Wizard

35 Runaway

Chris and Robin talked it out, explored it from all angles, and it added up to a hopeless situation. But the human animal is seldom hopeless, really hopeless in the real world. Had they been sealed off above and below, they could have waited to die. It might almost have been easier to do so. But while the stairs still beckoned, they both knew they had to descend them.

"It's in the best tradition of heroes," Chris pointed out "To die trying."

"Will you stop that hero business? We're talking about survival. We don't have a chance here, so if there's even a million-to-one shot at the bottom of the stairs, we have to take it."

But it was not easy to get Valiha moving.

The Titanide was a bundle of nerves. Logical argument had little effect on her. She could agree that they must look for a way out and that the only possible route was downward, but at that point her mind stopped, and something else took over. It was wrong for a Titanide to be in this place. To go deeper was almost unthinkable. Chris was beginning to feel desperate. For one thing, there was Gaby. It was not pleasant to remain near her body. Before long... but that did not bear thinking about. To be unable to bury her was terrible enough.

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 anybody. 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.

"A little longer," he wheezed.

They bumped into each other, moved away, and hit again. When Chris moved to his right, he hit his shoulder against the invisible tunnel wall. He had his hands out in front of him, no longer able to tell if the glow he was following-seemingly many kilometers ahead-was real or just an afterimage on his retinas. He was afraid the tunnel would make a turn and he would crash into the wall. Then he realized he was moving so slowly by now that he could not be badly hurt in a collision.

"Stop now," he said, and fell to his knees. Robin was somewhere in front of him, gasping and coughing.

For an undetermined time it did not really matter that acid might be creeping along the tunnel behind him. He pressed his cheek to the cool stone floor and let himself go limp. Only his lungs continued to labor, at a steadily decreasing tempo. His throat was burning, and his saliva was thin but so plentiful he had to keep spitting out sticky ropes of it. At last he raised his head, put his palms to the floor, got to his knees, and, by force of will, held his breath for a few seconds, listening. It was no good. His ears thrummed with blood, and Robin, close enough to touch, still gasped and panted loudly. He thought he might hear the approach of the acid if it came in a roaring wave, but it would not. If it were still coming, it would be rising silently. He reached over and touched Robin's shoulder.

"Come on. We'd better get moving again."

She moaned but got up with him. She fumbled for his hand, and they began to walk. His shoulder rubbed the right wall; they continued that way, Chris touching cool solidity with one hand, warm flesh with the other.

"We have to be going up," Robin said finally. "If it was down, the stuff would have washed over us a long time ago."

"I think so, too," Chris said. "But I don't want to bet my life on it. We have to keep going until we can get some light."

They walked on, Chris counting the steps, not really knowing why he was doing it. He supposed it was easier than thinking about what might lie ahead.

After several hundred paces Robin laughed.

"What's funny?"

"I don't know, I ... I guess it just occurred to me... we made it!" She squeezed his hand.

Chris was astonished by her reaction. He was about to point out that they were far from safe, that the road ahead was certainly filled with dangers they could not even guess, when he was suddenly filled with an emotion as powerful as any he had ever experienced. He realized he was grinning.

"Damn. We did, didn't we?" Now they both were laughing. They embraced, slapping each other on the back, shouting incoherent congratulations. He squeezed her hard, unable to stop himself, but she made no objection. And just as suddenly he found himself crying with a smile still on his face. Neither of them could control the swift passage of emotions brought about by the release of unbearable tension. Nothing they said made sense. And in time they were spent, still clinging to each other, still standing, rocking gently and wiping away stray tears.

When Chris finally chuckled again, Robin nudged him, "What's funny now?"

"Oh ... nothing."

"Come on."

For a while he wouldn't say anything, but she kept at him.

"All right. Damn it, I don't know how I can laugh. It isn't funny. A lot of our friends are dead. But back there ... back when we were pinned down..."

"Yeah?"

"Well, you couldn't see this because you were out of it. You know." He hurried on, wishing he'd never started now that he remembered how much she probably wanted to forget that time. "Anyway, Cirocco told us all to pee. Well, hell, I had to. I pulled my pants open and ... you know, got it out ... and let go. Spreading it around, you understand, so it'd do the most good ... and suddenly I thought, Take that, you lousy sand wraiths!" Robin laughed herself to the ragged edge of hysteria. Chris laughed with her but eventually began to worry. It hadn't been that funny, had it?

They had walked a thousand steps before they saw the first glow-bird clinging to the ceiling. It was their first realization that the tunnel had widened around them. The creature was at least twenty meters above, possibly more, and its orange light touched walls that were thirty meters apart. Chris turned and looked for reflections of moisture behind them but found nothing.

In a little while they passed beneath another glowbird, then five in a group. They blazed like torches after so many hours of darkness.

"I wonder what they find to eat down here?" Chris said.

"There must be something. I would think it would take a lot of energy to glow constantly like that."

"Gaby said it was a catalytic reaction," Chris recalled. "But still, they must eat. Maybe we could eat what they eat."

"We're going to need something sooner or later."

Chris was thinking of the supplies still in Valiha's saddlebag. That thought led to Valiha herself. He was beginning to worry about her. By now the glowbirds were plentiful, illuminating a tunnel that stretched far ahead of them. He could see 500 meters ahead, and there was no sign of the Titanide.

"I just thought of something," Robin said.

"What's that?"

"Are you sure this tunnel goes east?"

"What are you-" He stopped walking. "You know as well as I do that..." That what? The stairs had corkscrewed downward for five kilometers. Early in the descent Robin had pointed out that orientation would be critical when they arrived at the bottom. Accordingly, they had performed laborious calculations to discover the rate of curvature of the spiral stairs. When they knew how many steps it took to complete one revolution, once again to be headed in the same direction, orientation became a matter of counting steps. They had determined that they were at the south side of the chamber when they emerged in Tethys, so west would be to the left and east to the right.

Yet their figures had always contained uncertainty. The fact that their calculations might be off by a few steps was not relevant, but not knowing their precise starting point was. They had entered the surface building from the west. But the confusion surrounding their flight and the destruction of the gremlin-built structure made it impossible to know how many steps Valiha had covered before coming to rest. And when things had quieted down, the top part of the stairs had been clogged in rubble.

"You don't think she ran through half a revolution, do you?" he said at last.

"I don't think so. But she might have. If she did, this tunnel leads to Phoebe, not Thea."

Chris wished he could put it out of his mind. Their situation was so precarious; it depended on so many factors beyond his control. It was possible that even if they reached Thea-who Cirocco had said was a friendly region-she would not be kindly disposed to three invaders of her realm.

"We'll face that problem when we come to it," he said.

Robin laughed. "Don't give me that. If Phoebe is at the other end of this tunnel, what we'll do is sit down and starve to death."

"Don't be such a pessimist. We'd die of thirst long before that."

The tunnel began gradually to widen, to look less like an artificial passageway and more like a natural cave. Though there were more of the glowbirds, their light was correspondingly less effective in the larger space. Chris saw branch tunnels to the north and south, but they both felt it made better sense to continue in the direction they hoped was east.

"Valiha must have still been panicked when she came through here," Robin said. "I presume she would have kept going straight. If she'd started to think again, I'd expect her to come back for us, or wait, before she started exploring the side tunnels."

"I agree. But I didn't expect her to come this far. And I keep remembering she's got all our food and water. I could sure use a drink."

The cave floor had become irregular. They found themselves going up and down gentle slopes that reminded Chris of the sand dunes they had traversed on the surface of Tethys. The roof was by then so distant that the glowbirds clinging to it looked like stars turned orange by atmospheric haze. Little detail could be discerned above, and only the general shapes of things on the ground. When they heard running water, they approached it cautiously until the stream betrayed itself by coppery reflections. Chris dipped a finger in it, ready to wipe it dry if it proved to be acid. When he was not burned, he raised some to his lips. It had a faintly carbonated taste. They removed their shoes and waded, found that it was only ten meters across and never more than half a meter deep.

Beyond the stream the ground changed character again. They could see jagged spires rising around them. Once Chris fell over a two-meter drop. For an eternal second he did not know if the fall might be his last moments of life, until he hit on his hands and knees, cursing loudly more from relief than anger. He had a few bruises to add to his cuts and scrapes but was otherwise uninjured. His increased caution after the scare paid off quickly. Reacting more from instinct than any sure knowledge, he found himself reaching out to stop Robin. When they moved forward more carefully, they saw she had been no more than a meter from a precipice that tumbled down thirty or forty meters.

"Thanks," Robin said quietly. He nodded, distracted by a glow to his left. He was having no luck making it out when he heard the sound. Someone was singing.

They moved toward the light. As they did, detail emerged from the endless shades of gray and black. Shapeless blurs became rocks, dark traceries like the webs of spiders turned into emaciated vines and shrubs. And the light could be seen to flicker like a candle. It was not a candle, but the lamp Valiha had been carrying in her saddlebag when she took flight. In one last clearing of perceptions he could see one of the shapes near the light was Valiha herself. She was on her side, lying on the far slope of the small canyon twenty meters from the bottom. He called out to her.

"Chris? Robin?" she shouted back. "It is you! I've found you!" He thought it an odd thing to say but did not dispute her. He and Robin picked their way down the slope on their side, then climbed to her position. It seemed a strange place to rest. Another twenty meters, and she would have been on level ground. He had suspected something was wrong, and now he was sure of it. There was something about her that reminded him, with a flash of fear, of Psaltery lying in his blood-soaked dying ground.

When they reached her, the light of the lamp showed her face smeared with dried blood. She sniffed loudly and drew her hand across her upper lip.

"I'm afraid I've broken my nose," she said.

Chris had to look away. Her nose was broken, and so were both her front legs.