33

The Nighting Vine

1891, July 1: 3-Hour 12

The wails of pain and the gasping cries

Left me speechless, mindless, dumb.

After so many years of hearing her song

I grew hardened and strong and numb.

The sound I feared and the grief I fled

eclipsed my life’s whole meaning.

And now I want only to hear it again

To recall when I yet had feeling.

—“The Lachrima’s Lament,” Verse 2

WHEN THE GUARDS led Sophia back to the dungeon, she found to her surprise that the prisoners were no longer in the pit. They sat huddled around one of the clay-pot fires that dotted the floor. The men withdrew without a word, locking the heavy door. Only when Shadrack put his arms around her did Sophia realize that they were all soaking wet. Veressa and Martin sat shivering with cold. Theo stood near the fire trying to dry his cape. Calixta was wretchedly shaking out her hair.

“Are you all right?” Shadrack asked her anxiously.

“What happened?” she asked in reply.

“The pit we were in flooded. It was a long time before the guards heard us calling,” Shadrack said ruefully. “But that doesn’t matter. Are you all right? What did she want?”

Sophia seemed hardly to hear him. “So now they’ve left you here? We’re alone?”

“Did you see Blanca?” he pressed. “What did she ask of you?”

“She wanted me to persuade you,” she said, not looking at him but scanning the enormous chamber, “to change the carta mayor.”

“Sophia,” Shadrack said, taking her by the shoulders, “what is it? Your mind is elsewhere—what are you looking for?”

“The entryway. When we first came in earlier, I saw it—there was an opening on the other side of the room. If they left us here—”

“It is not an exit,” Veressa said wearily. “It leads to the labyrinth—a maze of ruined passages. They only left us here because they know we would never go in. Father and I have been in the entrance to take soil samples. No one has gone beyond that point since the last court cartologer”—and here she paused— “vanished attempting to map it.”

“I knew it!” Sophia cried, to everyone’s surprise. She ran to the nearest wall, where the pale vines that grew in the corridor and lined the dungeon were faintly luminous in the firelight. “It’s here, Shadrack!” she burst out, unable to contain her excitement. “I saw it through the glass map when Blanca held it up. Before—when she first took it from my pack.”

Shadrack shook his head uncomprehendingly. “What is here, Soph? What do you mean?”

“I saw them through the Tracing Glass,” she said impatiently. “These vines—they’re not just vines—they’re a map.”

At this, the wet prisoners still sitting by the fire rose and joined her at the wall. Shadrack examined the vines with amazement. “Are you sure?” he said slowly.

“I’m sure. Martin,” she asked, “do you know what kind of plant this is?”

He shook his head. “It has a popular name—Nighting Vine—but I have never been able to identify its origins. The vine is exceedingly rare and only grows underground.”

Veressa, standing beside Shadrack, examined the pale leaves critically. “It has no inscription, no legend of any kind. It may be the beginnings of a map, not yet full grown.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Shadrack said. “Or, if it is a map, then it is beyond my ability to read.” He let the vine drop and shook his head regretfully. “I would have no idea how to—”

“But it is not on the leaves,” Sophia cut in. “It is the whole plant. Look! Do you see how here there is one vine growing out of the floor, and against the far wall there is another? There, by the doorway, is a third. And all of them are identical!”

“Identical how?” Veressa asked, as she compared the three.

“The pattern of how they grow on the wall—the vines spread out in the exact same way, with the same twists and turns. Like a map,” Sophia triumphantly finished.

As she spoke, her listeners stood transfixed. The pale creeper, so delicate in appearance and yet so hardy in its growth against the dank stone, fanned out across the wall in hundreds of thin tendrils. The pattern was dense, making it hardly possible to determine whether they were truly similar, and yet if one followed a single route along the vine it became evident that the plants were, in fact, identical. “How on earth did you notice?” Veressa exclaimed, running her hand admiringly across the wall. “They are incredibly complex.”

Shadrack laughed with astonished delight. “It’s your artist’s eye, Soph,” he cried, taking her by the shoulders. “Your artist’s eye!” She smiled as he released her. And Theo, winking, caught Sophia’s eye and snapped his fingers into a little handgun of approval.

“And you think this is a map to the labyrinth?” Veressa asked, deferring to Sophia.

“Couldn’t it be? I don’t know how or why, but I think the maps to the labyrinth grow from the labyrinth itself.”

“Marvelous—just marvelous,” Martin whispered, lovingly tracing his finger along the winding vine.

“But where is the exit?” Veressa continued. “The vine leads to nothing but itself.”

“I can’t be sure,” Sophia admitted, “but look—look at these,” she said, pointing to three white flowers with fragile petals. “They grow away from the wall—upward. Don’t you think these might be three ways out of the labyrinth?”

The others regarded the nighting vine in silence. “It’s impossible to know for certain,” Shadrack said pensively, running a hand through his hair.

Sophia hurriedly retrieved her notebook. “If we can draw it,” she said, “then we’ll have a map to the labyrinth.”

“It will be a great risk.”

“Assuredly,” Veressa agreed, “but I see no better option. We have no other means of escape, and I doubt we have much time—perhaps a day.”

“It is far more satisfying an option than waiting here,” Burr put in, and Calixta nodded.

Shadrack took a deep breath. “Then we must hurry.”

—4-Hour 02: Drawing the Nighting Vine—

ALMOST AN HOUR later, Sophia, Veressa, and Shadrack were still drawing the nighting vine, each creating a copy in the hope that having duplicates would correct any discrepancies. Sophia’s eyes ached from concentrating in the poor firelight as she penciled in the last few lines and began checking the map. “You know,” she said softly to Theo, “you’d be pleased. I lied to Blanca. It was easy.”

Theo lay on his stomach and he turned to face her. “What did I tell you?” He smiled. “Comes in handy, doesn’t it?”

“I told her I’d try to persuade Shadrack to help her.”

He shook his head in mock dismay. “Next you’ll be lying to me. I’ll have to watch out from now on.”

Sophia laughed. She had checked her map twice; Veressa and Shadrack were still working. Setting her paper down on her pack, she closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees. She was dressed once again in her own clothes and her comfortable boots, having changed while Calixta held up her cloak like a screen. Theo had followed suit. They were the only two in dry clothes.

“Hey,” Theo said, holding up his bandaged hand. “Do you still have that sewing box? This is falling off.”

“I did keep it,” Sophia said, opening her eyes, “but it’s not here anymore.” She had found their clothing, spare bandages, Shadrack’s atlas, her pencils, and her notebook when she opened the pack Blanca had returned to her. But the sewing box was gone. “And it was so beautiful, too.” There was nothing she could use. Then something occurred to her, and she reached into her pocket for the spool of silver thread that Mrs. Clay had given her.

“Perfect,” Theo said when he saw it, holding out his hand.

As Sophia wound the silver thread over the bandage to hold it in place, her thoughts traveled elsewhere. There was no way of knowing whether she might see Mrs. Clay again, just as there was no way of Mrs. Clay’s knowing, when she gave Sophia the silver thread, that it would someday serve such an unlikely purpose. Is this what I was meant to use it for? she asked the Fates. No one knew what the Fates had planned; the future was truly inscrutable. As she tied the thread securely around Theo’s wrist, the thought gave her an unexpected surge of hope. Nothing is set in stone. The glaciers aren’t here yet.

Shadrack and Veressa had finished, and as they hastily compared their maps, Burr made two torches from pieces of his torn shirt affixed to foot-long shards of glass from the pit. “We must hurry,” Martin said anxiously, “before the guards return.”

“We are hurrying, Father.” Veressa looked at Sophia’s drawing of the nighting vine. “But we can’t afford to get lost; we must be certain of the maps before we set out.”

Burr handed a torch to Calixta. “This is the best we can do. We may burn through every scrap of our clothing before we make our way out.”

“Burn your own clothes,” Calixta muttered. “You’re certainly not burning mine.”

—4-Hour 17: Entering the Labyrinth—

AS A GROUP they passed, with faintly echoing footsteps, across the floor of the underground chamber. The fires flickered ominously, and smoke spiraled upward toward the blackened ceiling. When they reached the dark entryway at the far end, the cold air of the labyrinth reached out for them. They stood silently for a moment. “May we soon see daylight,” Veressa said, taking a deep breath.

She walked in front with her map, illuminated by Calixta’s torch, followed by Theo, Martin, and Sophia; Shadrack and Burr, with map and torch, brought up the rear. The muddy floor led to a long, straight passageway cut directly into the stone. It was clear that it had not been used in some time. Martin had to walk carefully to avoid slipping, and after a few steps he placed his hand on Theo’s shoulder to steady himself.

They reached a set of steps that led deeper underground. “Here is the first turn,” Veressa said as they reached the base of the steps, “you agree with me that we go left, Shadrack? Sophia?”

They had traced the simplest route through the labyrinth, and if Sophia’s theory was correct, then they had only to follow it to find their way out. The tunnel Veressa led them into was much narrower than the first, and the heavy stones on either side were cold to the touch. An atmosphere of chilled humidity replaced the smoky air of the prison cavern.

“This one is so much smaller,” Sophia said to Martin

“It’s what makes the tunnels so confusing,” he replied with effort. “The few soil samples I did take confirmed that they were made in many different Ages. There are various networks, some of which were deliberately integrated by human hands, others of which appear to connect entirely by chance. So, you see, it is a maze across many Ages.”

“How many?”

“No one knows. Maybe four, maybe four hundred. I myself have never been past the entryway.”

Step after step, tunnel after tunnel, they wormed their way through the dark labyrinth. It was almost as if they were walking in place—so much so that Sophia found time slipping away from her. She began counting her paces in order to keep track, and as she did, she felt mounting disbelief at how far the maze extended. As she reached two hundred and seventy paces, the air suddenly grew warmer, and someone at the front of the line exclaimed in surprise. “What have you found?” asked Shadrack.

“A crypt of some kind,” Veressa replied, waiting for the others to join her.

They had reached a low room whose stone floor was covered with indecipherable chiseled writing. The niches in the walls looked like shelves, and as Burr and Calixta held their torches aloft, Sophia saw bundles of crumbling cloth. “Burr!” Calixta exclaimed. A heavy sword lay over one of the bundles. She took it up at once and made an experimental pass. “Heavy, but perfectly effective. Thank you, friend,” Calixta murmured to the cloth bundle. Sophia gripped the silver thread in her pocket, thanking the Fates.

“There must be more.” Burr held his torch up to the other niches.

As they searched the crypt, Sophia heard a faint sound, like the distant rumble of footsteps. “Did anyone hear that?”

“Might be left over from the flash flood,” Martin said. “There will be a fair amount of readjustment going on underground.” At that moment, Burr found another sword. He eagerly claimed it, and they left the low chamber.

Beyond the crypt was a circular room with five arched entryways. Veressa checked her drawing and followed the second tunnel on the right into a narrow passage with rotting wooden floorboards. Sophia recommenced counting her steps as she watched Martin’s shoes before her. At the one hundred mark, she noticed the botanist furtively take his hand from his pocket and drop something.

“What are you doing, Martin?” Sophia asked quietly.

“Just a little experiment, dear.” She could not see his face but she imagined him winking at her. “I have seeds in my pockets.”

She was contemplating with some trepidation what kind of experiment Martin intended to perform when there was a sudden exclamation from Veressa. They had reached a dead end.

“We’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Veressa said worriedly, peering at her map. Shadrack huddled with her and they compared routes. “I thought we were here.” She pointed at her paper. “Sophia?”

Sophia joined them, holding her map up to the torchlight. “We must have turned off this way by mistake,” Shadrack said, tracing downward.

“Let’s turn back, then.” Veressa’s voice was tense with frustration. “You may as well go in front for a while.”

“Very well,” he agreed, taking up the map.

They retraced their steps along two passageways, and Shadrack led them through a low tunnel whose floor curved like the inside of a pipe. Sophia counted her paces as they traveled deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. The air around them was surprisingly varied—dry and warm in some places, cold and damp in others—but the darkness remained absolute. The nighting vine grew in fitful bursts along the labyrinth walls. Climbing stubbornly over broken stones and through narrow openings, the pale vine’s map grew stunted and distorted.

All conversation slowly died away, and they trudged on in silence. Their footsteps and weary breathing transformed as they walked, amplifying in the high caverns and shrinking down to muffled rasps in the narrow corridors. The tunnels seemed to wind onward interminably, and still the labyrinth led them deeper. They paused several times so that Shadrack could consult the map, and as they stopped a fifth time, Sophia heard the sound again. “Does anyone hear that?” she asked. “It—it sounds like people running.”

“I hear it, too,” Veressa replied from behind her. “But it’s not people. It’s running water.”

Sophia shook her head, unconvinced, but said nothing. The stone walls narrowed almost to the width of Burr’s shoulders, and then, to her surprise, a break in the wall transformed the passageway. The pockmarked stone wall gave way to smooth bricks of greenish-gray, and the air felt less stale. “This is a different Age altogether,” Martin muttered, without taking his hand from Theo’s shoulder. They walked along the corridor for nearly two hundred paces, winding right repeatedly as the tunnels forked.

The sound Sophia had heard was replaced by the unmistakable sound of running water. Veressa must be right, Sophia thought. I was only hearing the water.

“Watch your step!” Shadrack called back. Sophia watched as each person before her dropped out of sight, and she realized, as Theo crouched abruptly, that they were passing through an opening in the floor. Martin eased himself into the hole and Sophia followed. Calixta handed her torch through and then jumped down. Sophia looked around, taking in the strange walls. Cut from smooth, white stone tinged with green, they had shallow depressions with curious adornments—statues calcified and stained from their long entombment. Shadrack, already leading the way along the corridor, climbed a short flight of steps through a curved archway and disappeared.

Sophia heard exclamations from those at the front of the line, and she waited impatiently. The air around them changed yet again, becoming warm and humid with a heavy, earthy smell. Then Martin stumbled out of the way ahead of her, and she found herself in a vast chamber as large as the palace dungeon. But the room had obviously never been a dungeon. As Burr walked tentatively forward with his torch, pieces of it came into view. The curved walls, where the nighting vine grew unencumbered, climbed two or three stories high. Pale statues of standing figures—men and women with long, obscured faces—stood in the walls’ niches and at intervals along a staircase that crossed the room at a diagonal. A rush of clear water ran down the steps, vanishing into a dark tunnel.

Sophia looked around her in amazement. There could be no doubt. The room was not a room at all—it was an underground garden. Only the nighting vine survived, but stone walkways and pale urns across the dirt floor outlined where other plants had once grown. Martin, standing next to her, bent down to take a pinch of soil between his fingertips. His voice was hushed and full of wonder. “I believe we are in the ruins of a lost Age!”