Water Sleeps

83

I got my daily constitutional in before we reached the stairway. I began to appreciate just how vast the hall at the heart of that fortress was. My party dwindled into the distance. I observed, "This thing has got to be a mile across."

"Almost exactly. It's a few yards under, according to Soulcatcher. I don't know why. I wish we had a torch. I saw patterns in the flooring last time I was here, when there wasn't quite so much dust, but she wouldn't let me waste time looking at them."

There was a lot of dust. There had been none outside. The plain tolerated nothing alien except the corpses of invaders, evidently. Even here, we had yet to discover any sign of the animals or equipment that had accompanied the Captured south.

"How much farther?"

"Almost there. Watch for a drop-off."

"A drop-off?"

"A step down. It's only about eighteen inches but you could break a leg if it surprises you. I turned an ankle last time."

We found the drop-off. I stopped to look back once I stepped down. All sorts of genius was being invested in the assignments I had given. Closer, Sahra and the Radisha and several others to whom I had not given specific assignments had decided to follow me. I said, "You're right. It does look like there're some kind of inlays. If we have time, maybe we can take a closer look." I considered the edge of the stone. "This curves. And it's polished."

"That part of the floor is a circle. And it's almost exactly one-eightieth of the diameter of the plain. According to Soulcatcher. The raised part where the demon's throne used to sit is one-eightieth the size of this."

"That's probably got to mean something. It have anything to do with the Captured?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Then we'll worry about it later."

"The stairs start over here."

They did indeed, right next to the wall. The crack in the floor had extended clear through that. The wall's partial collapse had filled the gap there, then the material from the wall had been pushed back up as the fissure healed itself.

The stairs simply started. There was a rectangular hole in the floor. Steps went down, roughly paralleling the outer wall, away from the crack in the floor, which had healed almost completely. There was no handrail.

Twenty steps down we reached a landing eight feet by eight. The descending steps led off from our right. This flight appeared to go downward forever. Faint light crept up it, just strong enough so you could see where to put your feet.

Sahra and the Radisha had caught up close enough that I could hear them talking without being able to pick up specific words. Both women sounded frightened by the immediate future.

I could sympathize. I was nervous about achieving my life's ambition myself. Just a little.

"You want to go first?" Swan asked. He lacked considerable enthusiasm, I thought.

"Are there booby traps or something?"

"No. She probably wanted to, just in case somebody passed this way someday, just for the sheer mean fun of it, but there wasn't enough time. She piddled around so much, for so long, I didn't really believe we'd ever get away. I'm sure we wouldn't have if she hadn't been who she was. She spun spells that chased the shadows away. She'd been in there before. And she'd practiced."

"There it is!"

"What?"

"Nothing. Just remembering something." Stupid me. All those years I wondered how Swan and Soulcatcher had found time to bury the Captured without getting gobbled up by shadows and I had overlooked the obvious, the fact that Soulcatcher was a major sorceress and already had some experience manipulating shadows. You can be screamingly blind to the obvious if you don't realize that you have not opened up all the doors of your mind.

Forgive me, O Lord of the Hours. Be Merciful. Be Compassionate. I shall close the borders of my soul as soon as my brothers are free.

At this point Swan had no incentive to steer me into danger. I started downstairs.

The architects, engineers and stonemasons responsible had not been determined to achieve geometric perfection. Though this portion of the stairwell continued downward in a specific general direction, it tended to meander from side to side of a straight line. Nor were the steps of a uniform height. The builders had been thoughtful enough to provide landings every little way, though. I had a feeling those would seem to be miles apart once I started climbing up again.

"If we have to bring One-Eye down here, we're going to have to carry him back up. He won't survive the climb otherwise."

"You might want to organize what you're going to do before we go down there, then."

"I can't decide what has to be done until I see what I'm dealing with."

"You might call up your genie in a bottle. Get him to tell you."

"He's never said much about the place where he's at. Not since he's been in there himself. It's like he's constrained against that. I dreamed about it a few times but I don't know how accurate my dreams were."

Swan groaned. "I really didn't want to make this trek."

"Will it be that bad?"

"Not going down. But heading the other way is likely to change your attitude."

"I don't know. I'm beginning to get a little winded just going in this direction."

"Then slow down. A few minutes isn't going to make a difference. Not after all these years."

He was right. And wrong. There was no rush for the Captured. But for us, with our limited resources, time was destined to become critical.

Swan continued, "You need to slow down, Sleepy. Really. It's going to get a little bit hairy in a minute."

He was absolutely right. But he understated the case dramatically.

The stairwell did a meander to the right. It caught up with the chasm caused by the earthquakes that had occurred during the reign of the Shadowmasters.

There was only half a stairway there. It hung in the face of a cliff. That left a whole lot of down on my right-hand side. And it was down that was entirely too well illuminated by a reddish orange light that may have come from the stone itself, since there seemed to be no other obvious source. Though I did have trouble opening my eyes wide enough to look. Wraithlike wisps of vapor wobbled upward from somewhere down below. The air seemed wanner. I asked, "We're not heading into Hell itself, are we?" Some Vehdna believe al-Shiel is a place where wicked souls will burn for all eternity.

Swan understood. "Not your Hell. But I'd guess it's Hell enough for them that're trapped down there."

I stopped on the remains of a landing. The steps narrowed to two feet just below me. By leaning out slightly I could see clearly that the stairwell had been constructed inside a larger bore at least twenty feet in diameter. The shaft had been filled with a stone darker than that through which it had been cut. Maybe the bore had needed to be that big so Kina could be dragged down below. I asked, "Can you imagine what an engineering project this must have been?"

"People with plenty of slaves aren't daunted by big projects. What's the matter?"

"I have a problem with heights. This next part is going to take a lot of prayer and some outside encouragement. I want you to go first. I want you to go slow. And I want you to stay where I can touch you. I believe in meeting my fears eyeball to eyeball but if it gets bad and I feel like I might freeze up, I want to be able to close my eyes and keep going." I was astounded by how calm and reasonable my voice sounded.

"I understand. The real problem then is, who's going to keep his eyes open for me? Whoa! Don't panic, Sleepy. I was joking! I can handle it. Really."

It was not the worst thing I ever dealt with. I never abandoned rational thought. But it was difficult. Even when Swan promised me that an unseen protective barrier existed on the abyssal side and demonstrated its presence, the animal inside me wanted to get the heck out of there and go someplace where the ground was flat and green, there was a sky overhead, and there might even be a few trees.

Swan assured me that I was missing one heck of a view, especially as we approached the lower end of the gap, where the light was brighter, revealing churning mists way below, mists that concealed the depths of the abyss. I kept my eyes closed until we were back into a closed cavern again.

I had started counting steps up top so I could get an idea of how deep we went but I lost count while I was pretending to be a fly crawling on a wall. I was too busy being terrified. But it did seem like we had traveled a long way horizontally as well as downward.

Almost immediately after I had that thought, the stair turned left, then left again. The orange red light faded away. The stair made a couple more quick turns into a total darkness, which aroused whole new species of terrors. But nothing bit me and nothing came to steal my soul.

Then there was light again, growing so subtly I was never really aware of first noticing it. It had a golden cast to it but was extremely cold. And as soon as I was aware of it, I knew we were approaching our destination.

The stairwell passed right through a natural cavern. At one time that had been sealed off but the quakes had toppled the responsible masonry walls. I asked, "We here?"

"Almost. Careful climbing over the stones. They aren't very stable."

"What's that?"

"What?"

"That sound."

We listened. After a while, Swan said, "I think it's wind. Sometimes there was a breeze when we were down here before."

"Wind? A mile underground?"

"Don't ask me to explain it. It just is. You want to go first this time?"

"Yes."

"I thought you would."