by Adele Abbot
They traveled in a straight line for almost an hour before the passage turned left through a thirty degree angle and an hour or so later it returned to its original direction with a right turn. Just around this second corner, they came to a region where a great deal of movement had occurred within the mountain’s core. They were faced with a pile of broken rock which had fallen from a great rift across the ceiling and had to spend a considerable effort on moving enough of the heavy blocks to allow them to climb over the barrier.
The way beyond this point led up and down and it twisted and turned—all due to movements and tilting of mammoth blocks of living rock. At one point, Calistrope stopped and spoke to Ponderos. “How long ago do you think this passage was cut?”
Ponderos shrugged. “A hundred old years? A thousand? Who can say?”
Calistrope pointed to a curtain of stalactites which hung down and joined with several stalagmites growing upward from the floor. The metallic rail continued under the deposition. “Say ten or twenty thousand, perhaps one or two million”. The rock here is quite dry, wherever the water came from to form this structure, it is no longer active.”
The stalactites formed a massive barrier and an impassable one until Ponderos retraced their steps to collect a sizeable piece of stone to use as a hammer. They broke through the stalactites and one by one, squeezed through the opening only to find successive walls of natural stone bars erected against their progress. When they finally won free of the obstacles, they sat down and ate the last of their provisions.
“Wherever we are going,” said Ponderos, contemplating his last piece of dried meat, “I hope we arrive soon.”
Later and further along the twisting passageway they came to a gaping fault in the floor. The metal track had been pulled out like taffy into a thin strip across the ravine. Roli, quick to exhibit the skills of cat burglary, casually walked the tightrope to the far side.
“Now you Calistrope.”
The far side of the fault was two steps higher and it was necessary to walk up hill on the metal strip as well as across it. With somewhat less confidence than Roli, Calistrope stepped out. He took three steps and then found that the hard sole of his boots would not grip the smooth metal, he began to slide back, his boot slipped off the track, he fell.
Ponderos reached out to catch at his friend’s coat but was far too late. So heightened were their senses that Calistrope seemed almost to float down to an impact on an outcrop a few ells below. Horrified, Ponderos and Roli waited for him to move and look up at them, but he did not. He lay there, belly up, spread-eagled over the spur; they could not even be sure that he was breathing.
Ponderos placed the light on a flat rock at the edge of the chasm and climbed swiftly down. Clinging to the rock wall, he bent over Calistrope, placed a finger against the other’s neck and remained in that position for a time before finally straightening up. “He lives,” Ponderos announced and Roli, who had forgotten to breathe, suddenly sucked in a lungful of air.
“Thank Fate for that,” breathed Roli with relief. “Though we don’t know what injuries he might have suffered, there may be spinal injuries.”
“I think he’ll be all right. A mage rarely dies by accident or even suffers any great injury. Luck, you see. It takes only the tiniest measure of magic to sway chance if the force is applied at the right time. Sorcerers learn to apply that force by instinct.”
Ponderos chafed the Mage’s wrists. “Of course, it might be the talisman I gave him. It was once efficacious against weapons of bone or stone…”
“All motions are relative,” said Roli seriously. “If we consider Calistrope to have remained stationary then the world has struck him a vicious blow. A considerable weapon, your sigil must be a powerful instrument indeed.”
Ponderos looked up at Roli and away again He continued to massage the others’ hands and slapped his cheeks and was at last rewarded by movement. “Take it carefully old friend. Does anything hurt?”
“Hurt? No I don’t think so.” His manner was slightly confused. “Strange dream I had.”
“You dreamed you were falling? Or perhaps you dreamed of flying? Eh?” Roli laughed though the circumstances were not amusing. Relief made him react a little inappropriately.
“Mm? No, no. About this place.” Some memory seemed to come back to Calistrope. “Did I fall?” he looked down into the Stygian depths of the chasm then up to where Roli knelt. “Down there?” he swayed where he was sitting and Ponderos steadied him with an arm around his shoulders.
Ponderos told him what had happened and as Calistrope seemed to sway again with vertigo, distracted him by asking about the dream.
“It was about this place, I think,” Calistrope said. “That smell I mentioned? You remember that smell? Magic. Somewhere near here, the ether must be thick with power.”
Ponderos concentrated, trying for various magical effects. “I cannot draw any power whatever. Not an iota, which is a shame because we have to get you up there again.”
“But the source is nearby. Very strong. And I know we shall soon be out of here, very soon.”
“We have to get him up there,” Ponderos said slowly and took off his coat. He bent and carefully worked Calistrope’s coat free and tied the two together. “Yours now,” he said and a moment later was tying Roli’s coat to the chain. He let out the impromptu rope and looked at it. “It’s not long enough. We’ll have to take off shirts—and our breeks if necessary.”
In the event, breeks were not necessary and they hauled Calistrope, still unable to fend for himself, up to the edge of the cleft. When Roli had gone once more to the far side, Ponderos took off his boots and put his socks inside before throwing them across; he carried Calistrope across his shoulders, balanced his way across in six long steps.
And once he had recovered enough to walk, Calistrope found his forecast had been perfectly correct. Two hours later, they reached the end of their tunnel, a portal into a huge cathedral-like space which in spite of the damage that had occurred, was still unmistakably made. The roof was a single vault completely spanning the width, there were two huge walls at either end which had once been flat and vertical but were now visibly leaning and furrowed with fissures and bulging from uneven pressure behind the surface.
A dim illumination came from long strips of fluorescent material set into the roof and the light reflected off a maze of narrow gleaming tracks running from scores of tunnels which pierced both the end walls.
They entered and across the wide shadowy floor there was an uneasy shuffle of half seen forms, a half heard whisper. Afterwards the lights brightened, status boards shone, colored signals blinked. Now they saw that the movement had been the lifting of the hundreds of flat bedded transports which hovered a hand’s breadth above the shining metallic track ways where a knee-high pall of repelled dust still hung in the air. The changes left an air of expectancy behind, a waiting, a readiness.
When the companions walked from the tunnel mouth into the hall, there was an awareness. Waiting cranes shifted as they walked past, transports bobbed, insect-like maintenance machines scurried away from their feet.
“This makes me nervous.” Ponderos skirted a low box with a half dozen articulated arms that were making adjustments to a carrier’s control box. “Where are we going, anyhow?”
“There,” Calistrope pointed. “The far end.”
“Why there? There are several portals along the wall over there.”
“Because… I don’t know. Perhaps I saw it in the dream I had.”
“When you fell?”
Rather more dubiously than before, they crossed the track ways.
“Ah! Look at these machines Calistrope. Machines aping life.”
Ponderos stopped before a cluster of small hand sized machines on the ground. They did indeed resemble insects with dull grey carapaces and a variety of antennae and jointed limbs.
“And there,” said Roli, pointing, “are two real insects among them.
“So there
are.”
And as they recognized the real among the sham so, it seemed, did the machines. Two of the mechanical contrivances turned on the insects and touched their antennae to the insects’ heads, there was a bright spark of power and the two impostors were dead; blackened husks.
“They’re dead, Calistrope. Killed by machineries,” Ponderos evidently found the concept distasteful. “Quickly. Let us leave this place.” Which was easier to say than to do; the far end was several furlongs away.
They continued on but as they approached the far wall, it became clear that it was not what it appeared. It was, in fact, an archway, the lower edge, a half-ellipse as long as the hall was wide. Like the roof above, the lower surface was pocked with cavities left by the fallen masonry which littered the floor.
At the far side of the arch was a drop to a lower level. A gap to one side of the chest high barrier gave onto a spectacular stairway which curved down to the city at its foot.
The City of Schune.
Breathtaking.
Even from this height, a hundred ells, it was obvious the city was a mixture of architectural styles: the tall, needle shaped towers of a millennium past; the crystalline Fortunus vogues; circular fora from the Paddacene; even genuine stone and timber buildings copied from prehistory. Yet, despite the amalgamation, it worked, blended. Placement had been careful so each variation complemented another. Streets radiated from a paved area at the foot of the steps, intersecting with other streets spreading from small parks at opposite corners of a triangle. Streams ran haphazard courses across the city; linking, splitting: a tracery of silver waters crossed by filigree bridges and stepping stones.
“Beautiful,” said Calistrope. “What a simply lovely place.”
“Dead,” said Roli. “Empty.”
“There are lights,” Ponderos pointed out.
“But no movement.”
They descended and as they did so, so the true vastness of this new space became apparent. Beyond the archway, the wall went upward—so far that it was not possible to guess how high. The ground area was not as great as it seemed to begin with, the city was not that large but the surrounding walls curved protectively round it without quite meeting on the far side.
“Are those stars?” Calistrope pointed to the hard points of light in the darkness.
“It is not possible,” Ponderos objected. “We are far too high to be open to the sky—we couldn’t breathe.”
“If that’s a simulacrum, it’s tremendous. It would have to be a hundred chains across but I suppose a window as large as that would be almost as formidable.”
“And as high,” said Roli. “But look at that.”
What Roli was looking at was a single, slender, shining curve. It sprang from a domed building at the center of the city and leapt up to the roof which it pierced and passed beyond.
Calistrope shook his head. “At least it gives us something to aim for. Whatever it is.”
They completed the descent to the plaza at the foot of the steps and chose a street which seemed to take them towards the central area. The three passed by shops and eating houses, dwellings and meeting halls; all of them were brightly lit, all of them empty. Beneath their feet, the pavement was a creamy white stone with a myriad crystals embedded in the surface.
“It feels,” Calistrope said, “as though everyone was here just a minute ago, as though every single person just left.”
“Hmm, yes. And every one of them expected back in a moment of two,” Ponderos looked from side to side. “Do you suppose we are being watched?” his stomach rumbled. “And I’m hungry.”
Calistrope asked in return, “Watched by whom? Schune is kept alight and warm by mechanisms, like those we met in the great hall up there. They sweep away the dust and no doubt, they repair the buildings when time wears them out.”
“Then that is what is watching us,” Roli said. “Mechanisms. Machines with beady glass eyes and long metal fingers,” he shivered.
The domed building they were making for was nearer now but the streets which surrounded it were annular, leading nowhere. Narrow paths led from street to circular street and these were blocked by further walls at random intervals. A maze. Was it purpose or fancy that had made it?
“I’m hungry,” Ponderos complained. “Have I mentioned it before?”
“Indeed you have. Have you looked in the streams we have crossed? Fish, Ponderos.”
Unbidden, Roli ran to the nearest bridge, a high arched affair with delicate scrollwork hand carved from old stone. “Yes, yes. There are fish down here. Plump, every one a good meal.”
“Why do I always overlook the obvious, Calistrope?”
“Hunger drives away reason, my friend.”
But when they tried to catch the fish, they found them to be contrivances, simulacra made of wires and diaphanous films. Ponderos’ hunger remained unsatisfied.
The maze took seven hours to solve but at last they stood before Schune’s domed City Hall. Between the pillars were two great doors of a dull brown metal which gleamed like oiled silk. A great hoop of the same metal hung at the center of each door panel.
They tried the doors, they were locked solidly. The circular handles would not turn and not even Calistrope’s recently acquired facility with door locks could open them.
“Hmm,” said Roli and lifted one of the circular handles which hinged up and down easily enough. He dropped it, banging it with a great brazen clang that echoed back and forth between the buildings.
Slowly, the door swung inwards until it was wide open.
“More thievery?” asked Ponderos.
“Hardly. No thief would announce his presence with a door knocker.”
“Unless he were a very clever thief.”
“In that case, I’m certain you’re right.”
Light flooded out of the opening, bathing the steps in brightness. Inside was a circular room with a coiled staircase reaching up into the ceiling.
“I don’t like the look of this, at all,” said Calistrope.
“What is wrong,” Ponderos looked around the deserted room. “An ambush?”
“Steps. How many steps do you suppose there are between here and the roof above the city? It’s a very long way to climb. But it’s the only obvious place to go, you don’t find a control room in an empty city.”
“Do you find them at the tops of mountains?”
Calistrope shrugged. “I am willing to listen to arguments,” Calistrope answered. “Reasonable arguments.”
The steps took them to the dome above the building. A glass cage stood there at the base of a single gleaming bar as thick as a man’s wrist. The bar sprang upward, disappearing into a circular tube which in turn, vaulted to the cavern roof high above.
There was only one thing to do. They entered the cage and waited. An alarm sounded, a high note which fell in pitch over the course of five seconds and then stopped. The cage moved, lifting them gently through the building’s roof and up into a transparent cylinder. Gentle pressure against their feet indicated acceleration which cut off as they approached the cavern roof. Progress slowed until the elevator crawled up to and through the vaulted ceiling.
When the capsule came to rest, they stepped into a small lobby, a narrow closed door was the only other exit from the claustrophobic little room. It was grey and a circle of darker grey color was marked at each side of the panel.
Without thinking about it, Calistrope touched the nearer of the two circles. The door panel vanished. Within was a ramp of ribbed, grey material and when all had entered and begun to walk upwards, the surface beneath their feet began to gradually move upward too. So smoothly did it start and accelerate that none of them were initially aware of the motion. When they did realize, however, it was just one more marvel among the many, no one saw fit to remark on it.
The floor leveled out but continued to take them along what was now a long hallway with walls covered in tapestry works, rugs, fur pelts, artistic designs and paintings. The ceiling
, several ells above their heads, was a curved, barrel vaulted section built from interlocking blocks of polished granites. Sometimes black and white, sometimes pink or green, it reflected a million glittering points of light from the crystalline lamps which clung to the ceiling every few paces. The lights were activated in turn as they moved along so that before and behind them all was swathed in darkness; onward was an unknown quantity.
“You know, my friends,” Ponderos’ voice was ruminative. “I’m hungry.”
“You are always hungry, Ponderos.”
“I’m tired,” Roli said. “Did your dream tell what we might expect, Calistrope?”
“And you are always tired. No, what lies ahead is a mystery.
They were whisked on their way for what seemed a long time before they sensed that the pace was slowing. A minute later, they were walking. A division of the way ahead appeared, the corridor divided into two—although the right hand passage was blocked by closed doors across its width.
The barrier drew them—perverse curiosity. It was a pair of double doors similar to those they had met before. Calistrope extended his hand to one of the lighter grey circles in order to deactivate them. Nothing happened. Calistrope tried the circle on the other side, again nothing. Puzzled, Ponderos and Roli tried with similar lack of success.
“Well,” Calistrope looked at the doors and tapped a front tooth. “The other way then.”
They turned about and walked in the other direction. As before, a band of illumination stayed with them until they reached a second set of doors. With a certain lack of expectancy, Calistrope touched a light grey circle.
The door panels vanished. Before them extended a brightly lit hall which was so vast that distances could not be easily reckoned, so wide and so long that the walls were lost in haze. Above, the roof was an immense inverted plain of creamy white. Roli wrinkled his nose, the air carried a mixture of odd smells which defied analysis.