The City

by Stella Gemmell

  “No thank you,” he replied curtly. “I’ll get Garret to do it. You’ve got all the mothering skills of a wolf monkey.” He explained, “They eat their young when the going gets hard.”

  Indaro smiled. “Only the smallest and sweetest,” she said.

  They marched on companionably for a while. Indaro found she had become absurdly fond of the northlander, but she knew it might be as Fell said—he would have to be left in the lightless sewers if the worst came to the worst. For some reason she thought then of Broglanh, whose part in all this she didn’t entirely understand, and she yearned for his easy confidence, his unquenchable good humour. Would even Broglanh lose his good spirits in the endless blackness of the Halls?

  When finally they returned to the rotten bridge, and could see the distant daylight outside again, Gil called a halt and they rested on an outcrop of rock. The soldiers drank from their waterskins and kicked the sticky mud off their boots. Gil called Indaro and Elija to him.

  “Which way now?” he asked.

  Elija had brought the plans from his pack and was wrestling the large, flimsy sheets out of their waterproof packing.

  “Here!” he said, pressing his finger on the paper. “This is another way—it leads to the Fallowly Dike, which goes under the palace.”

  “But this shows it goes underwater,” Gil said, frowning.

  “We could take it as far as we can—until we reach the flooding, then strike off to higher ground.”

  “Indaro?”

  Indaro looked at the map. “It is better to go the way we are uncertain about than to follow a path we already know is flooded,” she argued. “The Fallowly Dike is high, only just under the surface, high above all the floods. And it’s been raining outside, remember, raining for three days now. We need to take the highest way to get there. I don’t think this is it.”

  Gil looked at the boy. “Elija?”

  He looked conflicted. “There are many ways to the dike, according to the plans. That way is very narrow,” he said. “A narrow way is more likely to be flooded than a wide one. This way”—decisively he tapped again on a line on the map—“I’m sure I remember it.”

  Indaro was racked with uncertainty. She only had Elija’s word that he knew a path through the sewers, and he was looking more unreliable by the moment. She took another long look at the map, trying to fix in her head the way to the Fallowly Dike. Her sense of direction had never yet played her false. She knew the dike was to the north-east of them, and if they kept on roughly in that direction they could not avoid striking it. She nodded reluctantly.

  The way very quickly became grim, the tunnels narrow and steep. Gil still led the way, while Elija and his guards stayed in the middle of the army, and Indaro and Stalker brought up the rear. Water ran constantly by them, mostly fresh, Indaro noted, often half filling the tunnels they struggled through. The water was icy and they were soaked and freezing. The lanterns kept going out and were only relit with difficulty. Indaro found herself wishing for the reassurance of a flickering torch.

  At the back of the slow-moving army Indaro and Stalker had long waits, sometimes in awkward places, while the rest of the soldiers ahead of them negotiated one obstacle after another. Word was sent down the line each time, but it was frustrating to wait in the drenching water, sometimes, it seemed, for an hour or more, while two hundred men made their way through a tiny crack in a tunnel wall or up a steep vertical drain. In her previous life underground, Indaro had mostly kept to the well-worn paths through the high Halls, walking with torch aloft and one hand on her sword, watching the rats and the Dwellers scurry fearfully out of her way. She had never had to endure this, burrowing like a mole in the semi-darkness, a blind mole in a waterlogged tunnel, with the great weight of the City bearing down on them.

  She knew Stalker was finding it much harder than she, for he was not agile, and his broad shoulders barely fit into some of the narrow crevices they had to climb through. Each time they came to a new opening she measured it with her eyes, wondering if he would make it this time, or whether she would have to leave him in the dark.

  At last, when Indaro was starting to believe she could tolerate no more, she squeezed through a long narrow tunnel and came out into an open space with a torrent of water running through it. She could feel by the air pressure that they were in a high, wide tunnel, and Indaro guessed it was the Fallowly Dike. All the soldiers were sitting resting on the sides of the dike, waiting for them patiently, and a ragged cheer went up as Stalker struggled out last.

  Gil nodded a greeting to Indaro, then raised his voice above the roar of water. “We have made good time now. We will all eat and spend two hours resting, then move on. The way should be easier from here.”

  Elija wandered over to sit with Indaro, and greeted Stalker with a shy smile.

  “Is this where you expected to be?” asked Stalker.

  Elija frowned. “The maps don’t show these narrow cracks and drains we’ve been through. But I think we’re in the Fallowly Dike, so we’re going in the right direction.”

  Indaro offered, “But I find it strange that such a major waterway, if this is it, is at such a low level. It had been raining for days when we entered the caves.”

  Elija nodded. “All the tunnels should be full. Yet we have not been once stopped by water.”

  He pulled out the maps again and spread them in the dim light. “If I’m right, then we are here,” Elija said, jabbing his finger at the map. Indaro peered at where he was pointing. “Then we are near the palace. The dike doesn’t go under the Keep, but very close to it.”

  Elija’s face was pale grey, translucent as water. Indaro wondered how a boy so frail could have endured all he had. She felt afraid for him, just as she felt afraid for Stalker. A fine commander I make, she told herself, worrying about my men when my eyes should be on the mission—my mission, to rescue Fell and get us away safely. Then Elija and Stalker and Garret, and the hero Shuskara, all of them can find their own way home.

  Home. When she thought of the word it no longer conjured visions of her father’s house on the Salient. That was long ago lost to her. Home meant safety, an enduring safety where she would go to sleep each night without a sword within reach. And it meant Fell. In her heart of hearts she truly believed that she would first bring Fell to safety, then he would bring her safe home, wherever that was.

  They set off again feeling a little refreshed, and with lighter hearts, knowing they were close to their goal.

  But a while farther on Gil called a halt and raised his hand. He listened, cocking his head. The soldiers faltered to a halt and fell silent, trying to hear what Gil was detecting above the roar of the torrent. Indaro thought she could hear it too, a groaning sound like the timbers of a house in a gale. Cautiously Gil moved forward, Indaro at his side with lantern raised.

  Then they all stopped. For a moment Indaro did not know what she was seeing, and when she did her heart leaped into her mouth.

  The tunnel in front of them was blocked, almost completely, by a huge plug of debris which allowed only the narrow torrent to escape to one side. Indaro could see a massive piece of timber, an oak tree perhaps, wedged sideways in a narrow spot in the tunnel. Rubble had built up behind it—branches, scraps of wreckage, metal and wood, from houses, and pieces of bodies. Behind it the stream had been trapped and built up and now the whole tunnel reverberated with the groaning of the tortured mass of debris as it fought to hold back the weight of water. As they watched, horrified, the plug seemed to move. Indaro was sure she could see the tree shifting and she visualised it tearing free, hurtling towards her followed by a black wall of watery death.

  “Back!” Gil ordered, and with a will the soldiers started running the way they had come. Indaro found it almost impossible to turn her back on the nightmare in front of them, as if by shifting her eyes away she would release the massive weight of water at their backs.

  The army hurried, all of them panicked by the threat behind them, but no one cut an
d ran. Gil and Elija were conferring as they went, Elija’s eyes darting to and fro, seeking a side exit from the dike. The groaning behind them seemed to intensify the farther away they went. Indaro tried to tell herself it was an echoing effect in the enclosing tunnel. But she feared they had only moments to find a way out before the flood was released and they were all swept away like bugs in a drainpipe.

  Above ground it was nearing midday. Somewhere in the world, perhaps, the sun was shining, but above the City heavy thunderclouds smothered the daylight. It was raining all over the land. In the north, on the rocky coastline of the Little Sea, it rained on the encampments of two of the largest armies still in contention in this endless war—the City’s Third Imperial and the Odrysian Wolves. The Day of Summoning would be the first day the two forces had not engaged in more than eighteen months. In the west it rained over the Salient, and the single boat whose crew waited patiently for any lost or injured soldiers returning from the caves. They would wait for another full day, then return with an empty boat to their home in Adrastto. In the south it rained on the Petrassi armies which held the City’s southernmost forests and mountains, and the two dams which flooded ever fuller, high above the level of the City, now straining against their weakening walls. And far to the east it rained on the citadel at Old Mountain, empty again now except for the small brown-skinned women who danced joyfully in the downpour, celebrating their goddess who brought forth plenty from the land and washed the blood of men from the world.

  By the time the afternoon came, a paler darkness had settled over the City.

  In its thick light Emly ran along a wide storm drain. The grey water was above her ankles and she was conscious of the loud splashing of her thin leather boots as she ran. The soldiers chasing her were making ten times the noise she was, but there was still a ridiculous temptation to be quiet, to tiptoe. She slowed to a halt and, chest heaving, stopped and leaned back against the wet stone wall. As her panting slowed she held her breath and listened for her pursuers. Nothing was running down there except for water. She peered back along the endless tunnel. She carried no torch, but ornate metal grilles high in the ceiling let in the grimy daylight in regular splashy pools. She could see only the line of high stone arches fading into the distant dark. No one.

  She craned her neck, looking up at the grille above her. The iron was wrought in an intricate pattern of flowers and beasts. Such beautiful decoration to cover a drain, she thought. She wondered if she was under the Red Palace. She was pleased her sense of direction in the tunnels had not fled over the years. Tantalising daylight filtered down towards her, a thick light filled with dust and grime. But there was no escape that way. The drain cover was far above her head.

  She set off again, at a pace she thought the armoured soldiers would be unlikely to exceed. There were no forks in the tunnel, no side drains she could dive along to escape her pursuers. And, more worryingly, the drain was sloping inexorably downwards.

  She thought back to the previous day. She had departed her new host’s house with the early morn. She had left a note for him, but she still felt guilty for abusing his hospitality. She resolved to herself to return when this day was over and apologise. The librarian, with his painfully humped back, had seemed a kind man.

  She had left behind her few belongings and dressed in warm trousers, cinched at the waist for they were far too big, and layers of shirts and woollens. It would be warmer underground, she knew, whatever the temperature up top.

  In her sheltered life with Bartellus she had learned little about the City and had trouble finding her way to Gervain in the dawn light. When at last she arrived at the entrance to the culvert she remembered from so long ago she breathed a sigh of relief. Looking round to see no one was watching she ducked her head and entered. Down there she was the expert and she felt a rising confidence as she stepped back into her home territory for the last time.

  She had been unlucky to meet a guard patrol dawdling along quietly, perhaps on their way back to barracks after a long shift. The six men had spotted her as she saw them and, with eager shouts, they had set off after her. She knew they were chasing her not because she was a conspirator, or a Dweller, but because she was a girl. Her plight would be vile if they caught her and she might not survive it.

  The roof was getting lower and the tunnel darker. Em felt a rising panic. In total darkness she would be lost, in every sense of the word. She would flounder around until she drowned in a lightless cistern, or fell unseeing from a treacherous ledge, or was found by the soldiers crying in a corner, begging them to take her.

  She saw a thin pool of light quivering on the wetness in her path, and gratefully stopped again. She looked up. In the ceiling she could make out the lower mouth of a high funnel. It was the size of a fat man. From it filtered a distant pearly light. She blinked and peered again, and thought she could see a sturdy bar across one side of the mouth, perhaps the bottom rung of a metal ladder. Emly quickly unclasped from her waist a thin rope, stolen from the librarian, then unsheathed her purloined knife and tied it to the end of the rope. She took a deep breath and calmed her body. Then she threw the knife up at the metal bar. It bounced off and clattered to the floor.

  It was then she heard the sound she had dreaded: the distant grate of armoured boots on the stone of the tunnel, the grunt of soldiers still keen for the hunt.

  She tossed the knife again. This time it didn’t even reach the bar. She scooped it up and tried a third time. The knife fell over the bar and wedged in the gap between the bar and the wall of the chimney. Holding her breath she carefully pulled on it—and it came free, falling and striking her hard above her left eye. Forgetting caution, she dropped her head back and screamed, the eerie sound bouncing off the walls of the tunnel, rippling the black water at her feet, making waves in the dingy air that surrounded her.

  Dashing away the blood trickling into her eye, she tried again, and again the knife wedged between the bar and the wall. Em took a calming breath and jerked the rope. This time the ripple dislodged the knife and it fell neatly behind the bar, straight into her waiting hand. She quickly untied it then grabbed the double length of rope. Her years of working with heavy pieces of glass had given strength to her arms and shoulders, and she pulled herself up with ease. She was right, it was an old ladder. In moments she was tucked inside the high funnel, clinging closely to the side, drawing up the rope.

  And moments later the soldiers tramped by beneath her. Not one head was raised. Then they had passed and she heard their boots splashing into the distance.

  Emly looked up. Now she had a choice. After hours in that tunnel, stuck like a rat in a pipe, she could choose. Climb back down and continue her underground search for the dungeons, hoping there were no other patrols. Or climb, and find her way through the palace. Despite her anxiety for Bartellus, she convinced herself the best way was up.

  The high funnel was old and the walls uneven. There were hand and footholds, but they were crumbly and treacherous. It sloped a little, giving her some purchase, but was too wide. Climbing like a spider, arms and legs splayed awkwardly, she inched up the drain, heading for the distant light. Her legs and arms started trembling with the effort, but the funnel was getting narrower, making the climb easier.

  At last she reached a junction of three ways. Bracing her legs against one side and her back against the other, she rested her trembling arms. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness, and she kept blinking away blood trickling from the wound on her forehead.

  She could carry on going up, or take either of the side tunnels. None seemed lighter than the others. Water was running down all of them. Tentatively she cleaned the dirty fingers of one hand under the flow, then put her fingers to her mouth. Rainwater. She cupped her hand and drank.

  In the end she chose the right-hand tunnel, because she had drunk water from it and felt she owed it her trust. It was as good a reason as any.

  It became narrower very quickly and the going became more difficult. The flow of
rainwater increased until she had to avert her head from the torrent for fear of being drowned. Her arms and legs shrieked with exhaustion as she levered her way up. Keep going, she kept telling herself, keep going. You must be near the top. The light was getting stronger.

  Then it went out.

  Her limbs froze and for a moment her brain shut down. She whimpered, and tears coursed down her face, drowned in the river of rainwater. Her arms and legs scrabbled frantically at the walls of the funnel and she struggled up a little farther without thinking, fuelled by fear and dread.

  Above the constant sound of water in her ears she heard something she recognised: a gritty rumbling noise. Then the light came on again and she looked up. She had reached the top of the drain and above her was a plain metal grating, barely wider than her shoulders. And above it—daylight. The sound was of a cart rumbling away. It must have halted over the grille for a moment, blocking the light.

  Inching her way up, arms above her head, feet and knees braced against the sides, Em stretched and touched the cold bars of the grille with the tips of her fingers. She pushed. It did not budge. She pulled herself up closer and pushed again—and the grating failed to move a fraction.

  There was a new sound now from the world outside: thunder rolling over the City. Icy rain lashed down and gushed into the drain onto Emly’s raised face. She spluttered and coughed and ducked her head to keep it clear, but it was hard to breathe.

  She shoved her fingers through the thick bars of the grille and wiggled them frantically. “Help!” she screamed, careless now of capture. “Help me!”

  Suddenly the grating was snatched away by an unseen force, and a hard hand reached down and gripped her wrist. She found herself being pulled out of the pipe like a cork from a bottle. She was set on her feet, blinking in the light, coughing up water.

  “What were you doing down there, lad?” her rescuer asked jovially. He was a burly man, bearded and shaggy, but not dressed as a soldier. With her hair plastered close to her body, he thought she was a boy in the dull light.