The Quartered Sea (53 page)
Benedikt bit off an involuntary moan and hurried back to the main tunnel. The lights were closer.
Breathing heavily, he started running, tripped, and slammed one knee painfully into the debris covering the floor. Lifting his lamp, he saw that a section of the arch had fallen, leaving a jagged, unbraced hole behind. Either the maintenance had ended or this was a recent collapse—either way, it seemed he was now in as much danger from the rock itself as from the guards.
"I see his lamp!"
The tunnels presented him with the triumphant cry, wrapped in echoes and joined by the slap of sandals against stone.
They were farther away than they seemed.
He still had a chance.
Careening off rough walls, bare skin scraped and bruised, Benedikt threw himself forward, no longer caring where he ran to as long as he got away. His back screamed protests, but he couldn't straighten. Every movement jangled half-healed nerves in his empty socket, filling it with fire, but he couldn't stop.
He scrambled up and over rockfalls. He threw himself down and under another section of collapsed roof propped to knee height on two slabs of stone. He squeezed past jagged edges, opening new lines of pain on back and chest.
If there were side tunnels, he didn't notice.
He had to get away. He couldn't let them take him back.
But the lights were still behind him when he reached the dead end. Another rockfall.
The tiny part of his mind still clinging to rational thought kept him on his feet and spun him about, frantically searching for another way.
The flame in his lamp flickered and he froze. Without even such a pitiful light, he couldn't run, and if he couldn't run…
Run where?
Despair brought with it false calm. Benedikt sagged against the stone that trapped him and drew in a long shuddering breath. He could see the lanterns, hear the guards coming closer. He could wait or he could go to meet them and get it over with a little quicker.
"Maybe," he whispered, amazed at being able to speak at all, "if I charge them, they'll kill me."
His sawrap slapped against his legs as he stepped forward, spraying water down his calves.
Water?
Stumbling around to face the rockfall again, he found the glistening line that ran from ceiling to floor and back along the wall until it disappeared into shadow.
Frowning, he bent lower and followed.
The shadow hid a crevice.
His lamp, thrust in as far as his arm could easily go, suggested an opening beyond—another tunnel, a natural cave, Benedikt neither knew nor cared.
The crevice was wide enough to allow a small man turned sideways to pass.
Benedikt was not a small man.
Still
… He swallowed and forced his right shoulder into the crack after the lamp…
there's less of me than there was
.
Stone pressed against his throat as he angled his head into the only possible place that would pass his skull. Head unshaven, he would never have made it. His hair would have caught on the rough rock and trapped him.
Why would anyone give up eight braids?
Here's a reason.
He could feel hysteria rising and bit it back.
Chest. Hip. Right leg bent almost into a squat.
Ribs creaked but slick with sweat and blood, his chest moved through.
Left hip. Left leg. Left shoulder.
Everything except his right hand was in the crevice.
Fighting panic, Benedikt struggled toward the lamplight a hair's width at a time.
His right foot pushed into freedom.
The gouge of rock into his groin, forced forward by the unnatural bend in his legs, was just one more pain amidst the many. He'd have ignored it except that the sawrap caught, and with movement so minimal it had strength enough to hold him fast.
All he could hear was the pounding of his heart, but he knew the guards were closer. Soon, they'd find him. Yank him out. Drag him back…
He had nowhere to put the lamp; he had to hang onto it or be plunged into darkness. His left hand fought to find purchase on the rock, to push against the friction of the wet fabric.
A moment's panic added a little more blood, but it wasn't enough to slide him through.
What would Bannon do ?
He couldn't help it, he started to laugh. Bannon was half his size. Bannon wouldn't have gotten stuck.
Cazzes frowned. "Did you hear that?"
The guard beside him nodded and held the lantern higher. "It's the dead. The dead live underground."
"The dead don't live, asshole. And they sure as shit don't laugh."
"Shut up, both of you," growled the house Second from the back of the pack. "We let this karjo get away, and the dead will be the least of your concerns."
Trite, Cazzes allowed, but true.
The two clumps of guards had come together, then separated once again, half to check the tunnels behind to make sure their quarry hadn't hidden himself until they passed and half moving on toward the Great Square. As the tunnels moved out from under House Kohunlich, they'd spotted their quarry's light and given chase.
Once or twice they'd lost the light and the Second—with them still to Cazzes' surprise—had sent reluctant guards into every nook and cranny they'd passed.
At the moment, they'd lost the light again; Cazzes wasn't looking forward to taking his turn alone in the next nook and or cranny they found.
* * *
With his weight held by the stone, Benedikt hooked his right heel on the crevice's edge and used the muscles of his legs to drag himself free of the rock's embrace. Teeth clenched, eye shut, explosions of light filling his skull, he began to move. Amid a hundred other bits of pain, he couldn't feel the sawrap dig into his waist. Nor could he feel the ties begin to part.
"Rockfall up ahead, Second."
"So I see."
"Whole tunnel's blocked, and there's no sign of the karjo."
"Then find out where he's gone."
When the sawrap finally gave way, Benedikt came out of the crevice like he was being birthed a second time. Naked, covered in blood, he slammed down onto a sandy floor and lost his hold on the lamp. He lay there for a moment, breathing shallowly, beyond both panic and despair, and then opened his eye.
A small flame flickered in the darkness. The lamp, cradled in a pile of fine black sand, had not gone out. The last few precious drops of oil hadn't spilled. The darkness hadn't won.
Taking strength from that simple gift, Benedikt crawled forward, lifted the lamp and looked around.
He was in a small round cave, with walls that had once curved down to become colonnaded entrances to a myriad of tunnels. Time had blocked many of the tunnels, but some, he thought, were open still.
In the center of the cave was a seated statue of a woman.
There was only one possible place the karjo could have gone.
"Give Cazzes a lantern," the Second commanded.
"If there's only one place the karjo could have gone," Cazzes argued, "why don't we all go?"
The Second glanced over at the shadowed crevice and hid a shudder. She'd heard the same stories in the children's compound as the others.
The dead lived underground.
"First," she told him, "you make sure."
As Benedikt moved around to the front of the statue, he wondered why the head seemed so out of proportion. The body had been carved along generous lines, broad hips and rounded shoulders cradling generous swooping curves of breast and belly, but the head seemed small and almost delicate.
Then he saw that the head had not actually been carved.
"…
there used to be a temple to Peta where the square is now, and the olden days people used to use the tunnels to get there
."
The remains of a skull, sat on the pedestal of a stone neck, the jawbone wired into place. It had been a very long time since this ancient goddess had chosen a new avatar.
A muffled curse pulled Benedikt around and he realized he could see a line of light near where he'd entered the cave.
No, not near.
The guards were in the crevice.
There was blood on a bit of jagged stone by Cazzes' cheek. It glistened in the lamplight and told him they were very, very close.
Shuffling sideways, attempting without much success to keep the new and tender part of his tattoo from touching the rock, he choked off a curse as his foot came down on something soft that wrapped a damp fold up over bare toes.
Hanging the lantern on a projecting rock, he managed to hook his finger around it and bring it up to where he could see.
A sawrap.
The karjo was naked and injured, and, Cazzes reminded himself, just barely recovered from the loss of an eye.
He hadn't been able to look away when the xaan's cousin had taken the eye. It had been no more brutal than many a punishment he'd seen and certainly no less than the runaway deserved, but somehow it had meant more. He hadn't been able to stop thinking of the despair he'd seen in those strange blue eyes.
He couldn't stop thinking of it now as he closed his fingers tightly around the crumpled sawrap.
The karjo, Benedikt, was harmless. He had a smart mouth, sure, and maybe he could push water around, but Cazzes had seen him embarrass himself in front of the xaan.
If he backed out of the crevic, if he said it ended barely a body length in and the karjo could not have gone that way, would the Second believe him?
Benedikt didn't know why the first of the guards hadn't already come through into the cave, but he was willing to believe the goddess had something to do with it.
"Peta, please," he whispered, his free hand staining her thigh with blood as he dropped to his knees. "Help me."
Staring up at the empty sockets of the ancient skull he touched the cloth wrapped over the place where his left eye had been. Tears ran down his cheek.
The goddess cried with him.
Heart racing, Benedikt lifted the lamp higher.
No. Water dripped from the ceiling above, ran down the rounded curves of ancient bone, and dripped dark promises onto the stone breasts.
The rock all around the cave was saturated with water.
"Cazzes! What's taking you so long?"
The harder he tried to think of something else, anything else, the more the despair in those eyes filled his thoughts.
What harm would it do to let the kid go ?
He felt the movement of the rock before he heard the Song that caused it.
Heard the Second yell a moment later. "Get him out of there now!"
Felt hands grab his wrist and yank him back into the tunnel as the world collapsed around him.
