FOR A MOMENT, after the afreet had vanished, Dewi and Husam stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. Black despair invaded them both. They had played into the enemy’s hands. The battle would be joined, the Sorcerer emerge into the open—and they would not be there.
After a while, Husam growled, “Well, it’s time to put on our rat’s heads, little heart. We will not stay here. We will escape.”
Dewi stared at him. She felt numb. “Oh, Husam, how can we…” she began wearily, but he shook his head.
“Don’t say it, or you will become as spellbound by despair as the afreet and its master want. Now, let’s check that this exit really is blocked.”
“It is,” said Dewi, but Husam was already limping up the passageway, rushlight in hand. She did not follow him. What was the good of it? She already knew they were sealed into this place that would be their tomb—whether from hunger or thirst, exhaustion, or what the afreet had spoken of, it made little difference. She looked at the painted wall. Was it her imagination, or did the rock bulge out just a little more? Her breath fluttered coldly in her throat. The oldest thing reigns at the darkest part of the night. As she stared, the painted lines of the great lizard began to flex—just a tiny ripple of movement, a slight shudder in the rock, but unmistakable.
She tried to tell herself that any form of dying was as bad as another, though she knew it wasn’t so. She held on tightly to her father’s talisman. It might not work in this place, but it was a tiny shred of comfort, a faint link to her father and to the world above, which she would never see again. Once more, she tried to call to Bupatihutan in her mind, but there was no answer, no vision, nothing but the tiger’s claw lying senseless and nerveless in her hand.
Husam returned. His face was strained but his tone was light: “Well, I tried every name, every magic formula I could think of, and it hasn’t budged. I don’t think we can get out that way.”
Dewi, her voice choked with fear, said, “We can’t get out any way, Husam. We’re doomed. Forgive me, Husam, for having dragged you into this. Forgive me. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that we had a chance. I’m a fool.”
“Ah, don’t carry on so—there is nothing to forgive,” said Husam just as lightly as before. “Besides, we’re getting out. We’re survivors, remember?” He began walking around the cave, running his hands carefully, slowly, over the rocky walls.
“I watched a film once,” he said conversationally, “and there was a secret entrance to a cave in a wall. There was a kind of hidden lever you could lift, and the whole of the wall opened up.”
“A film!” said Dewi, taken aback.
“You could help me, little heart,” said Husam. He came over to her and touched her on the shoulder. “Come on, we should try and cover every centimeter of this cave. The lever could be anywhere.”
Dewi’s heart sank. Husam was clutching at straws. She shot a glance at the painted wall. The powerful strokes of black paint that made up the huge lizard were definitely more fluid, more…alive. One of the lizard’s eyes opened. Her blood turned to ice; her bones seemed to lose their hardness. She managed to croak, “Husam…Husam…”
“What is it?” he said, and then he turned, and saw it. His hair stood up on end, sticking out stiffly like bits of wire. The lizard opened its other eye. Those eyes were dark, fathomless, without reflection or shadow, deep and dense as stones. They stared straight at Dewi and Husam.
Dewi felt the power of that stare rushing through her frozen bloodstream, throbbing into her terrified heart. And then it seemed to her that the throbbings became—not words exactly, but something older, more primitive, more elemental. She understood them as you understand words you hear in a dream but could never repeat out loud. “Child,” throbbed the wordless voice. “Come. Come, we will help you. Come.”
Dewi stared into the black lizard eyes and understood. Awe and hope surged through her. She put out a hand to Husam, who took it in his own. In the other hand, she held the tiger’s claw tightly. She made a prayer, deep inside herself. And then she said, very quietly, “We have to come to it, Husam. It is calling us. It will help us. We have to trust it. We must.”
Husam was ashy gray, his eyes wide and staring. But he walked forward with Dewi, toward the painted wall, which was now bulging and stretching with the movements of the massive beast. They reached it, and Dewi held out a hand to it. Instantly, the lines of the ancient painting seemed to gather together, as the great lizard burst from the wall and sprang at them. A vast darkness roared at them, an enormous jumble of energy, a huge gathering of force that swept them up, the cave vanishing into a pinprick of light that soon winked out and disappeared.
They were in the dark. The kind of dark you can only find underground: a dark so thick that not only does your hand disappear in front of you, you can hardly imagine it being there at all. Dewi’s whole body had vanished from her sight, as had Husam’s. It was utterly, utterly silent. She still clutched the tiger’s claw in one hand.
“Husam,” Dewi whispered, and her voice sounded loud in her ears.
For a moment, there was nothing. Then suddenly his voice came, curiously flat and muffled. “I’m here.” She could not tell where it had come from. She groped around, trying to feel if he was near her, but she could feel nothing apart from a smooth, rather leathery surface.
“Dewi, where have you taken us to this time?” His voice, tinged with humor, came to her, suddenly closer.
She started. “I don’t know.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, a cry echoed by Dewi. They had found each other’s hands.
“Little heart, I am glad to find you.” The old executioner’s knobbly, scarred fingers gently touched Dewi’s soft skin. “Now, what will we do?”
“The lizard-spirit might help us again,” said Dewi.
“But we can’t see anything, let alone the painting…perhaps we’re in the picture itself, in the creature’s belly?” said Husam.
“You know,” said Dewi with a funny little catch in her voice, “perhaps you’re right.” She groped around, trying to find the soft leathery thing again. She touched a hand to it gently. Nothing happened at first, no throbbing, no hissing; but it seemed to her that in her heart, a rhythm that was not hers began to beat. She bit her lip, trying hard not to be frightened, and concentrated on sending out images from her heart into the darkness around them. Please…help…light.
No reply. No sound. Yet…was the dark growing less dark? Was it graying, softening at the corners? Was that…could she begin to see vague shapes, like things seen in a mist? It wasn’t her imagination. It was real, it was happening! She saw Husam slowly taking form, then herself. She could see his hand. She could see hers!
“Well, little heart,” said Husam rather shakily, “I did begin to wonder if I really existed at all. Bless the Light! I am glad to see my solid flesh again. I would not like to be a ghost.”
“No,” said Dewi, laughing a little, relieved and thrilled also to see her own solid self. She had not wanted to say anything, or acknowledge it even to herself, but she had wondered if they were in the blank interspace between life and death—in the shadowlands that Senopati had spoken of.
“It’s a tunnel,” said Husam, looking around. “We’re in a tunnel.”
It was a large, rather unpleasant tunnel, with a low roof and an old, musty, unused smell. But it was a tunnel with a definite light at its end, in the distance, a tunnel that must lead out, into the light of day. Dewi could have cried with happiness.
“There are niches here,” said Husam, peering into the gloom, “and they have…oh…” He broke off suddenly, and Dewi, peering in the same direction, felt cold all over. In the niche there was a low white stone shelf, and on that shelf was a person—or rather, the remains of what had once been a person. It was a bag of skin, a boneless mummy, lying on its back with flat, leathery arms drawn up over its chest, its sightless eyes staring up, its legs crossed at the ankles. It was clothed in a brown robe with the remains of fur clinging to the edge. Into its dry, straight hair, which hung down the sides of its dry, dead, boneless face, were woven shells, beads of glass, and delicate strands of gold. And under its back, splaying out from its shoulders, were strange cloth shapes, like wings or sails. These were rather moldy and ragged, but the shapes were still clear enough.
Dewi made a tiny sound and took a step back. Husam said, in a voice full of awe and fear, “She’s not alone.”
And he was right, as the light slowly revealed to Dewi. There was not one niche, but many. It was a tunnel of the dead, a village of ghosts, the House of Dust itself.
“We were sitting by that one,” said Husam, nodding toward the first mummy; and then Dewi realized what it was she had touched when they were in the darkness. A sickness rose up in her throat; a terror and horror washed over her like a great wave. And then the wave had rolled over her and gone, leaving in its place a sensation of sad peace, a feeling such as she had known at Chandi Maya, when she had spoken with Senopati. There was nothing to be afraid of here; this was a place of rest. These people had once lived and breathed like herself.
It was their spirits who had helped her and Husam, she thought. The lizard on the wall in the cave had probably been these people’s spirit guide. Perhaps they had worshipped it, down in the depths of the underground, and had come to be buried here, in the tunnel? She had heard about such things at school, about the people who had lived in Jayangan long, long ago, before the island was called that, before Senopati’s people had come, before even the forging of the first kris. She looked back at the mummies now and felt gratitude, and gentleness, and even love.
“We thank you, O ancient guardians of the dark,” she said quietly, very quietly. “We thank you for your kindness and your protection. We will honor your memory every day.”
The throbbing had started again, the gentle purring and humming. And in it, Dewi felt thoughts being sent to her, over the darkness of centuries, the threads of millennia. “Child…you good…we help you…but you not tell…not tell…child…bless child.”
“I won’t tell,” said Dewi, tears in her eyes. “I will never tell anyone of what I have seen here. And neither will my friend. You will stay undisturbed forever. And I thank you for your blessing. I only hope I am worthy of it.”
“Of course you are,” said Husam, speaking suddenly. “Of course you are—or they would never have helped us.” He inclined his head and whispered, “Old Ones, I am not of your land. But I honor you too.”
There was silence in the tunnel. But it was a silence that spoke of quiet gladness; a sigh of peace and waiting, as if a dreamer had turned over in a long sleep.