by Paula Volsky
“Was Cognizance—was our colleague at Mauranyza Dome injured or otherwise distracted?” the first speaker demanded.
“Shot by the Grewzians, even as he transported us. Severely wounded or dead,” Girays reported. “And he wasn’t the only one. I am sorry.”
The shock showed on both the women’s faces, but neither gave way to emotion, and the elder requested simply, “Explain.”
Girays obeyed, describing the arrival of the Grewzian soldiers, the gunfire, and its consequences, in terms clear and economical. Luzelle listened in surprise, for he was not only reliably factual, as she would have expected, but diplomatic as well. The Girays she had known years ago would probably have told them exactly where their confreres back in the Mauranyza Dome had gone strategically wrong, and exactly what should be done to forestall future repetition of the disaster. Or maybe he wouldn’t have really, maybe moldy indignation clouded her memory.
“… two of your friends left alive in the hands of the Grewzians,” Girays was concluding, “which I fear may jeopardize both of you Cognizances, together with other members of your organization.”
“The prisoners will reveal nothing,” the older woman stated. He started to protest, and she silenced him with a gesture. “It is not your concern. You have informed us, there is nothing more you can do. And we of the Select possess ample means of self-defense.”
Didn’t seem to work so well for the Cognizant Oerlo Farni. Or for Preeminence Cezineen, Luzelle thought, but said nothing aloud. She caught Girays’s eye for an instant, and sensed that the same thought was passing through his mind. Sometimes with him, she just knew.
“Send us on our way, then, and we kick Grewzian ass around the Grand Ellipse for you,” Bav Tchornoi suggested. “We make those chitterling-sucking bastards look like shit.”
Tchornoi might lack a certain polish, Luzelle reflected, but he possessed a real talent for cutting straight to essentials.
Their hostesses seemed to agree.
“Come with us,” the senior ordered. “Everything is prepared to speed you from this place.”
Everything? What now—another white whirlwind? But Luzelle ventured no comment, following meekly as the black-robed women led the Ellipsoids from the chamber of the ophelu, down the stairs, and through the great hall to emerge from the castle into blinding afternoon sunlight. Standing in the courtyard was a sizable, sturdy carriage, drawn by four strong-looking horses. The driver waited in the box. The conveyance was almost disappointingly mundane.
“Are we not to carry on by way of that perfectly smashing hither-and-yon magical thingamajig that brought us here?” Stesian Festinette wanted to know.
“Seems a bit faster,” Trefian opined.
“The two sundered halves of the glass that brought you are capable of transporting cargo back and forth between Mauranyza Dome and Castle Io Wesha, nothing more,” the senior savant informed him.
“Cargo?” Stesian sniffed.
“Castle Io Wesha,” Luzelle echoed. “I can’t help but worry about the risks you run on our account. Do the Grewzians know—”
“The Grewzians know that this structure has been owned or occupied by members of my family since it was erected, over seven centuries ago,” the other informed her. “They also know of my family’s traditional connection to the Select of Lanthi Ume, but that is all they know, and it is not enough to do them much good.”
“But it’s not as if they needed actual proof to—”
“As for the risks we run,” the savant cut her off, “be assured it is not on your account.” She turned to the Festinettes, whose pretty brown heads were cocked at identical angles. “And you, gentlemen, take heart—your confinement to the carriage will be brief. The device that carried you here is not the only such to be found in this land.”
“Oh, outstanding,” Trefian comprehended. “You mean that we are being taken to—”
“I mean that it is more than time for you to go.” The flick of a finger urged the Ellipsoids on toward the carriage.
Who’s the driver? Luzelle wondered. Can she be trusted? I just hate having to depend on people I don’t know, and somehow it seems to happen so often!
She entered the carriage and the other five climbed in behind her, squeezing themselves carefully into the small space. Luzelle found herself trapped between the window and Bav Tchornoi, who sat with his massive thighs spread indolently wide, forcing her to flatten herself against the carriage wall in order to avoid contact. She thought about speaking up, to order him out of her space, but could not find the nerve to do it.
Only a few hours, she assured herself. Only a little while to put up with this gigantic, hairy, smelly, crude, rude Rhazaullean drunkard, and then it’ll be over—
Why didn’t Girays have the decency to sit next to me?
How could he know that I’d want him to?
She stole a glance at Girays. He had his head out the open window, and he was optimistically attempting a last exchange with the impenetrable savants.
“Cognizances, if I might request a final kindness, please tell us where we—”
“There will be guides,” the older woman told him. “They are allies. Try not to fear them.”
“Why would—”
The snap of the driver’s whip cut the question in half. The carriage lurched to life and Girays pulled his head back in the window. Moments later the vehicle passed under Io Wesha’s great arched gateway and out onto a steep hill where the fresh breezes carried the scent of wild beggarsgold, and the passengers could see for miles in every direction. Below them spread a vast expanse of rolling, uncultivated terrain. Not far to the south rose Lanthi Ume, her towers and domes shining in the sun; and beyond the city, the deep blue gleam of the sea. The road north unwound down the hill, circled the base of a great granite rise, and continued on across a wide, windswept desolation toward a misty region of distant hills.
The driver’s whip sang, and the carriage thundered down the hill.
TIME PASSED SLOWLY. There was little conversation in the carriage, and for that Luzelle was thankful; no Festinette prattle to endure, none of Zavune’s fractured syntax, no Tchornoi gloom. The Rhazaullean, in fact, occupied himself quite contentedly with his hip flask for a while before dropping off to sleep, and soon his vouvrak-perfumed snores filled the small compartment. Girays was reading something or other, she could not make out what. She herself took the opportunity to finish The Shadow of the Ghoul.
Some two hours into the journey, which Luzelle guessed to be about the midway point, the carriage halted beside a little stream winding among knobby hillocks crowned with tall grasses that stirred and rustled in the ceaseless winds. While the horses drank and rested, the passengers and driver alighted, scattering in all directions to lose themselves in the vegetation. Some minutes later the group returned to the carriage, where Bav Tchornoi still slumped snoring. Progress resumed, and the Rhazaullean never opened his eyes.
Luzelle stared out the window at the stark surrounding terrain swept by perpetual winds, and wondered at the nature of this empty unclaimed expanse, presumably unfit for cultivation and apparently deemed unworthy of settlement, despite obvious overcrowding within the city limits of Lanthi Ume. But the undesirability of the land itself could hardly account for the dearth of human habitation. People feared this place, and always had. The Gravula Wasteland—she dimly remembered the name from old geography lessons—was thought to be haunted. All sorts of quaint old Lanthian legends and horror stories attached themselves to the locale. Vengeful, immortal sorcerers prowling around in search of victims. Ert, the destructive divinity. White Demons—the old-time Lanthians had been very big on White Demons, with eyes of sweet death and voices of otherworldly beauty. She’d giggled over translations of those hoary Lanthian fables. Well, the Gravula didn’t look particularly dangerous, only a bit forbidding.
Her eyes rose to the sky, where the position of the sun drew her brows together. If all goes well, your entire group should reach your dest
ination by sunset today, Oerlo Farni had told them. But everything had not gone well, and the city of Hurba lay far to the north. At the present rate they would not arrive for another thirty-six hours or so at best. Of course, she recalled, poor Farni had spoken of a second glass.
In the middle of this place? Just lying right out in the open? Can’t be.
Time passed. The sun sagged toward the horizon. The carriage jolted on, Bav Tchornoi snored on, the Gravula Wasteland rolled on. At last, when the shadows stretched to ambitious length, the daylight measured its life in minutes, and Luzelle was beginning to wonder whether their indefatigable driver meant to carry on in darkness, a landmark rose in the near distance—a sight, like the Lureis Canal, familiar through countless artistic renderings and, also like the Lureis, striking and astonishing beyond the power of any image to convey.
Directly ahead, warmly sidelit by the low red sun, a stand of huge stone blocks reared themselves skyward in mysterious symmetry. Most of them were gigantic grey prism shapes that could never have occurred in nature. These were the famous Granite Sages, unexplained in origin, ancient beyond reckoning, and said to mark an entrance to the nether regions. Entranced, Luzelle watched the Sages approaching at the stolid steady pace of the horses’ progress. They were larger than she had realized, despite the accurate measurements set forth in scores of reference books—larger, and far more astonishing.
Who built that, when, and why?
Almost without thought she turned to Girays, and he glanced toward her at the same moment. Their eyes met in perfect understanding, and for a moment she was ridiculously happy.
The Granite Sages drew nigh. The world darkened as the shadow of the largest monolith—the gigantic stone known to the world as “the Master”—engulfed the carriage. Luzelle blinked in the sudden cool dimness. The vehicle halted and the driver descended from her perch.
The wordless invitation was clear, and the passengers emerged. The sharp breeze tousled Luzelle’s straying curls, and she shivered a little. The Sages loomed oppressively, their ancient vastness a voiceless commentary upon human insignificance and evanescence. The Master was the most intimidating of the lot, and for some reason the driver was down on her knees before Him, scrabbling amid the weeds at His base.
The driver did something with her hands, and there followed a deep rumble of shifting stone as a hitherto invisible door in the Master’s massive flank swung open to reveal a closet-sized interior chamber. The late sunlight slanting low into the tiny room struck reddish glints off a black glass floor.
The second ophelu, just as Oerlo Farni had promised, but so unexpected an apparition in that place that Luzelle could not contain a soft, startled exclamation.
“Three of you, in,” the driver spoke up for the first time since the trip began.
Bav Tchornoi was already bulling for the entrance, as if he imagined himself entitled to precedence by divine fiat, and she didn’t mean to let him get away with it this time. Without allowing herself time to think, Luzelle hopped in ahead of him.
Then Tchornoi was there beside her, too near, alcoholic breath too assertive, and she hoped that Girays would be the third, but Mesq’r Zavune slid in before him.
The cubicle was tiny, and the stone walls pressed closely on three sides. The fourth side was open, but even so, the sense of immeasurable solidity hemming her in chafed her nerves.
Don’t get skittish.
The driver was muttering something unintelligible. No crystalline powder around the ophelu this time. No seemingly spontaneous combustion, no billowing smoke, and Luzelle wondered if the Lanthian Cognition could really work without the pyrotechnical trappings. Even as she stood wondering, she was caught once again in the wild white wind, flung through whirling icy space, spun and buffeted, and moments later set down in a different place.
A very different place.
She tottered a little but kept her footing, and caught her breath with a gasp. Beside her, Bav Tchornoi grunted sharply. She looked around and felt the color drain from her face. She stood on a hexagonal black glass slab, one of many identical such slabs set into the stone floor of a small, plain chamber. The place was irregularly shaped, with a vaulted stone ceiling from which the slender stalactites dripped in fragile clusters. A cave? Braziers placed at unpredictable intervals along the walls kept the humid air heated to an almost uncomfortable warmth. The room was windowless yet well illuminated, for the floor, ceiling, and stone walls all glowed with a mild, colorless light, apparently a natural property of the native rock. But Luzelle hardly troubled to analyze, for the chamber was far from empty, and her astounded attention focused on the occupants.
There were at least a dozen of them—slim, attenuated figures of indeterminate gender, similar to humans, yet differing in many features easily observed, for the hairless bodies before her were unclothed. Their hands, she noted, terminated in long, bonelessly tentacular digits. Their eyes were immense—palely brilliant, ringed with triple ridges of muscle that rippled and flickered ceaselessly in the otherwise still faces. Most startling of all was their flesh—white, smooth, and glowing with an endlessly variable luminosity.
The beings—she couldn’t think of them as creatures, they were too near humanity, and the sentience shone in those unnerving eyes—were staring as if transfixed, as if the humans upon the ophelu were the strange and marvelous spectacle. One of them spoke up in melodious fluting tones, another answered in kind, and their speech was a kind of music, ineffably alien and beautiful.
Luzelle was trembling. There will be guides, the savant at Castle Io Wesha had told them. They are allies. Try not to fear them.
Try.
One of the luminous beings approached, gliding movements light and noiseless as smoke. Its right hand rose, boneless fingers undulating, and instinctively she shrank back until the lucent stone wall halted her retreat. Tchornoi and Zavune did likewise.
Seconds later the Cognitive storm whirled through the room, deposited Girays and the Festinette twins on the glass, and subsided. The new arrivals blinked and surveyed their surroundings. Under other circumstances their expressions of stunned incomprehension might have appeared comical. Girays recovered first. His dark gaze swept the chamber, touched Luzelle, paused a heartbeat, and moved on.
The chamber was filling. The white entities—Cave dwellers? Aborigines?—were drifting in by silent twos and threes. A host of pale eyes glowing like lanterns veiled in luminous mist caught and transfixed the human invaders. Luzelle shivered. The pressure of focused inquisitive sentience was almost palpable. Those incandescent eyes, she imagined, were gazing straight into her head to read the thoughts concealed there, and the sensation was unnerving. Almost she sensed foreign awareness impinging upon her own, and the fancy reinforced itself when the alien flutelike voices lifted in weirdly beautiful harmony—conversation?—and the strange melody stole past all defenses, bringing the tears of grief and longing to her eyes.
Who are they? Allies, the savant of Castle Io Wesha had promised, but that explained nothing. She found the answer within her own recollections, and then those ridiculous Lanthian fables that she had giggled at made some sense for the first time. White demons. All those legends, superstitions, and mythic accounts of the White Demons of the Caverns, lurking in their warren under the hills of the Nazara Sin. She should have known—her experience with various cultures the world over should have taught her that such legends often surrounded a kernel of truth.
The White Demons of the Caverns, she remembered, were said to feed upon unwary travelers.
Legends, born in ignorance and fear. Probably.
The room was crowded with them now, the changeable radiance of their flesh filling the confined space. They offered no overt threat, but there were so many of them, their attention was so unnervingly concentrated, and they were staring, all of them staring with those huge, uncanny eyes.
Her heartbeat quickened, fear flooded her thoughts, and her hand slipped of its own accord into her pocket to close o
n the loaded pistol.
Don’t touch that. Worst impulse, truly mindless. Her hand froze.
Not all of her fellow humans shared her outlook.
“They look weak, but not stupid,” Bav Tchornoi decided. “We will grab one, and it will be our shield. Then we will make it show us the way out.”
There was a brief, astonished pause, and then Girays advised, “Don’t be such an ass, Tchornoi.”
“Yes, he’s right, I mean, isn’t that suggestion a bit extreme, Tchornoi?” Stesian Festinette asked.
“It’s not as if we’re really sure they’re dangerous, is it?” Trefian chimed in.
“We strike first, we take command,” the Rhazaullean insisted.
One of the white beings stepped forward to separate itself from the bright throng. A double strand of colored pebbles draped its neck, and a large brown bat rode its shoulder. Perhaps these distinguishing features denoted rank, but there was no way to know. The tall figure advanced to confront the human knot.
It paused, and warbled incomprehensibly.
“That one,” Bav Tchornoi declared. “Their leader, I would bet. We will take that one.”
“You’ll keep quiet and keep still,” Girays told him.
“We wait for now,” Mesq’r Zavune concurred.
The white being snaked its long, boneless fingers at them. The triple ridges of muscle ringing its great eyes rippled. Communication of some sort was intended, but the message was indecipherable.
“I do not need your good wishes, little lads,” Tchornoi informed his critics. “And I do not need your help.”
As if it understood the speaker’s intent, the white being retreated, gliding its way among seemingly identical glass slabs set into the stone floor to pause before a polished hexagon gleaming near the center of the room. Turning to face the visitors, it bowed its head and fluted a plaintive cry.
“It calls to us,” said Zavune.