“You might call up your genie in a bottle. Get him to tell you.”
“He’s never said much about the place where he’s at. Not since he’s been in there himself. It’s like he’s constrained against that. I dreamed about it a few times but I don’t know how accurate my dreams were.”
Swan groaned. “I really didn’t want to make this trek.”
“Will it be that bad?”
“Not going down. But heading the other way is likely to change your attitude.”
“I don’t know. I’m beginning to get a little winded just going in this direction.”
“Then slow down. A few minutes isn’t going to make a difference. Not after all these years.”
He was right. And wrong. There was no rush for the Captured. But for us, with our limited resources, time was destined to become critical.
Swan continued, “You need to slow down, Sleepy. Really. It’s going to get a little bit hairy in a minute.”
He was absolutely right. But he understated the case dramatically.
The stairwell did a meander to the right. It caught up with the chasm caused by the earthquakes that had occurred during the reign of the Shadowmasters.
There was only half a stairway there. It hung in the face of a cliff. That left a whole lot of down on my right- hand side. And it was down that was entirely too well illuminated by a reddish orange light that may have come from the stone itself, since there seemed to be no other obvious source. Though I did have trouble opening my eyes wide enough to look. Wraithlike wisps of vapor wobbled upward from somewhere down below. The air seemed wanner. I asked, “We’re not heading into Hell itself, are we?” Some Vehdna believe
Swan understood. “Not your Hell. But I’d guess it’s Hell enough for them that’re trapped down there.”
I stopped on the remains of a landing. The steps narrowed to two feet just below me. By leaning out slightly I could see clearly that the stairwell had been constructed inside a larger bore at least twenty feet in diameter. The shaft had been filled with a stone darker than that through which it had been cut. Maybe the bore had needed to be that big so Kina could be dragged down below. I asked, “Can you imagine what an engineering project this must have been?”
“People with plenty of slaves aren’t daunted by big projects. What’s the matter?”
“I have a problem with heights. This next part is going to take a lot of prayer and some outside encouragement. I want you to go first. I want you to go slow. And I want you to stay where I can touch you. I believe in meeting my fears eyeball to eyeball but if it gets bad and I feel like I might freeze up, I want to be able to close my eyes and keep going.” I was astounded by how calm and reasonable my voice sounded.
“I understand. The real problem then is, who’s going to keep his eyes open for me? Whoa! Don’t panic, Sleepy. I was joking! I can handle it. Really.”
It was not the worst thing I ever dealt with. I never abandoned rational thought. But it was difficult. Even when Swan promised me that an unseen protective barrier existed on the abyssal side and demonstrated its presence, the animal inside me wanted to get the heck out of there and go someplace where the ground was flat and green, there was a sky overhead, and there might even be a few trees.
Swan assured me that I was missing one heck of a view, especially as we approached the lower end of the gap, where the light was brighter, revealing churning mists way below, mists that concealed the depths of the abyss. I kept my eyes closed until we were back into a closed cavern again.
I had started counting steps up top so I could get an idea of how deep we went but I lost count while I was pretending to be a fly crawling on a wall. I was too busy being terrified. But it did seem like we had traveled a long way horizontally as well as downward.
Almost immediately after I had that thought, the stair turned left, then left again. The orange red light faded away. The stair made a couple more quick turns into a total darkness, which aroused whole new species of terrors. But nothing bit me and nothing came to steal my soul.
Then there was light again, growing so subtly I was never really aware of first noticing it. It had a golden cast to it but was extremely cold. And as soon as I was aware of it, I knew we were approaching our destination.
The stairwell passed right through a natural cavern. At one time that had been sealed off but the quakes had toppled the responsible masonry walls. I asked, “We here?”
“Almost. Careful climbing over the stones. They aren’t very stable.”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“That sound.”
We listened. After a while, Swan said, “I think it’s wind. Sometimes there was a breeze when we were down here before.”
“Wind? A mile underground?”
“Don’t ask me to explain it. It just is. You want to go first this time?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you would.”
84
Golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen they, some covered with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the cavern roof.
So Murgen described it once upon a time, decades ago. The description remained apt, though the light was not as golden as I expected and the delicate filigrees of ice were denser and more complex. The old men seated against the walls, caught up in the webs, were not the wide-eyed madmen of Murgen’s visions, though. They were dead. Or asleep. I did not see one open eye. Nor did I see one face I recognized.
“Willow. Who are these people?” The bitter wind continued to rush through the cavern, which was a dozen feet high and nearly as wide, with a relatively flat floor, side to side.
It sloped with the length of the cavern. It looked like ancient, frozen mud covered with a pelt of fine frost fur. Water had run through the cavern in some epoch before the coming of men.
“These ones? I don’t know. They were here when we came down.”
I leaned closer but was careful not to touch. “These caves are natural.”
“They have that look.”
“Then they’ve been down here all along. They were here before the plain was built.”
“Possibly. Probably.”
“And whoever buried Kina knew about them. So did the Deceivers chased here by Rhaydreynak. Hunh! This one is definitely deceased. Naturally mummified but definitely gone.” The corpse was all dried out. Bare bone showed at a folded knee and tattered elbow. “These others? Who knows? Maybe the right sorcery could get them up and running around like Iqbal’s kids.”
“Why would we get them up? We’re here to get the guys that me and Catcher buried. Right? They’re on up there.” He pointed upslope, where the light was even less golden, becoming almost an icy blue.
The light was not bright. Not nearly so much so as in the vision I had experienced. Maybe it was more a psychic witchlight than a physical one, more suited to the dreamwalker’s eye. I mused, “They might be able to tell us something interesting.”
“I’ll tell you something interesting,” Swan muttered to himself. In a normal voice, for my benefit, he said, “I don’t think so. At least I don’t think it would be anything any of us would want to hear. Catcher took extreme pains to avoid even touching them. Getting the captives past without disturbing them was the hardest work we did.”
I bent to examine another of the old men. He did not look like he belonged to any race I knew. “They must be from one of the other worlds.”
“Maybe. There’s a saying where I grew up: ’Let sleeping’ dogs lie.’ Sounds like exquisitely appropriate advice. We don’t know why they were put down here.”
“I have no intention of releasing any deviltry but our own. These men here aren’t the same as those.”
