The Rivers of Zadaa (21 page)

I thought I caught a small tear forming in Saangi's eye. Truth was, she might not see Loor again. Not if we got caught in the middle of this war. My words didn't comfort her in the slightest. They sounded kind of hollow to me, too.

“Pendragon,” Saangi said, “I may be short in my manner, but I want you to know that I believe in you. If there is a chance of stopping this war, you and Loor will find it.”

“Thanks for that, Saangi,” I said. “And for everything.”

I gave Alder a quick touch on the shoulder. I didn't want to wake him. He needed the sleep. I wished he were coming with us.

“Let's go,” I said.

We were soon jogging through the dark, rainy streets of Xhaxhu, headed for the building that would lead us down into the depths of the Rokador tunnel system, near the flume. It was a familiar route. Loor didn't have to direct me. We found the building, entered the doorway, and descended down the spiraling ramp that brought us into the underground. Once we were below, the concept of day and night went away. The lighting was always the same. The domes embedded in the walls gave off the same, soft yellow light whether it was midday or midnight. We didn't stop to talk until we had walked through the abandoned water-control station, and emerged into the vast chamber that used to hold the raging river. Even with all the rain, there was only a small bit of water trickling along the dry riverbed. I had to admit, this looked bad for the Rokador. I was now convinced that they really were playing games with the water.

“Do we have a plan?” I asked Loor.

She took out the map that Bokka had given us. I took another look at the complicated labyrinth of tunnels and the route marked in red.

“What are those?” I asked, pointing to several unique sketches that showed up every so often along the route. They were all different. Some were slashes across the tunnels. Others showed what looked like small structures off to the side.

“I do not know,” Loor answered. “But we will find out.”

“Which way?” I asked.

“Bokka's route begins at the crossroads,” she said. “We must go through those large doors to begin our journey.”

“So right off the bat, we've got to go through a team of Tiggen guards who were assigned to make sure nobody goes through those doors because there is a major water transfer-control machine on the other side?”

“Yes.”

“Just checking.”

We started off, retracing the route that Bokka had led us on when we first went to the crossroads. I got confused pretty quickly. There were many turns and options. But Loor knew where she was going. I followed as if I did too.

“If we meet with resistance,” Loor said, “listen for my commands.”

“No problem, you're the pro,” I said.

I was actually feeling pretty confident. When we were attacked by the Tiggen guards before, I did all right. I was getting more used to Osa's stave, so I felt sure I could put a little more “oomph” behind it this time. On the other hand, there wasn't much we could do to defend ourselves if that assassin were there and he started shooting those steel arrows. We had to watch out for that dude. In a few minutes we arrived at the final tunnel that opened out into the large cavern called the crossroads. My heart sank when I saw that there were three Tiggen guards in front of the door. The road to Kidik was through those guys, and the doors they were guarding. The only good news was that the guy with the crossbow was nowhere to be seen.

“They are not alert,” Loor whispered.

“How do you know that?” I whispered back.

“From the way they are standing,” she answered. “Either they have been on duty for a long time, or they do not believe they will be attacked. Possibly both.”

“Tell me what to do,” I said.

“Fight,” she said, and took off running for the guards.

Just like that. No plan. No sneaking around. No coordination. No signals. Just an all-out, frontal attack. I pulled out my stave and followed.

I shouldn't have doubted Loor. She actually did have a plan, and it was the only one possible. The crossroads was a large, empty cavern with nothing but the two huge wooden doors that were being guarded, and a number of tunnels that led off to other points. The tunnel we had come out of was directly across from the wooden doors. There was nowhere to hide. No place to sneak and get closer without being seen. Loor made the only choice possible. She ran quickly and silently for the guards. If she was right, and they were not alert, we'd get pretty close before they even realized what was happening. If she was wrong, well, ouch.

Loor was right. She moved so quickly and so quietly that she was nearly on the first guard before he knew it. He never even got the chance to go for his weapon before Loor swung her stave. She knocked him to the ground with one shot, out cold. The other guards were just as slow to react. Loor targeted the next guy while I took the third. Neither of them even reacted to their buddy getting beaned. I figured my guy would pull out his steel baton and wait until I got close enough so he could dig it into my ribs and zap me. I didn't give him the chance. Just before I reached him, I dropped to the ground and swung my stave at ankle level. I was hoping to get him to reach down to protect himself, but it turned out even better. The stave hit his ankles and the guy toppled. He was on his back before I finished the swing. I brought the stave back, ready to drill the guy when I heard, “Pendragon, stop!”

It was Loor. I froze, but kept my eye on the Tiggen guard. I didn't want him to pull a sneak attack when I was looking away. I had learned my lesson, over and over again, that I had to keep my eye on my opponent. As I stood there with my stave raised and ready to strike, I saw something odd. The Tiggen guard still hadn't moved. As he lay on his back, he didn't even turn to look up at me. I figured he might have hit his head on the way down and been knocked senseless.

“Relax, Pendragon,” Loor said calmly. “They will not give us trouble.”

A closer look at my opponent revealed something eerie. His face looked frozen. Almost…dead. My heart raced. Had I killed the guy? There was no way. All I did was sweep out his feet. Loor walked over to the guy, reached down, and yanked back the white hood that covered his head.

“Dummies!” I exclaimed.

His face was a cloth mask. A quick look back showed me that all the guards were fake. They had been propped up to look as if they were guarding the doors. From a distance, the effect was pretty good. Now I knew how we got so close without them reacting. The word that came to mind was “scarecrows.”

“I do not understand,” Loor said. “Why would they no longer have real guards protecting such a valuable piece of machinery? Did Bokka not say they feared the first attack would be here?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But we can find out.”

I walked up to the large wooden doors. There was a heavy lock on the handle, but it was no match for Osa's stave. With two quick whacks I knocked it open.

“Let's see what's so important in here,” I said as I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. It was heavy. No big surprise since the door had to be twenty feet high and made out of wood that looked to be four inches thick. But it swung easily on its hinges. I was about to peek inside when Loor pulled me back.

“Careful,” she said.

She took the lead. It didn't hurt my ego. Whatever nastiness might be waiting on the other side, she was better equipped to deal with it than I was. I grabbed my stave, exhaled, and took my first step onto the map, and into the fire.

ZADAA

W
hat we saw beyond the door made no sense. Like Bokka said, there was another one of those water-control machines. And it was awesome. It had to be four times the size of the one back at the waterfall-that-was-no-longer-a-waterfall. The pipes that passed through this monster had to be six feet wide. There was no doubt that this was a major piece of machinery.

But it was shut down. And the cavern that held it was empty. There wasn't a Rokador in sight.

“Strange,” I said. “I thought they were all sorts of worried about the Batu getting control of this.”

I walked to the monstrous device to get a better look. The gauges all registered zero. It made no sound. I touched it. It was as still as a rock. Stranger still, there had to be several dozen valve controls, but all of the knobs and levers were gone. All that was left were small stems where the levers used to be. I ran my finger across several of the gauges, wiping a clear path through a thick layer of dust.

“This thing hasn't been used in a long time,” I said.

“There has not been water in a long time,” Loor commented.

“So why were they guarding it yesterday?” I asked. “And why did Bokka tell you this was such an important piece of machinery?”

Loor didn't know any more than I did. I took a look past the machine to see that this cavern narrowed down into a small tunnel that led deeper into the underground.

“I guess that's the Yellow Brick Road,” I said.

“The what?” Loor asked.

“The way to Kidik.” Note to self: Stop making clever Second Earth references.

Loor glanced at the map and said, “Here. The first of the strange markings.”

She showed me the map. I could see the big cavern with the monster water-control device. There might as well have been a note saying:
YOU ARE HERE
. I could also see on the map where the cavern narrowed down to a small tunnel opening, just as it was in front of us. The odd thing was that on the map there were three X's across the mouth of the smaller tunnel.

“Any idea what it means?” I asked.

Loor shook her head. We kept our weapons ready and began our journey to Kidik, the capital city of the Rokador world. We walked quickly to the far end of the cavern, stopping just short of the opening to the smaller tunnel. After a quick look around I announced, “No X's here.” I took a step through the opening. The instant I broke the plane, I heard a rumbling sound. I had triggered something.

“C'mon!” I shouted, and leaped through.

Loor didn't hesitate and jumped after me. Her quick reaction saved her life. The instant she entered the tunnel, a series of steel spikes shot down like spears from above, closing off the opening. If Loor had been a hair slower, she would have been skewered. We stood together, holding each other, breathing hard. The opening to the tunnel was now cut off by the spikes that had become vertical bars.

“Good news–bad news,” I said. “The route to Kidik may be booby-trapped.”

“Booby-trapped?” Loor said, confused.

“Full of dangerous surprises like that,” I said. “If we make a wrong move, it could hurt.”

“And what is the good news?” she asked.

“Bokka's map will save us,” I answered. “I'll bet these odd markings on the map show where the traps are.”

We both took another look at the map. Those strange markings now took on a whole new importance…and there were a bunch of them between us and Kidik.

“This may show us where they are, but not what to expect,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” I said. “This is going to be interesting.”

We weren't doing any good standing there staring at a map, so we continued on. The map led us through many different-size tunnels and caverns. The more I saw, the more amazed I became at how the Rokador had burrowed out an entire civilization underground.

“Are these tunnels natural?” I asked. “Or did the Rokador dig them?”

“Both,” Loor said. “I believe the larger caverns are natural, but the adjoining tunnels were created by the Rokador.”

“But how? This is, like, solid rock.”

“The history of the Rokador is best told by a Rokador,” Loor said. “But I am familiar with the dygos.”

“The huh?”

“Dygos,” Loor repeated. “Tunneling machines. We will see them on our journey.”

I decided not to ask any more questions until I had a visual aid. Besides, I was too stressed about running into another booby trap. Fear beats out curiosity any day. Walking through this labyrinth of underground tunnels was strange in that it didn't feel all that claustrophobic. Sure, some of the rocky tunnels were narrow, but they often opened up into caverns where the ceilings were as lofty as a cathedral. And there were lights everywhere. It didn't feel anything like we were traveling deeper and deeper underground. To be honest, I tried not to think about that. I couldn't imagine living down here under multiple tons of rock, unless you were an ant.

The thing we didn't find was people. Not a single living soul. We passed hundreds of different rooms that were full of equipment. Some looked like living spaces with cots and furniture. Others were stacked with boxes and tools. There had been people here once, and not long ago, either. The word that kept coming to mind was “abandoned.”

Every so often the route would take us through a less developed area, where there would be a marking on the map, and another booby trap. One time Loor took a step and felt the ground rumble. She leaped forward and I jumped back a second before the floor caved in, leaving a gaping black hole that dropped down to nowhere. We found ourselves on opposite sides of a hole that went from wall to wall. Unfortunately for me, I was on the wrong side, with no way to get across.

“There,” Loor said, pointing.

I saw a thin lip of stone floor that hadn't fallen. It was no wider than a brick and sticking out from the wall along one side of the hole.

“You want me to walk across on that?” I asked in horror.

“Unless you can leap over,” Loor said.

I couldn't. It was a thirty-foot jump. I had to go the lip route. Swell. Facing the wall, I tentatively put my right toe onto it and pressed down to see if it would crumble. It didn't. Still, this was going to be tough, even if the lip held. It was only a few inches wide. Gulp. I had to press my chest against the rock wall, with nothing to grab on to, and slide my feet along. It kind of reminded me of the training pit back at Mooraj. Only with this pit, if you fell, you died. I moved my right foot first, then brought my left foot up to it. There was no way I could cross them over. I would have lost my balance for sure. I kept the palms of my hands flat against the rock, carefully feeling for any little crag that I could hang on to with my fingers. My left cheek was pressed flat and I stayed up on my toes—anything to keep my center of gravity forward.

I tried not to think about how my butt was dangling out over oblivion. My entire being was focused on keeping my weight against the wall. I crept along like this, moving slowly, but moving. The lip held, and I was getting closer to safety. It wasn't until I was almost to the far side that my luck ran out. The wall bowed out ever so slightly. It wasn't much, but it was enough so that I had to move my center of balance back to get around. Bad move. I felt my weight shift toward oblivion. I grabbed for the wall, but my fingers brushed over the rock face uselessly. I was going down.

I didn't get far. Something hit me on the back. Hard. I carefully peeked to my right and saw that I was close enough to the far side that Loor was able to reach out with her stave and pin me to the wall.

“Ouch,” I said. I didn't mean it. She had saved my life. Again.

“Keep moving,” she commanded.

Having her hold me against the wall gave me confidence. I quickly got my feet shuffling again, and a few seconds later I was on the far side.

“Thank you,” I said. That hardly covered it, but what else could I say? Saving each other's lives was getting pretty common. Loor didn't need to be thanked. She was already on to the next challenge. How strange is that? I could very easily have died just then. But I didn't, so we had to move on like it was no biggie. That is what my twisted life has become. I shouldn't complain. At least I'm still around to write about it.

“It seems as though the Rokador abandoned these tunnels and set these traps to stop those who would follow,” Loor said.

“Yeah, us,” I said.

“Or the attacking Batu,” Loor said. “The Rokador are not warriors. In battle the Ghee will destroy them.”

“What about the Tiggen guards?” I asked.

“Bokka would not agree with me, but they are no match for the Ghee. Even if they were, they do not have the numbers we do. If they hope to win a war against the Batu, they will have to do it with cunning, not force.”

I agreed with her. From what I saw, the Tiggen guards weren't the fighters that the Ghee were. Heck, even I held my own against them. How pathetic is that?

“These traps are a pain for us,” I said. “But they won't stop an army.”

“Not from what we have seen so far,” Loor said. “We should continue.”

I was right about the map. It showed the location of every booby trap. Without it, we would have been history. Thank you, Bokka. But the markings only showed us where the booby traps were, not how to prevent them from springing. We were nearly skewered about a dozen times over. Rocks crashed down in miniavalanches. One time the ground started to churn below our feet to reveal the sharp teeth of grinding gears that nearly turned us into hamburger. It was like making our way through a medieval video game full of pitfalls and surprises. Only this was no game.

There was something else we saw along the way that I should mention. Whenever we reached one of the larger caverns, on either wall there would be these huge, round metal plates sunk into the rock. They each had to be about thirty feet in diameter. When we saw the first one, I stopped to examine it.

“I do not know what it is,” Loor said before I had the chance to ask. “I have never come this far into Rokador territory.”

I couldn't help but wonder what they were, and if they might give us trouble. They weren't on the booby trap map, so chances were they were safe. After passing hundreds of these giant disks, I didn't know any more about them than after I'd seen the first one. Though my curiosity was still tweaked, the main thing was that they didn't do us any harm, so I had to ignore them.

We continued walking cautiously for a couple of hours. There's no way to tell how far we had traveled, since we had to stop often to find ways around the booby traps. The map was really accurate. It showed every intersection, tunnel, and cavern exactly as we were seeing it. At one point we rounded a corner and came upon yet another bizarre sight. It was sitting to the side of a larger cavern, looking totally out of place. It was a giant, silver ball. I was so surprised by seeing this thing, I actually took a step back. It didn't faze Loor, though.

“That,” she said, “is a dygo.”

Dygo? Oh, right. The tunneling machine. Very cool. I took a closer look at this odd device to see that the silver sphere was actually a passenger cab. It wasn't much bigger than a golf cart. It looked like it could hold two people, with a clear window that wrapped halfway around. The giant silver ball rested on treads, like a tractor. This thing could move forward, back, or turn in place. But the most amazing thing was the gizmo attached to the outside. It was a six-foot-long drilling device. It was shaped like one of those old-fashioned megaphones—as wide as the sphere at its base and narrowing down to a hollow point that was about a foot across. Along the body of the drill were dozens of rings with various gnarly looking cutting devices. The circular tip had inch-wide teeth that looked like they could drill through pretty much anything.

“That's how they dig the tunnels?” I asked.

“Yes, though it is one of the smaller vehicles.”

I took a step closer to admire this silver tractor, drill, rock eater, whatever. “I figured they needed something more than shovels to create the underground, but this thing is…is…just killer.”

“Bokka and I used to race dygos through the caverns,” Loor said.

“They let you do that?”

“No.”

Oh. Those wacky kids.

“So you can drive this thing?” I asked.

Loor smiled mischievously, as if remembering some taboo joyrides. “They are quite fast.”

“So let's jump in and drive to Kidik,” I said. “If it can drill through rock, it'll definitely protect us against the traps.”

“Unless the trap is another bottomless pit,” Loor said.

“Oh, yeah.” I'd forgotten about that.

We had done all right getting by the booby traps up until that point, so it made sense not to mess with success. We left the cavern with the strange vehicle and continued our journey. Along the way I noticed more dygos. Some were parked in dark caves off to the side. Others were lined up in larger caverns, waiting for the next big project. I was getting very curious about the Rokador. In many ways they were incredibly advanced technologically. Yet they chose to live like moles. I hoped that someday I'd learn more about them—hopefully before they were annihilated by an army of Ghee warriors.