by Robin Hobb
Her body sprawled in the cold puddle. Cold rose through her flesh and into her bones, but the months and the years turned cartwheels around her, impressing every swift second upon her burning memory. She knew enough and then she knew more. The days wheeled out both before and behind her, time moving in both directions. She saw the blocks of the walls being set in place, and she saw the workmen desperately bringing in the dragon cradles. They pulled them on ropes, trundling them along on rollers, for outside the sky had blackened and the earth was shaking and ash rained from the sky swift and thick as a black snowfall. Suddenly it all stopped. She had reached the setting of the first brick in one direction, and in the other the folk had fled or lay dying. She knew it all, and she knew nothing.
Malta. Get up.
Which one was she? Why should she matter more than any other should? They all were, in the end, interchangeable. Weren’t they?
Malta Vestrit. Do you remember? Do you remember how to open the door?
Move the body. Sit up in it. Such a short, ungainly body. Such a short life it had led. How stupid she was. Blink the eyes. The chamber is dark, but it is so simple to recall the chamber as it once was, full of light. The sun shone overhead, and rainbowed down through the crystal panels. There. Now. To work. The doors.
There were two doors in the chamber. She had entered by the north door. It was too small for the dragon to pass through. The cradle had been brought in through the south door. She could recall little else of who she was or why she was here, but she recalled the opening of the door. Ordinarily, it would have been done by four strong men. She would have to do it alone. She went to the first panel beside the south door and found the catch. Her fingernails bent against it, and still the decorative door would not open. She had no tools. She pounded on it with her fist. Something snicked inside it. She tugged again at the catch. This time it reluctantly swung open. With a crash, the panel broke off its ancient hinges and fell to the floor. No matter.
Again, the chamber’s memory and her touch were at odds. The well-oiled crank that should have been there was draped in cobwebs and pitted with corrosion. She found the handle and strove to turn it anyway. It would not budge. Oh. The lever. Pull the lever first. She groped for it and found it. The polished wooden handle was gone. Bare metal met her grasp. She seized it in both hands and pulled. It did not move.
When she finally braced both her feet against the wall and dragged down on it, the lever gave. It moved fractionally then suddenly surrendered to her weight. There was a terrible rending sound from within the wall as she fell to the stone floor. For a moment, she was half stunned. A groaning shivered behind the panel. She clambered to her feet again. Now. The crank. No, no, that would not work. The other lever first. The door must be released on both sides before the cranks could lift it.
She no longer cared about her torn nails and bleeding hands. She wrenched the second panel open. As she did so, damp earth cascaded into the room from the compartment. The wall was breached here. She didn’t care. With her hands, she dug away around the lever until she could wrap both her hands around it. She seized it and pulled violently at it. It traveled a short way, and then stopped. This time she clambered up the decorative scrollwork on the wall, to stand atop the lever. Bouncing her weight on it moved it down another notch. Far overhead, something groaned. Malta braced her entire body and shoved down with her feet. The lever gave, then suddenly broke off under her. She fell past it, tearing her skirts on the jagged metal. Her knee smacked sharply against the stone floor and for a time, all she knew was pain.
Malta. Get up.
“I know. I will.” Her own voice sounded thin and odd to her. She got to her feet and limped back to the panel. The crank handle was mounted on a spoked wheel the size of a carriage wheel. It was made of metal. Damp earth was packed solidly around it. For an eternity, she dug at it. The soil was cold and wet and abrasive. It packed under her nails and sanded into her skin.
Just try it.
Obediently, she set both hands to the handle on the wheel. Her memory told her that two men should be on this crank and two on its partner. They would all have worked in synchronicity to turn them.
But she was the only one here. She put her weight on it and dragged down. Miraculously, it turned, but not far. Far up the wall, something shifted. She left this crank and walked back to the other one. At least this one was not packed with earth. She seized the handle and turned it. It moved more smoothly than its partner, but not much farther. She walked back to the first crank. It turned a notch. She went back to the other crank, and turned it. As she turned it, she could hear something moving in the wall. There was a tiny shifting. The door itself moved fractionally. She leaned on the crank and it moved again. Odd sounds whispered through the wall and door. Ancient chains moved on pulleys, her memories whispered. Counterweights began their descent. That was how she had designed it, remember? Remember. Remember how it was designed. Remember how the whole dome was designed.
She suddenly saw the whole wall and door and their mechanisms differently. The memory of how it should have been contrasted too strongly with what her hands told her. She felt the dirt and wet earth with her hands, shutting her eyes to block out the memory of how it had been. She groped her way across the door, feeling the bulges in its structure, the cracks that crossed it. She spun suddenly. “This whole side of the structure will give way if the door is moved. Only chance has kept it intact this long.”
“It will give way, the earth will fall away from it, and the light will shine in,” the dragon predicted. “Continue.”
“If you are wrong, you will be buried here, and I along with you.”
“I prefer that than to continue as I am. Turn the cranks, Malta. You promised.”
So potent a thing is a name. She snapped back to herself, a young woman in muddy clothes in the darkness. The proud young builder was gone, not even a memory, as dreams wisp away when the awakened one clutches at them. She took the crank in her hand and turned it another notch.
It was the last motion either crank would make. From one to the other she went, back and forth, tugging and cursing. It was as far as the ancient mechanism would move. The wall muttered uneasily to itself, but the door would not move.
“It’s jammed. I can’t do it. I tried. I’m sorry.”
For a long instant, the dragon was silent. Then she commanded, “Get help. Your brother … I see him. You dominate him easily. Fetch him, and two rods to use as levers. Go now. Now.”
There were good and sound reasons to resist this command, but Malta could not recall what they were. She could barely recall this brother the dragon spoke of. The door and the means to open it were all she clearly knew. The rods were a good idea. Shoved through the spokes of the wheel, she could use them as levers to force the cranks to turn.
She walked in light remembered from another time. She dragged her weary steps up the broad stair and out the north door. As she walked, her fingers found the jidzin strip and trailed along it. The corridor illuminated itself to guide her. A blink of her tired eyes, and it thronged with life. Nobles swept past her, their gangly pages in attendance on them. A seamstress and her two young apprentices backed, bowing, out of a door, rich fabrics draped over their arms. A nursemaid with a chubby-kneed child wailing in her arms hastened toward her and then through her. The nurse called a cheery greeting to a young man in a beribboned cap, and he whistled in reply. Malta was the unseen ghost here, not they. The city was theirs.
She stumbled suddenly on fallen stone. She lost her touch on the wall and was plunged once more into darkness. This was her time, her life, and it was dark and dank and riddled with collapsed corridors and jammed doors. This fall of earth, her groping hands told her, completely blocked the corridor. She could not go that way.
She touched the wall to get her bearings and instantly knew a better route that led to a closer exit. She turned her steps that way and hurried along. She no longer listened to the exhausted complaints of her body. She li
ved now in a thousand different moments; why focus on the one where she was in pain? She trotted along, her bedraggled skirts alternately slapping or clinging to her legs.
She slammed to the floor. “A quake,” she said dully, aloud, after it had passed. She lay still on the stone for a time afterwards, waiting for the echo-shake that often followed. Nothing happened. There were sounds, shifting and grating sounds. None of them seemed to come from nearby. Cautiously she came to her feet. She touched the light strip. Light flickered along it, but dimly. Malta had to reach for memories of how the corridor should be before she went on.
There were screams in the distance. She ignored them as she ignored the chatter of strolling couples and the barking of a small dog that brushed past her unfelt. Ghosts and memories. She had a door to open. She turned down a side corridor that would lead her out. The screaming was close here. A woman’s voice cried out, “Please, please, the door is stuck. Get us out of here. Get us out before we die!” As Malta’s hands trailed past the door, she felt the vibration of the woman’s pounding. More in curiosity than in answer to the plea, she set her shoulder to the door. “Pull!” she shouted as she pushed on it. The jammed door suddenly flew open. A woman rushed out of it as soon as it did. She collided with Malta, sending them both to the floor. A pale man stood behind her. Real yellow lanternlight spilled out of the room behind them, near blinding Malta. The woman trampled Malta as she scrambled to her feet. “Get up!” she shrieked at her. “Take us out of here. The wall has cracked and mud is leaking in!”
Malta sat up and looked past her into a well-appointed chamber. The carpeted floor was being engulfed by a slow wave of mud. A crack in the wall was the source of it. Even as Malta stared at it, a little water suddenly bubbled through it. The mud began to flow faster, thinned by the water. Its passage ate at the wall. “The whole wall will give way soon,” she observed with certainty.
The pale young man glanced at it over his shoulder. “You are probably right.” He looked down on her. “Your masters assured us we would be safe here. That no one and nothing could find me here. What is the good of my hiding from assassins, only to be drowned in stinking mud?” Malta blinked. The Elder phantasms faded. The Satrap of Jamaillia scowled down at her. “Well, don’t just lie there. Get up and take us to your masters. They will feel my wrath.”
Companion Kekki had gone back into the chamber to snatch up a lantern. “She is useless,” she declared to the Satrap. “Follow me. I think I know the way.”
Malta lay on the floor, watching them go. This was very significant, she told herself dazedly. The Satrap of Jamaillia had been brought to Trehaug, for his own safety. She had not known that. Someone should have told her about it. Didn’t he trust her? She closed her eyes to try to think about it more clearly. She thought of going to sleep.
The floor bucked under her, slapping her cheek. Down the hall from where she sprawled, Kekki and the Satrap screamed. The shrill sound did not scare Malta half so much as the deep rumbling from the chamber they had vacated. She scrabbled to her feet as the floor was still trembling. She seized the door and dragged it scraping shut. Could a door hold back a collapsing hillside?
She clutched at her head suddenly. Take control. She chose the moment and brought it to life around her. Chaos swirled past her. It might save them.
She turned and ran. Ahead of her, she saw the jouncing lantern the Companion carried. She caught up with the Satrap and his woman. “You’re going the wrong way,” she informed them tersely. “Follow me.” She snatched the lantern from Kekki’s hand. “This way,” she ordered them, and set off. They followed on her heels. Around them, phantoms shrieked thinly as they fled. Malta followed the flight of the Elderlings. If they had escaped their final cataclysm, perhaps she would as well.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DEATH OF THE CITY
THE QUAKE IN THE HOURS BEFORE THE SUMMER DAWN did not wake Keffria. She hadn’t been able to sleep. There had been a little bump in the night that she had ignored. This one was different. It started out as a sharp jolt, but it was the long shivering that followed that got her to her feet. Her Rain Wild hosts had warned her that the motion of the trees exaggerated the shifting of the earth below them. Nevertheless, she held onto the post of her bed as she hastily donned her clothes. Selden would think this was great fun, but Malta might be alarmed by it. She would go to her right away. And once there, she would force herself to tell Malta she was returning to Bingtown. She dreaded that. She had gone to see Malta yesterday evening, but found her sleeping. She hadn’t had the heart to disturb her. The swelling had gone down from her head injury, but both her eyes were still deeply blackened. Knowing sleep was the best healer, Keffria had tiptoed away.
The healer had insisted that Malta be put in a sunny chamber, far up the tree from Keffria’s room. Her path would take her over several bridges and then up a winding stair. She still wasn’t accustomed to the gently swaying footpaths. Selden ran back and forth on them all day, but they still made Keffria nervous. She wished there was more light, but it would be a while until the sun penetrated the foliage all around her. She crossed her arms over her chest and kept to the direct middle of the path. She would not think of how the bridge would sway if there were another quake while she was crossing it. She put all such thoughts out of her mind. She realized she was walking with tiny, mincing steps and deliberately tried to normalize her stride. She was glad to reach the winding staircase that twined up the tree’s trunk.
She rehearsed ways of telling Malta she was leaving her here. It would be hard. When Keffria left, Malta would be very alone, save for Selden. She had refused to see Reyn at all. She still blamed him. Keffria herself had forgiven him on the Kendry during their upriver journey. She believed the men who had accosted the carriage had gone far beyond their orders to seize the Satrap. The guilt and remorse of the young Rain Wilder as he kept vigil outside Malta’s stateroom door had convinced Keffria that he had never intended harm to his beloved. Perhaps in time Malta would see as much, but in the meantime, Keffria would be leaving her children to depend only on one another. The doubts that had assailed her all night returned. She ventured out on the limb that led to Malta’s room.
She nodded a brief greeting to a woman who had come to the door of a nearby chamber. The skin of her face was heavily pebbled. Growths wattled her throat and chin. Tillamon, Reyn’s older sister, smiled brightly at her. “Quite a bump we had,” Keffria observed inanely.
“I hope everyone is all right. Last month, we lost two bridges in a quake like that one,” Tillamon observed cheerily.
“Oh, dear,” Keffria heard herself reply. She hastened on.
She tapped at the door and waited. There was no reply. “Malta, dear, it is me,” she announced and went in. The relief she felt at being off the catwalk evaporated as she stared at Malta’s empty bed. “Malta?” Stupidly she went to stir the empty blankets as if they could somehow conceal her daughter. She went back to the door and leaned out it. “Malta?” she called questioningly.
Reyn’s sister was still in her doorway. “Did the healer take Malta somewhere?” Keffria called to her.
Tillamon shook her head.
Keffria tried not to be frightened. “It’s just so strange. She’s gone. She’s too ill to be out of her bed yet. And she is never an early riser, even when she feels well.” She would not look at the railings by the walk. She would not wonder if a dizzy girl could stagger up from her sick bed and …
The woman cocked her head. “She was out walking with Reynie yesterday,” she volunteered. A small smile came and went from her face. “I heard they had made up,” she offered apologetically.
“But that doesn’t explain why she isn’t in her bed … oh.” Keffria stared at her.
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean it like that. Reynie would never … he’s not like that.” She was falling over her own words. “I had better fetch my mother,” she proposed awkwardly.
There was something going on here, Keffria decided. Somet
hing she should have known about. “I think I had best go with you,” she replied with a sinking heart.
It took more than tapping to waken Jani Khuprus. When she came to the door in her house-robe, her eyes were both weary and anxious. For an instant, Keffria almost pitied her. But Malta was at stake here. She met Jani’s gaze squarely as she said, “Malta is not in her bed. Do you know where she might be?”
The fear that ghosted across Jani’s face told Keffria all. She looked at her daughter. “Tillamon. Return to your chamber. This is only for Keffria and me.”
“But, Mother,” her daughter began, trailing off at the look her mother gave her. She shook her head, but turned and left. Jani’s eyes came back to Keffria. The fine lines on her Rain Wild face suddenly stood out more clearly. She looked ill. She took a deep breath. “It is possible she is with Reyn somewhere. Late last night, he became … very worried about her. He might have gone to her… This is not like Reyn, but he has not been himself, lately.” She sighed. “Come with me.”
Jani led the way swiftly. She had not paused to dress properly or veil herself. Even powered by anger and fear, Keffria could barely keep up with her.
As they neared Reyn’s chamber, misgivings assailed Keffria. If Malta and Reyn had settled their differences, they might … She wanted suddenly to stop and think things through more carefully. “Jani,” she began as the other woman lifted her hand to knock. But she didn’t knock. She simply pushed the door of Reyn’s room open.
A heavy smell of brandy and sweat hung in the air. Jani peered in, then stepped aside to allow Keffria the view. Reyn sprawled facedown on his bed. His arm hung over the side, the back of his wrist against the floor. His breathing was hoarse and heavy. He slept as one exhausted, and he slept alone.
Jani’s fingers were on her lips as she pulled the door shut. Keffria held her apology in until they were well away from his chamber.