Wizard (39 page)

* * *

They never found out how long it took to descend the stairs. The clocks had been in Hornpipe’s pack, and there was just no other way to measure the passage of time. It became an endless nightmare, relieved only by meager meals taken when hunger became intolerable and by the dream-ridden sleep of exhaustion. They might make twenty or thirty steps down before Valiha would sit and begin to shake. It was impossible to budge her until she had screwed up her own courage. She was too big to move, and no words they could say did any good.

Robin’s temper—none too even at the best of times—became volcanic. At first Chris tried to restrain her language. Later he began to add comments of his own. He thought it unwise when Robin began to pummel the Titanide, to get behind her and push in her desperate urge to get moving, but he said nothing. And he could not just leave her. Robin agreed.

“I’d love to strangle her,” she said, “but I couldn’t abandon her.”

“It wouldn’t have to be abandonment,” Chris said. “We could go ahead and try to get help.”

Robin scowled at him. “Don’t kid yourself. What’s at the bottom? Probably a pool of acid. Even if there’s not, and if Tethys doesn’t kill us and we make it to one of those tunnels—if there even
are
tunnels down here like the other place—it’s gonna take weeks to get out and weeks to get back. If we leave her, she’s dead.”

Chris had to admit the truth of it, and Robin went back to physically trying to force Valiha to move. He still thought that might be a mistake, and Valiha proved him right. It happened suddenly and began with Robin slapping her.

“That hurt,” Valiha said.

Robin slapped her again.

Valiha put her huge hand around Robin’s neck, lifted her off the ground, and held her at arm’s length. Robin kicked a few times, then held completely still, gurgling.

“The next time I pick you up,” Valiha said, with no particular menace in her voice, “I will squeeze until your head comes off.” She set Robin down, held her shoulder while she coughed, did not let go
until she was sure Robin could stand on her own. Robin backed away, and Chris thought it was fortunate her gun had been safely stowed in Valiha’s pack. But Valiha did not seem to bear her any malice, and the incident was never mentioned again, nor did Robin ever again so much as raise her voice to the Titanide.

* * *

He thought they must be past the halfway point. It was the fifth time they had slept. But this time, when he awoke, Valiha wasn’t there.

They started to climb.

One thousand two hundred twenty-nine steps later they found her. She was sitting with her legs folded under her, glassy-eyed, rocking back and forth gently. She looked no more intelligent than a cow.

Robin sat and Chris collapsed next to her. He knew that if the tears started now, he might never stop weeping, so he fought them back.

“What now?” Robin asked.

Chris sighed and stood up. He put his hands to Valiha’s cheeks and rubbed them gently until her eyes focused on him.

“It’s time to go again, Valiha,” he said.

“It is?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She stood and let him lead her. They made twenty steps, then thirty, then forty. On the forty-sixth step she sat down again and began to rock. After more coaxing Chris got her to her feet and they made sixty steps. When he got her up the third time, he was optimistic, hoping to make one hundred steps, but what he got was seventeen.

* * *

Two sleeps later he awoke to the sound of Robin crying. He looked up, saw that Valiha was gone again.
He put his arm around her, and she made no objection. When she was through, they got up and once more began to climb.

* * *

It seemed that no one had done any talking in years. There had been arguing and once he and Robin had come to blows. But even that could not be sustained long; neither had the energy for it. He limped for a while after the fight, and Robin sported a black eye.

But it was amazing what a little adrenalin could do.

“It looks like the floor is dry,” Robin whispered.

“I can hardly believe it.”

They were concealed behind the gradual curve of the spiraling wall, looking out and down at what had to be, incredibly, the end of the line. All along they had expected to find an acid lake, with Tethys safely submerged in it. Instead, they saw what appeared to be a high-water—or high-acid—mark only ten steps from where they stood, then a section of bare floor. Tethys herself was invisible around the curve.

“It’s got to be a trap,” Robin said.

“Right. Let’s turn around and go back.”

Robin’s lips drew back, and her eyes blazed for a moment; then she relaxed and even managed a faint smile.

“Hey, I don’t know how to say this … it feels like we’ve been at each other’s throats forever … but if this comes out badly … what I mean is—”

“It’s been fun?” Chris suggested.

“I wouldn’t put it that way. Hell.” She put out her hand. “It’s been good knowing you.”

He held her hand in both of his briefly.

“Me, too. But don’t say any more. Every word is going to sound awkward as hell later if we
do
survive.”

She laughed. “I don’t care. I didn’t like you when we started out, but don’t feel bad. I don’t think I liked
any
body. I like you now, and I wanted you to know that. It’s important to me.”

“I like you, too,” he said, and coughed nervously. His eyes left hers, and when he forced them back, she had already looked away. He released her hand, aware of things he would like to say and unable to say them.

He turned to Valiha and began talking to her quietly. He had become better at that, speaking of nothing in particular, letting the melody of his voice soothe in a language they held in common. Gradually he began working meanings into what he said, repeating them, telling her what she must do without stressing it enough to activate her ever-present fears. He spoke to her of getting out in the sunshine again.

A strange fatalism had overcome Valiha during the last kilometer. She stopped less frequently but moved more slowly. She seemed drugged. Once Chris would have sworn she was asleep. She had a hard time keeping her eyes open. He supposed it was Titanide fear, or whatever they used in place of fear. Now that he thought of it, he had never seen any of the Titanides displaying what he thought of as fear, not in the face of the wraiths and not even down here in the dim stairway. She apparently did not fear Tethys in any way Chris could understand. Instead, there had been first a repulsion, like a physical force acting to keep her away from Tethys. She had been unable to give an explanation of many of her acts; when he and Robin were not impelling her downward, she simply went up, with the inevitability of heated air rising. That force had faded, to be replaced by a physical and mental numbness. Her mind worked sluggishly, her senses were dulled, and her body almost seemed to be shutting down.

“In a moment we … Valiha, listen to me.” He had to slap her to get her attention. He had the impression she barely felt it. “Valiha, we have to do this part of the trip quickly. It’s only a few hundred steps. I don’t think we’ll have time to sit down and rest like we’ve been doing.”

“No rest?”

“I’m afraid not. What we’ll do is hurry down the last steps, stay close to the wall—stay close to
me
, and
I’ll
be near the wall—and into the tunnel. Once we’re there, we’ll be on our way up and out. Do you see, Valiha? To start going up, we have to go just a little bit down, just a little bit, that’s all, and we’ll be okay. Do you understand?”

She nodded, but Chris was far from sure she did. He thought of saying more but realized there was little use. It would work, or it wouldn’t. If he were betting, he would have to put his money against them.

* * *

They started the final descent hand in hand. It did not take long to come around the curve of the corridor and into the presence of Tethys, who sat unmoving in her acid bath, just as Crius had done. In fact, there was no way Chris could tell the two apart. He hoped the things he could not yet see were also the same. He would not know until they actually emerged on the floor of the chamber.

“What took you so long, Wizard?”

The voice hit Chris like a physical blow. He had to pause and take a deep breath. Until that moment he had not realized how keyed up he had been. His heart was pounding, and his breathing was shaky. Luckily Valiha was still moving. The three of them continued to approach, with only ten steps in front of them.

“I knew you were up there, of course,” Tethys said. “I understand you ran into some trouble. Now I hope you aren’t blaming me for that because it was none of my doing, and you can tell that to Gaea.”

Tethys’s voice was identical to the voice of Crius. It was the same flat drone, without humanity: indistinct, without source. And yet there was a contemptuous, hectoring quality that chilled his blood.

“So you brought Gaby with you. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever meet. She’s not too good to do business with Crius, is she? Are you, Ms. Plauget? And yet we’ve never seen her down here. I wonder why?”

Robin leaned in front of Valiha, and her eyes were wide.

“Chris,” she whispered, “the damn thing’s
nearsighted
!”

Chris frantically signaled with his hands, afraid to talk and break the spell. Tethys would not mistake the voices.

“What was that?” Tethys asked, confirming his fears. “Why don’t you speak up? Is it polite to keep me waiting for so long and then whisper secrets when you get here? I hate secrets.”

They were on the floor now, and Chris saw the two tunnels he had noted in the chamber of Crius, one leading west and the other east. All they had to do now was traverse the sixty or seventy meters to the eastern tunnel. Chris nervously fingered the unusual weapon he had removed from Valiha’s saddlebag. It felt reassuringly cold and hard and unyielding as he ran his thumb over the two sharp points. Perhaps he would not have to use it.

“I confess I didn’t see until just now why you brought
that
creature along,” Tethys said. “It should have been obvious. Am I right?”

Chris said nothing. They were ten meters from the tunnel entrance and still moving.

“I’m getting impatient,” Tethys said. “You may be the Wizard, but there are limits. I’m talking about the Titanide. How thoughtful of you to bring dinner. Come here, Valiha.”

Valiha stopped and her head turned slowly. She looked at Tethys for the first time. Chris did not wait to see what she would do. He took a firm grip on the large fork which had been part of Valiha’s carving set, dropped back a step, and thrust it solidly into the fleshy part of Valiha’s rump. For one awful moment there was no reaction; then Valiha moved so fast she seemed to blur. He caught a glimpse of her tail as it vanished into the tunnel, heard her shriek and the clatter of her hooves; then all other sounds were drowned by a piercing whistle. They were into the tunnel, followed by a blast of heat and a rising wind. They were surrounded by choking fumes. Tethys was filling her lake as quickly as she could. The floor they were running on seemed level; when the acid brimmed over the edge of the moat, it would follow them.

As they ran, they were joined by fluttering, batlike creatures. Chris knew by their orange glow that they were the same animals which had lighted their long descent and which he hoped would also populate the tunnels. Whatever they were, they did not like acid fumes any more than he did.

One part of his mind noted that he had found one more thing he could do better than Robin. He was a faster runner. She had fallen behind, and he slackened his pace to allow her to catch up. They both were coughing, and his eyes were watering, but the fumes were not as thick as they had been.

He heard her gasp and fall. It was not until he had stopped himself and turned back that he heard the sound of a trickling liquid he suspected was not water. For one wild moment he was ready to run away, but instead, he hurried back to her, toward the sound of the approaching wave of acid. It was almost completely dark now since the luminescent creatures, less altruistic than he, had not halted in their flight.

He collided with her. Why had he assumed she would need help getting up?

“Run, idiot!” she yelled, and he did run, behind her this time, the only light coming from the distant fliers, the pale glow of which made a halo around the animated shadow she had become.

“How long do you think we need to keep running?” she called back to him.

“Until I can’t hear the acid splashing behind me.”

“Good plan. Do you think we can outrun it? Is it getting closer?”

“I can’t tell. I can’t hear it unless I stop.”

“Then we might keep running until we drop,” she pointed out.

“Good plan,” he said.

* * *

It didn’t seem likely that the glowbirds were flying faster. Yet they were farther ahead than they had been, so he and Robin must be slowing down. His own breath was coming in ragged gasps, and his side was hurting badly. But he had detected no rising of the floor. For all he knew, their present location
might actually be lower than the floor in the grotto of Tethys. It was possible that Tethys could flood the entire length of what Chris devoutly hoped was a 300-kilometer tunnel linking Tethys with her sister, Thea. But of course, it was possible the tunnel did not lead to Thea at all. It might end at any moment. It might begin to slope down, and they would find they had been seeking their salvation in what was actually a drain for excess acid. But there was nothing to do but run. If there were an end to the tunnel, Valiha would find it first, and they had not yet caught up with her.

“I think … it’s gone … up. Don’t … you?”

“Maybe. But how … far?” Privately Chris did not think they had gained any ground at all, but if thinking they were rising made it easier for Robin to put one foot in front of the other, that was fine with him.

“I can’t … do this much … longer.”

Neither can I, he thought. The darkness was nearly complete now. The floor was not as level as it had been, so the danger of falling was increased. Getting up again would be quite a project.