The 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.
The 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.