The back corridors of the Starhall had an airless, almost deserted feel. Solar strips along the tops of the walls gave off a subdued light, like a sickly haze. The silence was enough to make me itch.
Curfew or no, there should have been someone here in the middle of the night, even in this city where, as Avi told me, the most common crime was pickpocketing. A watcher, maybe, stationed by the big front doors. There was no trace of any guard Montborne might have left. We made our way alone and unchallenged through the storage areas lined with boxes and bales of papers, frayed tapestries, rolled and tagged, closets stuffed with old ceremonial robes and reeking of pine oil and cedar. Here we had to choose to go down or forward, toward the central chamber itself.
The door to the basement stairwell stood just a hair open.
It could be a steward who left it that way, in a hurry to get home to a hot dinner. It could be.
It could also be that Montborne and Terris had gone this way, and that Montborne had made sure they were alone. The Starhall watcher, if there were one, would have let him pass without any questions, would have turned his back while Montborne conducted his secret business below.
The steps were stone, once scored for traction but now worn smooth and hollowed in the center. I kept close to one wall, pausing every few feet to listen.
At the bottom of the flight we came to a landing with a chair and an old desk, a shelf holding some books with frayed covers and an unlighted reading lamp. The wooden wall panels were black and warped, smelling of old lacquer. I saw three doors and another pit of a stairway, smaller, narrower. Darker.
Etch started to go down. Without thinking, my hand shot out. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist. He stared at me, his eyes puzzled as I shook my head. He set his chin, shaped the word yes, and pulled away from me. I held him fast. He looked surprised at how strong I was.
I tried to keep my voice no louder than the slither of a house-snake. “I can’t protect you too.”
Etch started to shake his head, but then saw my meaning. He’d never pretended to be a fighter. He would die for me but not, I thought, risk me dying for him.
After a moment, when I felt sure he understood, I let him go. He saluted me with his City Guards knife and stepped aside.
The air was even thicker here, cold and musty, the wall lights fewer and dimmer. Whoever came here — if anybody ever did — must bring their own. Halfway down I paused again. My heart beat so loudly I wasn’t sure I could hear anything else.
Voices. Yes, voices. I listened...
Men’s voices. Two. Muffled, maybe behind a door. I couldn’t make out words, only tones. One sounded sharp, no more than bursts of sound and then silences. The other, softer, stumbling, as if the speaker were exhausted or sick at heart.
Images rose up to drown me, like the shadows cast by churning batwings. I trembled under their weight, terrified I’d come too late, smelling the blood and the death-stench all over again.
My body moved on its own, as if it no longer belonged to me. The City Guards knife, even badly balanced as it was, seemed to come alive in my hand. I glided down one stair after another, as supple and silent as a shadow panther on the prowl. No grain of sand would shift under my feet, not even the flimsiest stalk of grass would quiver as I passed. I could creep past a browsing gazelle without its knowing. Even my heart beat soundlessly.
I no longer strained to hear the words between the two men. Only the pauses, the silences, the way the air shifted and eddied with their slightest breath.
At the bottom of the stairs, I found a passageway and then a door frame of rough, cobwebby wood. I sensed its powdery grain and the tiny poison sacs of the spiders nesting there. Holding the knife so there would be no reflection off its flat surface, I flattened myself against the wall.
Almost within straight eyeshot of the room, I no longer needed my eyes. I felt the quaking in Terris’s muscles and tasted the blood on his lips. I recoiled from the oily smoothness of Montborne’s voice even before he spoke.
“You have to admit I’ve been more than fair. I’ve listened to you. I’ve even come all the way down here in the middle of the night. Alone, just as you asked. But you see, there’s nothing here. Nothing at all. Just an old storage room nobody’s used for a hundred years. There’s no sense to it. I ask you, as one sensible person to another, why would the founders of Laurea hide something so important down here? And why is there no official record of it?”
Terris’s voice, ragged though it was, rang like steel. “The gaea-priests were supposed to keep the secret...and the warning. But the knowledge was lost — ”
“Come now, lad,” Montborne said, moving closer and holding out one hand, “I can see you’re not well. You’ve been through an ordeal that would break most men. There’s no shame in admitting you’re human. All of us make mistakes. Let me help you upstairs and I’ll see you’re properly taken care of.”
Terris swerved out of Montborne’s reach and came up flat against the wall. Montborne followed, closing in. The general’s back was toward me, and his red-and-bronze uniform looked faded and muddy. I slid through the door frame, well away from the light.
“It used to be...behind the wall,” Terris said, edging away again. I couldn’t tell if he’d spotted me or not. His eye sockets were dark circles in a face as white as bone. “But it was...shifted. Just a little...farther.”
“I think you’ve gone far enough!” With a single stride, Montborne closed the distance between them, whipped one of Terris’s arms behind his back and jerked him away from the wall. He increased the shoulder leverage and Terris arched back reflexively.
“Damn you, Montborne! If you could just look past your narrow-minded patriotic nose, you’d see — ”
I tightened my grip on the knife but kept my muscles loose. I wanted my own attack to be sudden and final. Tricky — if I were close enough to hold a knife-edge to Montborne’s throat, I would also be close enough for him to effectively counter the move, and he’d know how.
“ — it isn’t Laurea that’s at stake, it’s all of Harth!” Terris’s breath came like a hiss through his clenched teeth. No wonder — Montborne had his shoulder joint half dislocated. My own joints ached with memory; Westifer used to try that one on me, until I learned some sufficiently nasty countermoves. Montborne half-lifted, half-dragged Terris, searching for the leverage that would get him up on his toes and carrying his own weight. An inch or two closer now and they’d be in reach...
I shifted my weight just a fraction, and beyond the two men, something came into my field of vision — something glimmering a few inches inward from the scabby black wall. A twist of the grayish opalescent light, like a Ridge weirdie and yet much more intense. Terris’s forgotten door? A door that he was trying to maneuver Montborne through?
No time to think. I launched myself with every bit of power in me and rammed one shoulder into Montborne’s back just level with his short ribs. His breath went out of him hard; he staggered and half-dropped Terris.
The force of my charge carried us all forward, out of the grayish light of the Starhall cellar and through a momentary flash of green. I fell to my knees and sent Terris and Montborne sprawling.
The next moment, I was squinting up at a sky sullen with thickly layered clouds. Stale, metallic-tasting air stung my eyes and burned my windpipe. After the Northlight and those green tunnels, I thought nothing could ever surprise me again. But this place...
At our feet lay a jumble of blackened and splintered bones and tattered cloth. Some of the bones looked human. Around us stretched a broad, weather-eaten platform, piled high with rubble. One side, a tangle of corroded metal and rock, looked like the remains of a once-majestic tower. The other three sides opened to a scooped-out valley, its floor strewn with steaming, rust-colored pools and twisted bushes. I’d never seen anything like that foul-colored water or the clumps of vegetation scattered across the streaked, red-purple soil. Squinting at the leaden sky, I found no trace of brightness where the sun might be. If anything lived, it kept itself well hid. For now, anyway.
I picked myself up. “Some door.”
Terris knelt beside the bones. The fabric looked as if it had once been green, now bleached almost colorless. It shredded as he reached into the pile. He pulled free a fragment, thin and curved, of a human skull. The bone showed distinct tooth marks, but from what kind of animal, I couldn’t tell.
Something glinted among the slender gray-black finger bones. I pointed, and Terris lifted out a ring. He drew in his breath sharply as he brushed away the powdery silt. He pocketed the ring and got to his feet.
Montborne’s skin looked smooth and fine and dead like beeswax, but sweat beaded his forehead and white ringed his eyes. His voice came in a rasping whisper. “Is this hell?”
Terris’s eyes scanned the desolate horizon, then flickered back to the general’s face. “Hell? Yes, in a way. One that we must never be allowed to repeat.”