Daywards (9 page)

‘What do you think, sis?'

It took her several moments to decipher his meaning.

‘Are you mad? No way!'

‘Come on.' Jaran grabbed the first rung and tested his weight on it several times, with increasing vigour. ‘It's solid.'

‘It's hundreds of years old. And sky knows what's at the top!'

‘Only one way to find out.'

Dara studied her brother. His eyes were bright, excited.

‘Jaran, we don't have time. It'd take ages to climb all the way up there, and you said yourself that we have to get out of the city before …'

‘It shouldn't take too long,' he interrupted. ‘We're both good climbers, and if we have to spend a night up there …' He shrugged. ‘We'll cope. It'd be worth it.'

‘Unless the whole thing falls down with us on it. Or one of the rungs comes away when we're halfway to the top, or we get up there and find a locked door.'

To Dara's amazement, Jaran grinned at her. ‘It'll be an adventure.'

It'll be an adventure.
Her brother's words and the familiarity of his grin took her briefly back to another time and place and for a moment she wavered, before pulling herself back into the present. ‘You're crazy.' She shook her head. ‘Now come on, let's go.' She started back towards the avenue but after a few steps realised Jaran wasn't following. She wasn't at all surprised to find him already fifteen rungs up in the air, watching her.

‘See, it's fine. They're as solid as the escarpment.'

‘I don't care,' Dara replied. ‘I'm not going up there.'

‘Suit yourself.' Jaran continued climbing. ‘I don't know how long I'll be. Just wait here until I get back …'

Dara watched him climb steadily and evenly, one hand in front of the other. By the time he was twenty metres up, with the stem ahead of him still impossibly tall and the dome at the top impossibly distant, he already seemed tiny: an ant working its way up the face of an enormous tree trunk. When she lowered her eyes again, the shadowy desolation of the city pressed in around her and the air shifted restlessly across the bare skin of her arms.

Sighing, she reached for the first rung.

Dara climbed. Her arms ached – every tiny ligament in her shoulders and elbows seemed on fire. Hooking one arm through the next rung, she stopped and tried to get her breathing under control. Further up the ladder, Jaran stopped and looked back.

‘How you doing, sis?' He was desperately trying to hide the fact, but it was obvious he was in as much pain as her. Beads of sweat ran down his face, leaving him bathed in a heavy sheen despite the cold wind that howled around them, snatching at their clothing and sucking the heat from their bodies. And, unlike Dara, Jaran was also burdened with his pack, adding further weight to his load. ‘Not much further.'

Dara didn't waste precious breath replying.

She'd lost any sense of how much time had passed since they started. It felt like they'd been ascending for hours. The higher they climbed, the more the domestem, which at ground level had seemed so massive, became little more than a fragile thread against the endless blue. To Dara, it felt as though the entire structure might give way beneath them at any second – it was a miracle it had survived this long. Despite her brother's reassurances that it was ‘just like climbing the scarp back home', the domestem had none of the reassuring bulk of the rock cliff, and none of the Earthmother in it, either. The higher they progressed, the more acutely Dara became aware of a yawning emptiness, an absence, inside her.

After a few minutes' rest her breathing returned to normal and her heart ceased pounding in her ears. She drew in a deep breath, steeled herself for the inevitable bolt of pain in her back and shoulders and reached upwards for the next rung.

Jaran threw her a quick nod of reassurance, then kept on climbing himself.

He was right about one thing though; they were getting close. They'd long ago passed the point where it would have been easier, safer and quicker to turn around and head down again, and so, left with no choice but to continue, Dara had kept her eyes locked firmly on that dark disc, relishing every tiny detail that revealed itself, as they rose higher and the sun slipped around from above to beside them.

No longer was the underside of the dome a black hole against the sky. Now she could clearly discern the smooth grey plates of plascrete. Fifteen minutes earlier they had passed three supporting arms that branched from the domestem around them and arced gracefully outwards to the edges of the dome's base, dividing it into even thirds.

Best of all, at the point where their ladder met the underside of the dome, a small, black rectangle suggested an opening, and this, more than anything else, helped Dara keep pushing past the aching shoulders and putting one hand in front of the other.

For the most part, she climbed with her eyes straight ahead, watching her hands with an odd intensity as they gripped each plascrete rung, and only occasionally glancing up to gauge their progress and check on Jaran.

She never let her gaze drift down. The distance to the ground was so dizzying and the air between her and the hard ground below so empty, it made her head spin just to think of it.

Instead she kept her eyes locked on the wall in front of her and climbed in a sort of daze, almost trance-like, her mind wandering to other places and times even as her body screamed for respite. Eventually, finally, they passed upwards into the shadow of the giant dome and the change in the light snapped her awareness back to the here-and-now. She was startled to discover the dome filling the entire sky. Not even a glimpse of blue showed around it. Dara struggled against a brief vertiginous sensation, as her mind desperately reminded itself that the base of the dome was in fact a horizontal surface they were climbing towards, rather than a vertical one towards which they were crawling.

‘Just a bit more, sis!' Jaran gasped, his face set in a grimace of pain, and Dara managed a sharp nod in response.

With complete exhaustion riding on her back, Dara was dimly aware of the ladder leading her up into a tight, dark tunnel, and then Jaran was grabbing her shoulders and hauling her bodily over the edge. A sharp corner dug at her and then the two of them were sprawled, spent, on the hard floor.

It was several minutes before either had the breath to speak. Eventually, Jaran half-turned his head towards his sister.

‘Won't be doing that again in a hurry, eh?' He attempted a weak grin, and Dara, her stomach cramping almost as badly as her shoulders and arms, shook her head at him, too tired to even glare.

Wind whistled upwards through the open hatchway, the breeze echoing hollowly around the dim space into which they'd emerged. The sound was an uncomfortable reminder of the enormous void now between them and the earth, and Dara rolled awkwardly a couple of times, moving further from the opening.

The floor was freezing cold, and hard, harder even than the flat granite stones of the escarpment, if that was possible. Despite this, and herself, she dozed for a while and woke to find Jaran still sprawled on the floor near the hatchway, snoring heavily.

Ignoring the fact that every muscle in her body protested the movement, Dara eased herself into a sitting position and took her first proper look around the inside of the dome.

It was nothing like she'd expected. Climbing up, she'd imagined them emerging into a massive, vaulted sky-cathedral, crowned by broken clearcrete, with limitless horizons. Instead, she found herself in a dark, low-ceilinged space, cluttered with fallen machinery and equipment long gone to rust. The only light was the dull glow coming upwards through the floor hatch, a dusty, angular beam shining in through a square opening in the outer wall, and, on the far side, a dim column of light falling from the roof, illuminating the fallen remains of a rusted steel staircase, which must have once led to an upper level.

Dara stood up and took a few hesitant steps towards this last source of light, but almost as soon as she was on her feet a wave of dizziness and exhaustion swept over her and she plonked heavily to the ground, raising a small cloud of dust in the process, which made her sneeze several times.

The noise woke Jaran and he sat up slowly, grimacing, then stretched and yawned before speaking.

‘We fall asleep?'

Dara nodded, as Jaran took in the cluttered and dusty room.

‘Not much to look at here, is there?'

‘What did you expect?'

‘Dunno. Not this. Something a bit more … grand, I guess.'

Dara gestured towards the fallen metal stairs.

‘I think this must be a lower level. That used to be the way up over there, but the stairs have fallen in.'

Jaran nodded in agreement, then hauled himself to his feet. ‘Let's have a look.'

He offered a hand and Dara accepted it. This time there was no dizziness and they carefully climbed over the piles of rusted equipment until they stood in the narrow column of light. Above, a doorway framed a distant glimpse of indigo sky, somewhere far beyond.

‘Must be late afternoon,' Jaran said. ‘I guess we're spending the night up here, after all.'

Dara suppressed a shiver. She looked up through the doorway again, but Jaran was already hunting around in the wreckage strewn nearby.

‘Let's find something to help us get up there.'

They considered and dismissed several options until finally Dara called out, ‘Here!'

She'd found an old equipment rack, its contents long gone and now lying half-buried under a small pile of debris.

‘It should be tall enough if we can get it out.'

They busied themselves uncovering the rack, and then hauling it – a slow and painful process, resulting in several bloody knuckles and a couple of bruised shins – until they could prop it upright below the hatchway, leaning it against the rusted riser struts of the old staircase for support.

‘You reckon it's stable?' Dara asked.

‘I reckon it's as good as we're gonna get,'specially if we want to climb up there before the light gives out.'

She considered their makeshift ladder a moment longer. ‘I'll go first.'

She moved towards the shelves, but Jaran stopped her.

‘Nah, let me. I'm heavier. If it'll take my weight, then we know it'll definitely take yours. And then I can help you from above.'

It made sense, so Dara stepped aside and took one end of the shelves, steadying them while her brother started to make his way upwards.

‘After this, let's not do any more climbing today,' he suggested.

He climbed carefully, testing each shelf with part of his weight before committing to it. Dara noted each foot and handhold. Although it was only a small climb, it took Jaran three or four minutes until he was standing upright on the top shelf. Above his head, the bottom jamb of the upper door was only just out of arm's reach.

‘Here goes.'

He leapt for the doorway, hooked his hands over it and then, desperately kicking his legs in the air to try and maintain his upwards momentum, he scissored his waist above the level of the door and scrambled into the dome beyond. A moment later, his head appeared, framed in the opening.

‘You ready?'

‘Yeah.'

Dara didn't climb nearly as carefully as her brother, preferring instead to clamber to the top as quickly as she could, before her nerve and her energy left her. When she stood upright on the top shelf, the entire structure wobbled slightly and she waved her arms to maintain her balance.

‘Ready?' Jaran asked from above.

‘Yep. On three. One … two …'

Dara leapt for her brother's outstretched hand, a shiver of adrenaline tingling in her toes and fingers as her feet left the shelf. Jaran's grip closed around her wrist and she felt herself hauled upwards until she managed to snag her free hand over the bottom of the doorway. Then the two of them struggled awkwardly to pull her though.

‘Good jump!' Grinning, Jaran climbed to his feet and then held out a hand. Without hesitation, she took it and he helped her upright. They took a few steps away from the door, then stopped and looked around them.

Jaran shook his head in amazement. ‘Unbelievable.'

The doorway opened out of a building onto the edge of some kind of enormous, central common – a clear space in the middle of the dome, probably a couple of hundred metres wide. It made the meeting cave back home seem tiny by comparison.

The common was bordered on each side by four giant buildings, each the height of the escarpment or possibly even higher.

The inward-facing walls of these structures were punctuated with hundreds of windows; empty eyes staring over the deserted common. Only a few still had their glass intact. Most simply yawned hollow, and through these the wind whistled and moaned, lending the entire interior of the dome a disconcertingly haunted atmosphere. The ‘ground' was littered with glass and clearcrete.

But, crowning all this, and dwarfing even those enormous internal buildings, was what was left of the dome. High above the towers it arched, the sky beyond it blurred and distant. One entire side, perhaps a third of the dome's clearcrete, had shattered and formed a rough maw of jagged edges, running down from the apex to disappear behind the nearest tower block. The rest, though, was intact, and Dara found it easy to picture the inside of the dome as it must have once appeared to those who'd lived there.

‘We'll have to watch where we step,' Jaran observed, and Dara dropped her eyes from that dizzying roof, noting the carpet of shattered glass and clearcrete that covered the floor.

‘What'll we do?'

‘This way.'

Slowly, carefully, he led them out towards the centre of the common, where a low circular structure, similar in some ways to the Eye, crouched above the point at which the main domestem met the base of the dome. Neither spoke, both concentrating on avoiding the minefield of razor-sharp glass. Dara usually hated wearing moccasins, and rarely did so back at the escarpment, preferring like most of the clan children to wander the forest barefoot, but she was glad of them now. Even though many of the shards would have sliced easily through the soft leather and deep into the flesh, the footwear provided some degree of protection.

Reaching the round building, they discovered a number of closed double doors set into the curved walls. They worked their way around, trying to lever each door in turn, but with no success. On the far side, though, they came across one that had been jammed half-open. A blast of cold air rushed through the opening with a dull whistle. Jaran stuck his head in through the gap.

‘Careful!' Dara warned, but her brother waved the caution aside. ‘What can you see?'

‘Nothing. It's pitch black in there.' He pulled his head out again and searched the ground around them, looking for something. A fist-sized chunk of rubble caught his eye and he hefted it a couple of times, thoughtfully. ‘Come here.'

Dara joined him beside the opening. She could taste the air rushing out from the gap, an oily, metallic flavour. Jaran dropped the rubble through the opening and they strained their ears, listening for the thump of it striking the bottom.