Glory Season (55 page)

Straight ahead, in the direction she had just been moving, a thick cluster of stars briefly emerged, casting a thousand gleaming reflections from a face of sheer concavity. The crater—far more intimidating than it had seemed
by day. The glass-lined precipice yawned not meters away, like the jaws of some mighty, ancient thing, hungry for a midnight snack. Maia swallowed hard. She turned to the left and continued, watching the ground more closely than ever. Fortunately, the trail soon receded from the terrible pit. Some distance onward, there came a faint sound, like a scraping of stone against stone. Maia paused, heard it repeat. Then she waited some more.

Nothing. Silence. Just the wind and forest. Grimly, in case it was a trap, Maia extended her frozen stillness for another count of sixty. At last, she resumed her forward stalk, concentrating to keep a bearing toward that final, grating sound. A break in the cloud cover, near the horizon, showed a corner of the constellation Cyclist. She used it for reference while skirting trees and other obstacles, until finally concluding that something had to be wrong.

I must’ve gone too far. Or have I?

She could not see or hear anyone. The idea of an ambush was not to be dismissed.

Two more steps forward and her feet left loam. They seemed to scuff a flat, sandy surface, scored at regular intervals by fine grooves. Peering about, Maia realized she stood amid massive, blocky forms, in a clearing where not even saplings grew. She reached out to the nearest pile of weathered stone.
Worked
stone with eroded, right angles. It was one of many ruins peppering the island plateau. Few places were better suited for springing a trap.

Quietly, she felt her way along the wall till it ended. Passing to the other side, she verified that no one waited behind. Not there, at least. Maia knelt and laid her burdens on the ground. She closed one eye, to protect its dark-adaptation—a habit taught her long ago, during astronomy nights, by Old Coot Bennett—and raised the cup holding the ember. Shielding it with one hand, she blew until it glimmered in spots, then laid it down with the tinder-wrapped end of her stave on top. Maia took the
chert knife in her left hand, and grabbed the stave’s haft in her right. A smoldering rose.

Abruptly, the torch flared with an audible
whoosh.
Maia quickly stood, holding it above and behind her head to shine everywhere but in her eyes. Stark shadows fled the garish-bright stone walls and tree trunks. Hurrying to exploit surprise, she rushed to circumnavigate the ruins, peering in all corners while Inanna would be blinking away spots.

Nothing. Maia hurried through another circuit, this time checking places where someone might have hidden, even the lower branches. At any moment, if necessary, she was ready to use the flaming brand as a weapon.

Damn. Inanna must’ve been just far enough to duck out when I lit the torch. Too bad. Thought I’d finally figured out how to do something right. I guess people don’t change.

Feeling deflated, disappointed, Maia sought the nearest flat area amid the ruins and sat down.

The stone jiggled beneath her.

She stood up and turned around, holding the torch toward the slab. It looked like just another chiseled chunk of wall, atop a pile of others.
Come on. You’re jumping to conclusions.

A breeze caused the flames to flicker upward.

Upward? Maia held out her hand, and felt a thin stream of air. With her foot she gave the slab a tentative shove. Stone grated stone, a familiar sound. The slab moved much too easily.

“Well I’m an atyp bleeder.” Maia blinked at a sudden mental vision of the glass-rimmed crater, as it had looked by daylight. She had briefly pictured a network of regular shapes behind the slag coating, then dismissed it as an artifact of her overactive pattern-recognition system. Now though, the mental conception loomed … of layers that she had rationalized as sedimentary, but which imagination shaped into rooms, corridors.

“Of course.”

Someone
had
dug some sort of mine or tunnel system here. Perhaps they had delved for safety, to no avail against whatever had melted that awful hole.

Bending to examine the stone, Maia sought its secret.
Tip it back? No, I see. Push to the left
 … 
then up!

The slab rotated, revealing a stout makeshift hinge arrangement of slots and pins. A set of rubble stairs, quite rough in the upper portion, dropped into darkness. Carefully, Maia lifted one leg and stepped over the sill, lowering herself gingerly below the forest roots.

My torch is already half used up. Better make this quick, girl.

The steps ended about five meters down, followed by a low tunnel under primitive archworks. Maia had to duck as flames licked the ceiling, igniting cobwebs in fleeting, sparkling pyres. Finally, the coarse passage spilled into an underground room.

Dust and stone chips covered every surface, save a wooden table and chair, surrounded by scrape marks and foot tracks. In one corner lay a trash midden, the freshest layer consisting of still aromatic orange peels and chicfruit rinds.
Someone’s been eating better than the rest of us
, she thought, wryly. A wooden box revealed a bag of stale sesame crackers and one orange, on its last legs.
No wonder it’s so urgent to launch the raft soon. You were running out of goodies, Inanna.

A blanket hung tacked over the sole exit. Maia tore it down. A few meters beyond, fresh stairs plunged anew. She proceeded to rip the blanket into strips, wrapping half of them around the torch, just below the burning part. One strip lit early and she dropped it, dancing away and cursing in whispers. Maia jammed the remainder under her belt, along with the knife, and set forth.

The dusty sense of age only increased as she descended, spiraling down the cylindrical shaft. These stairs
were original equipment, finely carved and worn down several centimeters in the middle, by countless footsteps. Each one was shaped as the sector of a circle, resting one radial edge atop the one below it. In the middle, disklike projections from each wedge lay stacked, one above the next, all the way down, forming a round, vertical banister that she used to steady herself while dropping lower and lower, round and around.

After perhaps ten meters, Maia paused where a door and landing gave into dark rooms. Torchlight revealed arched ceilings, some collapsed, trailing off toward utter blackness. There were no sounds. Undisturbed dust showed that no one had walked these quarters in years. Feeling eerily chilled, she continued downward, passing a second landing … and a third … and yet another, until at last she sensed distinct sound rising up the shaft. Faint, as yet indistinct, its source lay below.

Oh, for a dumbwaiter
, Maia recalled sardonically, contemplating climbing all this on the way back.
Even the Lysodamned Lamai wine cellar wasn’t like this. Hateful place, but at least they had a winch-lift. And a string of two-watt bulbs.
It wasn’t clear what she’d do if she was caught down here with the torch gone out. It should be simple, in theory, to get back. Just follow the stairs upward, then grope her way toward fresh air. In practice, it would probably be scary as hell.
I wonder what kind of lamp Inanna’s got.

Now the walls of the stairwell were cracked, as if tortured by some ancient blow or tremor. Worse, the steps themselves were splintered, chipped. Their undersides had given way, here and there, raining stone debris onto the stairs below. Some teetered in a fashion Maia found unnerving. There were gaps in places.

Maia was pretty sure, now. The huge, slag-rimmed crater wasn’t volcanic, or natural at all, but an artifact of war. Some folk had once delved here, deeply, seeking protection. And someone else had come down after them,
shaking the deepest levels. The scale of these ancient events frightened Maia, and right now the last thing she needed was more fear.

The sounds grew closer—distant, occasional plinkings. And a breeze. Fresh and decidedly cool.

Maia almost staggered when the stairs ran out. The tight spiral gave no warning, halting abruptly where a room opened ahead, featuring doors leading in three directions. At first she had to just walk the chamber’s perimeter, trying to straighten the unconscious crouch she had assumed during the descent. Finally, Maia wet a finger to feel the breeze, watched the flickering of the dying torch, and peered for footprints.

That door.

Beyond lay a passage hewn from island rock, extending past room after dead-black room, as far as the dim pool of torchlight stretched. Maia extended the brand inside the first chamber, and found it stripped, save for one huge, polished stone bench that had a regular array of uniform holes drilled in its upper surface, as if someone had arranged it to hold dowel pegs for some strange game. Yet, Maia felt instinctively that “games” were never played in this cryptlike place. It gave her chills.

The plinking grew louder as she resumed walking. A low susurration also waxed and waned rhythmically. The torch began to sputter. It was time to decide whether to wind on more strips or let the thing go out. It took all her courage to make the logical choice.

Maia strode forward with her left hand touching the wall on that side, eyes trying to memorize the lay of the hallway before— Then it happened. The last flicker died. Plunged in sudden, total darkness, she slowed but grimly kept moving, fighting an urge to shuffle. Instead, Maia lifted her feet high to avoid making unnecessary sound.

Abruptly, her fingertips lost contact with the left wall, setting off a wave of vertigo.
Don’t panic. It’s just the next
doorway, remember? Move ahead, keep your arm out, you’ll meet the other jamb.

It took ages … or a few seconds. She must have turned to overcompensate, for the next physical contact came when she banged the far side of the entrance with her elbow. It hurt, yet restored touch felt reassuring. So did getting beyond the doorway. In pure blackness, it was even easier than before to fantasize monsters. Creatures that had no need for light.

The true Stratoins
, she thought, trying to tease herself out of a panicky spin. There were silly tales that older siblings told their sisters, about mythical, primal inhabitants of Stratos, driven long ago from sight by the hominid invasion. Once shy, innocent, they now dwelled below-ground, far from the open sky. Bitter, vengeful … hungry. It was a fairy tale, of course. No evidence existed, to her knowledge, for anything like it.

But then, I never heard of hundred-meter craters gouging out the middle of mountains, either.

Another doorway swallowed Maia’s hand, making her jump higher than the last time, convincing her susceptible imagination that vindictive jaws were about to close, all the way up to her shoulder. When the wall resumed, this time striking her wrist, she let out a physical sigh.

Stop it. Think about something else. Life, the game.

She tried. There was plenty to work with. The speckles that her visual cortex produced, for lack of input from the eyes, created a panorama of ephemeral dots, flickering like Renna’s game board, set to high speed. It was alluring to think there might be meaning there. Some great secret or principle, found among the random, back-ground firings taking place inside her own skull.

Then again, maybe not.

Maia grimly picked up the pace, passing another door, and another. Before long, she felt certain the sounds had grown louder, more distinct. Soon she knew her first
suspicions were right. It could only be the surge and flood of tide-driven water.
I must be all the way down, near the sea.

She caught a scent of fresh air. More important, Maia could almost swear that up ahead the awful darkness was relieved by a faint glimmer. A dim source of light. Even before she consciously made out the floor, it became easier to walk. Faint distinctions in the murky dim gave her more faith in her footing.

Soon they were more than hints. Up ahead, she saw what could only be a reflection. A wall, faintly illuminated by some soft source, out of direct view.

Maia approached cautiously. It was the face of a T-bar intersection, lit from one side. She edged along the righthand wall, sidled to the corner, and poked around just one eye.

It was another hallway, terminating after about twenty meters in a large chamber. The source of light lay within, though not in view. As she began stalking closer, Maia saw that strange, rippling reflections wavered across the ceiling of the deep room. The plinking sounds were louder, an unmistakable dripping of liquid onto liquid. In the distance, a rolling growl of waves pounded against rock.

So that’s it.
Maia paused at the entrance, whose once proud double doors now sagged toward the walls, reduced to mold-covered boards bound by rusty hinges. Within, there stood another table, on which lay an oil lantern with a poorly adjusted wick. Beyond, half of the broad alcove descended to a wide pool of seawater. After ten meters, the placid surface passed under a rocky shelf, part of a low tunnel that led toward darkness and finally—judging from the muffled sounds—the open sea. A small boat lay tethered to a dock, mast down, sail furled but ready.

Maia gripped her wooden stave in both hands, ready to swing it, if necessary. She looked left and right, but no one was in view. Nor were there any other exits. The
emptiness was more unnerving than any direct confrontation.

Where is she?

Maia approached the table. Next to the lantern lay a boxy case, open to reveal buttons and a small screen. She recognized a comm console, attached to a thin cable that led into the sea-tunnel. An antenna, presumably. Or perhaps a direct fiber link to another island? That sounded extravagant. But over time, it might prove worthwhile, if this prison-trap was used frequently.

The screen was illuminated with one line of tiny print. Perhaps the message would reveal something. Maia put the stave on the table and leaned forward to read.

THERE IS A PRICE FOR NOSINESS …

Oh, bleeders
 …