Water Sleeps (42 page)

T he rescue was running smoothly, like a well-greased siege engine missing only
a few minor parts. Goblin had Murgen and Croaker headed toward the surface
aboard makeshift litters.

Croaker had not said a word, nor had he made any effort to do so, even though he
had been awake and aware. He stared at me for a long time. I had no idea what
was going on inside his head. I just hoped he was sane.

Before he departed, Murgen did give my hand a small squeeze. I hoped that was an
expression of gratitude or encouragement.

I was not at all happy about his being unable to provide information or advice.

I had not thought much about what role I would play after the Captured were
wakened. I had operated on the unspoken assumption, more or less, that I would
retire to my Annals—or even farther, to the Standardbearer job, if Murgen wanted
to be Annalist again.

More and more people kept coming downstairs even though I had tried to send word
up to warn everyone that they faced a horrible climb going in the other
direction.

The white crow continued to curse and jabber semicoherently until it lost its
voice. I was concerned about Lady. She had managed that feathery spy quite well
for a long time, never giving herself away even when she did try to clue me in,

but now she seemed to be losing control. Of herself. I assured her repeatedly
that she would go upstairs as soon as I had bearers capable of getting her
there. Doj, Sahra and Gota had Thai Dei ready to travel. I gave them the
go-ahead. One-Eye would follow him, then Lady would go. The Prahbrindrah Drah
would be the last, this time.

Tobo seemed fascinated by his father, apparently because he could not quite
believe that the man was real in a fleshy sense. Circumstances had kept his
parents separate almost since his conception.

The boy started to tag along after the rest of the family. I called out, “Tobo,

stay down here. You have a job to do. See about your dad after we get Lady and
the Prince moved out. Hello, Suvrin. Why’re you down here?”

“Curiosity. Sri Santaraksita’s curiosity. He insisted that he had to see the
caverns. He drove me crazy reminding me how storied they are in religious
legend. He couldn’t be this close to something like that and not explore it
personally.”

“I see.” I noticed the old librarian now. He was working his way up the line of
old men, examining each and murmuring to himself. Occasionally he would bounce
up and down in excitement. Swan had gone back to make him keep his hands to
himself. He wanted to finger and sniff every bit of ancient metal and cloth. He
seemed to have trouble understanding that those old men were still alive but
very vulnerable.

“Swan. Bring him up here.” I did want the benefit of his expertise just a while
ago. In a softer voice, I told Suvrin, “You’re the one who’s going to carry him
back upstairs if he can’t make it on his own. And I’ll be right behind you,

giving encouragement by poking you with a spear.”

Suvrin seemed to have thought about the climb already. He was not looking
forward to it, either. “The man has no concept—”

I interrupted. “What about Shivetya?”

“He’s back right side up and safely away from the pit. I can’t say he seemed
particularly grateful, though.”

“He say or do something?”

“No. It was his expression. And that was probably because we dropped him on his
nose once. In think I’d have trouble being grateful for a pop in the snoot
myself.”

Santaraksita was puffing when he joined us. He, was excited. “We’re walking the
actual roads of myth, Dorabee! I have begun begging the Lords of Light to let me
live long enough to report my adventures to the bhadrhalok!”

“Who will call you a liar over and over again. Sri, you know the Right People
don’t become involved in actual adventures. All of you, follow me now. We’re
going to have another actual adventure traveling into mythology.” I headed on up
the steepening slope.

I soon discovered that someone had gone this way before me. At first I suspected
Tobo had gotten farther than I had thought. Then I decided that the disturbances
in the frost were too old for that, so concluded that Soulcatcher must have gone
back this way, just to see what she could see.

Back there, small side caves entered the main cavern, few of them large enough
to permit passage of an adult body. The main cave dwindled in diameter. We had
to hunch down, then we had to crawl. Whoever had gone before us had done the
same.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Swan asked. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“Of course I do.” Leadership tip: Sound confident even when you have no idea.

Just do not make a habit of it. They will find you out.

I had been through here in my dreams. But only sort of, evidently, because every
few feet I ran into some detail I did not recall from those nightmares. And then
we stumbled onto something that was far more than a mere detail.

The sole of a boot nearly smacked me in the face because I was concentrating on
trying to decipher the story encrypted in the frost on the cave floor. That was
the story of someone who had been moving wildly, maybe in a panic. Not only had
the frost been rubbed away, in places the stone itself was bruised or chipped.

“I think I’ve found Mather, Willow.” It was one of those odd moments when you
discover the trivial. I noticed that Cordy Mather really needed to have his
boots resoled. I did not immediately wonder how a man’s leg could stick out like
that, with the toe pointing halfway upward above horizontal while the man
himself was lying on his stomach. “We’d better stop right here and take a good
look. I don’t see the man doing this to himself.”

Swan said, “I’ll get Goblin. Don’t do anything till he gets here.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’m fond of my hide. If I lose it, I’ll miss out on our
honeymoon.” I drew my sword, for what good that might do, then raised up slowly
till the top of my head bumped the cavern roof.

Cordy Mather had crawled over a hump in the floor. And something fatal had
happened to him before he could get all of himself onto the downward side.

Suvrin eased up beside me. Inexplicably, I found myself painfully aware of him
as a masculine presence. Luckily, he was even less interpersonally adept than I
was. He failed to notice my flustered and uncomfortable reaction.

Odd. The urge was not something I would pursue, certainly. I just wondered why I
sometimes suffered these sudden, random impulses, some of which were extremely
difficult to resist. Ninety-nine percent of the time I did not so much as think
about the possibility of combining myself, a man and a bed in a search for
adventure.

Maybe I should not have been teasing Swan.

Suvrin said, “That sure doesn’t look very appetizing. What do you think
happened?”

“I’m not even going to guess. I’m just going to sit here and wait for the expert
to show up.”

“May I look?” Santaraksita asked.

Suvrin scooted back. He discovered that the older man was too broad to pass by
him there. So we all had to retreat twenty yards so Santaraksita could get past
us in turn. I admonished him repeatedly not to go farther forward than I had. “I
definitely don’t want to have to drag you out of here.” Though I will grant that
the man was a great deal leaner now than when I had worked for him. “And because
you want to get home to tell the bhadrhalok all about this.”

“You were right about them, Dorabee. They won’t believe a word I say. And not
only because they’re the Right People but because Surendranath Santaraksita
never had an adventure in his life. He never had the urge until this adventure
had him.”

“Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.”

“You persist in amazing me, Dorabee. Who are you quoting?”

“V.T.C. Ghosh. He was an acolyte of B.B. Mukerjee, one of the six Bhomparan
disciples of Sondhel Ghose the Janaka.”

Santaraksita’s face lit right up. “Dorabee! You are a marvel indeed. A wonder of
wonders. The pupil begins to exceed the master. What was your source? I don’t
recall ever having read of a Ghosh or a Mukerjee featured in the Janaka school.”

I snickered like a prankster kid. “That’s because I was pulling your leg. I made
it up, Sri.” And that seemed to leave him even more amazed.

Goblin broke it up. “Swan says you found a dead man.”

“Yes. It looks like Cordy Mather from this end. I didn’t see his face, though. I
wasn’t going to move anything anywhere until we had a good idea what happened to
him. I’d rather it didn’t happen to me.”

Goblin grunted. “Pudgeman, you want to back down here so I can get past you?

This tunnel gets pretty tight, don’t it? Watch out you don’t let your chubby
butt plug it up. For how come do you want to go slithering around back here,

anyway, Sleepy?”

“Because if I keep going this way far enough I’ll get to the place where the
Deceivers concealed the original Books of the Dead.”

Goblin gave me a funny look but took my word for it. I talked to ghosts in mist
machines. Birds talked to me. A talking bird was following me right now, at a
distance. At the moment it did not have much to say because its throat was sore
but it did manage to rip out a curse or two whenever it had to dodge somebody’s
flailing feet. “That’s interesting.”

“I thought so.”

“Ah. Yeah. It’s not sorcery, though. It’s your basic mechanical booby trap.

Spring-loaded. Stabs you with a poisoned pin. There’re probably twenty more
between here and where you want to go. What do you think Mather was trying to
do?”

“If he woke up and found himself down here and didn’t know where he was or what
had happened to him, he might have panicked and taken off and just went in the
wrong direction. I bet it’s his fault all those guys back there are dead. He
probably tried to wake them up.”

Goblin grunted again. “There. That’s disarmed. I’d better go ahead and see what
else is waiting. But first we need to get Mather pulled back so you all can get
past him.”

“If you can weasel past him so can I.”

“Yeah, you can. But what about your boyfriend and your sugar daddy? They’ve got
a little more pork on them.” He grunted and cursed softly as he fought Mather’s
remains back over the hump in the floor. I noticed, for the first time, that the
echoes were different in this more confined space, jammed with bodies. They were
almost nonexistent.

I do not believe it was miles to where the Deceivers of antiquity concealed
their treasures and relics but my body believed that before we got there. Goblin
disarmed another dozen traps and found several more that had fallen victim to
time. The underground wind whimpered and whined as it rushed past us in the
tight places. It sucked the warmth right out of me. But it did not dissuade me.

I went where I wanted to go. And was hungry enough to eat a camel when I got
there.

It had been a long, long time since breakfast. I had a dread feeling it could be
longer still before supper.

“It feels like a temple, doesn’t it?” Suvrin asked. He was less troubled than
the rest of us. Though raised nearer this place than anyone else, he was less
intimate with the legends of the Dark Mother. He stopped staring at the three
lecterns and the huge books they bore long enough to turn to me and whisper,

“Here.” He offered me a bit of crumbling flax cake from the pouch he wore at the
small of his back.

“You must have read my mind.”

“You talk to yourself a lot. I don’t think you realize you’re doing it.” I did
not. It was a bad habit that needed breaking right now. “I heard you when we
were crawling through the tunnel.”

That had been a private discourse with my God. An internal dialog, I had
thought. The subject of food had come up. And here was food. So maybe the
All-Merciful was on the job after all.

“Thanks. Goblin. You feel any tricks or traps in here?” There were echoes again,

though with a different timbre. We were inside a large chamber. The floor and
walls were all ice that had been cut and polished by the flow of frigid water. I
presumed the invisible ceiling was the same. The place did have a feel of the
holy to it—even though that was the holiness of darkness.

“No traps that I can sense. I’d think they’d leave that sort of stuff outside,

don’t you?” He sounded like he wanted to convince himself.

“You’re asking me to define the psychology of those who worship devils and
rakshasas? Vehdna priests would guarantee you that there’s nothing so foul or
evil as to be beyond the capacity of those most accursed of unbelievers.” I
thought they would guarantee it. If they had heard of the Stranglers. I had not
heard of them before I became attached to the Company.

Suvrin said, “Sri, I don’t think you should—”

Master Santaraksita had recognized the ancient books as something remarkable and
just could not resist going up for an up-close look. I agreed with Suvrin.

“Master! Don’t go charging—”

The noise sounded something like someone ripping tent canvas for half a second,

then popped like the crack of a whip. Master Santaraksita left the floor of the
unholy chapel, folded around his middle, and flew at the rest of us in an arc
that admitted only slight acquaintance with gravity. Suvrin tried to catch him.

Goblin tried to duck. Santaraksita bounced Suvrin sideways and ricocheted into
me. The lot of us ended up in a breathless tangle of arms and legs.

The white crow had something uncomplimentary to say about that.

“You and me and a stew pot, critter,” I gasped when I got my breath back. I
snagged Goblin’s leg. “No more traps, eh? They’d leave that sort of thing out in
the caverns, eh? What the devil was that, then?”

“That was a magical booby trap, woman. And a damned fine example of its kind,

too. It remained undetectable until Santaraksita tripped it.”

“Sri? Are you injured?” I asked.

“Only my pride, Dorabee,” he puffed. “Only my pride. It’ll take me a week to get
my wind back, though.” He rolled off Suvrin, got onto his hands and knees. He
had a definite green look to him.

“You’ve enjoyed a cheap lesson, then,” I told him. “Don’t rush into something
when you don’t know what you’re rushing into.”

“You’d think I’d know that after this last year, wouldn’t you?”

“You might think, yes.”

“Don’t anybody ask how Junior is doing,” Suvrin grumbled. “He couldn’t possibly
get hurt.”

“We knew you’d be fine,” Goblin told him. “As long as he landed on your head.”

The little wizard limped forward. As he neared the point where Santaraksita had
gone airborne, he became very cautious. He extended a single finger forward one
slow inch at a time.

A smaller piece of cloth ripped. Goblin spun around, his arm flung backward. He
staggered a couple of steps before he fell to his knees not far from me.

“After all this time he finally recognizes the natural order of things.”

Goblin shook his hand the way you do when you burn your fingers. “Damn, that
smarts. That’s a good spell. It’s got real pop. Don’t do that!”

Suvrin had decided to throw a chunk of ice.

On its way back, the missile parted Suvrin’s hair. It then hit the cavern wall
and showered the white crow with fragments of ice. The bird had a word to say
about that. It followed up with a few more. I began to wonder if Lady had lost
track of the fact that she was not, herself, the white crow, and in fact, was
just a passenger making use of the albino’s eyes.

Goblin stuck his injured finger in his mouth, squatted down and considered the
chamber for a while. I squatted, too, after taking time out to keep Suvrin and
Master Santaraksita from making even greater nuisances of themselves.

Swan slithered into the chamber, disturbing the crow. The bird said nothing,

though. It just sidled away and looked put out about all existence. Swan settled
beside me. “Wow. Kind of impressive even though it’s simple.”

“Those are the original Books of the Dead. Supposedly almost as old as Kina
herself.”

“So why is everybody just sitting here?”

“Goblin’s trying to figure how to get to them.” I told him what had happened.

“Damn. I always miss the best stuff. Hey, Junior! Run up there and show us your
flying trick again.”

“Master Santaraksita did the flying, Mr. Swan.” Suvrin needed to work on his
sense of humor. He did not own a proper Black Company attitude.

I asked, “Why not try it yourself, Willow? Take a run at the books.”

“You promise to let me land on you?”

“No. But I’ll blow you a kiss as you fly by.”

“It’d probably help if you people would shut up,” Goblin said. He rose. “But by
being blindingly, blisteringly brilliant I’ve worked it out anyway, already, in
spite of you all. We get to the lecterns by using the golden pickax as a
passkey. That was why Narayan Singh was so upset when he saw what we had.”

“Tobo still has the pick,” I said. A minute later I said, “Don’t everybody
stumble all over each other offering to go get him.”

“Let’s just go together and all be equally miserable,” Goblin suggested. “That’s
what the Black Company is all about. Sharing the good times along with the bad.”

“You trying to con me into thinking that this is one of the good times?” I
asked, crawling into the cave right behind him.

“Nobody wants to kill us today. Nobody’s trying. That sounds like a good time to
me.”

He had a point. A definite point.

Maybe my Company attitude needed attention, too.

Behind me, Suvrin grumbled about starting to feel like a gopher. I glanced back.

Swan had had an attack of good sense and decided to bring up the rear, thereby
making sure that Master Santaraksita did not stay behind and tinker with things
that might cause a change in Goblin’s opinion about this being one of the good
times.

“Where did he go?” I mused aloud. People were still working in the cave of the
ancients, getting Lady and the Prahbrindrah Drah ready to go upstairs. But Tobo
was not among them. “He wouldn’t just run upstairs, would he?” He had the energy
of youth but nobody was so energetic they would just charge into that climb on
impulse.

While I tromped around muttering and looking for the kid, Goblin did the obvious
and questioned witnesses. He got an answer before I finished building up a good
mad. “Sleepy. He left.”

“Surprise, surprise . . . what?” That was not all of it. The little wizard was
upset.

“He turned right when he left, Sleepy.”

“He . . . oh.” Now I did have a good mad worked up. A booming, head-throbbing,

want-to-make-somebody-pay, real bad mad. “That idiot! That moron! That darned
fool! I’ll cut his legs off! Let’s see if we can catch him.”

Right was downward. Right was deeper into the earth and time, deeper into
despair and darkness. Right could only be the road to the resting place of the
Mother of Night.

As I started out, with intent to turn right, I collected the standard. The white
crow shrieked approval. Goblin sneered, “You’re going to be sorry before you go
down a hundred steps, Sleepy.”

I was tempted to abandon the darned thing before we had gone that far. It was
too long to be dragging around in a stairwell.