The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (53 page)

There was no way to tell how it was attached. The coil seemed to be stuck as if by glue. Without waiting to see if Stoneface approved, Cazia pulled the rope away from the wood. It came freely, the knotted ends wriggling at her command.
Third plunder.
 

Something tickled at Cazia’s memory. There was something she was forgetting--something important--and she needed to draw that realization to her waking mind.

Looking toward the center of the structure, she once again saw that dark gray circle that suggested the end of the chambers. Cazia started in that direction again, this time in the lead. The coil of rope responded to her thoughts like a well-trained pet, and she imagined the tricks she could do with it. She could make it dance, or sway like a serpent, or…
 

How Jagia would have laughed and screamed if she could see this. Cazia couldn’t suppress a terrible pang of loss.
 

So she was taken completely by surprise when she lunged into a chamber and scraped her shin against the leg of an alligaunt lurking in the darkness.
 

Cazia cried out in surprise as the creature thrashed in the darkness. It spun toward her, one eye bulging white, then swam for the nearest tunnel opening, bashing through the arch braid with its shoulder as it fled.
 

A moment later, Tejohn was beside her, his spear at the ready and his short sword in his other hand. The alligaunt did not immediately reappear, so he sheathed his sword and began to unsling his shield from his back. “I’m sorry, Cazia. You should let me go fir--”
 

“That’s not necessary,” she said. “It was just a misunderstanding, right?”
 

They turned toward the opening the alligaunt had fled through. Small broken sticks floated near it. Two glowing eyes appeared.
 

“Arm yourselves,” a voice said out of the darkness. “Armor yourselves, too, if you need to. You are among killers.”

Cazia didn’t like that at all. She laid her hand on her knife. “Speaker brought us here and told us we could wander in safety.”
 

“Ah,” the voice said, sounding sadistic, “an assessment. Don’t get the wrong idea,
prey
. The Sacred Hunters will not suffer your presence gladly. I think I should take a nip out of you to remind you of the power of teeth and claws.”
 

Tejohn laughed. Cazia was so startled that she gaped up at him. It was a loud laugh, almost booming, and it sounded wildly out of place in these whisper-dark chambers. “Don’t bother trying to impress us,
boy
,” he said. “We both saw you flee in terror at the merest brush of your leg. Such boldness! Such courage!”
 

The alligaunt swam into their chamber, then up through the opening above, curling back around to make a sort of somersault in the water that returned him to his previous position. The only effect was to see that it could move very quickly in the water--certainly more quickly than Cazia--and that it had iron spikes on its tail.
 

“You toy with your life,” it said, quietly.
 

“Enough,” Tejohn said dismissively. “We were brought here for a purpose. Stop pretending you can do what you like with us. No one is impressed with this foolishness.”
 

“Foolishness!” For a moment, Cazia thought the alligaunt’s outrage would overcome its ability to speak. “Someone needs to teach you your
place
.” With that last word, it surged into the chamber, only turning away at the last moment to pass through a side opening.
 

Tejohn and Cazia watched it swim away. Just before it vanished into the gloom, it seemed to turn toward the center of the hive, but it was hard to be sure of that.
 

“How did you know to call it a boy?” Cazia asked. “How could you be sure?”
 

Tejohn sighed, then slung his shield on his back again. “I’m a weapons instructor. I know the sound of young warriors miming confidence, especially the ones who think the might of their empire lends might to their spear hand. Or jaw, I guess. Besides, haven’t you noticed that it’s only the small ones who wear the spikes on their tails?”
 

“No, I hadn’t.”
 

“I’d guess there’s a rite of passage involved in becoming dangerous enough to go without.”
 

The thought of a rite of passage made her think of the portals again, and suddenly the thought that had lingered at the bottom of Cazia’s memory made itself known.
 

“Voices out of the air,” she exclaimed. “That’s what I couldn’t remember.”
 

Stoneface glanced around as if watching for dangers, then guided Cazia toward the center of the hive. “Tell me as we go.”
 

“The Tilkilit Queen,” Cazia said, letting the old soldier lead her from chamber to chamber. “She said something to me about being ordered to go through the portal by the gods. She said there were voices out of the air… Fire take me, what did she say? She obeyed the
voice of the god in the air
, I think. I thought it was weird, because wouldn’t most people say
god of the air
instead of
in the air?
”
 

“They would. They do.”
 

“Right. Ivy says that Kelvijinian is the god
of
the earth… Anyway, I thought it was just that the Tilkilit are so incredibly stupid, but what if the queen was talking about the same sort of voice we heard on the lakeshore, before we were given alligaunt translation gems?”
 

“Speaker did recognize your anti-magic stone,” Tejohn said. He moved warily, as though expecting an attack. “What did he call it?”
 

“A spell-disruptor. Listen, what if…okay, what if the spell-disruptor, kinzchu stone, anti-magic spell, whatever you call it, what if it came from the alligaunts? What if they created it and gave it to the Tilkilit in the same way the Evening People gave us the Gifts?”
 

“That would mean the alligaunts are the masters of the Tilkilit.”
 

“And that the Tilkilit were sent through the portal by the alligaunts. But why? What does it mean?”
 

“What it means, I think,” Tejohn said, “is that we had better do well on this assessment.”
 

They traveled in silence for a few levels, moving closer to the end of the series of chambers. There was definitely a larger space ahead, and it was well lit.
 

“Mother told me almost the same thing,” Cazia said quietly. The look Tejohn gave her showed he didn’t understand. “Not my mother. Mother, the leader of the eagles. The ruhgrit.”
 

“She referred to voices out of the air?” Tejohn asked.
 

“Yes. Well, she called them
voices from the deep above
, or something, but the meaning is pretty much the same. She also referred to belly-crawlers.”
 

Tejohn lowered his voice. “The alligaunts crawl on their bellies when they move on land.”
 

“Which leaves us with the same question: why? Why send these creatures through the portal to Kal-Maddum?”
 

“Up ahead,” Tejohn said.
 

He was referring to the end of the chambers. They passed through three more openings and finally came to the center of the city.
 

It was nothing more than a wide-open space, a column of open water that stretched from the shadowy darkness of the shield above all the way down to the well-lit, sandy lake bottom. The whole hive curved around it, and glowing spheres were mounted at close intervals throughout.
 

There must have been nearly a hundred levels in the hive, and the open space before her… It was bigger around than the walls of the Palace of Song and Morning.
 

Cazia had never seen anything so colossal and could not imagine what it would look like on dry land. The alligaunts must have been extraordinarily powerful if they could grow so many trees in braids down here where the sun could never reach them.
 

Tejohn’s voice was quiet when he said, “Wow.”
 

“Yeah, wow.”
 

Looking up, Cazia saw the columns of lights sway back and forth very slightly like tall grass in a gentle wind. The sight made her suddenly queasy; what if a sudden current pushed hard against that shield up there and toppled the whole hive? What made this stable?
 

Then she saw it. In addition to the heavy bracing braids of wood that grew both as vertical shoots and in rings around the center, there were five truly colossal braids spaced evenly around the open space. Each was as thick around as a tower, with huge trunks wound tightly together.
They hold this place together.
It would have taken a crew with iron axes a full day, working undisturbed, to cut through one of them.
 

“What is this place?” Cazia muttered.
 

“It’s the commons,” Tejohn answered. “Look.”
 

He pointed downward just as an alligaunt swam by, moving upward extremely fast. There were red ribbons tied to its arms and legs, not to bind it, but to trail artfully behind.
 

A second alligaunt swam by, seemingly chasing the first. Behind them both was a crowd of a dozen, swimming in a group.
 

Then Cazia noticed a huge, broad gray oval mounted on the far side of the hive. Four alligaunts tended it, leaning over to make marks on it with long styluses. They were drawing something; as Cazia watched, she realized it was a stand of marsh grasses with something crouched inside it.
 

“Do you hear the singing?” Tejohn asked.
 

Suddenly, she did. It was extraordinarily low, almost in whispers, but carefully harmonized, too. “That’s not much of a song,” she blurted, annoyed that the alligaunts had such primitive and uninteresting music.
 

“It’s perfect for them, I’d bet,” Tejohn said. “They’re hunters. They sneak into a hiding space, wait their for prey, then snatch them suddenly. Hunting is sacred, right? So, their music is quiet like a hunter lying in ambush, their artists draw hunting images over and over, and that…” He pointed toward the swimming alligaunt with the red streamers, whose procession had changed direction again and was heading downward. “That is some kind of play or mime.”
 

“The crowd in back must be the audience,” Cazia said, “and the ribbons represent blood streaming from wounded prey, right?”
 

Tejohn nodded. “That’s how it looks to me. And it makes sense. We put on plays about war; even after the Evening People made tales of war unacceptable, we kept telling them through symbolism.”
 

“And stories of love, too,” Cazia said.
 

“Yes, love and war. But alligaunts don’t seem to understand either. All they care about, all they want to record from their own lives, are their hunts. And this is the city commons, where they create it.”
 

Cazia watched the procession pass through the center of the commons far below her. The chasing alligaunt would soon catch its “prey.”
 

They passed in front of a light that was unlike the other globes. This one was far from the walls of the hive, hovering a foot or two above the lake bed. Also, the color and shape were wrong. The other lights were perfectly round and white or blue-white. This one bulged like misshapen fruit, and besides its own yellow glow, there were flashes of light playing across it like the sunlight on water.
 

Tejohn had noticed it, too. “Why is that portal so misshapen?” he asked.

That’s a portal down there.
What could have made it swell up that way? She squinted through the murky water and saw it: black iron bars had been hooked into the edges of the portal, almost as though it was a pet on a leash.
 

An alligaunt emerged from the portal, swimming with all its might. Moments later, a school of fish swarmed through as though in hot pursuit. They were long, slender, and bright green, with tails like pennants.
 

She turned toward Tejohn to ask him something, but Stoneface’s expression was more Stoneface than she’d ever seen it. In a low voice, he said, “We’re being stalked.”

Chapter 34

Tejohn expected her to gasp or turn around suddenly, but to her credit, Cazia did not react with any sign of fear. She simply became very still, nodded, and asked, “Where?”

Tejohn looked back to indicate where the alligaunt had gone. It was the same one they’d accidentally awoken, he was sure. Tejohn knew he shouldn’t have taunted the creature, but Fire and Fury, they were
so arrogant
. He couldn’t stand another moment of their smug condescension, especially from a youngster who’d fled in terror at the merest touch.
 

Still, taunting a young warrior was a young soldier’s mistake, and he wasn’t a young soldier anymore.