They continued through the labyrinth, Ike leading his hostage by the rope. Like barbarians approaching Rome, they passed increasingly sophisticated landmarks. They walked beneath eroded archways carved from the bedrock. The trail became a tangle of once smoothly laid pavers buckled by eons of earth movement. Along one untouched portion, the path lay perfectly flat, and they walked for half a mile upon a mosaic of luminous cobbles.
Among these fins of rock, the thunder of waterfalls was muted. The canyon floor would have been flooded if not for canals that cleverly channeled the water along the sides of their path. Here and there the acequias had broken down with time and they waded through water. For the most part the system was intact. Occasionally they heard music, and it was water passing through the remains of instruments that were built into the walkway.
They were getting close to the center, Ike could tell from the girl's apprehension. Also, they reached a long bank of human mummies bracketing the trail.
Ike and the girl made their way between them. What was left of Walker and his men
had been tied standing up, thirty of them. Their thighs and biceps had been ritually mutilated. They looked barrel-chested because their abdomens had been emptied. The eyes had been scooped out and replaced with marble orbs, round and white. The stone eyes were slightly too large, which gave them a ferocious, bulging, insect stare. Calvino was there, and the black lieutenant, and finally Walker's head. As an act of contempt, they had laced Walker's dried heart into his beard for all to see. If they had respected him as an enemy, it would have been eaten on the spot.
Ike was glad now that he'd starved his prisoner. At full strength, she would have presented a serious challenge to his stealth. As it was, she could barely walk a mile without resting. Soon she could feast and be free, he hoped. And Ali – the visitor in his dreams each night – would be restored to him.
On January 23, the girl attempted to drown herself in one of the canals, leaping into the water and wedging her body under an outcrop. Ike had to drag her out, and it was almost too late. He cut the rope gag and finally got the water out of her lungs. She lay limp by his knees, defeated and ill. Exhausted by their battle, both rested.
Somewhat later she began singing. Her eyes were still closed. It was a song for her own comfort, sung softly, in hadal, with the clicks and intonations of a private verse. At first Ike had no idea what it was, her singing was so small. Then he heard, and it was like being shot through the heart.
Ike rocked back on his heels, disbelieving. He listened more closely. The words were too intricate for his small lexicon. But the tune was there, scarcely a whisper:
'Amazing Grace.'
The song sent him reeling. It was familiar to her, and beloved, he could tell, as it was to him. This was the last thing he had ever heard from Kora, her singing as she sank into the abyss beneath Tibet so many years ago. It was the very anthem he had cast himself into the darkness for. I once was lost, but now am found / Was blind, but now I see. She had put her own words to it, but the tune was identical.
He had taken Isaac's claim of fatherhood to be the truth, but saw no resemblance to that beast at all. Prompted by the song, Ike now recognized Kora's features in the girl. Ike groped for other explanations. Perhaps the girl had been taught the melody by Kora. Or Ali had sung it to her. But for days, he had been carrying a vague, troubling sense of already knowing her.
There was something about her cheekbones and forehead, the way that jaw thrust forward in moments of obstinacy, and the general length of her body. Other details drew his attention, too. Could it really be? So much was the image of her mother. But so much was not, her eyes, the shape of her hands, that jaw.
Wearily she opened her eyes. He had not seen Kora in them because they were not Kora's turquoise eyes. Maybe he was wrong. And yet the eyes were familiar. Then it struck him. She had his eyes. This was his own daughter.
Ike sagged against the wall. Her age was right. The color of her hair. He compared their hands, and she had his same long fingers, his same nails. 'God,' he whispered. What now?
'Ma. You. Where,' he said in his fractured hadal.
She quit singing. Her eyes rode up to his, and her thoughts were easy to read. She saw his daze, and it suggested an opportunity. But when she tried prying herself from the wet stone, her body refused to cooperate.
'Please speak more clearly, animal man,' she said politely, in high dialect.
To Ike's ear, she had expressed something like What? He tried again, reversing his question and fumbling for the right syntax and possessive. 'Where. You own. Mother. To be.'
She snorted, and he knew his attempts sounded like grunting to her. All the while she kept her eyes directed away from his knife with the black blade. That was her object of desire, Ike knew. She wanted to kill him.
This time he traced a sign on the ground, then linked it with another sign. 'You,' he said. 'Mother.'
She made a gentle sweeping motion with her fingers, and that was his answer. One did not speak about the dead. They became someone – or something – else. And since you could never be sure who or what form that reincarnation might have taken, it was most judicious to give the dead no mention. Ike let it go at that.
Of course Kora was dead. And if she was not, there would probably be no recognizing what was left. Yet here was their legacy. And he needed her as a pawn to trade away for Ali. That had been his working plan. Suddenly it felt as though the life raft he had crafted from wreckage had just wrecked all over again.
It was excruciating, the appearance of a daughter he had never known, changed into what he had almost been changed into. What was he supposed to do now, rescue her? And what then? Obviously the hadals had taken her in and made her one of them. She had no idea who he was or what world he came from. To be honest, he had little idea himself. What kind of rescue was that?
He looked at the girl's thin, painted back. Since capturing her, he had treated her like chattel. The only thing good to say was that he had not beaten or raped or killed her. My daughter? He hung his head.
How could he possibly trade away his own flesh and blood, even for a woman he loved? But if he did not, Ali would remain in their bondage forever. Ike tried to clear his mind. The girl was ignorant of her past. However harsh, she had a life among the hadals. To take her out of here would mean tearing her by the roots from the only people she knew. And to leave Ali meant... what? Ali could not possibly know he had survived the fortress explosion, much less that he was searching for her. Likewise, she would never know if he turned around and dragged this child away from the darkness. Indeed, knowing her, even if she did know, Ali would approve. And where would that leave him? He had become a curse. Everyone he loved disappeared.
He considered letting the girl go. But that would only be cowardice on his part. The decision was his to make. He had to make it. It was one or the other, at best. He was too much of a realist to waste a moment imagining the whole happy family could make it out. He was tormented the rest of that night.
When the girl awoke, Ike presented her with a meal of larvae and pallid tubers, and loosened her ropes. He knew it would only complicate matters to restore her strength, and that the slightest guilt at having depleted the child was a dangerous moralism. But he could no longer go on starving his own daughter.
Guessing she would never tell it to him, he asked her name. She averted her eyes at the rudeness. No hadal would give such power to a slave. Soon after he started her downward on the trail, though more slowly in consideration of her fatigue.
The revelation tortured him. After his return to the human side, Ike had vowed to keep his choices black and white. Stick to your code. Stray, and you died. If you couldn't decide a matter in three seconds, it was too complicated.
The simplest thing by far, the safest thing, would have been to cut loose and escape while he could. Ike had never been a believer in predestination. God didn't do it to you, you did it to yourself. But the
