Empire of Ivory (36 page)

them, a succession of red-brown sands and arid scrubland,

and great white salt pans barren of all life. Their course

continued north-east, bearing them still farther inland and

away from the coast; their thin hopes of escape or rescue

wasting away entirely.

At last they left behind the wastelands, and the desert

yielded to milder scenery of green trees and yellow ground

overgrown with thick grasses; late in the morning, the

belly of the dragon rumbled loud above them with his roar

of greeting: answered momentarily with several voices from

up ahead, and they came abruptly into view of an

astonishing prospect: a vast moving herd of elephants,

creeping slowly across the savannah as they tore at the

shrubs and low-hanging branches in their path, and enduring

with perfect docility the supervision of two dragons and

some thirty men, who ambled along comfortably behind, only

a few lengths short of the rear of the herd.

The herdsmen carried long sticks with dangling rattles, by

which means they kept the herd from turning back; a little

farther along, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile into the

wreckage the herd had left behind, women worked busily,

spreading great bushels of red-stained manure and planting

young shrubs: they sang as they worked, rhythmically.

The prisoners were let down. Laurence almost was distracted

from the water-bag for staring at the fat, sluggish

creatures, larger than any he had ever heard bragged of. He

had visited India twice, as a naval officer, and once seen

an impressive old creature carrying a native potentate and

his retinue upon its head, some six tons in weight. The

most impressive here would have he guessed outweighed that

one by half again, and rivaled Nitidus or Dulcia in size,

with great ivory tusks jutting out like spears some three

feet beyond its head. Another of the behemoths put its head

down against a young tree, of no mean size, and with a

groaning implacable push brought it crashing to the ground;

pleased with its success, the elephant ambled lazily down

its length, to devour at leisure the tender shoots from the

crown.

After some little conversation with their captors, the

herd-dragons went aloft and chivvied away a few of the

beasts from the main body of the herd: older animals, by

the length of their tusks, without young. These having been

coaxed downwind and behind the line of herdsmen, Kefentse

and the two other dragons fell upon them skillfully: a

single piercing of talons slew the creatures, before they

could make any outcry which might have distressed the rest.

The dragons made their repast greedily, murmuring with

satisfaction, as might a contented gentleman over his

pleasing dinner; when they were done, the hyenas crept out

of the grass to deal with the bloody remains, and cackled

all through the night.

Throughout the next two days, they were scarcely an hour

aloft without sight of some other dragons, calling

greetings from afar; more villages flashed past beneath

them, and occasionally some small fortification with walls

of clay and rock, until in the distance they glimpsed a

tremendous plume of smoke rising, like a great grass-fire,

and a thin silvery line winding away over the earth.

"Mosi oa Tunya," Mrs. Erasmus had told them, was the name

of their destination, meaning smoke that thunders; and a

low and continuous roaring built higher around them as

Kefentse angled directly towards the plume.

The narrow shining line upon the earth resolved itself

swiftly into a river of great immensity: slow and very

broad, fractured into many smaller streams, all winding

together past rocks and small grassy islets towards a

narrow crack in the earth like an eggshell broken down the

middle, where the river suddenly boiled up and plunged into

the thunder of a waterfall more vast than anything Laurence

might have conceived, the gorges of its descent so full of

white-plumed spray that its base could not be seen.

Into these narrow gorges, which seemed barely wide enough

for him to go abreast, Kefentse dived at speed, pocket

rainbows gleaming in puddles collected upon his hide

through the first clouds of steam. Pressed hard up against

the netting, Laurence wiped water from his face and oneweek's beard, and palmed it away from the hollows of his

eyes, squinting as they broke through into a widening

canyon.

The lower slopes were thickly forested, a jewel-green

tangle of tropical growth reaching some halfway up the

walls, where abruptly the vegetation ended and the cliff

faces rose sheer and smooth to the plain above, gleaming

like polished marble and pockmarked only by the gaping

holes of caverns. And then Laurence realized he was not

looking at caverns, but at great carved archways, mouths

for vaulted halls which penetrated deep within the

mountain-side. The cliff walls did not gleam like polished

marble; they were polished marble, or as good as: a smooth

speckled stone, with quantities of ivory and gold inlaid

directly into the rock in fantastical pattern.

Façades were carved and sculpted around the openings,

ornamented gorgeously in vivid color and odd abstract

patterns, and towering more vast than Westminster or St.

Paul's, the only and inadequate measures of comparison

which Laurence possessed. Narrow stairs, their railings

carved of stone and smoothed by the water-spray, climbed

between the archways to give the perspective: five ordinary

town-houses, laid foundation-to-roof atop one another,

might have approximated the heights of the largest.

Kefentse was going at a lazy speed now, the better to avoid

collision: the gorge was full of dragons. Dragons flew back

and forth busily among the halls, some carrying baskets or

bundles, some carrying men on their backs; dragons lay

sleeping upon the carved ledges, tails drooping downward

from the mouths. Upon the stairways and in the halls, men

and women stood talking or at labor, dressed in animalskins or wrapped cloth garments of dazzling-bright colors,

indigo and red and yellow ochre against their dark brown

skin, many with elaborate chains of gold; and softly

running above the sounds of all their mingled speech came

the unending voice of the water.

Chapter 11

KEFENTSE DEPOSITED THEM rudely within one of the smaller

caverns dug into the face of the rock: he could not fit

inside himself, but only balanced upon the lip of the cave

while the netting was undone. They were shaken out onto the

floor in a heap, still tied up, and he flew at once away,

taking poor Mrs. Erasmus with him, and abandoning them to

work themselves loose. There was no sharp edge to help

them; the cavern walls were smoothed. Dyer and Roland and

Tooke managed eventually to squirm their smaller hands out

of their bindings, and began to help untie the others.

Thirty of them left all together, from four crews. They

were not crowded, nor could their circumstances be called

cruel; the floor was strewn liberally with dry straw to

soften the hard rock, and despite the lingering day's heat

outside, the chamber remained cool and pleasant. A

necessary-pit was carved out of the stone at the back of

the chamber; it must surely have connected with a drainage

channel somewhere beneath, but the opening was small, and

drilled through solid rock: there was no way to get to it.

There was a small pool also, in the back, refreshed

continuously from a trickling channel and waist-deep on a

man, large enough to swim across a few strokes: they would

by no means die of thirst.

It was a strange prison, with neither guard nor bars upon

the door, but as impregnable as any fortress; there were

none of the carved steps leading to their cavern, and

nothing but the yawning gorge beneath. The scale of the

whole, the carved and gothic ceiling vaulting overhead,

would have made a comfortable stall for a small dragon; it

ought to have seemed an airy and spacious environment, but

had the effect of making them feel rather Lilliputian than

comfortable, children wandering in a giant's house, with

their numbers so painfully small and dwindled.

Dorset was alive, with a terrible bruising down along the

side of his face, and he pressed his hand now and again to

his side, as if his ribs or his breathing pained him. "Mr.

Pratt is dead, Captain," he said. "I am very sorry to be

sure: he tried to stand before Mrs. Erasmus, and the beast

carved him to the hip," a grievous loss, the smith's quiet

capability no less than his immense strength.

There was no way to be certain of the full extent of their

losses: Hobbes killed before their eyes, and Laurence had

seen Chenery's midwingman Hyatt dead; Chenery's lieutenant

Libbley remembered the surgeon Waley fallen also; but

another dozen at least had been heaved out after that first

night, the rest of them too sick and dazed to recognize in

dim lighting, and more had been left dead upon the field;

others still, they hoped, had slipped away in the general

confusion, to leave at least some faint direction behind.

There was no-one who had seen Warren.

"But I hope to God that Sutton will have the sense to turn

back straightaway for the Cape," Harcourt said. "No-one

could ever conceive we had been brought so far; they will

wear themselves to rags with fretting, and never find a

trace: we must find some way to get them word, at least.

Those men knew something about guns, did you notice? There

must be some trade, some merchants must be tempted to come:

more ivory than they know what to do with, when they build

their walls out of the stuff."

They ventured cautiously to the edge of the cavern-mouth to

look out again into the gorges. The first impression of

immensity and splendor was not to be undone, but the degree

perhaps fell off a little here, farther from the falls and

near the end of the inhabited portion of the gorges; the

façade of their own prison was plain rock, although the

native cliff wall had been polished to a smoothness that

would have defied a monkey to climb.

Chenery bent down over the ledge and rubbed his hand over

the wall, as far down as he could reach, and came up

discouraged. "Not a finger-hold to be had: we are not going

anywhere, until we manage to sprout wings of our own."

"Then we had better rest, while we may," Harcourt said, in

practical tones, "and if you gentlemen will be so good as

to give me your backs, I am going to bathe."

They were roused up early not by any attentions paid to

them, for there were none, but by a dreadful noise which

could most easily be compared to a swarm of horse-flies in

continuous agitation. The sun had not yet penetrated into

the twisting canyons, though the sky above was the

thorough-going blue of mid-morning, and a faint glaze of

mist yet clung to the smooth rock near the cavern mouth.

Across the gorge, a pair of dragons were engaged in a

peculiar exercise, flying back and forth hauling

alternately upon what looked to be a thick grey hawser

coiled about and passed through the end of a tremendous

iron shaft, spinning it steadily. The other end of the

shaft was plunged into the depths of a cavern only

partially hollowed-out, and from here issued the malevolent

buzzing. Dust and chalky powder blew out in great gusts,

speckling the dragons' hides so they were coated thickly

ochre; occasionally one or the other would turn his head

and sneeze powerfully, without ever losing the rhythm.

A great cracking noise heralded a leap forward: loose

pebbles and great stones came spilling from the mouth of

the hall into a large sack stretched out upon a frame to

catch them. The dragons paused in their labor, and withdrew

the enormous drill; one clung on to the rough, unpolished

cliff, holding the mechanism suspended, while the other

perched upon the ledge and scraped out the boulders and

loose rock which had shattered. A third dragon, smaller,

came winging down the gorge when the operation was

complete; he carried away the laden sack, to let the pair

resume.

While this work proceeded, almost directly above them

another cavern, already sunk deep within the hillside,

crawled with human masons finishing the rough work, the

distant musical plink-plink of tapping hammers on the rock

drifting across the divide; each man bringing his own

discards to the cave-mouth as they smoothed down the walls.

They were very industrious all the morning; then mid-day

arriving they quitted their work. Their tools were heaped

inside the cavern, the vast drill also; and the dragons

flying up collected the men, who without any harness leapt

with casual fearlessness onto the dragon's backs, wings,

limbs, and clapped on to the handful of woven straps, or