Sword and Sorceress XXVII (4 page)

“No,” Amina replied. “Unless you count
lives as treasure, which I do—but I don’t think that is the treasure you were
asking about.”

“Lives! You think to find lives down
here?” The fey creature laughed scornfully. “Seems the tales you humans tell
each other have grown even larger.”

“The lives of miners, villagers trapped
down here after a rock fall. There is supposed to be a way through to the mine
from here.”

“Why do you think that?” the creature
demanded.

“Because the memory I carry is from one
who walked this way, and she told the village of her journey, and her memory
was gathered and stored in case another would ever need to find that way. Which
now, I do, to rescue those who will surely die if they are trapped much longer.”

“A Memory Keeper,” the creature said
thoughtfully.

“Yes,” Amina said firmly. “And I need to
be on my way.”

“She lied, you know.”

“Who lied?”

“The one who gave you that memory you
are carrying. She was a deceitful one. She came here looking for treasure. All
she found was me. I sent her on her way. She never walked through these caverns
or went into the mine.”

Dismay struck Amina’s heart. “No, that’s
not possible! There must be a way!”

She pulled up the memory of the other
and, hesitating only a moment, plunged into the memory again, this time letting
the wholeness wash into her. If she went mad, so be it; without this memory the
other villagers, friends and kin, would die. It was her duty, her destiny, to
be a Memory Keeper, to risk all for the good of others.

But she realized with dismay that the
creature was right. The girl-woman whose memory she rode had lied, using her
lies to gain herself attention from the other villagers in her time, to make
herself important. She rode the memory to its end, to the girl fleeing from the
chamber and up the narrow stairway of roots, running away from the fey creature
who laughed at her, all the way to her decision to tell a fancy tale rather
than admit to her panic and be laughed at by the other villagers for her pride
in thinking herself strong enough to outwit the fey. For in her time they had
believed in the fey creatures, and no one traveled the paths that were
supposedly theirs.

And perhaps they had been right, Amina
though, opening her eyes with despair. It had all been for naught. All her
years of training. All her years of fear and overcoming it, in order to prepare
her for a time when she was needed, for when a memory was needed.

And instead she had grasped the memory
of a foolish, prideful girl, much like she herself had been that first time she
opened the Memory Box. She was justly punished for that arrogance. But it was
others who would pay the price. It would be the miners who would die, either suffocating
or starving. Oh, no doubt she would die too—that was the price paid by those
who defied the fey. But it wasn’t the thought of her own death that crushed
her; it was the thought of the others.

“So there is no back entrance to the
mine,” she said to the silvery creature, “and all this is for naught. I beg
your pardon for trespassing, and will leave immediately.”

“Oh, I didn’t say there wasn’t a way to
get to your noisome mine from here,” the creature replied, watching her
thoughtfully.

“There is a way?!” Hope surged back up
in Amina’s chest. “Please, I
must
get through to them! I
must
bring them out!”

The creature stared at her for a long
thoughtful moment. “I see that. You really do care about them. What would you
pay for me showing you the way and letting them tramp back out through my home
here?”

“Anything,” Amina replied. “I will pay
with my life.”

“And what good would that do? Just give
me a dead body down here. Bad enough all the cleaning I’ll have to do after all
your miners tramp their muddy boots through my home.”

“Then what do you want from me?” Amina
asked.

The creature stared at her cunningly. “I
think I’ll show you the way first—that way you will be beholden to me.”

Amina felt uneasy, remembering all the
tales of trickery and deception. Would this fey creature with the iridescent
wings show her a way only to close it and trap the miners permanently? Or show
her a false image and then claim something was owed? But what choice did she
have? She would never find a hidden way into the mine, if one even existed,
without the help of this creature, now that she knew the memory was false. All
she could try was bargaining.

“I would rather know now, in case I
would be unable to fulfill your request.”

“Oh, it would be in your powers,” the
fey replied. “Follow me.”

Before Amina could argue more, the
creature had flitted off as swiftly as a darting star and stood waiting for her
by the entrance to a narrow shaft cleft in the rock.
“She could be thinking
to lose me in the ways of this cavern and leave me to die,”
thought Amina.

Well, she had already offered her life.
If the creature was just playing games with her, she would be no worse off than
she was now. Following was the only chance of finding and rescuing the miners.
And if the creature demanded the impossible in payment, she would either find a
way to meet her demands or find a way out of paying. She was a Memory Keeper,
one whose life was given in service to her people, one who was supposed to have
the courage, and the intelligence, to find ways when others couldn’t. She was
through with cowering before the thought of what might become; it was time to
deal with what
was
.

She strode briskly after the fey,
holding her lantern high. As they walked, Amina activated the light trance
Keepers used for making memories; if she needed to find her way out by herself,
she would be able to retrace her steps. They squeezed through narrow
passageways, hurried across caverns broader than the one she had entered at the
bottom of the root stairway and turned this way and that. She would think the
fey was deliberately trying to trick her, but they were always moving
downwards. Amina could tell that by the ache in her calves.

The cool dampness of the cave seemed to
press in upon her, gradually getting heavier, as if the air itself was testing
her. Still, Amina followed the flickering form of the fey creature. They left
the passageways of rock and the sounds of dripping water and moved into
passages that were dirt and rock. The way got harder, the passages narrower. At
times Amina had to bend over, ducking her head and walking with a crabbed step.
At other times she had to climb up and over piles of dirt and rocks that
shifted and tumbled away beneath her feet. The air no longer smelled fresh, but
close and breathless.

And then she heard a murmuring
sound—more water? Air moving past an opening?

The fey stopped and slid back against a
depression in the side of the passage they were in. She pointed ahead into the
blackness. “Up there and down,” she said.

“You can lead them out this way, but I
won’t let them see me. And I won’t let them see my home, either, so only you
will see the way. After you lead them out, come back and I’ll tell you my
price.”

Amina looked at her and saw something
flicker in the other’s eyes—something that wasn’t spite or ill humor. But she
didn’t have time to linger and seek what it was she had seen.

“Thank you,” she said to the other,
sincerity ringing in her voice. She could tell now that the murmur up ahead was
voices, low and muffled by the dirt and rock, but voices. “I will come back,
and learn your price.”

The other ducked as if avoiding her
gaze, and then vanished, as if she had never been there. Amina held the lantern
up, but there was no crack or crevice behind where she had been standing that
she could have gone into—
fey,
Amina reminded herself with only a slight
shiver.

Then she turned and started climbing up
the narrow passage. It became so steep she had to hold the handle of the
lantern in her mouth in order to free her hands to grasp at the rocks and pull
herself up step by careful step. The passage took a sharp turn to the left and
climbed a bit more and then, at what Amina thought was another turn to the
right, dropped off precipitously. She gasped, scrambling backwards a bit. Below
her was a section of the mine—and there, down below, slumped against rock walls
and curled up against each other were the trapped miners.

She had found them.

#

It was still a matter of hours before
the last of them were out of the mine. First it had taken some time for them to
cut lengths of rope from the small carts used to haul ore up to the surface,
and knot them together. More time still for the nimblest of the young men—of
those who still had the strength to be nimble—to climb up to the small opening
where Amina crouched and find a secure place to fasten the end of the rope. The
best they had found was a half buried rock that neither of them trusted, so
they had wound it around themselves as well, and dug their heels in, telling
the lightest of the others to come up first. As more ascended, they added their
hands and weight to the rope and eventually all had climbed, or been carried,
up the rope.

Then Amina started the long way back,
scrambling backwards down that last steep passage and then counting everyone by
the now feeble light of her lantern to make sure no one got left behind. The
entire journey out was like that: get through a set of passageways and turns,
have a moment of rest for those who could barely walk, and for those carrying
the ones that couldn’t, count faces and start over again.

When they reached the end of the dirt
passageways and began through those of red rock and air, Amina could see two
passageways. The one she could see with her eyes and her memory, and another,
just like the ones they had already battled their way through. She realized
this was what the others were seeing, and wished they could rejoice in the
beauty and air she could see. But she realized this was what the fey had meant;
this was her home and the others would not be allowed to see it.

Indeed, Amina realized, if the villagers
knew that these beautiful caves were here, they would flock to them. Folk would
come from other villages to gawk and marvel. And the fey would have no home;
she was right to guard it. Still, it was difficult to see the weary, desperate
miners ducking to squeeze through narrow dank passages that were not there,
peering to keep sight of Amina’s faint lantern glow when light from above
filtered through and turned damp sheens of water on the rock into glimmering
mirrors and bathed the glowing rocks with beauty.

At last they reached the rooted
stairway, and even that seemed to be difficult for the villagers to see. Amina
wound up climbing the narrow winding way and attaching the rope they had
carried with them to the bole of the tree and once again the miners had to
climb up cautiously, passing the weakest of them up hand-to-hand.

The final stumbling walk down the hill
was done in silence, amidst the growing dusk of a day already over, not one of
them with the energy to talk until they reached the mine entrance where anxious
relatives still hovered, watching the efforts of those still trying to dig
through from the other side. Then the babble of voices broke out, amidst tears
and hugs, and the blowing of the mine’s whistle.

Amina stumbled back to her aunt’s house,
knowing she had to return to the cavern, but wanting just one cup of tea and to
wash her face and hands. She remembered answering a few of her aunt’s questions
and took the mug of tea she had pushed into her hands, and woke the morning,
stiff, in the chair in the corner of the room.

“Oh, no!” she cried, jumping to her feet
and then stumbling forward awkwardly, on feet stiff from sleeping in a chair.

“What is it?” her aunt cried, alarmed.

“I have to go back to the cavern—umm, to
the mine!”

“Why do you have to do that? All the
villagers are out, dear. You did it; you got them out.”

“Yes, I know, but… there’s something
more I need to do… Keeper work,” she said finally, looking at her aunt firmly
but saying nothing more.

Her aunt met her gaze and then nodded. “There
often is,” she said, and asked no more. She insisted Amina have something to
eat—‘you didn’t eat a bite last night and barely sipped your tea—you need
something for energy or you’ll collapse like those rocks in the mine shaft, and
then what can you do’—but then let Amina leave with no further questions.

Amina blessed again the fate that had
brought her into her aunt’s raising, for all she’d been hurt by her mother’s
abandonment at the time. Her aunt respected her, as well as loved her, and had
raised her to be a woman, true to herself and her obligations. And now she had
to fulfill one, and hope the fey was not so angry at her failure to return
right away that she wreaked vengeance on the village.

Her calves, still sore from the day
before, burned as she walked steadily up the hill to the copse of trees and the
huge old oak that guarded the way into the cavern. She noticed with bemusement
that the opening was filled with leaves and twigs and dirt as thick as if it
had been undisturbed for years, instead of having been trampled by some 35
miners just yesterday.