In the middle of a wide square paved in alternating brown and black tile, the two men walked beneath the shadow of a black derrick. A ring of knee-high white stones surrounded a chasm. They stepped over and stood at the lip, looking down into the Cleft.
The lip itself was ragged, and broken tiles canted dangerously over the dark hole. The sun, like a bubble of rosy wine, had risen toward noon, and the rust-colored light slanted wanly into the pit. A vast space was revealed, with what seemed colonnades and corridors opening up upon a central well.
The tiles of the street were nothing more than the rooftiles of a building immense beyond description: soil and stone had accumulated atop this roof. The city later erected atop it was no more significant than the nests of rooks found in the eaves of barns.
The architecture underneath was old, with that exactitude of beauty and detail evidenced nowhere in the above-ground buildings; but rubbish and broken rock, slick with mushrooms and spores, lay everywhere. There was a noise of dripping water echoing from the gloomy depths.
A squadron of soldiers, led by two officers in square-topped plumed helmets, and wearing scaly jackets made of hard, brightly-colored flakes, approached at a quickstep from the wrought-iron wickets fronting the Magistracy building. In their hands were lances with tips of sharpened glass, and large round shields of transparent substance.
Manxolio said in a low voice: “We are discovered. These are the Uhlan Elite, the privy guard of the Invigilator’s Order. Such is the price of overzealous curiosity. I might be able to deter them from trifling with us, if they respect my rank. Do not aggravate them with questions!”
The young man lifted his eyes and saw them. “Note the vermeil, purple, rose, and lavender hue of the scales they wear. Their armor is worked from a leviathan’s hide. The bucklers are made from shed eye-cusps.” He seemed not overly concerned with their approach. “The Dark Iron Wand points downward, and south-southwest. That third level: see the dark residue of the radium lamps? Behind those cracked valves beneath that fallen architrave is an energetic source.”
Now the men-at-arms were at hand. The men saluted Manxolio with a flourish of their glassy spears and a click of their boots, and the two officers greeted him with polite words.
Manxolio said genteelly, “Permit me to introduce two of the Invigilators, upon whose valor the peace of Old Romarth with tranquil confidence depends: here is Ullfard of House Urilim, son of Oothbard; and this is Right- Lieutenant Mmamneron of House Mm, son of Mmaeal, a didact and antiquarian. Much of his family’s riches come from the Cleft, and so his fathers have made an avocation of its study.” Then, turning to them: “This is…ah…call him Anomus. He is assisting me in effectuating a case. The details of the matter are delicate, and a nicety of discretion is called for. I trust I need say no more?” He favored them with an engaging smile.
In a soft voice, Ullfard said, “Noble sirs, I cannot help but trouble you to notice that you have overstepped the bounds of demarcation, quite clearly inscribed in this circle of white stones circumvallating the aperture of the Cleft. This is a dereliction of the First Order against the civic mandates. I enjoin you, out of the graciousness of your high station, sirs, to remove yourselves with no delay.”
Even as he spoke, there came a voice from the pit, a hushed whisper, and then a murmur as of many voices. In the dim light, figures could be seen, thin, bone-white and wild-eyed, dressed in rags. These men were peering from the tumbled rocks that clustered near the corridor-ends. The Cleft itself was infundibular, so that the Cleft offered a diminishing view of each successive level. The ragged men among the columns and broken walls of the first level seemed fully human; lower down, where there was less light, could be glimpsed larger, thinner shapes, perhaps of Ska or Visitants or beast-human hybrids.
Anomus (or so he was called now) spoke up. “Sirs! I see children’s faces down there, thin and scarred with disease. If this is where you emplace your criminals, how came these to be there?”
Manxolio winced.
Ullfard politely answered, “In the ordinary course of nature, once female felons, murderesses, mulct-evaders, scolds, harridans, or strumpets, run afoul of the edicts, they are lowered into the Cleft. The convicted women wed, or are taken without wedlock, there in the dark, and produce whelps, who are the small faces you see.”
Anomus said, “But why is not the platform of your derrick lowered for the children to ascend? They have committed no offense.”
Ullfard smiled. “In principle, I suppose you are correct, but modern legal theory holds that no child is truly human unless raised into the sunlight, since our race is self-evidently a diurnal one. These creatures are nocturnal. While they might biologically be children, in the legal sense they occupy a less dignified category. Besides, who knows what crimes these dark beings commit against each other in the wet and stinking pits of under-earth? They are surely guilty of something! In any case, I fear, gentle sirs, that I must insist with unseemly persistence that you remove yourself from this area. None may approach the Cleft.”
Now a voice spoke from underfoot. “Ullfard, Ullfard, of Urilim! We ache with hunger! Lower the platform, let the viands and good brown beer be bestowed! We thirst! We sicken of eating mushrooms! It is I, Chomd, the chieftain of the Northwest Buried Corridor, who speaks!”
Ullfard clashed his spear against his transparent shield, producing a ringing clatter, surprisingly loud. “Silence, worms of the underworld! I speak with men of stature and distinction! Draw back from the open air! Now is not the hour when you are allowed to see the sunlight! Draw back, I say, or I will call the archers. They have plucked fresh needles of potent import from the gnarled limbs of cacti, which you will mourn to find embedded in your flesh! Draw back!”
The voice spoke again: “Noble and kindly Ullfard of Urilim! Important news! A swimmer in the mud discovered an inundated hatch in the second level, leading into the treasure houses of the third level, where, dry and untouched, corridor upon corridor of mummified remains, still seated in the postures they assumed in life, rear among the broken splendor of their libraries and relict-halls! Rare crystals taken from a mausoleum we have found, the brain-stone of a grue, the vestments of the matriarchs of the Nineteenth Aeon, as well as codices and tomes. All rarities, worth stoops of wine and fat hens! The books are illuminated in precise hand, crafted with capitals in red ink, and set with tiny nodules of malachite. Lower the platform, the beloved platform, forty-nine feet. Send us the hens, for we hunger, or we will burn the books, and no advantage will there be to your fairs and merchant houses!”
A second voice, this one dimmer, as if farther off, cried out then: “Heed him not, Ullfard! Gward the Huge, hetman of the Third Dungeon importunes! We have legal title to those books; they were found on our level. Lower the platform ninety-one feet, and we will pour out with abundant hand the folios and geodes from the ancient glory of Romarth! Send us lamps, lamps with oil, and more treasures will be yours! Send us weapons, dirks and derringers, petards and partisans, ranceurs and guisarmes with iron beaks, that we may drive back the impertinent trespassers of the second level! We are harder-working, and will heap up in vertiginous piles the ancestral heirlooms for you to sell!”
Ullfard clashed his spear against his shield. “Silence! Draw back! Or shall I order the sluices opened?”
Mmamneron of Mm said nervously to Anomus, “The talk of the Inhumed is often wild, and full of rare allusions, difficult to interpret! When they speak of selling the priceless archeological treasures of Old Romarth, of course, this is a short expression, a synecdoche, really, for reposing these rarities in the museums of the Antiquarians, where they are preserved for scholarly study.”
Anomus said to the Invigilators, “We mean to enter the Cleft, explore certain corridors and shafts of the buried city, and return. We will lose the signal if we delay. What is the procedure?”
Ullfard said unctuously, “There is no procedure. Without the Magistrate’s order, none can be lowered into the Cleft, and even that only after a disquisition and official hearing, and a consultation of the auguries. As for now, by approaching the Cleft, you trespass, and you must withdraw. Such is the unrelenting law.”
Anomus said, “What is the penalty for defying this law?”
Ullfard blew out his cheeks. “Why, in a severe case, or if the workforce needs replenishment, the punishment for trespass would be introduction into the Cleft.”
“So, the punishment for attempting to enter the Cleft, is that one is allowed to enter the Cleft?”
Manxolio Quinc spoke hesitatingly. “Anomus, it is no use. We cannot offend the ancient ceremonies. If the Magistrate were here…but even so, there is no provision for introducing innocent men into the Beneath-world. The
