The Sea of Time (40 page)

KIRIEN AND ASHE hurried down stairs that jinked precipitously through the wooden heart of Mount Alban. The cliff face had been carved out and replaced by a labyrinth of chambers, hallways, and steps all at different levels. Sometimes one could look up the stair well for several erratic stories. Other times, one had to duck under low beams, all the while watching one’s feet on worn, moss-covered treads. There was a more direct stair, but they had chosen not to take it for fear of whom they might meet. Diffuse light filtered through from various outside windows, aided by candles set on banisters, weeping wax. Indistinct voices murmured about them, but the usual morning chatter of the college community was absent.

“You there. Halt.”

The command came from above them on the last landing which they had passed. A big Kendar stood there, clad in Caineron hunting leathers.

“My lord wants to see you,” he said, “and the scrollsman Index. Where is he?”

Ashe stepped in front of Kirien, her iron-shod staff raised.

“Don’t be foolish,” said the man, and drew his sword.

He had barely taken a step forward, however, when a stone crashed down on his head. As he collapsed, a ball of twine bounced on the boards beside him.

“You see?” said someone above. “The rock and the ball fell at the same speed.”

“They did not!”

A tall, gangly scholar clattered down the stairs, followed by a short, squat colleague. Both wore the college’s usual belted coats with many pockets in which to carry tools, notes, or perhaps lunch.

“The rock was clearly traveling faster than the lighter twine,” said the short man, glowering.

The tall scholar looked down his long nose at him. “You just say so because that oaf’s head got in the way.”

Ashe inspected the fallen Kendar. “Only stunned,” she muttered. “Good. Now . . . what’s going on?”

“Besides experimentation?” The short scholar bent with a grunt to retrieve his rock, which required both hands to lift. The Caineron had been very lucky not to have suffered a smashed skull. “As you may have noticed, we’ve been invaded.”

“By how many?”

“Ten around the main door. Some forty inside, hunting.”

“I can see why Caldane wants Index,” said Kirien, “but why Ashe and me?”

“You, Lordan, presumably as a hostage,” said the taller scrollsman, rewinding his ball of twine. “Ashe . . . well, the rumor is that m’lord has a former priest with him who knows the pyrrhic rune.”

Kirien ran distraught fingers through her close-cropped black hair, leaving some of it on end. “Madness! Does he want to start a war?”

The short scholar laughed. “When has Caldane ever thought through any of his grand schemes? My guess is that he talked some of this over with his uncle, then went off on his own. Corrudin would never support something so half-witted.”

“Good hunting, then,” said Ashe. “We go . . . to find Index.”

They continued down the stair. At its foot lay a great hall roughly hewn out of bedrock by Hathiri masons with Mount Alban’s main gate at the far western end. Shapes with torches moved around before it, casting gigantic shadows. On the other side of the hall was the door that led down to Index’s herb shed. It stood open. Kirien and Ashe paused by it, listening. Voices rose from below, and glass shattered.

“Who’s mucking about in my shed?” demanded a shrill voice behind them, and there stood Index, gray beard abristle, eyes glaring with outrage. “No, I won’t be quiet! Let go of me!”

They hustled him away from the door, still expostulating, and across the hall, but others had heard his sharp protests. Voices called from below and feet thundered up the stairs. The guards at the door came running, their shadows leaping before them.

“Quick,” said Ashe.

She led them back up into the wooden maze, but soon left the twisting stair for a murky, narrow hallway. This ended at an iron-bound door set in the college’s eastern wall, against the rock face. Ashe parted a slit in her robe. Underneath was a corresponding sword slice in her skin. The edges of the old wound were shriveled and bloodless. Under them, hard against a rib, was the outline of a key. This she fished out as if from an inner pocket.

“I am going . . . to take Index . . . out of Mount Alban . . . for safekeeping,” she said as she fitted the key into the rusty lock and turned it with effort. “You . . . stay here.”

“But, Ashe . . .”

“No.” Death-dulled eyes peered at Kirien from under the shadow of the singer’s hood. “You . . . will be safer . . . with Caldane . . . if he catches you.”

She forced open the door. Beyond was a tunnel ending in dim light.

“I don’t understand.”

Voices called to each other behind her in the maze. The Caineron were casting about for traces of the fugitives. Ashe pushed a protesting Index through the door and followed him.

“If you really . . . want to help,” she said through the crack as she pulled the door shut, “lead them away.”

The lock reengaged with a clunk of gears behind her.

Kirien was left standing in the hallway, surrounded by Mount Alban’s interior gloom. What in Perimal’s name . . . ?

A faint glimmer on the floor caught her eye. Ashe had tried to slip the key back into its hidden pouch of skin, but it had fallen through. Kirien picked it up and fingered its ornate wards. Should she? What would Jame do? She rarely found herself in the sort of situation that came so readily to the Knorth Lordan, except when Jame was present. That kind of thing was a bit too dramatic for her taste and, she thought, it called for different skills than those possessed by even a talented scrollswoman. But scholars were always curious, and so was she. At the very least, she should open the door since Ashe had just accidentally locked herself and Index out of the college.

Kirien inserted the key and carefully turned it. It worked more easily for her than it had for Ashe, perhaps because the singer had knocked off some of the rust. The door swung open with only a muffled protest. Beyond, at the end of a tunnel cut through living rock, was a wall of drifting mist, lit from above. Kirien had never considered what lay behind the college, assuming it would only be more stone. This seemed to be a cavity in the cliff, open at the top. She edged forward, stopping with a gasp as her foot came down half over the edge of an abyss. A pebble, kicked forward, fell and went on falling, it seemed, forever. Where had Ashe and Index gone? To the left, she heard their muffled voices. Index was still protesting.

Kirien felt along the wall with hand and foot. The latter detected a ledge, which became a narrow path. She edged out onto it. Once started, it seemed impossible to turn back, although the way sometimes slanted downward into emptiness and sometimes the stone wall bulged. More pebbles rolled underfoot, causing her to gasp and clutch at the rock face. The voices drew nearer.

“You’ve wrenched me away from my proper station,” Index was saying. “For my own safety, eh? Well and good. Ancestors know, though, what damage those louts are doing in the meantime. So I’m calling in all my barter chips with you, haunt. For the answers to two questions.”

Kirien’s hand groped around the edge of an opening. A side cave, she thought, and pulled herself toward it.

Down three stone steps, Ashe and Index confronted each other in a small, stony chamber lit by a torch held by the singer. At the back of it was an iron door, scabrous with rust, toward which Index gestured.

“Now, where exactly are we, and what’s behind that door?”

“That,” said Ashe, “is no concern . . . of yours.”

“I’m still asking. D’you want to be declared a cheat?”

For a scrollswoman, that was almost as bad as being called a liar. No one would ever barter information with Ashe again.

“You . . . are being unreasonable.”

Kirien thought so too. The old scholar was acting like a petulant child; his will thwarted in one direction, he was striking out in another. She wondered, for the first time, if he was going soft with age.

“This . . . is a secret prison,” said Ashe. “Bashtiri masons created it. Kendar builders found it. As for what it contains . . .”

The singer’s bony fingers touched her side, then groped futilely at it.

Kirien stepped forward into the light. “This is what you lost,” she said, extending the key.

“Ha!” Index snatched it from her. “Now we’ll see!”

He scurried over to the door and thrust the key into the lock. As he turned it, Ashe dropped the torch and grabbed him around the waist. She wrestled him away, but he clung to the handle and pulled the door open on screeching hinges as he went.

Light flickered across the floor inside. With a chitinous rustle, its surface seemed to split open as a carpet of black beetles seethed back into the shadows. Index craned to look.

“There’s a table in there,” he said, “and something on it. A book and a knife, both white. Sort of.”

He moved to investigate, but Ashe restrained him.

“You fool . . . stand still.”

She placed herself between the other two scholars and the open door, facing it, gripping her staff.

Ahhhhh
. . . breathed the darkness.

Kirien thought she saw a figure standing in the shadows, slightly bent under the low ceiling. It looked over its shoulder at her—the crescent of a face with a silver-gray eye, a high cheekbone, and thin lips that twitched into a smile.

Ahhhh . . . ha, ha, ha . . .

It turned and advanced. Its eyes reflected the flickering light of the fallen torch. Kirien retreated a pace, still staring. The thing looked like Torisen before he had grown a beard, but with an obscene twist to its features. The three upward leading steps were behind her. She tripped over them and fell, sprawling.

Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . .

It ducked its head under the lintel and stepped into the antechamber, drawing the darkness behind it in a train of seething shadows, as if the noisome room it had just left was turning inside out. It raised a pale face masked with the fluttering wings of moths. Its smile spread and split open the lower half of its face. White teeth writhed . . . no, maggots. A mouth full of them.

Ashe snatched up the guttering torch and thrust it into the creature’s face. Moths ignited. Beetles popped in the heat and stank. It fell back a step as incandescent cracks opened across its face and chest. Then it surged forward again with a hiss.

“Run,” said Ashe over her shoulder to Kirien.

Kirien scrambled to her feet and dived out the door. She had no conscious thought where she was going, even as her feet scrabbled on the sloping shelf of the trail. It seemed to go on forever. Stones rolled under her feet. The unseen abyss called.

Suddenly her hand began to twitch, almost making her lose her grip on the wall. Aunt Trishien was sending a message. Kirien fumbled for her tablet, and dropped it. When she awkwardly bent to retrieve it, a shuffling foot inadvertently kicked it off the ledge into the void.

Moments later, with a lunge, she found herself back at the mouth of the tunnel, gasping facedown on the stony floor.

Her hands still shook, but with nothing more than fatigue and strain. Whatever her aunt had tried to tell her was lost.

What had happened, though, back in the cave?

As her head had turned, she thought she had seen the thing crumble even as it had lurched forward, but instinct told her that it wasn’t dead—well, no more so than it had already been. On the path, she had heard the door thud shut behind her and the rasp of the key in the lock. Ancestors, please, let Ashe and Index be safe. She should go back to check, but her nerve failed her.

Voices called to each other down the stone tunnel and the wooden hall, from within Mount Alban.

“If you really want to help,”
Ashe had said,
“lead them away.”

Kirien struggled to her feet.

At the outer door she paused a moment, then shut it, hearing the lock engage within. Now that Ashe had the key which apparently worked on both doors, on both sides, she needn’t leave it open.

Where were the Caineron? The wooden maze that made up the college’s core distorted sound. If she could reach the stair . . .

As she dashed forward, however, someone stepped into the corridor in front of her. Kirien skidded to a stop, turned, and ran into the arms of another tall Kendar.

“M’lady Kirien, isn’t it?” he said, looking down at her. “M’lord Caldane would like a few words with you.”

V