by Ian Irvine
“Air and water,” said Aditty.
“Can you elaborate?”
“Elab — elab — ?” He went into a fit of coughing that turned his face scarlet and made his eyes water.
“It means explain,” said Holm. “Tell us what you mean by air and water.”
Aditty wiped his eyes. “They got to have fresh air underground, and clean water. Got to get rid of the breathed air and the dirty water, or they die. Big problem, especially air.”
“Go on,” said Tali.
“Can be all kinds of bad air underground. There’s fire-damp: you can’t smell it, can’t see it, but one spark and,” he clapped his hands together, “bang! And there’s stink-damp, like what they burn in the street lights of Caulderon. Not so common, but it’s deadly poison, and it also goes off, bang.”
He paused for a moment, staring at his feet. “Then there’s heavy air, collects in low places. Put a group of people in a hole and they’ll breathe out enough heavy air to suffocate ’emselves.” He looked up, and Tali saw a keen interest in his tired eyes. “If you build a city underground, you got to have good air, lots of it. Where do you get it?”
“An air shaft,” said Tobry.
“An air shaft does for a small mine. But for a city, what runs underground for miles, you need lots of air shafts, one for each area.”
“Why can’t you have a fan in one entrance,” said Tobry, “and blow it through the city and out the other side?”
“Never seen a fan strong enough. Like I said,” said Aditty, “the heavy air builds up quick. You got to get rid of it straight away. Need lots of air shafts.”
“The problem is finding them,” said Holm. “They’ll be carefully concealed — ”
“And guarded,” said Aditty.
“- and the Seethings above Cython is Lyf’s territory. If we try to search it we’re bound to be seen. We’ve got to go straight to the spot.”
“What about water?” said Tali. “It’s not so easy to hide where water goes underground.”
“Water ain’t such a problem,” said Aditty. “Mines often got too much water, though you can’t always drink it. Can be salty. And in a lead or arsenic or cinnabar mine, it’ll kill you quick. But then,” he mused, “just mining lead or arsenic ore, or cinnabar, can kill you quick. Or coal, for that matter. Dangerous business, mining.”
“Can you read mine maps?” said Holm.
“Wouldn’t be in such health if I couldn’t.” Aditty coughed up grit into a grubby rag, inspected it and put it in his pocket.
Tali unrolled another map on the folding table. “This is Cython as it is now. At least, it’s the main level of Cython, where the Pale live and work. And the enemy live.”
“Reliable?” said Aditty.
“It was made for the chancellor before Caulderon fell, from details tortured out of enemy prisoners. I’ve checked it.”
“How did you get it?” said Tobry.
“Snaffled it from his chart room. He had a plan to attack Cython at one stage.”
They gathered around the table and Tali pointed out the main features of Cython — the enemy’s living quarters, the Pale’s Empound where the women lived, the farms, eeleries, toadstool grottoes, heatstone mine, the men’s quarters and the main Floatillery, an underground canal that ran all the way to Merchantery Exit.
Tali produced a second map. It had been drawn in blue ink on fine leather, but was now cracked and worn, and the ink was badly faded.
“I found this in the same place. It’s a two-thousand-year-old Cythian mine plan. It shows the workings of the labyrinth of mines underneath the Seethings, as they were at the time of the First Fleet. I’m not sure what all the symbols mean.”
Aditty bent so low over the map that his nose touched the surface. He moved his head around for several minutes, his breath crackling. He checked the Cythonian map, then returned to the mine plan. He stepped away, coughed more grit up into his rag and nodded to himself.
“Well?” said Tobry, impatiently.
“Here,” said Aditty, stabbing a dust-impregnated thumb at the left side of the mine plan.
Tali could only see meaningless lines and symbols. “What is it?”
“A forgotten air shaft from ancient times.”
“How do you know it’s forgotten?”
“I’ve prospected all through the Seethings. Seen no sign of it. I reckon it runs through to Cython, about here.” Aditty gestured to the other map.
“That’s at the water supply pondages,” said Tali. “Why would an air shaft run there?”
“Mines in that area make water, don’t they? When the old mine was abandoned, it would have flooded in a few years.”
“The enemy went underground five hundred years after the first war started,” said Tobry. “If the old maps were lost, they wouldn’t have known the flooded air shaft was there. Good place for the water pondages, though.”
“How deep would the water be?” said Tali.
“How far underground is Cython?” said Holm.
“The climb up the sunstone shaft is a thousand steps — three hundred feet or more.”
“The bottom of the air shaft could be flooded twenty feet deep,” said Aditty. “Or sixty.” He nodded and went out.
“If we go down the shaft to the water,” said Tobry, “we might be able to dive and come up in the flooded area.”
“Twenty feet we might manage,” said Holm. “I can’t dive sixty.” He shuddered.
“There’s magery for that kind of thing,” Tobry said vaguely.
“What kind of thing?” said Holm.
“Breathing underwater. I’ll start working on it.”
“I can’t swim,” said Tali, another of her personal nightmares closing in around her.
CHAPTER 86
“No, like this.” Tobry supported Tali in the water with one hand and demonstrated the breaststroke with the other, for the tenth time.
“I can’t do it!” she wailed. The water was miserably cold and terrifyingly alien. “I’m not meant to swim. Get me out!”
He pulled her three yards to the edge of the river pool and helped her onto the bank. Holm, who was waiting beside a fire, wrapped a blanket around her. Tali sat down in the chair and lifted her blue feet onto a wrapped stone he’d heated in the fire. He handed her a large mug of sweet, steaming tea. She curled her hands around it.
“Then we’ll have to go to Cython without you,” grinned Holm. “Though I don’t see how we’re going to convince the Pale to rebel.”
“You two couldn’t masquerade as Pale in pitch darkness,” she muttered.
Tali had looked forward to this. Not for the swimming lessons, which she had known would be an ordeal, but because she’d be with Tobry. Now that they were just friends again, and working together on her plan, the tension between them was gone and it was a pleasure to be with him. It reminded her of old times.
But the water was so cold that it took her breath away, and Tobry had turned out to be a stern teacher who expected her to be able to swim after one lesson. The first time he let her go she began to flounder, panic set in and she sank. It had set the pattern for the day.
She could only last five minutes in the cold water, and each time she got out and warmed up it was harder to go back in. She eyed Tobry resentfully. His chest was bare and he hadn’t bothered to stand by the fire.
“One more go,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“You’re a horrible man. I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”
“I never understood it either,” he said, smirking.
“You’re enjoying my suffering, you beast.”
“Get in!”
She stood up. Holm took the blanket away, and the breeze struck through her wet shirt and knickers. “No more!” she gasped, staring at the hostile water.
“In, or I’ll throw you in.”
“One day I’m going to murder you, Lagger. One day!”
He rolled his eyes. Tali stepped in and all the carefully n
urtured warmth was gone in an instant. She pushed her arms out, attempting a stroke, but her legs sank and she plunged to the bottom, thrashing and choking.
Tobry hauled her up by the hair and extended her horizontally along the surface. “Well done. You almost did a stroke that time.”
She thumped him and sank.
It was forty miles from Nyrdly to the forgotten air shaft that led into Cython, by the winding route they had to take to avoid detection, and it had taken them two nights to get there. Two exceedingly tense nights.
On Tali’s right, the mighty volcano called the Brown Vomit was erupting, casting an ominous red glare over the landscape. Fine ash was sifting down, getting into their eyes, noses and ears, and the ground quivered constantly.
Tobry had barely spoken the whole time. The magery to allow them to breathe underwater was proving a far bigger challenge than he had anticipated, and he was still struggling with it as they rode between the boiling pools of the Seethings, and across the boulder-strewn badlands between the Vomits and Lake Fumerous.
It wasn’t the only thing bothering him — or her. The eruption flares glistened on his sweaty face, and every so often he would twist around in the saddle and thrust out a hand, as if to ward something off, though there was nothing to be seen in the empty landscape. Was it a sign that shifter madness was closing in? An attack was often preceded by hallucinations and, she knew, could be brought on by stress.
If he had a bout of madness on the way down the shaft, when they were reliant on his magery, none of them would survive. But Tali could not do it without him. Without his underwater breathing spell she could not hope to get inside.
And then there was the circlet to worry about. How long before Lyf decided to look for it in Garramide? Or Grandys went there? Leaderless, Garramide would fall in a day, and there was nothing she could do about that either. She could not spare Tobry or Holm, and could not trust anyone else with the secret.
“I’ve just thought of another problem,” said Holm. “A big one.”
Tali groaned. “I don’t want to know. What?”
“If the worst happens, and we end up in a battle, what are you going to do?”
“We’ll have to fight.”
“Even if we can arm the Pale, they’ve no training with weapons.”
“Heatstone!” said Tali.
“What about it?”
“We chuck it at the enemy. When heatstone breaks, it’s like a grenado going off.”
“And wasn’t there something about it knocking the enemy unconscious, but not the Pale?”
“That was sunstone, but I’m hoping heatstone will have the same effect, since it’s stronger. Anyway, apart from Tobry’s magery, heatstone is the one advantage we have over them.”
“Why can’t they chuck it back at us?”
“They’re very superstitious about it; won’t touch the stuff.”
“Perhaps they sense its connection with king-magery,” Holm said thoughtfully. “That’s a good idea, but if you do end up in a battle, how are you going to direct it? It won’t be anything like directing a normal battle from the top of a hill where you can see everything.”
“Um…” said Tali.
“Cython is a maze of tunnels,” said Tobry. “And you’re…”
“Short?”
“I would have said petite. If there’s a row of enemy troops in front of you, you won’t be able to tell if there’s twenty of them, or a thousand.”
“And you won’t have a clue what’s going on in any of the other tunnels,” said Holm.
“What’s your solution?” said Tali.
“I don’t have one.”
“Then we’d better not get into a battle,” she said quietly.
As she rode, she checked on Lyf again, but her gift was weak today. And all she saw were disconnected images of the temple walls…
“What can you see?” said Holm quietly.
She roused slowly. “How did you know I was looking?”
“A particular blankness in your eyes.”
“Thanks!” She looked again. “Lyf’s pacing. Looks worried. Now he seems to be arguing with his ghost ancestors. No, I’ve lost him.”
Several hours before dawn they reached the rocky little hill which, according to Aditty, should contain the forgotten air shaft. The hill was only a few hundred yards across and rose from the flatlands like a door knob before flattening on top, eighty feet above the plain. They walked the horses up and made camp among scrubby trees and grey-leaved bushes.
“We can’t move until after dark tonight,” said Tali. “I want to get into the Empound around midnight, when the slaves are in their beds and there aren’t many guards around.”
“First, let’s see if the air shaft is here,” said Holm. “After all this time it could have collapsed.”
Tobry wiped his dripping face and twisted around, staring behind him and swallowing audibly. “Get on with it. I’ve got to complete the water-breathing spell and I need peace and quiet.”
“What if you can’t complete it?” said Tali. Part of her hoped he would fail. Hoped there was no way in and she wouldn’t have to go through with it.
“What if you can’t find the shaft?” he snapped. “What if it’s blocked, or there’s no way into the pondages, or — ”
“I think we’d better leave him to it,” Holm said pointedly. The stress was getting to everyone.
“Do you know what you’ve got to do?” Tali said to Holm as they began to circumnavigate the hill, working in along a spiral.
“I ought to, the number of times you’ve asked me.”
Something was bothering him, too. “Sorry. I’m not used to leading a team.”
“I identify and disarm any enemy traps,” said Holm. “When we get inside and you’re inciting the Pale to rebellion, I help Tobry break open the armouries and heatstone stores. Sounds simple enough.”
She stared at him in the red glare from the erupting volcano. “Simple?”
“I was attempting a joke.”
“A joke?”
He chuckled. “You know — to relieve the tension and lighten the mood.”
“Well, don’t!”
Nothing could lighten Tali’s mood save being a thousand miles from here. If the maps were wrong, or this route was known to the enemy, or the traps they would encounter could not be disarmed, they would die.
“Seems to me you’ve got a lot to learn about leadership,” said Holm.
“What’s the matter with you? You haven’t been your normal self since we left…”
“And only now do you think to ask? A good leader has to be sensitive to — ”
“If there’s something the matter, just tell me,” she hissed. “Don’t drop hints so I’ll dig it out of you. I’ve got enough worries as it is.”
“Well, here’s another one. When I was a kid, my big brother used to hold a pillow over my face until I thought I was going to suffocate. Ever since then, I’ve been afraid of being buried alive. Going down this shaft isn’t the deepest desire of my heart.”
“I wish you’d told me.”
“It would have been one more thing for you to worry about,” he said pointedly.
“Speaking of which, have you been keeping an eye on Tobry?”
“I have,” said Holm.
“Would you say he’s more twitchy than usual?”
He ran his fingers through his thin hair.
“Holm?”
“Judging by the heavy doses of potion he’s been taking the past few days, I’d say he thinks he’s not far off shifting — involuntarily.”
“Fantastic!” said Tali. “I’m terrified of drowning, you’re afraid of being buried alive and we’re going down a bottomless well with a madman whom we can’t do without.”
“And that’s the easy part.”
They continued on their inward spiral, probing ahead with sticks so they didn’t accidentally walk into the shaft. Some minutes later, Tali’s stick broke through a layer of rotting ve
getation. They cleared it away. Holm unshuttered his lantern and shone it down.
An oval shaft, six feet by five, cut through hard volcanic rock. The light did not reveal how deep it was. Tali dropped a stone. It took four or five seconds before she heard the splash.
“Few hundred feet down to the water,” grunted Holm. “I hope our ropes are long enough.”
“You packed them. You ought to know.”
He chuckled. “Just testing you. Of course they’re long enough, and a bit more.”
She got out the chancellor’s map of Cython, studied it carefully, then folded it and packed it in its envelope of waterproof waxed cloth. She could need the map in Cython, since some parts of the city had been forbidden to her.
It was getting light as they headed back to the camp, but when they were ten yards away Holm thrust out a hand. They stopped in the gloom under a copse of trees.
Tobry had lain his potion bottles out on a flat rock and was measuring the doses into a cup. He held it up in a shaking hand then swallowed it in a gulp. He wiped his face, checked behind him then, furtively, began to measure a second dose. After draining the cup, wiping out the residue with a forefinger and licking it off, he stood up, shuddering.
“A double dose,” Holm said in Tali’s ear. “It’s worse than I thought.”
They continued to the camp. “We found the shaft,” said Holm with exaggerated good cheer. “How’s it going?”
“I’ve done the spell,” said Tobry, wiping his face again.
He was sweating more than ever. This was not going to go well.
CHAPTER 87
“Before we go, it might be an idea to check on Lyf again,” said Holm that night. They were waiting by the shaft, and all was ready.
She used her failing magery to peer through the hazy distance to Lyf’s temple. It took three attempts before she saw anything, but this time she could only see, not hear.
“He’s stalking across to a table,” said Tali. “There’s a small sheet of iron on it — ”
“Iron?” said Holm.
“Like a loose leaf from the iron book he made, but it’s blank. He’s writing on it. No, etching it with a scriber. He used to use alkoyl for that, back in his caverns.”