Harric followed the terrace along the front side of the houses along a stone path. Each house stood still and cold, shuttered windows dark, but each had some version of the mushroom-shaped lamp by its second-floor front door. In the Unseen, the lamps appeared as dark blots in the ambient essence glow, but Harric imagined that in the Seen, the whole valley must glow in constellations of concentric rings.
As he passed the third or fourth door, Fink’s claws hooked like a startled cat’s into Harric’s shoulders. Before Harric could protest, something huge and white flashed past a gap between roofs, and his heart nearly flew from his chest.
Whatever had passed was so big it had filled that band of sky.
Harric flattened himself against the front face of the nearest building, inadvertently smashing Fink behind him. Afraid to breathe lest he be heard, he sidestepped along the face of the house as quietly and quickly as he could, until he reached the side, and then slipped into a narrow alley extending back between houses, but the alley dead-ended at a high wall that rose to the next terrace. Only a trellis continued upward. Harric cowered against the dead-end wall and rolled his head back to look up for a glimpse of movement above the roof line.
“Aerie?” Harric whispered, barely making a sound.
Fink’s talons pricked deeper. Then the imp let go with one hand and jabbed a crooked finger toward the right side of the alley, where an open archway beckoned from the concealment of a partially fallen trellis. Harric crept around the junked trellis and darted through the archway. He found himself in a tunnel that seemed to run beneath and behind the next house. Plunging forward, he put some distance between himself and the archway, navigating by the dim essence light of moisture and dust on the walls and floor.
When they were a good twenty paces in, they passed a door that must have gone into the basement of the house. Fink leapt from Harric’s back and dove for it. With a frightened glance back the way they’d come, the imp clawed the latch at the top of the door and heaved it open. The hinges gave way with a rasping gasp that made Harric wince, but Fink plowed in, apparently oblivious, his fat chins shaking with fear.
Harric followed into a cellar lined with shelves of sealed pots and jars and walls stacked with urns. The space smelled of dust that now rose in glowing motes in the Unseen, disturbed by their feet on the floor. A wooden ramp climbed up from the floor to another door.
“Close the door, kid!” Fink practically squeaked.
Harric peeked out into the tunnel to be sure no one followed, then closed the door gently behind them.
Fink quaked like a freezing child. “Kid, how could you do this to me?” Eyes bugged from his bald head as he hunched on the floor, flabby arms hugging his knees. “How could I let you do this to me? They know I’m here, kid. I can feel it. They know.”
“Fink, they don’t know. If they knew, they would’ve grabbed you.”
Fink shook his triple chins. “They’re coming. We have to get out of here. I mean…we have to stay and hide. Maybe hide—” He put his hands on his head as if to keep it from flying apart.
Harric sighed and coaxed the nexus from Fink’s talons. “I have to see what’s out there. I have to see where Brolli went.”
“This place is all wrong, kid.” Fink’s voice was barely a whisper. “No one’s been in here for years. Full of food and drink and the things you mortals put in a tomb for the afterlife. As if that’s what you’re going to eat there.” He gave a miserable wave at the jars. “This might as well be my tomb, but I can’t eat any of that.”
Harric cracked the door to peer back into the tunnel. “Fink, I’ll be back. Just stay put.”
“Souls, kid, don’t let them see you. And hurry.”
Harric stepped out and closed the door. He hadn’t taken three steps before the weight of the Unseen pressed upon him like a suit of lead. Carrying Fink on his back had been a merely physical strain, and though it made him sweat, he could support it for a long time. Holding himself in the Unseen was carrying a spiritual weight, and it burdened him in ways that he struggled to understand. It was like diving after witch-stone nuggets in the deep pools in the river, where his breath felt too small, the icy water froze his temples, and a relentless pressure squeezed his lungs. It felt like the water itself wished to expel him, and the dives took careful concentration or he risked drowning or aborting the dive. But he still had no choice but to maintain himself in the Unseen or he risk being spotted by a night-seeing Kwendi.
The tunnel was wide enough for two men to walk side by side, but its ceiling was only a hand’s breadth taller than Harric, and until he got used to it, he kept flinching and ducking for fear of knocking his head. The tunnel curved continuously under the ring of houses, passing many doors like the one to Fink’s cellar, and crossing alleys every three or four houses.
He guessed he was in a servant’s passage like the ones in Gallows Ferry, where cooks and maids moved supplies without disturbing residents. Whether the Kwendi had a similar kind of segregation of lords and servants, he had no real idea, but even without the segregation, it seemed likely the tunnels were for practical access. Ruts in the floor suggested carts moved through the passage with materials too heavy to move through a trellis, a suspicion confirmed when he passed an abandoned two-wheeled wheelbarrow.
At each alley, he stopped to listen and look up for evidence of the Aerie or Kwendi before he passed beneath the brief band of open sky.
After a dozen alleys, he heard water ahead, and soon a glowing archway came into view, backlit by the brilliant blue-white spiritual essence of water. Beyond the archway lay a stone-vaulted reservoir. Or so he guessed it to be.
The room had no floor. Instead, it housed a square stone pit about eight paces to a side and five fathoms deep. Across the pit on the opposite side he could see another archway, connected to his side of the pit by an ancient trellis. From a pipe high in the right-hand wall poured a steady stream of water. In the Unseen, the stream shone like liquid lightning plunging into a pool of the same below. It wasn’t exactly “running” water, but the whipping motion of the strands rising from the pool stung Harric’s spirit body like nettles on sunburn.
He stepped back into the protection of the archway until the strands could no longer flog him, and from there examined what he could through the dazzling glare.
The room reminded Harric of the water tower on the cliff above Gallows Ferry, which provided the water for the inn; similarly, this cistern probably fed water to the Kwendi houses on the lower terraces. Something had happened to drain it, though, because it appeared to be only a fathom deep, at most. If it were full, he could simply strip down, toss his clothes across, and swim over. Drained as it was…
He stepped forward, enduring the sting of the water essence so he could get a better look at his options. The hand-bridge trellis looked like a ladder laid flat at a height just over Harric’s head, and it looked about as trustworthy as any wooden structure left over a pit of water for years untended might look: slippery, and likely rotten in places. However, the Kwendi had also left a narrow ledge around the rim of the pit that he could probably sidestep to reach the other side, but if he fell into the pool below, he’d never get out.
He frowned and looked back the way he’d come. Another option was to retrace his steps to the last alley and then slip around the front of the buildings to the next one, but that would expose him to the risk of being seen by the Aerie. Or he could give up and go back to Fink.
Cobs. He did not want to go back empty-handed.
After a moment’s study, he gritted his teeth against the burn of water essence leaned out above the pool, and grabbed each pole of the hand-bridge in his hands. He didn’t trust the ancient bridge enough to hang from the rungs and swing across Kwendi style, because if even one rung broke as he hung from it, he’d probably fall. But if he first got on top of the trellis, he could crawl across on its back, and that way be secure enough on hands and knees to remain on its back if a rung broke loose beneath him.
<
br /> Holding his breath, he gave a little jump and hoisted himself up between the first rungs. The support poles groaned, but held firm as levered his upper body above the rungs. Then the room echoed with a sharp crack! and the bridge gave a mighty shake and a tilt.
And Harric dropped.
O shall I fight, so weeping maids
May kiss my bleeding head?
Methinks such fame comes much too late
for me if I be dead.
—Sir Willard’s eleventh squire, Corvil, in “Sir Willard at Broden Field”
50
Curiosity & The Cat
Harric’s heart leapt into his throat as he swung from his right hand above the pit.
A stream of curses crowded his lips as he kicked his feet and struggled to get his other hand on the remaining support pole while the rotten one dangled by his ear. About the time he had cursed all Kwendi engineers and their mothers and fathers and offspring, he managed to get hold with both hands, kick his feet back onto the solid ground, and pull himself to safety.
He stumbled back into the tunnel and leaned against a wall to let his heart settle.
And may the rotting trellises of this rotting city catch fire and burn to ashes.
A vicious throb squeezed his head, reminding him of the precious few minutes he had in the Unseen.
Cob it. I’m going to get myself killed.
Rubbing an aching shoulder, he looked back the way he’d come. There’d be no shame in returning empty-handed. It would be the smart thing to do. It was certainly the safest thing to do.
On the other hand, he could sidestep the ledge around the edge of the reservoir and continue his search for the Kwendi. Surely he was close now to where he’d heard the Kwendi laugh. Stupid to give up now.
His feet took him back to the shining archway.
The sweaty walls of the reservoir were no different than the cliffs he’d grown up climbing above the river at Gallows Ferry. In some ways, this would be easier, because the stonework here was solid. He should have tried it to begin with.
The sunburn sting of whipping water strands resumed the moment he stepped out on the ledge, and again his head throbbed with the burden of sustaining himself there. But progress along the wall was easy. When he reached the first corner above the pit, however, voices echoed from one of the tunnels. One of the Kwendi laughed, and though the Unseen and the tunnels distorted the sound, it could easily have been the laugh of Brolli.
Heart drumming in his ears, Harric hurried his next step and set the ball of his sock-covered foot on a sharp pebble that made him lurch off balance. The gulf whirled around him as he teetered and felt himself leaning out too far. He shot a hand back to the other wall in the corner and managed to brace himself just long enough to reset his feet across the gap in the corner and restore balance.
Fool, he can’t see you! He cursed himself. You don’t have to hurry this.
As sounds of feet on stone grew louder, he forced himself to move slowly and deliberately. He still couldn’t tell from which archway the sounds came, but he fancied they came from the archway he was heading toward.
And just as soon as they’d begun, the sounds of voices and footsteps ceased.
When he finally reached the safety of the other archway, Harric peeked around the corner and found nothing but more empty corridor. Picking up his pace, he resumed his quest down the tunnels and passed another alley, then another, before he once again heard what he’d been seeking: faint voices in conversation. He heard them echoing in the narrow confines of the third alley beyond the reservoir. By now his head throbbed with the effort of keeping himself in the Unseen, and sweat slicked his forehead and neck.
A quick look in the alley proved it empty, but a second-floor window stood open, and from it came the sound of voices. A male voice, possibly Brolli, though the Unseen and the inflections of the Kwendi language made it impossible to know. If it was Brolli, Harric had to wonder what he was doing in this ghost village. Meeting with a ghostly official? Paying a visit to ghosts?
The houses spun around Harric and the weight of the Unseen forced him to his knees. Gasping, he released himself back into the Seen. His heart was racing like he’d just run up a hill.
The conversation above hitched and stopped.
Harric lurched to his feet and staggered back into the now-pitch-black tunnel, where he tried to catch his breath without wheezing or gasping.
When he finally regained control, he listened at the alley and once again heard that the voices had resumed their murmured conversation.
He hung his head in relief. That had been the longest he’d ever held himself in the Unseen without help. Nevertheless, it was clear to him he wouldn’t be able to move through the Unseen on the way back. He’d be lucky if he had enough stamina left for a minute more in the spirit world, so he’d have to save that for an emergency.
Once more he considered turning back, but he’d come so far that he couldn’t bear to retreat.
Cob it all. In for a penny, in for a queen.
Turning his back on the alley, he groped his way back down the passage, hand trailing along the right wall until he found the cellar door to the house and opened it.
Once inside, he brought out the glowing globes he’d taken from the mushroom lamp, and held them out for light. This cellar was much like the one he’d seen with Fink. Pots and jars burdened the shelves, sealed urns lined the walls, and a fine coat of dust carpeted everything. On the dusty floor, footprints of bare Kwendi feet crossed from the door to the shelves and from the shelves to the cellar ramp, up which they proceeded to an open door at the top.
Jackpot.
Faint sounds of conversation drifted down through the door.
Harric crept up the ramp and found himself in a stone kitchen with a hearth. A full complement of pots and pans adorned a few knee-high tables and a chopping block. Dried plants hung from the ceiling in clots of cobwebs. Dust and ash and long-dead spices scented the air.
Following the tracks, Harric moved from the kitchen to a vast drum-shaped room like Brolli’s map room, with its central column and radiating branches. Among the branches at various levels lay wooden floors supporting soft-walled rooms like hanging pavilions. A few mushroom-shaped lamps on the floor cast a dim light upon a circle of cake-shaped leather cushions around a long, low table, like a bench.
Scanning the place through his oculus, it was impossible to miss the cascade of brilliant green soul strands pouring from a covered pavilion some two fathoms up and on the other side of the central column. The strands slanted downward across the room, wavering and undulating, full of life, and disappeared into the earth.
As he crept beneath the elevated pavilion, he studied the branches for a way to climb high enough to see into it. He imagined a Kwendi wouldn’t think twice before flying up the abundant branches, but to him it looked like a treacherous climb. But on the far wall of the drum he found a ladder that passed within an easy step of the pavilion’s platform, and he climbed it.
In that pavilion might lie the answers to his questions about the abandoned town. Understanding of what Brolli did each night.
As Harric crept out onto the platform, the voices went quiet. In a moment of panic, fearing he’d been heard and was about to be discovered, he clutched the nexus in its pouch and entered the Unseen.
The renewed burden hit him like a sandbag and blurred his vision, forcing him to hold to a trellis limb. Then, knowing he had only moments left, he staggered forward, parted the hangings, and peered into the pavilion.
The space inside seethed with the brilliant green-white soul light of two Kwendi—neither one Brolli and neither one wearing more than the clothes the gods gave them, male and female, at birth. That they were male and female he knew because their defining parts were quite visible. The female had her back to Harric as she sat atop the male, who lay on his back in a nest of furs and blankets. Despite the male’s obvious distraction in that moment, he looked right at the gap Harric made as he
parted the hangings, and his brow furrowed.
Harric froze. He couldn’t back away or close the hangings without confirming that someone was there, but he had to re-enter the Seen before he blacked out.
As stars flashed across Harric’s vision, the Kwendi’s eyes widened in shock, and the female, seeing her partner’s alarm, turned to look behind her. She let out a shout of surprise, tumbled to the carpeted floor, and hurled a mushroom lamp at Harric. The lamp exploded in fragments against the column beside Harric, sending glowing balls in all directions.
The male sprang to his knees, fists balled for a fight.
The fabric walls of the pavilion embraced Harric as he fell into darkness.
Arkendian infatuation with maleness manifests most strangely in naming offspring. Though a mother’s identity is certain, and the father’s identity equally uncertain, the child is considered to be of the father’s clan. They think so little of women, that…in cases where the father is unknown, the offspring is considered “illegitimate,” which means “outside the protection of the law,” and is made to wear a badge of dishonor in the form of a belt. …and by this measure are we a race of illegitimates without knowledge of our fathers!
—From Among the Stilties, by Kwendi First Secretary Chombi
51
Flight
Dim, watery sounds drifted through a fog of pain, and Harric struggled to make sense of them. Yapping, barking. A cascade of jumbled syllables, like a cart of drums spilled down a cobblestone hill. His skull felt like a walnut under a boot. When he noticed a dim light moving in the fog, he opened his eyes to see frantic movement around him.
Brolli was pulling a shirt over his head. Strange words came from inside the shirt. Muffled. Brolli wore no pants, which was awkward.
But when Brolli’s head emerged from the shirt, Harric noticed that he had a narrower face than Brolli, and a wider mouth, with a tangle of snaggleteeth at the front. Someone else shouted in the small space of the pavilion, and Harric turned to see another half-dressed Kwendi pointing and retreating into a corner.
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