A new thought interrupted this tempting vision. Who says the Old One is going to include you in his plans except as a resource—a sort of database to tell him what various things are? Returning to the stars is your dream. Is it his? I doubt it. The Old One must know that away from Artemis he would cease to be a power. He would be little more than a curiosity. He might even find himself imprisoned in some lab somewhere, mined for the secret of his longevity as he mines his subjects for their adaptations.
The more Griffin considered this point, the less certain he felt that the Old One intended to work with Griffin as any sort of equal. Indeed, the very fact that the Old One had been willing to speak so freely to Griffin might be taken as an indication of the exact opposite—that Griffin, assumed dead and drowned by the few friends he had made here on Artemis—would remain dead.
Then all the more important that I show myself willing if I am to have any freedom at all.
So Griffin flung himself into his assigned research with fevered intensity. He saw the Old One with enough frequency to be assured that the planned trip into the mountains above Shepherd’s Call had not yet begun. Of one thing Griffin felt certain—the Old One would lead that expedition himself. Not only wouldn’t he wish anyone else to make the discoveries, it would be the best way of assuring local cooperation, for the Old One had no reason to believe that Bruin was anything but his faithful follower.
The Old One must not go or, if he does, I must go with him, be there to mislead him, to distract him with my helpfulness. Best if he didn’t go at all. How to manage it?
Worry pounded in Griffin’s head, background to all he did, a song of desperation verging upon insanity.
* * *
“The village is called Chankly’s Harbor,” Terrell reported to Adara a few days after they had departed the Sanctum. “The head of the clan is Captain Bore Chankly. The Chankly clan doesn’t have the best reputation locally. The former family head—Bore’s father—was a drunk who turned most of the catch into booze. Bore Chankly took over after his father was injured during a nasty storm—except there are those who say the damage wasn’t caused by the storm but by Bore himself.
“Since then family fortunes have risen, but not their reputation. It’s said most of their catch comes from raiding others’ nets and traps. They’ve staked out fishing grounds for themselves. Any who trespass find holes in their nets—or their hulls.”
“Let me guess,” Adara said. “Their favored fishing grounds are between their private harbor and the Haunted Islands.”
“Yep. And that has folks puzzled because those have never been waters known for good fishing. Too turbulent, for one. However, Captain Chankly isn’t hurting for money. It’s rumored that he’s found a wreck on one of those shoals or maybe some seegnur artifacts. But people don’t like to talk about the Chanklys. Nasty things happen to people who gossip too much about where Captain Chankly gets his money.”
Adara grinned. “You seem to have done well enough.”
“Although you seem immune,” Terrell countered, “I am actually a very charming fellow. And I didn’t get all of this in one place—not by far. I started by asking about who was best to buy from, hinting that I’d been given such a good offer by one of the Chankly crews that I doubted the quality. The rest came from there.”
“Take care if you’re wandering around at night,” Adara warned. “Sounds like you’re setting yourself up for some of those ‘nasty things’ that happen to those who ask too many questions.”
“I am,” Terrell assured her. “The Trainers are more than happy to loan me a bear hound or so if I go out. That’s nearly as good as having Sand Shadow with me.”
The puma made a sound between a purr and a growl, her version of an ironic chuckle.
Adara scratched the puma under her chin. “We haven’t been so successful. We’re keeping an eye on Chankly’s Harbor. Thus far there’s no sign of anything unusual. They don’t even seem to be doing much fishing. I’m getting frustrated.”
“No luck finding a way into that facility?”
“Not so far, yet I’m sure there must be a way. Ring and Winnie got out, so we can get in.”
She could see from Terrell’s expression that he didn’t think that was necessarily true. Indeed, she herself could think of ways any entrance could be completely sealed—massive amounts of dirt or rock from a “landslide” would do the job.
But those would make it very hard for the Old One to return and I cannot believe he would want that. If the place was of the seegnur’s making, then the Old One might hide it, but he would never destroy it.
Bolstered by her conclusions, Adara returned to the hunt. She reviewed Lynn’s description over and over again. There had been an inlet. A large rock shelf had been associated with the place. She’d found both. Eventually, she accepted that her own awe for the Old One, no matter how much she had tried to hide it from herself, had worked against her.
I have been acting as if he were some sort of wizard—or worse, the seegnur of old—capable of hiding a city behind a wall of fog and mist. Think like a hunter! There must have been ways for food to be brought in, water, an underground place would have needed fresh air …
Two nights later, Adara found the way in. There was a waterfall—so natural in its course, so small and insignificant in its flow—that time and again she had overlooked it. Behind the water, she found more space than there should be. Searching by touch, she came upon a crevice so narrow she needed to pass through sideways. Beyond that crevice was a passage cut by tools far more sophisticated than any she knew.
Seegnur work.
Griffin has told us often enough how the seegnur were like foxes, always building hidden exits from their dens. This must have been one such. I cannot believe they chose to get soaked every time they went in or out.
The passage appeared to end after a dozen or so paces. Once Adara would have been fooled, but that was before she had helped Griffin and the rest explore the Sanctum. The passage “end” proved to be a door similar to those commonly used there. Griffin had shown them how to operate the fail-safe that allowed the door to be opened without power.
Adara wondered that a door allowing access to the outer world had not been more carefully locked. Her answer came in the form of a huge blackened mark that all but obscured a panel near the door.
I see. When the raiders came, they burned away the more complex lock. Later, they did not take time to replace a mechanism that would not work without power in any case. After all, the primitives of Artemis would not be able to figure out seegnur locks.
She prowled forward, alert for traps. The lore from the days after the slaughter of the seegnur was filled with tales of the unfortunate who had fallen afoul of dangers left by the seegnur for their enemies. Then there were the traps the Old One himself might have left for Lynn or her allies.
Sand Shadow remained outside while Adara made the initial check. Eventually, Adara indicated the puma could join her. Once past the crevice—which Sand Shadow would have no trouble with—the corridors were quite wide enough for both of them. The puma arrived, plushy fur like damp velvet, and rubbed her head against Adara in approval. To her nose, the place smelled strongly of humans: old scent, but of young and old, many females, many young.
This is what we sought, the place the Old One was forced to abandon after Lynn discovered his secret. Now to see if we can turn it to our own use. He will not make it easy.
Nor did he. Five or six times Adara had to stop and patiently dismantle some device that would have harmed someone without her gift for seeing in the dark. Two more times only Sand Shadow’s basic distrust saved her from blundering into something that escaped even her careful inspection.
Once the place would have overwhelmed Adara with its peculiar layout. Not only was it larger than the buildings she had known, but the seegnur had built with a different sense of priority than her own people. Moreover, there were repeated signs of destruction—burn marks, slagged metal, ruined m
achinery—that even the Old One’s later use did not conceal.
Adara thought that Griffin might have been able to guess the place’s original purpose, but it was a mystery to her. All she could do was patiently search corridor by corridor, room by room, trying to find anything that might be useful.
The facility had been stripped of its furnishings. They found evidence of how it had been refitted for modern needs. Clumsy chimneys made from clay pipe fed into ventilation ducts, probably meant to serve stoves no longer in place. Smoke marked walls and ceilings where lanterns had been hung.
Occasionally, Sand Shadow’s sense of smell added a detail. This room smelled strongly of blood, that one of food, this one of smoke. In the end, it was Sand Shadow who found where another door was hidden.
Here, the puma sent, pressing her nose to an otherwise unpromising wall at the end of a wide corridor. Human scent, fresher than the others, also older scent, piled up as if many, many went over this place.
Adara understood and quickly found the outline of a door. She found the controls, concealed behind a panel that matched the surrounding wall. The concealment, although quite good, looked as if it had been done since the time of the seegnur. Probably then, long ago, this door had not been hidden.
However, try as she might, Adara could not open the door. The fail-safes did not work as did the ones in the crew quarters. Frustrated, she sat on the floor and considered.
I wondered at the outer door why it was not better locked. There the lock had been burned away. Here it remains. Did the Old One somehow work out its secret?
Almost unwillingly, Adara found herself admiring the Old One’s cleverness. He might be colder than the never melting ice of the highest mountains, but there was no denying his brilliance.
I must not let myself forget that Griffin comes from a culture that—although fallen—is still far closer to that of the seegnur than any we know. The Old One may have had centuries of life, but still he is of Artemis. That he has learned so much without teachers such as Griffin had … No. I must take care not to underestimate him. That brilliance of mind is as dangerous as the fangs of any pack of winter starved wolves.
She tried to solve the lock a while longer, but failed. Eventually, she decided to seek Terrell’s aid. Terrell had a loremaster’s education. Possibly he would think of something she had not. Perhaps this door was useless to their cause. However, the Old One had closed it and locked it as he had no other. If for no other reason than that, Adara wanted to get through.
* * *
Griffin’s apparent eagerness—and perhaps the Old One’s desire to make him an ally, not a mere prisoner—quickly earned him privileges. One of the first was being offered a mistress, such as both Julyan and Dierks enjoyed.
He knew that to refuse would be to lower himself in Julyan’s estimation—Julyan was very much the sort of man who enjoyed flaunting his sexuality—but Griffin had no desire to force himself on a woman. Then again, the women might be willing to tell him things he wanted to know: about the Mender’s Isle routine, how often the inhabitants were permitted outside, all those things that could enable him to plan an escape.
In the end, Griffin decided to express interest but also a degree of choosiness—presenting himself as a connoisseur of female beauty, unwilling to waste himself on just any woman. Julyan already thought he was odd, and readily accepted this excuse. However, this meant that each day some woman or other—bathed, groomed, and dressed provocatively—was paraded before Griffin. Some even seemed willing, which made Griffin’s self-restraint even more difficult. It had been a long time, and he was lonely as well.
If it hadn’t been for the odd dreams he kept having, for his chats with Dierks and, more rarely, with Julyan or the Old One, Griffin might have accepted a mistress just to break his isolation.
As it was, he found that remembering passages of Winnie’s story were quite effective in cooling his ardor. Her voice saying “Is it enough to say that the Stablekeeper took me and showed me what happened to one girl who had rebelled? What I saw was enough to convince me to give in” was usually enough to stop him.
Scientific assessment also helped. Griffin tried to look at the women not as women but as specimens, speculating as to what trait they had that the Old One desired. Occasionally, there was a clue. One slim blonde had eyes with pupils like Adara’s. Another showed thin lines on her throat that might be gill slits.
A final restraint to his sexual urges was that Griffin had no desire to be part of the Old One’s breeding project. As far as Griffin knew, he had no adaptations, but might the Old One want to add off-world genes to his collection? The idea of some son or daughter of his being raised in captivity, bred, perhaps to a sister or brother to bring out shared traits, was enough to make Griffin impotent.
Oddly enough, Griffin’s sexual self-restraint gained him freedom in other matters. Apparently, as Julyan saw it, if Griffin could resist the assortment of feminine pulchritude paraded before him each evening, then Griffin could also resist other temptations. Therefore, Griffin was given free run of most of the facility. The only areas off-limits were those where the women and children lived. Dierks assured him he wasn’t missing much of scientific interest.
“I was there before the space was converted into living areas,” he said. “The Old One and I went over them with great care. As best as we could tell, they were probably used to park a shuttle when it was no longer in use, just a huge, empty area with a door that—from its angle—probably opened directly under water.”
“You didn’t open it?”
“We couldn’t, even if we’d dared. The seegnur may have had a way to keep the water out, but we don’t. I was nervous the Old One would try anyhow—he is fearless when it comes to seeking knowledge—but the locks had been melted shut. You must remember, both this place and the one under the lighthouse were in horrible shape when the Old One found them. Only the arrival center was left in good shape, though sealed against intrusion.”
“Under the lighthouse?” Griffin tried not to sound eager. He remembered how Adara had located the general area where Lynn had said the Old One had originally housed his breeding project. They hadn’t found a way into the facility there but, to be fair, they hadn’t looked very hard. There had been too much else to occupy them.
“That’s right,” Dierks said. “It’s closed now but it was the first place the Old One found. He came to Spirit Bay because he had heard about the arrival facility and how it was still intact. However, even with the help of the loremasters, he couldn’t find a way in. Instead, he concluded that if the seegnur had one facility in the area, they might have had others. Proximity would have been useful since they refused to use their flying machines.”
“Yes. That would have ruined the ambiance,” Griffin agreed. “So the Old One went looking…”
“He had already learned that if the local lore said a place was scenic or otherwise restricted, it often held hidden evidence of the seegnur’s technology. The Haunted Islands were of great interest for that reason, but even he could not figure out how to bring a boat safely ashore.
“Therefore, he went looking for other places. There were tales that there had once been a very elegant lighthouse some distance from the town of Spirit Bay. It’s still depicted in mosaic art from the time of the seegnur. However, it had been completely destroyed. The Old One realized that the destruction had likely happened during the slaughter of the seegnur, for destroying the buildings they made is not easy.”
Griffin nodded, thinking of the houses in Spirit Bay, still intact, still with paint apparently pristine after five hundred years.
“And the Old One was, of course, correct.”
“He was more than correct,” Dierks went on, enthusiastic now that he was praising his mentor’s cleverness, “for he found not only the place—it was overgrown after several hundred years of neglect, as you can imagine—he also found the hidden facility beneath it. Clearing that facility without arousing local ire—for the a
rea was ruled as a restricted zone in the regional lore—was his first challenge.”
“But he succeeded.”
“He did. It took years. As he did so, he cultivated friendships with the people of Spirit Bay and surrounding areas. He had long been an advocate for the adapted. In Spirit Bay, as elsewhere, there were conflicting reactions. I think there was some relief at someone who would take responsibility.”
“But the Old One’s work didn’t stop with finding the area below the lighthouse,” Griffin gently prompted.
“Not in the least. Eventually, he found a tunnel from that facility to the Haunted Islands.”
Griffin noted the difference in Dierks’s account from what the Old One had told him. The Old One had implied that he had reached the islands from the Sanctum.
Interesting. So perhaps he does not want me to know about the lighthouse. Did he forget to tell Dierks to stay silent? Or is this a sign of increasing trust?
“The facilities on and beneath the islands had also been ruined,” Dierks continued. “This time, though, the Old One changed his focus. He now knew that here—as elsewhere he had visited—the seegnur had hidden their workings beneath earth and water. He estimated where a tunnel into the sealed facility on the edge of the town might be.”
“He found it,” Griffin guessed, “and managed to get into the sealed facility that way. Clever. The locals didn’t mind? After all, the Sanctum must have been restricted as well.”
Dierks shook his head. “By the time the Old One found his way into the Sanctum, enough time had passed that the locals accepted his right. He is the Old One Who Is Young. He had outlived generations unchanged. Many thought he was one of the seegnur, either returned or reawakened. He never made that claim…”
Griffin nodded. But he did everything he could to quietly create that impression, from how he styled his hair and dressed, to implying that he remembered what he had only learned. I suspect his greatest asset was that he never tried to convince anyone of his right to do as he wished. He simply did it and left it up to them to accept or not.
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