and they were going to want value for their money.
They could’ve overpowered the jailer who brought their food and stepped out of the room, but that was premature until they could break the shield itself, or had some plan of physical attack. Whoever was powering the shields around them, they were stronger than the five wizards, even working together the way Najud had started to show them at Mrigasba’s urging. Glad you’re not here Pen-sha, but you and your chain would surely be death on this shield.
There weren’t enough weapons to go around. Mrigasba had managed to conceal a dagger, and Najud’s turban had yielded two small knives, better than nothing but more for surprise than sustained attack.
It was going to have to be wizardry or nothing. Without discussion, he had assumed the leadership during the day, and no one seemed eager to contest it in an environment where more than wizardry was clearly going to be necessary. Char Dazu was too young and tentative, Vylkar too elderly, and Mrigasba still damaged from his head injury. Ijumo was too ill to attempt it, and Gen Jongto was no wizard.
Najud finished the last of his stew and laid the bowl down. “All right, my friends. Time to report on the state of our health, honestly, starting with Gen Jongto. And after that, back to our shielding exercises. If they drop the outer shield we’ll have an inner one to match. And then we can start to look for a weakness in theirs, yes?”
No one demurred, and with a quiet clatter of wooden bowls and cups being laid on the filthy stone floor, they prepared themselves for the evening’s lesson.
Munraz had been surprised on his way up the eastern slope of Tegong Him just as the sun finally set. The trail he was following petered out as the surface became more vertical and turned into a real cliff, perhaps two hundred feet from the top. And yet the trail persisted.
Not until he reached the end of it did he find the outlet of a tunnel, not much more than man height and discretely tucked behind a small fold in the cliff. This must be one of the tunnels his jarghal had told him about that were rumored to wind through Tegong Him.
He glanced up at the cliff face itself, in the dusk. Not an appetizing choice. Still, the trail did see use, so he needed to expect to encounter people if he entered the tunnel.
He tried scanning his surroundings, the way Penrys had been teaching him. It felt curiously muffled, as though all the rock around him interfered with it somehow. In any case he could detect no one else around, which reassured him.
There was no way for him to make a light, however, not for long. His little fire-starter kit was in his pocket—his uncle had long ago beat it into him that he should never travel without it—but there was nothing to use for fuel except whatever cloth he could spare. The bushes on the slope were green and wet with spring growth, and the prior season’s remains of herbage were too small for anything but tinder.
Either I sleep in the entry here and go back down in the morning, or I try to find where it goes. Someone made it for a reason, and they still use it, or the trail would be less obvious.
His stomach growled and his mouth was dry, but he tried not to think about it. Better inside, I suppose. Can’t get any darker than dark. Might as well see what I can find, if I don’t go too far from the entrance.
He stretched out his left hand until he touched the wall, slightly slick. He knew there was an entire small city above his head but for all he could tell he was in a cave near the top of a bare mountain. How strange to be underground while so high above the ground. It made him smile.
He took small and careful steps, turning his head every six steps as he counted to make sure he could still see the gray light of the entrance, until a gradual upward curve in the tunnel took it out of his sight.
After a while, a small breath of air touched his face, and there was an indefinable sensation of openness. He’d been careful with his feet as he shuffled along, though he didn’t expect a natural opening in a man-made tunnel like this. Now he needed a way to make sense of the new geometry he sensed around him. He stretched his right hand out and encountered nothing but bare space.
A rope would be handy. Who would’ve thought I’d want a rope for a walk in the city? Or a torch, either.
There was a small square of cloth in his pocket, and now was the time to sacrifice it. Keeping his left foot in contact with the wall, he felt for his striker in the fire kit, and then thought through his actions in advance. Once the fabric caught, he wouldn’t be able to hold it. But it wouldn’t burn long and he wanted to lift it somehow.
He tugged off his right boot and sat himself down crosslegged, his left knee in contact with the wall. He pinned the boot upside down between his legs, put the bit of cloth on top of the hard sole, and struck sparks over it until it caught.
Then he grabbed the reversed boot with its feebly burning flame by the ankle and stood up carefully, in touch with the wall at all times, and held out the makeshift torch to see as much as he could while the light lasted.
In front of him the tunnel continued into blackness. To his right, a sunken channel pierced the rock, smaller than a man, and headed in the direction of the cliff face, as best he could judge. It was smoothed by the passage of water, and above it, not far from his head and the source of the air movement that bent his dying flame, he saw the metal rungs that ascended the far side of a shaft upward out of sight.
And then the fire died away, leaving behind a smell of scorched leather.
He yanked his boot back on and then stood and stretched out blindly with his arms in the direction of the fixed handholds, counting his steps as he did do, in case he somehow got turned around in the short distance. He took his time, mindful of the water channel on the right and feeling carefully with each foot before committing to the shift of his weight.
It took him twelve anxious shuffling steps to reach the wall of the shaft. He’d missed the metal rungs, but a careful probe with his arms in turn as he hugged the wall turned them up. He looked up, but could see nothing. Either his view was blocked by the structure, or it was open to a night sky.
Up it is, then. The ground is up there, at least the nearest ground. I can’t go crawling through these tunnels without light.
He counted the rungs as he climbed. At the twenty-ninth, air movement warned him of an opening, and he clung to the bolted handholds with one hand and both feet while he reached out with his other hand. It took a while to confirm the geometry—there was a cross-tunnel here, its left side higher than the right. It grazed the bore hole and continued downhill. Munraz was no longer sure of his orientation and didn’t want to guess which one went further into the mountain, if indeed either of them came out directly.
When he looked up, he thought he saw distant specks of light, not stars exactly, but something. It smells moist, like soft night air.
He pulled himself up forty-six more rungs, past one more intersecting tunnel until he felt the soft breathing of the shaft as it inhaled the heavier wet air of evening, through a coarse metal grate, into the unknown tunnel and cave structure below him. At his first attempt to push the grate open, nothing happened.
He stood on the
rungs as high as he could and tried to see where he was. No light fell through the grate to illuminate his face, but there was light scattered about, and the sound of people moving nearby, walking steadily and talking.
Would they help him if he called out? He shook his head. No doubt, but what will they help me into? I need to see what this is, figure out the situation, not just hope for the best.
His stomach growled and his mouth was dry. Too bad. I’m just going to have to wait for daylight. I’ve been worse off than this. I’m not even hurt. Just a little delay, so I know what’s what. If I don’t like what I see, I can always explore one of the tunnels. In the dark, without a staff or a rope.
It wasn’t an appealing thought. He lowered himself back down to the last intersecting tunnel and prepared himself to wait, choosing the downward side of the tunnel to minimize any chance of rolling the wrong way in the dark.
He was tired, but too wound up to contemplate sleep. He dropped his shield and tentatively reached out to the upper city above him. There were people everywhere, like Mentsek Tep below, and several were wizards.
At his own level and below, he thought he could feel others. Traveling in the tunnels? Compact groups of them moved inexplicably up and down. He was puzzled until he remembered the cages he’d seen ascending the southern cliff. At least I know which way is south. He strained to reach Penrys at the Zannib embassy, but it was too far away for him.
Is anyone even looking for me?
Cautiously he raised his shield again, and tried to get comfortable enough on the bare rock, with his turban for a pillow, to sleep the night away. His hand reached out to the wall to keep contact with it, and fell upon on a small shard of rock there. He cupped his hand around the stone in the dark, and drifted off.
CHAPTER 20
After her solitary meal, Penrys took advantage of the guide sent by Tun Jeju to show her the way to the roof.
When he opened the door for her, she stepped out onto a slate walkway. The evening was quiet and a breeze blew from the west, fresh and moist. Five stories was enough height to let her sense the darkness to the south that marked the river. No moon was visible, but there was enough ambient light to see Tun Jeju waiting for her.
“I admit to being curious about the wings,” he said, and she laughed.
“My pleasure,” she said. She pivoted on her heel and told the guard, “I may be out for hours. Can I open that door from the outside to get back in?”
“He’ll stand watch on the inside and wait for your knock,” Tun Jeju answered on his behalf.
“All right, then.” Penrys stepped away and invoked her wings. She stretched them to get the kinks out, and noted Tun Jeju’s attention. “You can touch them, if you like. It’s just feathers.”
“Thank you, lupju-chi.”
A chill went down her spine as the Kigali term for wizard was applied to her for the first time.
Tun Jeju walked around her, and briefly ran his hand down a wing tip.
“I don’t understand how they are attached,” he said, as he moved back to give her room.
“No one does, notju-chi,” she called back over shoulder as she took a running jump into the air and launched herself into flight.
She overflew the entire city and its suburbs, from Junlin Tep in the west to Chankau Tep in the east, and from the river to well back on Tegong Him and Juhim Tep. It didn’t take as long as she’d feared—the city was broad but not nearly as deep.
Against a dim background of ordinary minds, the wizards and the chained wizards both stood out like stars on a cloudless night. There weren’t many chained wizards—in fact she easily located the rendezvous point of the gewengep east of Tegong Him which contained most of them—but the hundreds of conventional wizards were surprising. Most of them seemed to be in small clusters. When she dipped low to test a theory, she found that she was mostly finding wizards in their larger families, within a compound, anywhere from two to twelve, home for the night. There were exceptions—people traveling or stationary in ones and two—but almost all of them at this hour were at home.
The guild meeting at Suimiju’s temple was over for the night and set to resume tomorrow. Chosmod had filled her in when he dropped by before returning to his embassy for dinner. “Hard to say how far they’ve gotten,” he’d said, “but I take the absence of bared weapons as a good sign.”
Everywhere she flew, there were no concentrations of wizards in larger than family compound quantities, except in three locations. The first was in Chankau Tep, where a cluster of compounds seemed to house three dozen wizards, many of them shielded. She counted buildings from the river and local parks so that she could identify it from a map.
The second was on the edge of Chankau Tep and the central Mentsek Tep. Fifty or more were actively working in a group of four linked compounds, and Penrys could make out sparks and fires as well as other activity.
Finally, when she overflew Juhim Tep, she found wizards scattered about, and one compound occupied almost entirely by wizards, apparently settled for the night. In addition to the unusual quantity, at least forty or so, it was noticeable for how many were shielded. The little drop-outs that were shields to her mental scan were well distributed in that one.
Once again, she counted buildings from apparent landmarks. The emperor and the rest of the court are up here somewhere, and much of the army. Maybe I’ll get to see that in daylight.
She turned south from there and counted streets until she was sure she’d found the Imperial Security building again. Wouldn’t do to land in the wrong place. She chuckled at the image of some bureaucrat from some other government department trying to make sense of it.
She landed nimbly, for a change, and tried the door. Locked. A rap on it resulted in a cautious opening, and the guard stepped out of the way to let her in.
After trailing him down to the ground floor, she waved him off and went down one more flight to her cold and solitary bed, underground in the stone-walled room. The story from the Ellech delegation of the chained wizard waking, and dying, inside a stone tomb haunted her, and she left the lantern lit in the corner of the room while she tried to yawn herself into a decent sleep.
“That’s part of the Armorers’ compounds.”
The map expert that Tun Jeju had called in put his finger on the city map spread on the familiar meeting room table.
Penrys couldn’t recall his name—she was too focused on remembering her coordinates from the night before. She’d described her evening’s activities to Chosmod, and to Mpeowake who had walked in unexpectedly this morning, her torso stiff and bound.
“Active at night? Many wizards?” Penrys asked.
The man glanced at Tun Jeju for confirmation, then explained. “They don’t live there, they work there. Some of their work—smelting ore, refining metal—that runs in long batches regardless of the hour, so there’s always activity at odd times of day or night.”
He blinked at her uncertainly. “I don’t know about lupjuwen… But other than that, what you saw seems normal to me.”
Penrys suppressed a smile. The man was unnerved by the implications of this meeting, that someone had flown over the city and wanted to find parts of it on a map, but he was still doing his best to adjust.
Chosmod cleared his throat. “There were armorers at the temple yesterday, so the craft certainly includes mages. Device-builders, I would imagine.”
“So, not an unusual concentration,” Tun Jeju supplied, and Penrys agreed.
“Then what about this one?” Penrys moved her finger along a grid of streets until she found the landmarks from last night and singled out a cluster of several compounds.
Tun Jeju leaned forward with interest. “The center of Chalen Tep, the criminal district?”
The map expert nodded. “Yes, notju—gambling and debt collection, murder for hire, stolen goods distributors.”
“And they are lupjuwen?” Tun Jeju riveted Penrys with his eyes.
“Well, lots of them seem to
be.” The silence that resulted seemed to need filling. “What, you expected all wizards to be upstanding citizens of the empire? Name me one class that doesn’t have its criminals.”
She checked his emotions. No, that wasn’t it—he wasn’t surprised.
“But do they have our lost emissaries?” Tun Jeju asked.
“That’s a more difficult question. I looked closely but I couldn’t find any trace of our people.” She held up a hand. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t there and shielded, and there were shields there. I’d still like to look from the ground.”
Chosmod said, “You mentioned murder for hire. Could they have hired out to attack us, even if they don’t have the captives?”
Penrys added, “Weren’t you going to identify them, the dead ones? What did you find out?”
Tun Jeju gave her a measuring glance before he replied and she held her expression immobile. Yes, I killed most of them. You don’t have to remind me.
“We knew some of them, and when we brought in the City Guard they placed quite a few more. All known criminals.”
At Mpeowake’s repressed snort of dissatisfaction, the notju expanded on his explanation. “Imperial Security is more focused on external threats and internal treason. Criminals are the proper concern of the City Guard. The problem remains that we have captives we must find, and a motive we must identify.”
Penrys thought his mind didn’t quite match his words, as though he knew more than he said, then she laughed at herself. Of course he knows more than he’s sharing. What would I expect? The downside of organization, Naj-sha—rigid, inflexible, and secretive.
Why aren’t there any demands from whoever holds the captives? Are they still alive? And Munraz? Talqatin had no news of him. Are they even further away, smuggled out to sea? Carried inland?
“Penrys?” Tun Jeju’s voice recalled her attention.
She spoke her thoughts aloud. “Do we know that the captives are still in the area? Not taken away by river or carried into the interior?”