by eden Hudson
“Fine.” I started following the walkway again. “We’ll get proof, then we’ll rejoice.”
The path sloped down past a cascade of tawny flowstones and ducked under a rock bridge with an inverted garden of thin calcite straws growing on its underside. We followed it back up, turning so we could squeeze between a pair of stone columns into a smaller room hanging with dazzling curtain formations, then sideways again to exit the room through another choke point. There the path curled around the outside wall of that curtain room and switched back toward the entrance. The path down to the water was chained off.
Carina stared at the chain, her brow furrowed.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m the best thief in the world. I can get us past this. Watch.”
I unhooked the chain and stepped through to the other side with a grand flourish.
She glared at me, unimpressed. “It’s got the same rock growth on it the people upstairs did.”
I felt the links, then inspected them a little closer. “You’re right. It does. And while I’m not normally one to dismiss a connection like that, so does the whole cave, Carina. We don’t know how they got turned into human hard candy, but we do know how the cave and everything inside it got this way—mineral seepage.”
She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand and went on.
“The mud people didn’t follow us in here, and I haven’t seen anything that looks like a seraph wielding a fiery sword, but from down here we’ve got a direct line of sight to every other point in the cave, and you’ve got to be happy with that bottleneck up there. You keep a lookout for anything coming from above, and I’ll keep an eye out for my flame kigao. Deal?”
She exhaled loudly, but nodded.
“Good deal,” I said.
I let the chain drop and headed down to the water’s edge. It looked as if the walkway used to lead down into a deeper part of the cave, but it was eventually cut off when the water rose too high.
A chill was coming off the water, making this area colder than the rest of the cave by far. I knelt next to the pool and took a deep breath through my nose. This was definitely where the smell of cold, clear water was coming from. According to the ancient texts, this flowed up from a spring somewhere down below. If we’d brought diving gear, we could probably have traced it back to the source.
“Greatest thief in history finds the source of Time,” I whispered.
Carina’s allegation that the legend might just be a legend flickered to the surface of my mind. I scooped up a handful of water and raised it to my lips.
The lights went out, plunging the cave into blackness. I froze.
“IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH!” a voice boomed from the walls.
My heart punched me in the tonsils so hard that I almost missed the fact that the voice was speaking First Earth words I’d only ever seen written before.
“Van Zandt?” Carina yelled. She sounded like she was trying to be heard over the voice, not trying to warn me of imminent doom. “I’m sorry. I—”
“THE EARTH WAS WITHOUT FORM AND VOID! AND DARKNESS WAS OVER THE FACE OF THE DEEP! AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD WAS HOVERING OVER THE FACE OF THE WATERS!”
A dim blue light clicked on, illuminating the pool in front of me. It was recessed in a little hollow to my right, beside a primitive amplifier that was half-covered in calcite.
“—this old panel full of buttons,” Carina yelled. “Sorry. I can’t get it to shut—”
The blue light clicked off, dropping us back in the darkness.
“AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
Bright white light flooded the cave, sparkling off the wet surfaces of curtains and columns.
Carina was still yelling at me. “What’s it saying?”
“It’s the beginning of your Scriptures,” I yelled. “Must be an automa—”
“AND GOD SAW THAT THE LIGHT WAS GOOD! AND GOD SEPARATED THE LIGHT FROM THE DARKNESS!”
Now the lights shut off again, and this time, multicolored lights went on and off around the cave, illuminating the major formations. Jade on a tiered column that ran from the ceiling to the floor. Scarlet on a long, wavy strip of curtain. Fiery orange on a massive stalactite.
“That’s it,” I yelled at Carina. I pointed up at the stalactite. “That’s the Seraph.”
I burned the image into my brain and closed my eyes before the light moved on to another formation. Whatever First Earth doofus had named that piece of rock the Seraph must’ve had better imagination than eyesight. It looked like a very thick stalactite to me. I could sort of pick out things that might be wings stretching out on either side of the body. And the double points could maybe be feet, but only if you imagined the wavy bits just above them were a flowing robe. Sticking out to the side was another branch that might’ve been arm. Didn’t look like it was brandishing a flaming sword, though. More like an oversized club.
I studied the image I had in my head, searching for any sign that it was alive. It looked like a standard speleothem. But so did the mud people outside.
The backs of my eyelids turned red, and I realized the voice wasn’t booming anymore. When I opened my eyes, the smaller yellow lights had come back on. The show was over.
I glared at Carina. “Maybe give a guy a warning before you start pushing buttons next time.”
She did not appear appropriately chastised. She was staring at the Seraph formation.
“It’s not a seraph,” she said.
“It’s barely humanoid,” I said.
“No, I mean, if it’s anything, it’s a cherub.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Seraphim are the burning ones who worship around God’s throne. Cherubim are the guardians; they carry flaming swords. God placed them at the entrance to the Garden of Eden after the Fall to keep humans away from the Tree of Life.”
“And you think the recitation of Scripture here is alluding to that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Those ancient texts you sent me never said for sure what First Earthers believed about this place. But this one does look like it’s holding a fiery sword.”
“It looks like it’s holding a whale dong,” I said, turning back to the water. “Don’t push any more buttons for a while, all right? I’m going to test our legend.”
I cupped my hand and scooped another handful of cold, clear water to my mouth. I drank.
No flickers from the lights. No thunderous voice. No fire and brimstone raining down.
I checked the misnamed Seraph. No movement from up there.
“How am I supposed to tell if this is working if nobody attacks me?” I said.
Carina didn’t answer. She was staring down in my direction, but not quite at me.
“What?” I looked over my shoulder.
There wasn’t anything there. The water wasn’t even rippling anymore.
“Feeling thirsty, Bloodslinger?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything. She also didn’t move. Or blink. Or breathe.
“Carina?”
No response.
I jogged up the slope, back through the open chain, to her side. She was still staring down at the pool where I’d been.
“If you’re messing with me, I’ll pitch you over this railing,” I said. I leaned over and yelled in her ear, “Carina!”
Nothing. She could’ve been a life-size sculpture.
I looked around for some other proof that what I thought was happening was actually happening.
The water. I ran back down to the water, slipping a little on the slick rock in my hurry.
I’d been wrong to think the water wasn’t even rippling anymore. The ripples were still there, but they weren’t moving.
Time had stopped.
“Yes!” My shout didn’t echo. I clapped a round of flat-sounding applause. “I did it! I’m the greatest thief in history! I! Stole! Time!”
After a few more minutes’ well-deserved celebration, I got down to business. I needed to know ho
w long that tiny drink of Time would last me, get some sort of conversion system of swigs-to-days figured out. I started the timer on my wristpiece.
With that going, I ran up through the mud people holo-screening and the gem shop to grab our bags and bring them to the pool. I dug out the ten-packs of two-gallon inflatable bladders we’d brought for carrying the Time-water and filled them all, then filled both my and Carina’s Hi-Alt/Lo-Temp hydration kits.
As I worked, the water didn’t rush in to fill in the empty spaces I scooped from. There were just dips here and there throughout the pool. I stared at the half-tunnels, then our backpacks, considering dumping out the rations and refilling the resealable bags they’d come in with water, but decided against it. Fitting all twenty of the full bladders into our backpacks would already stretch them to the limit.
I was trying to figure out whether we could somehow empty the insulate out of one of the inflatable mattresses and fill it with Time-water—maybe we could drag it behind us?—when the water geysered back to life in front of me, nearly making me jump out of my shorts.
“Jubal, what—?” In her shock, Carina had used my first name. “How’d you get over— Why’d the water—? Wait.” She pointed at the pile of filled black bladders I’d built up next to our bags. “I know we left those outside. What happened?”
I stopped the timer on my wristpiece.
“It’s Time, Carina,” I said, grinning. “I’m stealing Time! I told you!” I grabbed a hydration kit that used to be full of mundane melted snow and brought it up to her. “Try a drink. You’ll see.”
She looked at it skeptically, but took a sip.
And then she was gone.
“Where are you?” I yelled, spinning in a slow circle.
“Up here!”
I craned my neck. She was near the entrance to the cave, leaning over the railing that she’d told me not to lean over earlier.
“You’re stealing Time!” Her green eyes were wide with unadulterated delight. “Real, actual, physical Time!”
“See, now that’s how you show someone you’re suitably impressed,” I told her.
TWENTY-THREE:
Jubal
Because I hadn’t thought to tell Carina to start her wristpiece timer right after she drank, we didn’t get any measurement from her venture outside of Time. We had a never-ending supply of the stuff right there, though, so I explained the experiment’s goals, then had us both take a drink at the exact same second.
“If we’re both outside Time now, how do we know it worked?” she asked, looking up from starting her timer.
“Excellent question,” I said, pausing to start mine. “And the answer is, like this.”
I reached down and dragged my hand through the pool. The water curled off to each side, but didn’t fall back in.
Carina stared in awe. “That’s why the water exploded after you disappeared. Splashing in it between seconds would’ve been like dropping a ballistic missile in it. I was so caught up in everything else, I didn’t think to try messing with the water.”
“Everything else?” I said. “Carina, did you look in my pants?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not everyone is as obsessed with your manhood as you are.”
“Who are you trying to convince, dirty girl? Me or yourself?”
We spent the next twenty minutes—according to our wristpiece timers—loading filled containers into our bags. We had forty-two gallons. I’m man enough to admit that I couldn’t shoulder an even twenty. I’m a creature of luxury, not a packhorse. Luckily, Carina was literally built to carry that kind of weight. We managed to cram twenty gallons in her bag and tie eight on the top and sides. I took the remaining fourteen. To get it all in our bags, though, we had to transfer the sleeping gear into mine and dump all our rations.
“What are we going to do about the trip back?” Carina asked. “We’re going to need food.”
“Our bodies can’t metabolize if Time isn’t moving,” I said. “We’ll drink just enough to stay outside Time until we get back to the dispatch station. I’m sure Farrelli will be happy to serve us up something delicious once we get there. Then we’ll catch an icebreaker headed back toward the Kalian Islands.” I looked around one more time. “I still think we should try to fill one of the mattresses.”
Carina hauled her bag onto her shoulders, then gave a little hop to adjust the straps. “I don’t think either of us could drag it while we’re carrying these. Besides, you don’t know whether that insulant is toxic. Kind of counterproductive to drink poison while you’re looking for a cure to the plague.”
I zipped my bag shut and hefted it onto my shoulders with a groan.
We struggled back up the walkway and onto the stone stairs, moving carefully to avoid slipping under our heavy loads. We’d just made it to the mouth of the cave when I heard an explosive splash from below.
The water had flowed back together in the pool.
“Stop your timer,” I told Carina while I did the same. Mine said one hour and eight minutes had passed. “What do you have?”
“Sixty-eight minutes and forty-three seconds,” she said over her shoulder.
We started walking again.
“Now we just need to measure how much each of our mouths can hold,” I said.
“I bet you wish I’d said that so you could make an off-color comment.”
“Just do it, Carina. You know you want to.”
Because she knew it would drive me crazy, she shook her head. “I don’t think I do.”
“Say, ‘Open up, I’ve got a yardstick right here,’ then go for your fly. Say it or I will.”
She glanced back, making sure I saw her check out my crotch. “More like an inchstick.”
“Yes!” I took my hands off my bag’s straps, letting the full weight dig into my shoulders, so I could applaud. “Oh, yes!”
A fiery hand grabbed my arm. “The electricity is about to go out.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Carina.”
She stopped in the entrance, one foot over the threshold to the dark pre-tour room, and turned back. From the look on her face, she was about to make a smart remark, but that died when she saw the look on mine.
“Is it her?” Carina asked.
“The electricity is about to go out,” I told her in time with my flame kigao.
I spun around, searching for the source of the threat. My kigao mimicked the motion.
A tawny blur shot past, knocking me out of the way. I threw my arms out, and just barely managed to balance the added Time-water weight before I hit that flimsy railing.
Metal clashed against rock. My head snapped up.
The Seraph was at the mouth of the cave, fighting Carina. The thing was still an amorphous speleothem, but twice as big now that it was up close and personal rather than hanging at a nice distant point on the ceiling. Its wings snapped and flapped as it darted around the doorway. Its single arm whipped around as it tried to bludgeon Carina with its flaming club—which was actually on fire now.
Carina battled back with her sword. These strikes weren’t as graceful as I’d seen from her in the past. The weight of her bag and the doorway she was standing in hindered every movement. But she couldn’t leave the threshold. If she stepped into the cave or the room behind her, the Seraph could attack her from any direction. Like this, he could only attack from the front.
The Seraph fell back a step, trying to draw her out, then lunged when that didn’t work. Carina countered. The Seraph’s club crashed against her sword so hard that Carina’s bad leg buckled. She dropped to her knees, snarling under the weight. Fire dripped from the Seraph’s sword. Carina’s sleeves melted where the drops fell. Her arms shook as the Seraph leaned on his club, but she didn’t throw him off.
A flick of her thumb turned on her sword’s chain. The ear-shattering whine reverberated off the cave walls as the chain-driven saw edge chewed into the Seraph’s club. Burning rock chips flew in all directions.
The noise snapped me out
of whatever trance I’d been in. We had to get out of here. Carina couldn’t beat an immortal guardian. She might be able to hold him off while I ran, but she couldn’t kill him. Even if she weren’t overloaded with Time-water, she would eventually get tired and then the Seraph would bash her head in. I couldn’t let that happen. Not when she was finally starting to admit that she knew how things were supposed to be between us.
I jogged back down the walkway, my feet slipping a little on the slick rock.
A shout from Carina drew my attention. She’d given up her defensive position in the mouth of the cave and gone into a controlled roll across the walkway. The Seraph’s club smashed into the rock an inch from her face. She rolled again, using the momentum from the weight in her bag.
I wanted to yell what the hell did she think she was doing leaving the relative safety of the doorway for the open range of the cave, but as soon as I opened my mouth I saw why she’d done it.
The mud people were awake. They crashed in through the cave mouth. A few surrounded the Seraph, going for Carina. The rest—more than a dozen it looked like—clunked down the path toward me.
I picked up the pace, unslinging my bag so I wouldn’t get hung up in the pinch point in the curtain room, then skidded out the other side and around the switchback. From behind me, I heard rock curtains shattering. Apparently, mud people didn’t go around things, they went through.
When I came out at the bottom of the path, Carina was hanging one-handed from one of the rickety metal posts anchoring the railing. Mud people on the walkway reached for her and got their hands sawed off. Greenish-gray goo and bits of calcareous shell went flying. The Seraph darted in and out, swinging its club at her head. Carina swung and blocked, but she was wearing down fast.
“Jump!” I yelled. “Let go and jump!”
One of the things I respect about Carina is that she doesn’t waste time arguing when someone’s trying to save her life. She dropped and landed just up the walkway from me, her bad leg folding again.
“Jeesh, what kind of shoddy rebuild work does the Guild do, anyway?” I huffed, grabbing her arm and dragging her back to her feet.