Narrowing her eyes, Minla made a long, rounded tone, shaping a high overtone with her mouth and throat which was barely perceptible to anyone without a trained ear. A curved set of lines and strokes appeared on the surface of the stone, glowing with a soft blue sheen until Minla cut off her sound and looked up, nodding with satisfaction. “‘Sanctuary,’” she pronounced, naming the symbol from the old script used by the Makhás for encrypting sensitive information. “There’s got to be another room behind this wall, Kiri—her sanctuary.”
Kirian slid his arm around his wife’s waist and pulled her close, rubbing her belly before smiling down at her. “You’re incredible. Let me check out the space and then I’ll transport us in, ok?”
At Minla’s nod, Kirian projected a quick mental probe through the stone wall and found the hollow resonance he was looking for. In the next instant, he shifted them both into the space and lit a new glowglobe which revealed a comfortable chamber lined with wall scrolls, a couple of brimming bookcases, and low shelves topped with a few pieces of elegant pottery.
“Quite the cozy hideaway,” he observed as he set his wife down next to a pile of heavy cushions on the thick, rich carpet.
“Voilà—Gran’s writing table,” Minla declared with a wave of her hand. Tucked against a tapestry-covered wall to their right was a warm wooden desk piled with books and writing instruments.
Kirian sniffed the air as he lifted the glowglobe to examine the room more thoroughly. “It smells surprisingly fresh in here. There must be air vents concealed near the ceiling somewhere, which means there may be more tunnels or chambers off of this one. Sera Choden was certainly full of surprises.”
Minla smiled and walked over to the orderly, dust-covered desk, running her fingers over a stack of books before landing on a small wooden box. “This is strange,” she mumbled as she picked up the box, blowing off the dust and turned it carefully in her hands. “Come look at this, Kiri.”
Stepping up beside her, Kirian suspended the glowglobe over the desk and focused on the small object Minla held in her hands. “It says ‘yeshe’ in the old script,” he observed, studying the detailed design on the lid of the box. “Looks like it’s inlaid with some kind of stone. Open it.”
Minla nodded and curled her fingers around the lip of the lid, frowning when she couldn’t seem to lift it away. “It must be sealed with some kind of field.”
“Try saying ‘yeshe’ with the old pronunciation,” Kirian prompted.
Minla spoke the word aloud and when it failed to work, she sounded a releasing sigil which also had no discernible effect. “You try it,” she said, handed the box to Kirian. “You’re the yeshe, after all.”
As soon as the wooden vessel touched Kirian’s skin, the symbol pulsed briefly with a faint emission and the lid became loosened from its seal. When he lifted it away, the light from the globe overhead shimmered across the surface of a golden object cradled within a dark silken cloth.
“What it is?” Minla wondered aloud as Kirian set the lid aside on the desk and carefully lifted the piece of intricately worked gold which was attached at the top to a long, slinky chain.
“I don’t know exactly,” he replied softly, holding the shiny metal in his fingers and grazing his thumb over the detailed pattern. “It looks like … a complicated matrix, geometry within geometry, set into gold. There’s a stone worked into the center, but in this light, I can’t tell what it is. It’s … warm,” he said with surprise, looking up at Minla as he unconsciously clutched and caressed the weighty piece of gold in the palm of his hand.
“It looks like it was intended to be worn,” Minla stated, holding her hand out in order to slide her fingers through the end of the chain.
Kirian leaned down so she could loop it up over his head. Gently she pulled his long hair out from under the chain, allowing it to settle around his neck.
“Well, this was definitely not my gran’s,” she observed thoughtfully, inspecting at the gold pendant nestled against Kirian’s breastbone.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she was a tiny little thing, shorter than I am. This would have hung clear down to her navel,” she said with a laugh.
“If it wasn’t your grandmother’s, then whose was it?”
“We’ll probably never know. It was meant for the yeshe—no, it was meant for you. Take it as a gift.”
With a mystified shake of his head, Kirian picked up the golden geometry again, looking at it with a perplexed expression. Abruptly, the sound of massive explosions filled his head, coming on so strong that he closed his eyes and took a step back to keep his balance.
Minla’s voice reached him as if coming from a great distance. “Kirian, what’s wrong?”
A man’s deep voice was shouting in alarm in an unfamiliar language and in the next instant, a jolt of searing pain shot through the man’s chest, bleeding into Kirian like a tidal wave. He clutched at his own chest and sucked in a desperate breath, shaking his head sharply before he was able to grab hold of his runaway thoughts.
Where are you? What’s happening to you?
He sent the mental call in Mothertongue to the dark-haired man who was in the grips of something traumatic, but the stranger was apparently too upset to pick up the contact or else he was untrained in using internal abilities. Kirian watched the bizarre scene unfold in his mind and was about to try reaching out once more when the unexpected link vanished and went cold.
Taking several long breaths to calm his racing heart, Kirian opened his eyes to find Minla watching him with troubled concern.
“That was weird,” he grated hoarsely, rubbing his chest beneath the gold pendant to ease the residual ache from the sudden encounter.
“What happened, love? Are you in pain?”
“I’m ok,” he said quickly to ease her distress. “I saw this man, a human,” he breathed with incredulity. “I remember Dad’s descriptions of the different kinds of people the Makhás used to trade with, but it was the first time I’ve seen a human myself.”
“Then he must be off-planet somewhere,” Minla declared excitedly. “What was he doing?”
“I think he was on a ship of some kind. I could see equipment and screens, as if I was looking at them through his eyes. There were horrible explosions, bombardments before I heard him yell. I called out to him, but he couldn’t seem to hear me. He was in terrible pain, as if he had just lost someone or—” Kirian lifted his eyes to his wife’s as another thought suddenly hit him. “Maybe I just watched him die, Minla. The link just shut down and I couldn’t bring it back.”
“You can’t be sure, Kirian. You thought Senga was dead when you couldn’t reach him in Edu. A broken link doesn’t always mean the person is deceased.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he conceded, rubbing a hand over his face to clear away the tension. “We’ve just had too many severed links that never came back, like your kin, but I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
“Try to reconnect with him again later,” she added calmly, reaching up to gently stroke his chest. “I think it’s amazing it happened at all.”
“Yeah, well, it won’t do us any good if we can’t get out.”
“Always so dour, my yeshe,” she mused with an affectionate smile. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured with a shake of his head as he reached out to run his fingertips down the side of her face, amazed once again that this beautiful woman looked past his flaws and returned his love.
“Ready to go on?” she asked softly.
“Yep, we got this far thanks to you. Let’s see if your grandmother—or any other mysterious benefactor—left us more surprises.”
Turning back to the writing desk, Minla pointed to one of the stacks of books piled at the back. “Why don’t you take a look at those. I’ll get this batch.”
Kirian set the empty box down on the desk and picked up the top volume, blowing off the dust and flipping open the cover to a set of pages wr
itten in fine cursive. “Is this your grandmother’s handwriting?”
“Yes, definitely. She had a very distinctive, flowing style to her script.”
“Huh. This top volume looks like prose, an imaginative work. Do you remember her writing stories or fiction?”
“I remember her telling me fantastic tales at night before bed.”
“Well you may have some interesting reading in store for you. This second volume is another work. A side of Yeshe Choden no one was aware of.”
“These are all fiction as well,” Minla said as she hurriedly went through the stack of bound notebooks. “I know she kept journals, though, Kiri. That’s what I thought these were when I first saw them. There’s got to be something else here.” She pulled open the wide, shallow drawer just beneath the writing space and froze when her eyes landed on a thin, black notebook with her name written across the front in gold lettering.
Slowly she lifted the journal out of the drawer, caressing the cover once with her fingers before gingerly opened the cover. “‘My dearest Minla—’” She stopped and swallowed, collecting herself before pushing on with the journal’s initial entry. “‘If you are reading this, it can only mean that you have survived and I have not,’” she read with a quavering voice. “‘Most of these pages are for you, dear child. If you or any other Makhás discovers this journal, my first charge is this: find the bells,’ which is written with the old encryption sigils,” she explained with a wave of her finger in the air. “‘And find my son’s writings about what to do with them. My deepest hope is that they will set you free.’”
Minla looked up into her husband’s wide eyes.
“By the Prime,” Kirian whispered, barely able to breathe at the implications of Sera Choden’s simple words.
“We were right, Kiri. My dad must have figured out a way to fix the broken portal.”
Kirian grabbed her shoulder with a shaking hand as a wild rush of excitement rolled through his flesh. “Then I’m going to tear this place apart stone by stone, splinter by splinter until I find what Tashi wrote.”
“What about ‘find the bells?’”
Kirian raised a hand and pointed at the back wall. “They’re back there. I know it. They’ve hidden them in another chamber that only a Makhás could get into.”
He turned and ran to the back wall of the room, sliding his hands over the cold stone surface between two long wall hangings until he felt what he was looking for. “Another embedded symbol,” he declared, stepping back as Minla came up beside him. Together they held out their hands and toned the pattern that would reveal the energetic imprint, holding it steady while the glow of the old character came to life in front of them.
“‘Bells,’” Kirian read with profound satisfaction.
Minla laughed, catching the elation that radiated from every cell in Kirian’s body. “Let me transport this time. You seem to be a little wobbly,” she teased.
“I can’t help it. My father and I have been looking for this breakthrough for years.”
Slipping her arm around his waist, Minla checked the space behind the wall and shifted them in, raising a bright glow of light around both of their forms.
“By all that’s sacred,” Kirian groaned within the cavernous space.
In front of them stood a gargantuan bell at least twenty feet in diameter that rose into the darkness far above their heads. Kirian ran forward and threw a set of globes up into the air, sending them flying with mental nudges to spread deeply into the cavern behind the bronze behemoth.
“There are five of them!” he roared ecstatically as the globes showered light onto the sleeping giants. “I can’t believe this! They’re beautiful!” He held his hand out for Minla and she ran forward to join him. Hand in hand, they walked down the length of the deep chamber past each of the bells, examining the intricate designs that had been cast into their surfaces.
“These have to be really old,” Kirian remarked, craning his neck to be able to see the large sigil emblazoned on the side of each. “I’m not familiar with any of the characters.”
“Maybe they correlate to a place or function,” Minla suggested. “Or maybe the characters are the bells’ names. They each seem to have their own personality, don’t they? That one has a greenish tint, at least in this light, and is shorter and fatter than the others. I think that first one back there was the largest and had a reddish brown cast.”
“They were probably shaped and tuned for different sound constructs,” Kirian speculated, running a critical eye over the unusual double curve of the last bell in the cavern. “My guess is that they each do something very specific.”
“I wonder where they came from. Gran and Dad must have collected them all here from their original sites, hoping to protect them from the Shitza.”
“Thank the Prime they did.”
Impulsively, Kirian dropped Minla’s hand and walked forward to the bell in front of him, placing his palms on the cold metal surface before closing his eyes and raising a deep, reverberating tone up from the bottom of his chest. He adjusted his sound with each successive breath, and when he felt the bell answer with a corresponding frequency, he locked in his own tone and increased the amplitude.
The thundering vibration that rolled through his frame nearly sent him to his knees. He allowed the wave to pass through into the ground and stopped his sound, breathing heavily to allow the lingering energy to settle in his body.
“Whoa, that was fucking amazing,” he panted. “It’s a good thing I know what I’m doing or I could have blown a few circuits.” He looked up toward the top of the golden-hued giant and patted its side, laughing with admiration. “Arman’s going to have a seizure when he sees these babies.”
“Then let’s call him, right now, get him back here,” Minla exclaimed as she came up beside him, placing an encouraging hand on Kirian’s back.
“We will, in a few minutes, love,” he said, smiling down at her. “But first we have to find Tashi’s keys.”
“Shall we go back to the library then? Or do you want another blast from your new lover?” she said with a wicked grin.
“What? Why you little—”
“Wait a minute. I want to try this,” she insisted, stepping around him to place her hands on the big bell. “Who says you get to have all the fun.” She closed her eyes and started to bring up a tone, but let out a peel of laughter when Kirian growled and grabbed her from behind, sliding his arms down around her and biting her neck.
“God, I love you,” he murmured, holding her close as she leaned back and relaxed into the warmth of his body.
She lifted her hand to stroke the side of his face. “I haven’t felt you this animated in a long time,” she said with a contented sigh. “I could get used to this.”
“Mmm, me, too. I’m so dog-tired of living on the edge all the time.” With a final squeeze, he straightened and turned his attention to forming a transport matrix and dousing his glowglobes. “Let’s go shake down that library.”
When the two of them reappeared in the hallway outside the library entrance, they were met by the sound of Selina and Asti’s agitated voices. Stepping in through the doorway, they found the two adepts crouched on the floor near the edge of the rubble, hovering over a scroll that Selina was reading aloud.
Kirian’s twin whipped her head around and immediately launched into a gale of ebullient words. “You’ve got to come see this, Kiri! This scroll must have every portal configuration that the Makhás ever designed, hundreds more than any other text we’ve ever studied. And we found another one that discusses how to knit a ruptured energy line within the grid. It’s—” She stopped when she saw the burning look on her brother’s face as he stormed across the room.
“There’s more where that came from,” he declared as he stared at the sloping rock on the other side of his sister. “Good work, ladies. Would you mind stepping over to the side of the room?”
With wide eyes, Asti and Selina gathered up the delicate scrolls and hur
ried past him toward Minla and the door. With a sweep of his arm, Kirian lifted a layer of rock from the floor and flung it in one broad motion with both of his hands to the far side of the room. Scanning the floor, he repeated his actions to lift another collection of rubble up into the air, flinging it away with a second resounding crash.
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that,” Asti grumbled sardonically. “Are you finished, Mr. Testosterone?”
“Yeah, I’m finished. You two were in exactly the right place. Tashi must have been working here at this table,” he said, kneeling down next to the crushed papers, books and scrolls scattered in a mess across the broken pieces of a library table. “I just hope it’s all here,” he muttered as he began to grab loose papers, scanning their contents in a feverish frenzy, looking for any mention of the cache of giant bells hidden in the back caverns.
“What’s he going on about?” he heard Selina ask near the door.
“Tell them what we found, Min, and then come help me.”
“Did you find your grandmother’s room?” Asti asked while she carefully rolled the long scroll back up. “You were gone a long time.”
“Yes, we discovered one of her journals that told us specifically to find my father’s work—that’s what he’s looking for right now. And we found five gigantic bells that Gran and the other masters brought here to hide in the back cavern.”
“What?” Selina exclaimed with surprise. “Bells?”
“Yes, yes, YESSSSS!!” Kirian yelled, clutching a stack of papers in his shaking hands. “Here it is—at least part of it. Come look!”
The three adepts hurried over and huddled close, peering over his shoulder to get a better look at the drawings he was spreading out in a space he had cleared in front of his knees. “Minla, see this? It’s the character we saw on the side of the golden bell that I toned with. Tashi doesn’t use the word ‘bell,’ but names it ‘Dolma,’ one of the ‘Cagi’ which mean ‘sisters.’ This drawing over here gives a set of exact dimensions, which I assume correspond to the tower where the bell was hung, and this place name beneath it must be the tower’s location. We’ll have to check a map to see where it is.”
Descent of the Maw Page 13