Songs of the Dying Earth

garment.

The shaft opened onto a circular room into whose walls the windows Thiago had seen from the ground were cut. It was absent all furnishings and lit by the same pale sourceless light. A second stairway led down to an even larger room, pentagonal in shape, its gray marble walls resplendent with intricate volutes and a fantastic bestiary carved in bas relief. The air retained a faint sourness, as of dried sweat. Cut into the floor, also of gray marble, was a complicated abstract design. Five curving corridors angled off from the room, receding to a depth Thiago would have believed impossible, given the dimensions of the tower; but this, he reminded himself, was a magician’s tower that cast no shadow and likely was governed by laws other than those to which he was accustomed.

They went cautiously along the first of the corridors, passing a number of doors, all locked, and came at last to a door at the corridor’s end that stood open and admitted to a room, a laboratory of sorts. Derwe Coreme made to enter, but Thiago barred her way with his arm.

“Look first,” he said.

She frowned, yet raised no objection.

Many-colored light penetrated the room from panels in a domed ceiling, shifting from dull orange to peach to lavender. Volumes of obvious antiquity lined the walls. Upon a long table, vials bubbled over low flames and the components of a mysterious device, a puzzle of glittering steel and crystal, lay scattered about. An immense bell jar contained dark objects suspended in what looked to be a red fluid. Several more such jars held items that Thiago could not identify, a few of which appeared to be moving. Then the scene changed. Their view was still of the same room, yet they were considerably closer to the table. The objects submerged in red fluid were fragments of a sunken ship. Gray creatures with sucker mouths, elongated hands and paddle feet crawled over the wreck, as if searching for something. Another jar enclosed a miniature city with a strange geometric uniformity to its architecture whose two tallest towers were aflame. Beneath the largest glass bell, a herd of four-legged beasts with flowing blond hair and womanly breasts fled across a mossy plain, pursued by an army of trees (or a single multi-trunked tree) that extended root-like tentacles to haul itself along.

Unsettled, Thiago and Derwe Coreme returned to the room of gray marble and entered a second corridor, passing along it until they reached a door at its nether end. Through it they saw a valley of golden grasses lorded over by hills with promontories of corroded-looking black rock that might have been the ruins of colossal statuary rendered unrecognizable by time. They could discern no signs of life, no movement whatsoever. The absence of all kinetic value bred a sense of foreboding in Thiago. At the end of a third corridor they stood overlooking a vista that could have been part of the Sousanese Coast south of Val Ombrio: a high reddish sun, barren hills, a stretch of forest, and then a lowland declining to water that glowed a rich pthalocyanine blue. All seemed normal until a flight of winged serpents the size of barges soared low along the coast and in the eye of one that flew straight at the door, veering aside at the last second, Thiago glimpsed their terrified reflection.

They had quit trying the doors, but as they retreated toward the marble room, Thiago idly turned a doorknob and thought to hear a gasp issue from the other side.

“Who’s there?” Thiago gave the door a shake.

He received no answer. Again he rattled the door and said, “We have come to free you. Let me in!”

After an interval, a woman’s voice cried out, “Please help us! We have no key.”

Derwe Coreme pressed on; when Thiago called to her, she said, “Whoever she is, she can wait. I have two more corridors to inspect.”

Before he could speak further, she passed beyond the bend in the corridor. He felt diminished by her absence and this both surprised and iritated him.

He examined the hinges of the door. The bolts were flush to the metal and he did not think he could loosen them with a knife. He set his shoulder to the planking and gave it a test blow. Solid. The corridor, however, was narrow enough that he could brace his back against the opposite wall and put all his strength into a kick. He did so and felt the lock give way the slightest bit. The sound of the kick was startlingly loud, but he drove his foot into the lock again and again until the wood splintered. A few more blows and the door swung open. Two beautiful dark- haired women attired in gauzy costumes that left little to the imagination stood gaping at him in the center of a room furnished with a bed, an armoire, and a mirror. In reflex, Thiago covered himself as best he could.

The younger of the women, scarcely more than a girl, prostrated herself. The older woman regarded him with a mix of hauteur and suspicion; then she stepped forward, standing almost eye-to-eye. She had the well-tended look and fine bone structure of the patrician women with whom he had consorted in Kaiin. Her hair was bound with an ivory and emerald clip. He could not picture her ladling dumplings onto a farmer’s plate in Joko Anwar.

“Who are you?” she asked in a firm voice.

“Thiago Alves of Kaiin.”

“My name is Diletta Orday. I was traveling in…”

“We have no time to exchange personal histories. Is there somewhere you can hide? I cannot fight and watch over you both.”

Diletta’s eyes darted to the side. “There is no hiding place for us so long as the avatar lives.”

The girl on the floor moaned and Diletta said in a challenging tone, “Ruskana believes you will rape us.”

“That is not my intent.” He cast about in the corners of the room. “There were more of you, were there not?”

“We were nineteen in all. The avatar led seventeen along the corridors. None returned. He claims they are with Yando.”

Cugel, Thiago told himself, must have been testing the open doorways, sending the women through and observing what happened. Chances were, he had not liked the results.

“He is no avatar,” Thiago said.

“I am not a fool. I know what he is.” She pointed to the armoire and said archly, “If your intent is to fight, you may need your hands. His clothes are there. Perhaps something will fit.”

Within the armoire was an assortment of men’s clothing. The shirts fit too snugly, hampering his freedom of movement; but he found a pair of trousers that he could squeeze into.

“Can you tell me where he is?” he asked.

“Oh, you will see him shortly.”

As he turned, made curious by the lilt in her voice, he felt a sharp sting in his neck and saw Diletta pulling back from him, wearing a look of triumph. He staggered and, suddenly dizzy, went to one knee. Something struck him in the back and he toppled on his side. A second strike rolled him onto his back. The girl, Ruskana, was engaged in kicking him, grinning like a madwoman. He tried to focus on Diletta, but his vision clouded. Her voice echoed and faded, losing all hint of meaning and tone, becoming an ambient effect, and the kicks, too, became a kind of effect, no longer causing pain, each one seeming to drive him farther from the world.

Voices, too, ushered Thiago back to consciousness. A woman’s voice complaining…Ruskana? Another woman, lower-pitched, asking what she should do. Diletta. Then a familiar man’s voice that brought Thiago fully awake. He lay on his back, his hands bound beneath him, and began to work at loosening his bonds even before he opened his eyes.

“There must have been a woman with him,” said Cugel from a distance. “The pelgrane would not have flown him to the summit, otherwise.”

“Hunger may have overwhelmed its sense of duty,” said Ruskana.

“I attribute no sense of duty to the pelgrane,” said Cugel peevishly. “I suggest that if Thiago had come alone to the field, it would have gained nothing by flying to the summit. It would have eaten him where he stood.”

“We have searched most of the night,” Diletta said. “If a woman was here, she is not here now. Perhaps she took refuge at the end of one of the corridors. If that is the case, we have no need to worry.”

Thiago could not make out Cugel’s response. He slitted his eyes and saw he was lying in a small featureless room with gray marble walls close beside a bluish metal egg some fifteen feet high and ten feet wide, supported by six struts. Beyond lay a stair on the bottom step of which Ruskana stood. It led upward to a ceiling of gray marble. Thiago assumed there was a concealed exit and this would open onto the room with the five branching corridors. He redoubled his efforts at loosening his bonds.

“Is it ready?” Diletta asked, moving into view.

“I must refer to Iucounu’s notes. Minor adjustments may be required.”

Cugel came out from behind the egg. He wore a high-collared black cape, gray trousers, and a velvet tunic of