As he drank off the last drops in the water bowl, the cat nudged his leg once more. “You can come with me or stay here,” he told it. “Your choice.” He took up Bright-Nail, then wrapped a rag around the blade just below the hilt and tied the earl’s buckleless belt around the sword and his waist so his hands would be free. It was more than a slight relief to feel it against him once more.
As he felt his way toward the mouth of the cavern the cat was at his feet, twining in and out between his ankles. “You’ll trip me,” he said. “Stop that.”
He edged a little distance along the passageway, but the creature was between his legs again and made him stumble. He reached down for it, then laughed hollowly at the stupidity of trying to catch a cat in blind darkness. The cat moved under his hand and then slipped away in the opposite direction. Simon paused.
“That way, not this way?” he said aloud. After a moment, he shrugged, then laughed again. Despite all the horror behind him and before him, he felt curiously free. “Very well, then, I’ll follow you for a while. Which means I’ll probably wind up sitting next to the largest rat hole in Osten Ard.”
The cat bumped him, then slipped away up the corridor. Feeling along the walls, entirely surrounded by darkness, Simon trailed after it.
Yis-hadra stopped at the base of the stairs and chimed anxiously to her husband. Yis-fidri replied. They bent to examine the cracked stone baluster.
“This place,” Yis-fidri said. “If you follow these steps upward, you will come at last to the mortal castle built atop this one.”
“Where?” asked Miriamele. She dropped her bow and pack to the tunnel floor and slumped against the stone. “Where in the castle?”
“We know not,” Yis-hadra said. “All has been built since our day. No Tinukeda‘ya touched those stones.”
“And you? Where will you go?” She looked up the stairwell. It spiraled up far beyond the weak light of the dwarrow’s batons, twisting into darkness.
“We will find another place.” Yis-fidri looked at his wife. “There are few of us left, but there are still places that will welcome our hands and eyes.”
“It is time for our going,” Binabik said urgently. “Who is knowing how far away the Norns are?”
Miriamele asked the dwarrows: “Why don’t you come with us? You are strong, and we can use your strength. You should know by now that our fight is yours, too.”
Yis-fidri shuddered and raised his long hands as though to fend her off. “Do you not understand? We do not belong in the light, in the world of Sudhoda‘ya. We have already been changed by you, done things that Tinukeda’ya do not do. We have ... we have killed some of those who were once our masters.” He murmured something in the dwarrow-tongue and Yis-hadra and his other remaining folk chorused unhappily. “It will take us long to learn to live with that. We do not belong in the world above. Let us go to find the darkness and deep places we crave.”
Binabik, who had spoken much to Yis-fidri during the last part of their flight, stepped forward and extended his small hand. “May you find safety.”
The dwarrow looked at him for a moment as if he did not understand, then slowly put out his own spidery fingers and wrapped them around the troll’s. “And you. I will not tell you my thoughts, for they are fearful and unhappy.”
Miriamele bit back words of argument. The dwarrows wished to go. They had fulfilled the promise that she had forced out of them. They were already frightened and miserable; aboveground they might be less than useless, more a responsibility than an asset. “Farewell, Yis-fidri,” she said, then turned to his wife. “Yis-hadra, thank you for showing me how you tend the stone.”
The dwarrow bobbed her head. “May you also fare well.”
Even as she spoke, the lights of the batons flickered and the underground chamber seemed to shift, another convulsion without movement; a moment later, when things were again as they had been, the remaining dwarrows began to whisper.
“We must go now,” Yis-hadra said, her dark eyes wide with fear. She and her husband turned and led their troop of shuffling, spindle-legged kin away into the shadows. Within moments the corridor was as empty as if they had never existed. Miriamele blinked.
“We must go also.” Binabik started up the stairs, then turned. “Where is the monk?”
Miriamele looked back. Cadrach, who had been at the rear of the assembled dwarrows, was sitting on the ground, his eyes half-closed. The flicker of Binabik’s torch made him seem to sway.
“He’s useless.” She bent to pick up her belongings. “We should leave him here. Let him follow if he wants to.”
Binabik frowned at her. “Help him, Miriamele. Otherwise, he is left for the Norns’ finding.”
She was not sure the monk didn’t deserve just that, but she shrugged and went to him anyway. A tug on his arm brought him slowly to his feet.
“We’re going.”
Cadrach looked at her for a moment. “Ah,” he said, then followed her up the ancient stairway.
As the company of Sithi led them farther into the deeps below the Hayholt, Tiamak and Josua found themselves staring around in astonishment, like Lakeland farmers on their first visit to Nabban.
“What a treasure trove this is!” Josua breathed. “And to think it was below me all those years I lived here. I would gladly spend a lifetime down here, exploring, studying....”
Tiamak, too, was overwhelmed. The rough corridors of the outer tunnels had given way to a decayed splendor he could never have imagined, and even now could scarcely believe. Vast chambers which seemed to have been painstakingly carved out of living rock, every surface a minutely detailed tapestry; seemingly endless stairways, thin and beautiful as spiderwebs, that curled up into shadow or stretched across black emptiness; entire rooms carved in the likeness of forest clearings or mountainsides with waterfalls, though everything in the chamber was solid stone—even as crumbling ruins, Asu‘a the Great was astonishing.
They Who Watch and Shape, Tiamak thought, seeing this place has made every bit of my suffering worthwhile. My lame leg, my hours in the ghant nest—I would not trade them if I must also lose the memories of this hour.
As they wound through the dusty byways, Tiamak tore his eyes away from the wonders that surrounded him long enough to observe the strange behavior of his Sithi companions. When Likimeya and the others stopped to let the mortals rest, in a high-roofed chamber whose arching windows were clogged with dirt and rubble, Tiamak sat beside Aditu.
“Forgive me if my question is rude,” he asked softly, “but do your people mourn their old home? You seem ... distracted.”
Aditu inclined her head, bending her graceful neck. “In part, yes. It is sad to see the beautiful things our people built in such a state—and for those who lived here ...” she made an intricate gesture, “it is even more painful. Do you remember the chamber carved with great flowered steps—the Hall of Five Staircases, as we call it?”
“We stopped there a long time,” Tiamak said, remembering.
“That was the place where my mother’s mother, Briseyu Dawnfeather, died.”
The marsh man thought of how Likimeya had stood expressionlessly in the center of that wide room. Who could know these immortals?
Aditu shook her head. “But such are not the greatest reasons we are, as you put it, distracted. There are ... presences here. Things that should not be.”
Tiamak had himself felt more than a touch of what he thought Aditu meant—a riffle of wind on the back of his neck that seemed insistent as probing fingers, echoes that almost sounded like faint voices. “What does it mean?”
“Something is awake here in Asu‘a that should not be awake. It is hard to explain. Whatever it may be, it has given a semblance of life to what should not have one.”
Tiamak frowned, unsure. “Do you mean ... ghosts?”
Aditu’s smile was fleeting. “If I understood First Grandmother when she taught me what the mortal word means, no. Not as such. But it is hard to show the difference. You
r tongue is not suited for it, and you do not see or feel what we do.”
“How can you tell?” He looked across to Josua, but the prince was staring fixedly at the ornately carved walls.
“Because if you did,” Aditu replied, “I suspect you would not be sitting there so calmly.” She rose and crossed the rubble-strewn floor to where her mother and Jiriki stood in quiet conversation.
In the middle of emptiness, Tiamak suddenly felt surrounded by danger. He slid closer to Josua.
“Do you feel it, Prince Josua?” Tiamak asked. “The Sithi do. They are frightened.”
The prince looked grim. “We are all of us frightened. I would have liked a full night to prepare for this, but Camaris took that away from me. I try not to remember where it is we are going.”
“And all with no idea of what to do when we get there,” Tiamak mourned. “Was there ever a battle fought so confusedly?” He hesitated. “I have no right to question you, Prince Josua, but why did you follow Camaris? Surely others less crucial to our success than you could have tried to track him.”
The prince stared ahead. “I was the only one there. I sought to bring him back before he was lost to us.” He sighed. “I feared others would not come in time. But even more ...”
The strange perturbation of air and stone came again, sudden and disorienting, cutting Josua off in mid-speech. The Sithi’s lights jittered, although the immortals themselves seemed not to move. For a moment, Tiamak thought he sensed the presence of a host of others, a shadowy horde disposed all through the ruined halls. Then the feeling was gone and everything was as it had been but for an odd, lingering smell of smoke.
“Aedon’s mercy!” Josua looked down at his feet as though surprised to discover them still on the ground. “What is this place?”
The Sithi had paused. Jiriki turned to the mortals.
“We must go faster,” he said. “Can you keep up?”
“I have a lame leg,” Tiamak replied. “But I will do my best.”
Josua laid his hand on the Wrannaman’s shoulder. “I will not leave you behind. I can carry you if need be.”
Tiamak smiled, touched. “I do not think it will come to that, Prince Josua.”
“Come, then. The Sithi need haste. We will try to give it to them.”
They moved at a fast trot through the winding passageways. Watching the backs of the Sithi, Tiamak had little doubt that if they chose they could leave their mortal companions far behind. But they did not, and that said much: the Sithi thought that Tiamak and Josua could do something important. He ignored the pain in his leg and hurried on.
They seemed to run for hours, although Tiamak had no way of knowing if that was true: just as the substance of Asu‘a itself seemed strangely unstable, so too did time move in a manner that Tiamak no longer trusted himself to interpret. The lag between steps sometimes seemed to stretch for long moments, then an instant later he would be in another part of the ruined sub-castle, still running, with no memory of the intervening journey.
He Who Always Steps on Sand, keep me sane until I have done whatever I can do, he prayed. Beside him, the prince too seemed in silent communication with something or someone.
For a while the Sithi were so far ahead that their lights were little more than a glow in the tunnel before them. Tiamak’s own globe, jiggling in his clutch, provided inconstant light; he and Josua found themselves stumbling through wreckage they could barely see, suffering more than a few cuts and bruises, until they caught up to the immortals once more.
The Sithi had halted beneath a high archway where they stood silhouetted by a diffuse glow from the chamber beyond. As Tiamak hobbled to a stop beside them, gasping for breath, he wondered if they had finally reached the light of the upper world. As he sucked air into his lungs, he stared at the dragonlike serpent carved on the arch. Its tail stretched down one side and was carved across the dusty floor of the archway as well, then rose up the other side and back to the lintel, where the tip was clasped in its owner’s mouth. There were still flecks of paint on its thousands of minute scales.
The smoky light behind the Sithi made them seem distorted, freakishly lean and without firm edges. The nearest, Jiriki, turned and looked back at the panting mortals. There was compassion on his face, but it battled with more pressing emotions. “Beyond is the Pool of Three Depths,” he said. “If I tell you it is a Master Witness, you may have some idea of what kind of forces are at work here. This is one of the mightiest of the places of power; the great worms of Osten Ard once came to drink its waters and share their wordless wisdom, long before my people set foot in this land.”
“Why have we stopped here?” Josua asked. “Is Camaris... ?”
“He may be, or he may have already been here and passed on. It is a place of potency as I said, and it is one of the sources of the change we have felt all around us. He may very well have been drawn here.” Jiriki lifted his hand in warning; for the first time, Tiamak could see the weariness on the immortal’s face. “Please do nothing without asking. Touch nothing except the floor where we walk. If something speaks to you, do not reply.”
Tiamak was chilled. He nodded his understanding. There were a thousand questions he longed to ask, but the tension he saw in the Sithi was a strong argument for silence.
“Lead on,” said Josua.
Appearing a little hesitant themselves, the Sithi stepped through the archway into a wide chamber full of indirect light. Where Tiamak could see the walls through the strange mistiness of the air, they seemed almost new-built, undamaged and ribbed with great sculpted pillars that stretched up toward the hidden ceiling. The pool, a circular expanse of scintillant water, lay in the center of the chamber. A circular staircase whose landing touched on the pool’s far side spiraled up, massive yet graceful, and vanished in the mists above.
Something in the room was ... alive. Tiamak could think of no other way to describe the sensation. Whether it was the pool itself, with its shifting blue and green glows flickering up from the depths, he could not say, but there was far more to this place than water and stone. The air was thunderstorm-taut, and he found he was holding his breath as they moved forward. The Sithi, moving as cautiously as hunters stalking a wounded boar, fanned out along the edge of the pool, growing unaccountably more distant from him with each single step. The smoky light glimmered.
“Camaris!” shouted Josua. Tiamak looked up, startled. The prince was staring at a shape beyond the farthest of the Sithi, a tall figure with a long shadow in one hand. The prince hastened around the tarn’s rim; the Sithi, their attention pulled away from the pool, moved with him toward the solitary figure. Tiamak hurried after, the pain of his leg momentarily forgotten.
For an instant Tiamak thought the prince was mistaken, that whatever this shape was, it was not Camaris: for a blink of time he saw someone completely different, jet-haired and dressed in strange robes, with a branching crown upon his head. Then the chamber seemed to shudder and tip, and the Wrannaman stumbled; when he had regained his balance, he saw that it was indeed the old knight. Camaris looked up at the approaching figures and stepped back, his eyes wild with alarm, then leveled the black sword before him. Josua and the Sithi stopped beyond its reach.
“Camaris,” said the prince. “It is Josua. Look, it is only me. I have been searching for you.”
The old man stared at him, but the sword did not waver from its defensive position. “It is a sinful world,” he replied hoarsely.
“I will go with you,” said Josua. “Wherever you wish to go. Do not be afraid. I will not stop you.”
Likimeya’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “We can help you, Hikka Ti-tuno. We will not stay you, but we can make your pain less.” She took a step forward, her hands held with palms upward. “Do you remember Amerasu Ship-Born?”
The old man’s lips drew back in a grimace of pain or fear and he drew Thorn back as if to strike. Dark Kuroyi’s sword hissed from its sheath as he stepped in front of Likimeya.
“There
is no need,” she said coldly. “Put up.”
The tall Sitha hesitated for a moment, then slipped his witchwood sword back into place. Camaris lowered his black blade once more.
“Pity.” Kuroyi sounded genuinely regretful. “I have always wondered what it would be to cross swords with the greatest of mortal warriors....”
Before anyone else spoke again the light flared wildly, then the room was plunged into blackness. A moment later light returned, but this time the misty air was blue as the center of a flame. Tiamak felt a freezing wind that seemed to blow through him, and the tension of the air increased until his ears hammered.
“How you do love mortals. ” The dreadful voice sounded in his thoughts and all through his body; the words felt like insects skittering on the Wrannaman’s skin. “You cannot leave them alone.”
Tiamak and the others turned. In the roiling mists behind them a shape was forming, pale robed and silver masked, enthroned in midair above the pool. The sickly blue light did not reach much beyond the water, and the chamber was now walled with shadow. The Wrannaman felt terror seize him by the spine. He could not move, could only pray that he would be unnoticed. Stormspike’s queen—for who else could it be?—was as dreadful as any nightmare vision of She Who Waits to Take All Back.
Likimeya nodded her head. She held herself stiffly, as though even speaking took much effort. “So, Eldest. You have found a way to reach the Pool of Three Depths. That does not mean that you can use it.”
The masked figure did not move, but Tiamak felt something almost like triumph emanate from it. “I silenced Amerasu—I broke her before my huntsman dispatched her. Do you think you are her equal, child?”
“By myself, no. But I have others here with me.”
“Other children. ” A pale gloved hand lifted, wavering as the mist swirled.