They ran along with the rustling sea wind; the water was salty and fresh. Their road-tested hardiness made them able to make the daring journey over tiny islands without slipping into one of the spuming white channels at their sides. Before long, they’d entered the deep mists of the basin, and the sun was removed and replaced by a golden suffusion. Then the mist shredded, and they stopped and gawked like tiny ants as a barrier akin to Eod’s Great Wall emerged from the haze. Capped with clouds that seemed impossibly high up, it had a facade of crystal and coursing water. It seemed like the cliff a storm-giant might climb; none could fathom how it had been made. His voice barely audible over the grinding ruckus, the Wolf said, “We shan’t be swimming across the lake. There are no bridges or paths through the wall, at least not above. However, there are roads and tunnels down below our feet. I believe we may have come at the city the wrong way.”
Once they’d hopped a few more islands, the Wolf picked up Morigan—who laughed—and leaped down a steep split in the rocks. When Thackery and Adam reached the spot where they’d vanished and peered down into the rainy crevasse, they saw the pair had safely reached the bottom and was now standing on a damp, pebbly path. Daintily, the Wolf placed his bloodmate on her feet, then beckoned to the two men above. “Come on,” he said. “I will catch you.”
“Is there no other way?” shouted Thackery. Although he was once again youthful, his stomach flipped at the thought of scraping himself. The echo of his voice was rather terrifying, too—the Wolf was easily two hundred paces beneath him. “What do you think, Adam?”
The changeling grinned at him, then wrapped his arms around himself and leaped. Thackery watched him sail to the bottom and get swept up like a bonnie lass by the Wolf, who gave him a growl of approval. After Adam had regained his footing, they barked at each other happily.
“Show-off,” cursed Thackery. “I’m coming…I guess. Catch my staff.” He threw it down the crack. “And you bloody well better catch me. Here I come.” Stepping out into air went against all his natural instincts, and he could feel his body seizing up and recoiling. “Bugger…I’m just going to have to jump. Kings save meeee—”
Thackery screamed all the way down. A hard meaty impact awaited him. He realized he wasn’t dead when he smelled a combination of man, wood, and spice. “Not bad,” said the Wolf, and righted his friend.
Thackery reclaimed his softly shining staff and used it to steady his legs and illuminate the darkened grotto in which they’d landed. Raindrops pattered down into the great fanged tunnel surrounding them, creating an endless tin-roof song. The space was wide in some places and narrow in others, but everywhere its height was impressive. Water babbled and bubbled along the path they’d discovered, which was clearly a road—the only evidence of man anywhere to be seen. The cavern smelled of deep earth and wet minerals, and Thackery was even damper down here than he had been above. He looked up, blinking against the constant rain, and spotted the dim wrinkle through which they’d come. “Where are we?” he asked.
“A road,” replied the Wolf, beginning to walk. “There are more formal entrances to these caves, but we must have missed them, or perhaps they are not easily found unless one knows where to look. I hear the whistle of winds now that we are down here and away from the roaring monster of the city—those winds are from such entrances, I suspect.” He jiggled a fingertip in his ears. “It hurts my head, this land.” Morigan touched her bloodmate reassuringly.
After that, the bloodmates remained silent. Thackery puzzled over the idea that a city could have subterranean layers with no conspicuous entrances or exits. This “Undercomb” appeared functionally similar to Menos’s sublevel, and surely served similar purposes when it came to transit and city engineering. However, what these people had created was harmonious with nature and must have required a form of technomagik Thackery had never before encountered.
As they moved through the thundering caves, as Thackery watched the currents of water running alongside the road, and listened to the synchronous, musical, measured dripping occurring everywhere, the mechanics of the sublevel became clearer to him. All the water down here ran in the opposite direction from the rivers and falls above—the rivers and falls that somehow did not flood these caverns. It was a system, he realized. One set of pumps took the water away from the city, while another recycled the magik and kinetic force and fed them back into the circuit. He’d heard of technomagikal turbines that produced energy through similar means. Self-sustaining power of this magnitude could easily reverse the physics of a waterfall and make it rush up instead of down. Thackery wondered what other applications these people had found for this font of seemingly infinite magik. Thackery’s excitement drove him ahead of the others.
As Thackery passed the Wolf, a spice of library dust and sizzling candles wafted from the sage—the smell of a passion for knowledge and truth. Am I growing soft? wondered the Wolf, for he felt a pang when he thought of the autumn-haired fellow who smelled even spicier, and had filled so many of their silences with chatter.
We shall see them soon, promised Morigan.
If your father keeps his word, he replied.
Morigan searched for a retort but could find none. They continued on in silence down the road of water and stone for a great stretch. Fishes and weaving glints of silver swam in the channels beside them. Some of these creatures resembled eels, though they were longer, metallic, and luminescent. They rose and dove in the water as if they were mammals of the sea, and emitted bleating little cries. On the walls crept colonies of crabs that clattered their claws and reminded the Wolf of the crustaceans he and his bloodmate had killed. The Wolf felt certain that his time in Pandemonia and his bond with Morigan had further sharpened his senses. For he could hear the greasy flicking of the crabs’ antennas and eyestalks; he could smell their fishy, sardine-like musk. To test himself, he followed the swishing travel of one of the silver eels using only his mind. He tracked the beast for spans and spans until he became bored of the game. In this heightened state of perception, he soon became aware that there were folk in the tunnel ahead, several lazy bends away from where they were. “Three men…” he muttered, peering through the rainy dark and seeing every detail. “Armed with…staves of some kind. Magikal, I suspect.”
“Time to introduce ourselves,” said Thackery, and then stopped short. “Umm, about that. We’re without our Menosian translator and the scholar who has surely picked up half the language by now. How do you propose—”
“I shall be our voice,” declared Adam, striding forward.
They arrived at a place where the tunnel expanded into a bulbous hollow. The many rents in the ceiling admitted a bright light, and the streams that wept from above were like banners of glass. As the Wolf had predicted, three men in dark blue robes and cloaks were there, within a circle of falling water. They held glowing staves much like Thackery’s, but theirs shone with a blue radiance rather than a white one. To the Wolf, the weapons looked carved of ice, entwined in cottony, cold mist. No fool would rely on only three men—even ones armed with magik staves—to guard a city entrance. But the men themselves reeked of the sulfur of sorcery—great sorcery. “Careful, Adam,” he said to the young changeling who dashed to meet Eatoth’s defenders.
One of the three defenders responded to Adam’s impetuous movement by raising his staff, which suddenly glittered at its tip like a star. With a crackling gust, the cascade before Adam twisted, creaked, and then froze so fast that he nearly smashed into the jagged obstacle. Another few steps, and it would have solidified with him inside. A warning, clearly. Adam raised his hands and calmly spoke. The others couldn’t identify the dialect he employed—it was thick, rolling, and ancient, and had harsh k’s and a’s.
“Please, we come in peace,” he said. “We come from very far away. We must have words with your warchief. We must warn him of what is coming for your city—an army of the mad king.” The three blue-robed ones said nothing, though the one who’d called the elements lowered
his staff. “Do you know of the mad king? He is the enemy of life itself. We have hunted and battled this enemy from sea to sea, and soon he will be at your gates. If you will not hear what we have to say, then you will die.”
It seemed his confidence and candor might have convinced them, for the one of the three who’d acted stepped away from the others, strode out of the circular downpour, and tipped his staff. It flashed again, and the frozen cascade in front of Adam melted and resumed its flow. Then the silent sorcerer of Eatoth strode across the chamber. The company quickly pursued him.
At the end of the hollow, the rainfall ended, the thundering dimmed, and the stones dried to dampness. They entered a tunnel so tall that only the Wolf could see its heights; it wasn’t difficult to imagine that they were now walking under the lake itself. It became quite dim. The luminescent staves of Thackery and their guide cast the travelers’ forms as eerie shadow-puppets on the walls.
Their guide didn’t speak; he didn’t even look back at them. He walked slowly, strangely lackadaisical for a man who had just been informed of his city’s impending doom. Many of the company knew Brutus’s horrors firsthand, and the blue sorcerer’s calm did nothing but irritate them, and rouse suspicion.
Indeed, Morigan sensed hardly a ripple of discord in the man’s ocean of tranquility. She set her swarm upon him and her psychic raiders returned with mostly useless information and imagery of rolling oceans and gently rumbling storms. A great man. A wise man. One who listens. What she wills, she wills, they repeated. Either magik or discipline had built in this man a barrier against her prying; she’d need time and dedication to break through the wall in his mind. She possessed no patience for that, and instead asked a favor of the young changeling. “Adam, may I borrow your trinket? I would like to try my hand—or tongue, rather—at speaking with this man. I have questions for him.”
Adam fondled the black stone around his neck. It had become a safety net for him. In recent memory, he’d removed the talisman only when he was a wolf or when he and Mouse stumbled through the occasional lesson on common Ghaedic—he was quite awful, yet made leaps of progress when they were together. Adam hated the thought of words once again becoming gibberish in his ears, of not knowing what his pack said. After a few specks of internal struggling, though, he reluctantly slipped off the necklace and passed it to Morigan.
She thanked him and placed the necklace on. “Excuse me, sir?” The blue sorcerer didn’t acknowledge her, so she tried again. “Pardon me? You there. Gentleman with the staff that freezes things.” Still no reply.
“The talisman may not work with anyone else,” mumbled Adam to himself.
“Adam!” exclaimed Morigan. His voice had sounded smooth, and his speech had been articulate. They came to a halt.
“You understand me?” asked Adam.
“Perfectly,” she replied. “I don’t know how. When we were on the Skylark, you were barely working through your vowels.”
“I can understand you, too, which shouldn’t be possible,” he said. “Not without that.” As Adam and Morigan both reached for the talisman around her neck, their hands met just over the stone. Bees buzzed in Morigan’s head, and she was lifted in a silver cloud up and out of her body.
Once more she’s in the limestone cavern. There’s Elemech’s pool, and two figures sit beside it. One is the young changeling, kneeling. He is waiting for a gift. Elemech takes her time choosing his present. She leans over while sitting upon her rock and picks through the small pebbles at her feet. It must be the right stone, the right piece of this great rock where she lives, if he is to receive the power he seeks. Elemech choses a stone: flat, shaped a bit like an arrowhead—or perhaps a key, thinks Morigan.
“Are you sure this is what you wish?” asks Elemech.
“Yes,” replies the changeling.
“Say it. Declare your desire to the Green Mother, and prepare to suffer all the glory and ruin your decision will bring.”
Quite brave—or foolhardy—Adam does not waver. He puffs up his chest. “My wolf-mother wished for me to see the world, to speak with the men in iron and ivory cities. I wish for that too. However, I must understand these animals in order to be among them. I am a foreigner in my pack, and I want to be a friend—”
“Clearly. Speak clearly and true. What is your wish?”
“I want the gift of communion. I want to hear and be heard by the world.”
Elemech’s stare twinkles with a rarely seen amusement. “Very well.” She hands Adam the stone, which is now bound and cased in leather twine—a necklace. Adam slips it over his neck, kisses the stone, and smiles at the sister. Elemech returns his smile, though much of her delight comes from knowing that men always ask for more than what they need.
The Wolf pried Adam and Morigan’s praying grasp apart and the Dream ended. After Morigan had returned to herself, she passed the talisman—only a simple necklace, she realized—back to Adam. “You asked for the gift of communion and understanding,” she said. “That is what you were given. I don’t think this token has any more magik remaining within it. I believe it was more a key than a tool. Its power was spent unlocking your desire.”
“My desire?”
“To communicate. With everything, you said. I know not how far-reaching the wish truly is, but it certainly intrigued my mother with its scope,” she replied.
Adam thought of the voices he’d heard last night. Perhaps his joy over speaking and interacting with man and nature again had accelerated whatever magik the sister had planted within him. He paled. There could be worse curses, he supposed, than hearing the many voices of land and sea—although at some point he would have to consider what this would mean for his diet. Could he really kill and eat creatures that pleaded for their lives?
“Adam? Where are you, lad?” Thackery lightly shook the fellow. “You look like a hundred troubles in one man. You haven’t had a scrap to eat. You have a vacancy in your eyes that I’ve seen only in Morigan. And you’re pale, but you’re too tanned to be pale.” Thackery looked ahead and made a noise of frustration. “Our guide does not seem to have noticed we have stopped—or perhaps he doesn’t care. At any rate, he’s now quite some distance ahead.”
“Hold a moment,” Adam shouted to the shadow far down the tunnel; their guide stopped, clearly understanding him. Unfortunately, Adam’s companions could make no sense of the thick syllables that flew from his throat. When Adam resumed speaking to his companions, he did so in Ghaedic—his transition between languages was as fluid as the shifts performed by a master translator. He didn’t even seem to realize the shift had occurred. “The sister did indeed grant my wish. But the sisters’ gifts always come at a cost or bring unforeseen consequences—and mine was no different.” Keys. Voices. Powers. Finally, it was Adam’s turn at the wheel of strange, and he’d won one of the oddest prizes at the fair.
“Fair enough,” said the Wolf. “Alas, our guide has no courtesy, and Eatoth is in danger; we’ll discuss this later.” Soon, Father, you will know your son’s claws and teeth, thought the Wolf. Frowning and determined, he pushed ahead.
In no time at all, they caught up to their guide. Adam asked a few questions at Morigan’s behest—where are we going? Whom are we to meet?—but the blue robe made no answer. Their silent journey under the pounding shield below Eatoth continued for many strides, perhaps even a span or two. Gradually, the din quieted, more behind than before them now. They were under the city now, the Wolf sensed. Hundreds of strides up and through the gray bedrock, feet scuffled, cries echoed, and a clatter of mortal sounds played a noisy symphony. Eatoth was immense, he realized—perhaps larger than any of the cities of the West.
Winds bearing woodsy smoke and sultry-sweet oils blew down the tunnel. The Wolf sniffed and tasted what he could, though none of it was familiar. Not long after that, the tunnel’s roof dropped, and they began walking up an incline. They passed through a heavily fortified area: two small bastions of stone and a gate that blocked the tunnel from floor to c
eiling. The guardhouse had dozens of tiny glass windows, and faces were visible at each one. The Wolf was reminded of the submersibles he’d once seen on the Feordhan. There was a marine-like quality to the gate and gatehouses; perhaps the structures were waterproofed. In this city of water, the guardhouse might even do double duty as a loch. The soldiers visible through the glass were all men, swarthy and strong. Although they glared from afar, the company and their guide were not detained, but they were delayed, as it took many sands to open the grand metal gate.
Light dazzled them, for what lay beyond was a city brighter even than a realm of sunlight and dreams. They wandered past their guide and through the gate, mouths agape, entering a yawning earthen mouth with a carved tongue of stairs that led upward. Dazzling words from the mythic language of Pandemonia had been chiseled into the gold-painted ruts of every step and it was as if the strangers trod upon the glowing prose of a Dreamer; plated, hammered, also dazzling murals hung like metal banners on the walls on either side. The stories stairs and murals told looked fabulous even to these four beings of the fantastic. They depicted a phantasmagoric Pandemonian bestiary: giant fire-belching lizards, women with scorpion tales, men with the heads of bulls, and vistas of sun, sand, forest, and moon that possessed a three-dimensional lure.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 57