Northlight (36 page)

“It would have been made to withstand tampering. And he was young, so he might not have learned how to turn it off. So he would have done the only thing he could do. He walled it up, did his best to make sure no one else ever dug it up. And never passed on the knowledge of what it was, why it was built, why it must be guarded.”

“And is that so bad? To forget?”

“Maybe,” he said, studying me. “For some. But
you
won't forget.”

“I don't understand what this is all about. Gates, weapons, machines. Besides, it happened a long time ago. As far as I can see, there are no more
things
on the other side, just waiting to come through.” I got to my feet, brushing sand from my pants. It was hard to feel gloomy with the fresh sea-tang in my face. “You say it's important to remember, fine. I said I would. But I intend to have you around to do the remembering for both of us.”

A nasty thought nibbled at the back of my mind. “Has it occurred to you, the tweak you're putting yourself in if you let anybody else know you can do this thing?
You
may give a shit about how you use it, but there are some very nasty people out there who won't. And you — or anyone you care about — could be a target for them.”

“Who else knows? There's my sister,” he counted off on his fingers like a kid, “and Jakon and Grissem. Etch. Nobody I don't trust.”

“There's me.”

“You, you're the one who thinks of these things for me.”

I held my breath as we stepped through, expecting an instant of sizzle, a flash of green and then the frozen white of the caldera. Instead, heat swept over me, laden with the pungent, familiar smell of ripe palm-cactus fruit. I blinked, gasping. My eyes raced over the reddish dunes, softly curved like a woman's thigh. My knife was in my hand, my legs tensed for action, my breath searing my throat.

“Kardith!” Terris cried, his voice too high and tight for certainty. “Kardith, no!”

The open steppe stretched in one direction, the groves with their branches arching toward the crystalline sky in another. Jorts clustered around a dusty well; ghameli stood tethered beyond them. A pair of women were singing and dipping out water, their wrist bells chiming, children laughing and dodging behind them. Their scarves and robes fluttered in a sudden breeze, bringing me the scent of sandalwood and chirosa bark. A feeling rose up in me, not terror, not anger, no, sharp and melting all at once. I blinked hard.

Terris said something, but I couldn't make out his words above the pounding of my heart. Something about being sorry, making a mistake.

The flap of the nearest jort was pushed aside and a man emerged. He moved with a knife-fighter's grace; his beard gleamed like spun red-gold in the sun. He must have thought me a man in my heavy parka, for he lifted one hand in welcome. My knees shuddered.

I whirled to face Terris. “Get me out of here! Anywhere!”

He grabbed my free arm and pulled me sideways. I staggered through a wall of white flame and pulled up gasping, an inch from tumbling into a pool of yellowish, scum-crusted water.

Now I was the one to grab on to him, one-handed as I wasn't about to put away my knife. He swore, but not at me.

Above us, around us, grayish branches dripped oozing green-black stuff, more slime than moss. Even the sky looked smudged. We stood on a little island of solid ground, lichen over rock and matted weeds. The reek of sulfur in the hot, still air sent my eyes and nose watering. Something squawked in the distance, shrill and ululating, like no bird I'd ever known.

Terris swore again. The steppe was an accident, maybe because he wasn't yet wise to the ways of those doors of his, but this place — he must have gotten us here in sheer panic. I loosened my grip on him.

“Where are we?” I whispered. At moment, I would have given anything I owned to be back on the steppe, to raise my hands in a stranger's greeting, to throw myself open to those familiar sights and smells, the dry clean beauty of the dunes.

“We're still on Harth, maybe south of the Inland Sea.” He stepped carefully over the mounds of yellowed grass. Now that the first shock of the place was fading, I noticed signs of renewal, a spray of violet flowers, a few half-ripe berries. A few blades of green stood like sentinels among their fallen brothers. A water-strider, tiny legs outstretched, skittered across a clear stretch of water. From a thicket, a huge white songbat took wing.

“Why put a gate here?” Terris murmured. “As a warning, a lesson? Or did something come through here? Did they preserve this place deliberately so each generation would be forced to think in terms of all Harth?”

He scraped a layer of glistening mossy stuff off its underlying rock with the edge of his boot. I could see scattered indentations that might once have engraved letters. Terris couldn't make them out, either.

“Let's go,” he said at last. “I'll be more careful this time. I'm sorry about the steppe.”

“I'm not,” popped out of my mouth before I realized it. I thought a moment and went on, “Maybe I'll go back on my own some day.”

He smiled at me and took my hand.

The light was just as shifting and glare-blinding, but Terris strode through it even more surely, back through the startling green flashes and out again, dimmer and quieter. With a hiss and a searing flash we came shivering on to the caldera plain.

I jumped ahead of Terris, long-knife drawn, to land light and balanced on both feet.

Etch stood nearest us, with an expression of mixed feelings — worry and fear and joy. His eyes were so full, on the steppe we'd say they were all soul. Beyond him, Avi waited between Jakon and Grissem.

Jakon came toward us, and for a moment he seemed no different from Montborne or the steppe priests or anyone else who led only his own people. I raised my blade tip, bringing it between him and Terris. Once I could have killed him and would not. There was no choice this time.

“Put away your knife, Kardith,” said Terris. “Jakon and I have to talk.”

He pushed past me to face Jakon. “Did you know what would happen to me in there?”

“All that I dreamt has been fulfilled,” Jakon answered.

He doesn't know what the Light is, I realized. He sits in front of it and drums up all these dreams, but he doesn't know.

He's never been inside.

“I too have had a vision sent by the Northlight,” Terris said. His voice took on the steely ring of truth. “A terrifying vision. A vision of your people and mine kept apart, two static societies — no matter what the cost. You're just strong enough so we can't spread out over your lands and just weak enough to pose no more than a border threat. We're the only place on Harth that has any technological capability, but we have no frontier, everything's closed in and watched, and who cares what happens on the steppe?

“But it's no good,” Terris continued. “They've forgotten what it's all about — the gaea-priests and Guardians. It's not enough to keep from doing harm, hanging on from one generation to the next, squashing all research except in narrow little projects that go nowhere. Sooner or later, somebody like Montborne comes along to upset that brittle balance, and now it isn't just Montborne we have to stop, it's Esmelda.”

Avi moved silently toward Terris, her face white and pinched. I caught something in her movement, a tenseness that sent my skin crawling. I felt her in my blood, moving with all her Ranger's stealth, cold and deadly intent. Her eyes fixed on her brother, and something in her watched and waited like a coiled sand-viper. All because Terris had mentioned Esmelda?

“You said
Esmelda,
” said Jakon, looking like he hadn't understood a word Terris said. “We have no quarrel with her. She has been as much a friend to us as any souther could. If you mean to stop your general's war, why include her?”

Avi kept coming, and I kept watching her. She moved like satin, like flowing brandy. Etch and Grissem had their eyes on Terris. They didn't notice. Me, I stood absolutely still. I wanted her to see Terris, only Terris and not me. I held my knife low and hard to spot.

“Esme, our enemy?” I heard the shift in Terris's voice, something that reminded me of the old dragon. “I must have not spoken clearly. I meant the whole situation being ripe for Montborne to exploit.”

Avi paused, the relief across her face thick enough to smell. My stomach uncoiled and I took a deep breath. Whatever it was had come and passed. But I shook a little as I let the breath out. Terris passed some kind of test out there in the Light and came out changed forever, and now it had happened to me too, just the same. Standing here, not moving a muscle, my knife ready to slice Avi's throat if she drew her own, these few moments gave a whole different shape to my life. I could go on, but I couldn't forget.

I'd become what I'd chosen.

And what had Avi become, that she'd draw steel on her own brother to protect some damnable secret of Esmelda's?

Holy sweet Mother — was
this
why she'd left home? Had the old dragon somehow forced her to swear a thing like that?

“If it hadn't been Brassaford,” Terris went on, “he'd have found some other excuse. He sees the end as justifying any means — killing Pateros, me, you if he could — anyone he thinks he needs to.”

Jakon's eyes narrowed. “I asked you once before, why would you join forces with me against him?”

“For the truth,” Terris said, echoing his first promise to Jakon. “The truth alone.” Truth and steel. He held out his hand, souther style.

After a moment's hesitation Jakon took Terris's hand and shook it.

“We
are
going home now, aren't we?” said Avi. She had already slung her pack over her shoulders with her good hand. Her face looked less white, but her eyes were still jumpy. “It'll take at least a week from here.”

“No,” said Terris. “We can make it in a few hours. Get the horses and I'll show you.”

We entered the green tunnel a little way from the base of the volcano. Terris wove his horse back and forth across our trail until the others all thought he was crazy. Me, I knew he was looking for the in-place, and when he found it, it was only a slip of a thing. Nothing I could see, really, not even a shimmering of air like the Ridge weirdies, just an itch behind my eyes. Getting the horses through was a bit like threading a needle with rawhide strips — we marched them right past it half a dozen times. My mare seemed to know just where to go, but that pea-brained sheep-hocked bat turd Etch called a horse kept sidestepping, and finally Terris had to lead it through on foot.

The tunnel was wide enough for three to ride abreast and too tall for me to reach its ceiling, even standing on the saddle. It seemed to go on forever, curving slightly so the ends were out of sight. I looked over my shoulder and saw no trace of where we'd come.

I'd never in all my days imagined of a place like this, not even when the priests loaded me on so much dreamsmoke I could hardly stand. Who could envision these featureless green walls? Instead of a natural color all shaded with yellow and brown like you'd see in living plants, this green bore a slight purple tinge, like a badly simulated gemstone.

After a few moments, none of us able to do anything more than draw one breath after another, my mind started to sort things into a crude imitation of sense. The others weren't doing much better. Jakon clutched his pony's reins, his face all white and beads of sweat gleaming on his upper lip. Grissem, behind him, chanted under his breath while his fingers wove mysterious symbols.

Avi doubled over as if to empty her stomach. “Not again!” she moaned. “Oh drat!”

“That's the most lukewarm cussing I've ever heard. I don't think you could talk mean if you tried,” Etch muttered between gritted teeth, and we all laughed, even Avi, the kind of laughter that brought tears to the eyes.

“Tell me this is a gods-damned
hallucination,
”

she gasped when she could talk again, “and I'm still lying in that root cellar.”

This was no hallucination, no instant insanity. Thanks to the steppe priests, I'd had my fill of that sort. And we weren't dead, either, that was sure.

“It's the same place you fell into,” said Terris.

Avi's face looked sick in the green light. In another life, I'd have gone to her, but now all I could do was stare.

“So you've been here before and returned. And there's no reason to think we can't all get back, so there's nothing to be afraid of, yes?” he said.

“Harth's sweet ass, man, you're not trying to
reason
with her?” said Etch.

Jakon gestured at the tunnel walls, deathly still around us. “This can't be real.”

“You're right!” Terris said cheerfully. “It's an illusion. Or a theatrical decoration dreamed up by us wicked southers. You can think whatever you like, just so long as you get on that pony and moving.”

I picked up the gray mare's reins and swung up on her back. Other than a
whuff!
of surprise when we first burst in to the tunnel, she seemed as solid as ever. The two northers, of course, were not going to sit there like a pair of brain-addled twitterbats while some bats-crazy Ranger went on ahead. Yet I was more worried about Avi's condition than theirs. She bit her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood, then vaulted onto her pony's back and booted the poor beast so hard it almost leapt straight up into the air.

We moved off, after a fashion, shedding our heavy fur parkas. It was too warm for wool cloaks but too cool to be comfortable without them. Hell, it wouldn't kill us to be naked here, except of boredom.

As we rode on, I noticed piles of green silty stuff,
dust
I'd almost call it. I remembered Avi saying she tried to mark a trail and couldn't. Assuming all the green tunnels were similar, that made me nervous.