heart of the city. I love you and so I strive to save what I can of it. What might survive.'
'You believe you will die if you turn the crank. You and the boy both.'
He nodded to himself. 'Yes. But it will be more quickly than if we wait and let the water eat out the walls and bring them down on us.'
'Can't you go back the way you came?'
'Do you seek to dissuade me from what you have begged me to do for years?' he asked her in amusement. Then he answered her question. 'The way back is already gone. The Satrap's chamber was oozing water. That door is only wood. It could not hold. I suspect it is the source of the water that flows in even now. I am done, dragon, and the boy with me. However, if we collapse the ceiling, some light may break through. If it does, then you may survive us. If not, then we will all be buried together.'
He waited in vain for her reply. When it came, it surprised him. She left him. There was no lingering aura of gratitude, not even a farewell. She was simply gone.
He rapped the shaft sharply with his claw tool. He set his hands to the crank. He suspected that once the counterweights in the wall started moving, the momentum might take over. Or perhaps the wheel would turn no more than a notch or two. He would not think of that. Slow death alone he might be able to face. Slow death with a young boy at his side would be torture eternal. He shoved the claw tool through the spokes of the wheel and braced it. He looked at Selden. The whites of the boy's fearful eyes gleamed in the candlelight. 'Now!' he told him.
They leaned on the bars. The wheels turned grudgingly, but they turned. The door groaned warningly. Move the bar up a spoke, lean. Move the bar up a spoke, lean on it again. Reyn heard the counterweights shifting inside the wall. Surely by now something should suddenly take over the work of the task. He wondered how many barrows full of earth were pressed up against the door. It had settled solidly for years; how many, no one knew. How could he even imagine that he could open it, let alone that the earth would break in and light shine through? It was ridiculous. Move the bar up another spoke. Lean on it.
Cruelly, the light bar suddenly sprang to life, illuminating the final destruction of the city. It lit up the spreading cracks across the murals and the gleaming water on the floor. For the first and last time in his life, Reyn got a fleeting glimpse of the true beauty of the room. He stared up in awe. As he looked, something cracked sharply, not in the door, but up overhead. Crystal shards of one of the great windows of the dome fell like great icicles. They shattered to dust on the floor of the chamber. A trickling of soil followed them. Nothing more.
'Keep going, lad,' Reyn encouraged Selden. In unison they moved their bars, and leaned on them. Another groaning notch.
Suddenly, on Reyn's side of the door, there was a tremendous series of pops. Instinct sent him diving toward Selden as the door suddenly burst unevenly from its track. The edge of the door bowed in, a great vertical crack that reached from the floor to the top of the door. Suddenly the sagging and splitting spread from there. Like the shell of a dropped egg, the cracks spread out across the dome above. Crystal panes and plaster frescoes fell like rotten fruit from windswept trees. There was no place to escape the bombardment as the ceiling randomly surrendered to the weight of earth atop it.
Reyn clutched the boy to him and hunched over him as if his paltry body could save him from the forces of the earth. The boy clung to him, too frightened to scream. One great intact panel of the ceiling fell with a crash. It landed against the wizardwood log and leaned there. Selden wriggled loose from his grip. 'Under there. We should get under there!' Before he could clutch at him, the boy was racing across the chamber, dodging falling pieces of ceiling and heaps of debris on the floor. He scooted under the fallen ceiling piece.
'The rising water will drown us there!' Reyn roared after him. Then he was following the boy's zigzag course, to scuttle into the dubious shelter of the leaning ceiling panel. The light bar failed. They plunged into darkness as the ceiling came down with a roar.
SHE WOKE UP BECAUSE SOMEONE WAS NUDGING HER IN THE BACK. 'IT'S NOT funny, Selden! That hurts!' she snapped at him.
She rolled over, fully intending to give him a good shaking. Suddenly the warmth and safety of her bedroom at home vanished. She was cold and stiff. Leaves crinkled under her cheek. The Satrap poked her again with his foot. 'Get up!' he commanded her. 'I see lights through the trees.'
'Kick me again, and you'll see lights with your eyes shut!' she snapped at him. He actually stepped back from the threat.
It was evening. It was not quite dark enough for stars to show, but it was dark enough that the yellow gleam of lamplight showed well. Her heart lifted and sank simultaneously. They knew where to go now, but it seemed very far away. She stood slowly, easing her body to her feet. Everything hurt.
'Did you find any oars?' she asked the Satrap.
'I am not a servant,' he pointed out coldly.
She folded her arms on her chest. 'Neither am I,' she declared. She scowled to herself. It was going to be black as a tomb back in the collapsed boat-house. How could the Satrap, rightful ruler of all Jamaillia, be such a useless, stupid man? Her wandering eyes took in Kekki. The Companion was sitting hopefully in the boat. She looked like a dog expecting an outing. The water was so shallow that the boat had sunk to the bottom under her weight. Malta barely repressed a terrible urge to laugh. She looked back at the Satrap. He was staring at her severely. Then she did laugh. 'I suppose the only way I'm going to be rid of you both is to take you back to Trehaug.'
'At which time, I will see you are punished appropriately for your lack of respect,' the Satrap announced imperiously.
She cocked her head at him. 'Is that supposed to make me eager to take you back?'
He was silent for a moment. Then he drew himself up. 'If you act swiftly to obey me now, I shall take that into account when I judge you.'
'Will you?' she asked him archly. Then, suddenly, she wearied of the game. She walked away from him, back to the dark cave-like opening where the remains of the building projected from the earth. There was no part of her body that did not hurt. Her feet were bruised and sore, her knees and back ached as she crouched down to re- enter the ruins. She searched in the dark, by touch. She had no means of re-lighting the lantern they had carried. She found no oars, but did manage to pull loose some pieces of wood that might serve. Like the boats, they were cedar. They would not fit the oarlocks, but she could pole with one of them, she thought. As long as she kept to the shallows of the swamps, they would do. It would be hard work, but they could get back to Trehaug. Once there, she would have to confess all her foolishness. She would not think about that, not just yet.
She frowned to herself, briefly, as she crawled out of the ruins dragging her boards. She had intended to do something. Something to do with the city, with boards like these. When she had left the city, she had had some firm, fixed purpose. She groped after it, but could only recall a dream from her afternoon's sleep. A dream of flying through darkness. She shook her head. It was most peculiar. It was not that she could not remember; the problem was that she remembered so much, she could not sort out what parts of it belonged to her. From the time she had entered the buried city, few of her actions seemed like something she would do.
When she got back to the boat, she found both the Satrap and his Companion sitting in it. 'You'll have to get out,' she pointed out to them patiently. 'We'll have to push the boat to deeper water before you can get in. Otherwise, it won't float.'
'Can't you just row us to deeper water?' Kekki asked plaintively. 'No. I can't. The boat has to be floating before we can row it.' As she waited for them to disembark, Malta reflected that she had never paused to think how much she knew simply by virtue of her upbringing. There was a lot to be said, after all, for being a Trader's daughter.
It took some time in the twilight to find a place suitable to launch. Both Kekki and the Satrap seemed extremely uneasy with the rocking of the small vessel as they clambered down into it from a tree root. Malta directed one to each end and took the center. She would have to stand to pole the boat along. When she had been younger, she had had a little pram she had rowed about in the ornamental pond. This was very different from that. She wondered if she could do it. Then she lifted her eyes to the glimmering lights of Trehaug. She would make it. She knew it. She seized one end of her board and pushed the boat off.
