strange. It was a market day, rich with light and noise of conversation and the rich smells of baking. The life of a city swirled around me. In the next moment, Tremartin seized my arm and jerked me away from the wall. “Do not touch the black stone,” he warned us. “It puts you in the ghosts’ world. Come on. Follow me.” In the distance, we saw the brighter flare of a fire gleaming, shaming the uneasily flickering light.
The fire was Retyo’s torch. He was grimed from head to foot. Even when he saw us, he continued to scoop mud away from a door with a crude wooden paddle. The watery ooze was a constant flow down the hall; not even a dozen men could hope to keep up with it. If Olpey did not open the door soon, he would be trapped inside as the mud filled the corridor.
I stepped down into the shallow pit Retyo had been keeping clear. Heedless of the mud on him, heedless that my son and my friend watched me, I embraced him. If I had had the time, I would have become what my husband had accused me of being. Perhaps, in spirit, I am already a faithless wife. I care little for that now. I have kept faith with my friends.
Our embrace was brief. We had little time. We called to Olpey through the doors, but he kept silent until he heard his little sisters weeping. Then he angrily bade us to go away. His mother begged him to come out, saying that the city was giving way and that the flowing mud would soon trap him. He retorted that he belonged here, that he had always lived here and here he would die. And all the while that we shouted and begged, Retyo grimly worked, scraping the advancing muck away from the doorsill. When our pleas did not work, Retyo and Tremartin attacked the door, but the stout wood would not give to boots or fists, and we had no tools. In a dull whisper, Tremartin said we must leave him. He wept as he spoke. The mud was flowing faster than both men could contain, and we had three other children to think of.
Chellia’s voice rose in a shriek of denial but was drowned by an echoing rumble behind us. Something big gave way. The flow of the muck doubled, for now it came from both directions. Tremartin lifted his torch. In both directions, the corridor ended in blackness. “Open the door, Olpey!” I begged him. “Or we all perish here, drowned in muck. Let us in, in Sa’s name!”
I do not think he heeded my words. Rather it was Carlmin’s voice, raised in a command in a language I’ve never heard that finally won a reaction. We heard latches being worked, and then the door grated grudgingly outward through the muck. The lit chamber dazzled our eyes as we tumbled into it. Water and flowing muck tried to follow us onto the richly tiled floor, but Tremartin and Retyo dragged the door shut, though Retyo had to drop to his knees and push mud out of the way to do so. Mud-tinged water crept determinedly under the closed door.
The chamber was the best preserved that I had seen. We were all dazzled by the richness of the chambers and the brief illusion of safety amid the strangeness. Shelves of gleaming wood supported exquisite vases and small stone statues, intricate carvings and silver ornaments gone black with time. A little winding staircase led up and out of sight. Each step of it was lined with light. The contents of the room could have ransomed our entire company back into the Satrap’s goodwill, for the objects were both fine and strange. Olpey stooped down protectively to roll back a carpet in danger of being overtaken by the ooze. It was supple in his hands, and as he disturbed the dust, bright colors peeped out. For a few moments, none of us spoke. As Olpey came to his feet and stood before us, I gasped. He wore a robe that rippled with colors when he moved. About his forehead he had bound a band of linked metal disks, and they seemed to glow with their own light. Chellia dared not embrace him. He blinked owlishly, and Chellia hesitantly asked her son if he knew her.
His reply came slowly. “I dreamed you once.” Then, looking about the room he said worriedly, “Or perhaps I have stepped into a dream. It is so hard to tell.”
“He’s been touching that black wall too much,” Tremartin growled. “It wakes the ghosts and steals your mind. I saw a man two days ago. He was sitting with his back to the wall, his head leaned against it, smiling and gesturing and talking to people who weren’t there.”
Retyo nodded grimly. “Even without touching them, it takes a man’s full will to keep the ghosts at bay after a time down here in the dark.” Then, reluctantly, he added, “It may be too late to bring Olpey all the way back to us. But we can try. And we must all guard our minds as best we can, by talking to one another. And get the little ones out of here as quickly as we can.”
I saw what he meant. Olpey had gone to a small table in a corner. A silver pot awaited beside a tiny silver cup. As we watched in silence, he poured nothing from the pot to the cup, and then quickly quaffed it. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and made a face, as if he had just drunk liquor too strong for him.
“If we’re going to go, we must go now,” Retyo added. He did not need to say, “Before it’s too late.” We were all thinking it.
But it was already too late. There was a steady seepage of water under the door, and when the men tried to open it, they could not budge it. Even when all the adults put our shoulders to it, it would not move. And then the lights began to flicker dismally.
Now the press of muck against the door grows heavier, so that the wood groans with it. I must be short. The staircase leads up into absolute darkness, and the torches we have contrived from the articles in the room will not last long. Olpey has gone into a daze, and Carlmin is not much better. He barely responds to us with a mutter. The men will carry the boys, and Chellia will lead her two girls. I will carry our supply of torches. We will go as far as we can, hoping to discover a different way back to the dragon-woman chamber.
Day . . . I do not know
So I head this account, for we have no concept of how much time has passed. For me, it seems years. I quiver, but I am not certain if it is from cold, or from striving to remain who I am. Who I was. My mind swims with the differences, and I could drown in them, if I let go. Yet if this account is to be of any use to others, I must find my discipline and put my thoughts into order.
As we ascended the stairs, the last breath of light in the chamber sighed out. Tremartin lifted our torch bravely, but it barely illuminated his head and shoulders in the engulfing blackness. Never have I experienced darkness so absolute. Tremartin gripped Olpey’s wrist and compelled the boy to follow him. Behind him went Retyo, carrying Carlmin, then Chellia leading her trembling daughters. I came last, burdened with the crude torches created from the furniture and hangings in the chamber. This last act had infuriated Olpey. He attacked Retyo and would not stop until Retyo struck him a hard openhanded blow to the face. It dazed the boy and horrified his mother and sisters, but he became compliant, if not cooperative.
The stair led to a servants’ room. Doubtless the privileged noble in the comfortable chamber below would ring a bell, and his servants would spring to satisfy the master’s wish. I saw wooden tubs, perhaps for washing, and glimpsed a worktable before Tremartin hurried us on. There was only one exit. Once outside, the corridor offered blackness in both directions.
The noise of the burning torch seemed almost loud; the only other sound was the dripping of water. I feared that silence. Music and ghostly voices lingered at the edge of it.
“The flame burns steadily,” Chellia observed. “No drafts.”
I had not thought of that, but she was right. “All that means is that there is a door between us and the outside.” Even I doubted my words. “One we must find and open.”
“Which way shall we go?” Tremartin asked all of us. I had long ago lost my bearings, so I kept silent.
“That way,” Chellia answered. “I think it goes back the direction we came. Perhaps we will see something we recognize, or perhaps the light will come back.”
I had no better suggestion to offer. They led and I followed. Each of them had someone to hold tight, to keep the ghosts of the city at bay. I had only the bundled torches in my arms. My friends became shadows between me and the unsteady torchlight. If I looked up, the torch blinded me. Looking down, I saw a goblin’s dance of shadows around my feet. Our hoarse breathing, the scuff of our feet on the damp stone, and the crackling of the torch were the only sounds I perceived at first. Then I began to hear other things, or to think that I did: the uneven drip of water and once a sliding sound as something in the distance gave way.
And music. It was music thin as watered ink, music muffled by thick stone and time, but it reached out to me. I was determined to take the men’s advice and ignore it. To keep my thoughts my own, I began to hum an old Jamaillian lullaby. It was only when Chellia hissed, “Carillion!” at me that I realized my humming had become the haunting song from the stone. I stopped, biting my lip.
“Pass me another torch. We’d best light a fresh one before this one dies completely.” When Tremartin spoke the words, I realized he’d spoken to me twice before. Dumbly I stepped forward, presenting my armload of
