The Plains of Kallanash (47 page)

“They’re cleaners!” she whispered. “Cleaning the tunnel.”

“Yes, but what are they?” he whispered back, wide-eyed. “I’ve never seen anything like them, even in books.”

“Oh, they’re
morodaim
. But…” She stopped, bewildered. “But they’re
extinct
. They were destroyed in the Catastrophe, if they ever even existed. They’re just legends.”

“They look real enough to me. If they are these
morodaim
, should we be worried?”

“They were supposed to be quite friendly
– if you got lost in the caves, they would guide you out. So the legends say.”

There was an increasing amount of noise behind them, but there was no clash of metal, no thud of sword hitting shield, no whine of arrows flying or cries of injured men. Mia thought she even heard laughter. Then everything went quiet again, and Tanist, Hurst, Gantor and Trimon shouldered their way back to the front.

“Fucking Walst!” said Trimon with a grin. “Giving us a fucking fright like that.”

Mia wondered how Walst could possibly have caught up when he left a day behind them, but there was no time for explanations.

“What do you make of them?” Tanist said quietly to Mia, pointing down the tunnel. She told him they were
morodaim,
and what little she knew of them.

“Gantor?”

“Could be. They fit the description, it’s true.”

“Safe for us to pass?”

“Yes, if that’s really what they are. No sharp teeth or claws, never known to use weapons. Very docile. They used to clean out the dragon caves, apparently.”

“Will they go running to the Slaves to tell them about us? Because if so, we have to kill them.”

Gantor was silent for a long time. Mia sheathed her dagger with a soft shush, and stood head down, staring at her feet, trying to suppress her urge to cry. She dared not speak.

“I think…” Gantor said, “that they have no way to communicate with humans, except by simple gesture. And they’re cave-bound
– or tunnel-bound, they never venture above ground. So I don’t think it’s a risk.”

“Right,” said Tanist. “We’ll go past two at a time, weapons out of sight. We don’t want to startle them. Gantor and I first, then Hurst and Trimon, and if all’s well, Dethin and Mia. The rest as they wish. Carefully with the cart, don’t bump theirs.”

Mia realised she was holding her breath, and let it out slowly in relief. She was not after all to witness the first killing of the journey. The whispered instructions were passed down the lines of men. Tanist and Gantor sheathed their swords, and with a nod to Hurst began to walk slowly down the tunnel.

As they drew nearer to the
morodaim
, the creatures twittered more rapidly in rising tones, and bobbed about in apparent interest, watching the approaching pair carefully. The two men edged nervously past them, keeping as far from them as they could, and then backed away on the other side, but nothing untoward happened. After that, Hurst and Trimon made their way past, and then it was Mia’s turn. Dethin went first, and she followed, tense and stiff, her hand on her dagger. As she drew level, the twittering reached a crescendo, and all four of them stared at her, their huge eyes unblinking. She was convinced they were talking about her, somehow. She stopped, curiously drawn, staring back at them in fascination. She found she was not afraid of them, just curious. Abruptly the twittering stopped, and as one they lowered their heads in a strange sort of bow. As soon as their eyes dropped, she was released from the spell and hurried after Dethin.

“Well, they were interested in you,” Hurst said, his tone puzzled, as he bundled her further along the tunnel.

Two by two they filed past the odd creatures, and then walked on as fast as they could. Tanist and Hurst stayed at the back for a while, but when they returned to their place, they reported that the
morodaim
had carried on with their cleaning operations as if nothing had happened.

“Weird,” Hurst muttered under his breath.

~~~

That night’s rest stop had a bizarre festival feel to it. The two groups were still together, so there were stories to be exchanged and much boasting about travelling speed and efficiency. In addition, they made a pleasing discovery. All the camp caves were well supplied with dried goods which could be made edible in the stewpot. This one, however, boasted a row of smoked hams dangling from hooks. For the first time, there was food they could eat at once, without waiting for the brazier to do its work, or scrabbling in pockets for leftovers. Knives flashed, and within moments everyone had a good handful of tasty meat.

Walst was hugely pleased with himself, and sat between Mia and Dethin to explain how he managed to catch up with them. When his group reached the first cart storage cave, he discovered that one of his warriors had once been a locksmith and still had some skill. The first lock had been a failure, eventually jamming, but at the second store a couple of days later he had succeeded.

“See, there are advantages to having convicted criminals in your troop,” Walst grinned. “Gods, I wish we had some fucking wine, though. I’m sick of water.”

Having thirty people squeezed into a camp cave designed for no more than twenty promised an uncomfortably crowded night for everyone, but Walst had a solution to that problem too.

“What, do you sleep in here with everyone else?” he said to Mia. “Gods, no need to be quite so virtuous! Tenya and I always sleep in the Godstower when I’m not on watch, if there’s one near enough. And if it’s not raining, of course! It’s a bit colder, but we keep each other warm, you know what I mean? And guess what? We worked out how to open the door in the Godstowers.”

After they’d eaten, Walst smugly led a small group down the tunnel a short distance to the adjacent Godstower. The gate was propped open, Tanist’s cautious habit when they slept nearby to ensure an emergency escape route. Just inside were left the necessary ropes and tools for climbing down from the upper windows. Tanist thought of everything.

They climbed the ramp to the next level, the only place above the tunnel there was a large flat area they could sleep on. Beyond it, the ramp snaked on and upwards round the tower in steep steps, with the centre left open. Walst strode up the ramp to the opposite wall and, grinning broadly, pointed to the wall.

“No, can’t see it,” Tanist said.

“Yes, it’s clever, isn’t it? We only spotted it when the moonlight caught it just right and threw a shadow.”

Mia followed Walst up the ramp and ran her hands over the wall. “Ah! There it is.”

The handle was not like those which opened the tunnel gates. It was a long solid metal bar set into a horizontal indentation in the stone. A strut at either end was almost hidden in grooves in the wall. She grasped the handle and pulled. It moved smoothly downwards with a solid thunk, followed by clunks and clanks within various parts of the wall, each sound a little further round. And then, creaking and groaning, the wall parted and the door opened.

As soon as there was a visible gap, an icy wind tore into the tower. Wrapping themselves in their cloaks, they all stepped through the opening. Hurst drew his sword.

Outside the moon illuminated a clearing fringed by dense, velvety blackness. Above their heads was a sparkling star-crusted canopy, and they could hear the trees rustling and swooshing in the wind, but they couldn’t see them moving. There was a clear gap between the tower and the trees, where the undergrowth had been trimmed away. Hurst walked right round the tower, sword held out before him, but reported nothing unexpected.

“How far are we from any roads?” Mia asked.

“No more than five miles,” Tanist said. “Nowhere here is more than a few miles from some kind of civilisation.”

“This must be one of the old forests,” she said. Then, when Hurst raised his eyebrows in question, she added, “The Petty Kings had hunting forests. There aren’t very many patches left now, but the trees here are too tall to have been planted since the Coming of the Word.”

“Whatever it is, it’s too cold to linger out here,” Tanist said. “Let’s get back inside, and make sure everyone knows how these doors work. We never know when we might need them. And whenever we get hold of some wine, Walst gets the first jug. It’s nice to know he serves some useful purpose, after all.”

Well before the sun was up the next morning, Tanist led his group off down the tunnel. He was accompanied this time by Walst, the locksmith and a couple of other warriors, for there was a cart store not far away, according to the signs. The locksmith efficiently picked the lock for them, and then Walst and his men returned to the camp cave. They would continue a day later, to keep the two groups apart again.

With four carts they could progress much faster, stopping only at every second camp cave. Hurst was glad to ride most of the time, for his leg was increasingly bothersome. It was awkwardly cramped in the cart, and the muscles stiffened up painfully, but it was still better than walking the whole way.

Late in the day, they came to the main southeastern tunnel which would lead them directly to the Tower of Reception, or so they hoped. The junction was exactly as they expected, with no danger of taking the wrong turn, and they knew Walst was just behind them, so they carried on to the next camp cave for their overnight stop. For the first time, the cave showed signs of previous occupation, with cooking pots unwashed, blankets dropped on the floor and the brazier a mass of ashes. There was still plenty of food, however, and they always carried extra in case of just this eventuality, so after some grumbling and tidying up and a very late meal, the night passed off as usual, although Tanist ordered extra men on watch as a precaution.

~~~

The days passed in monotonous routine, but they encountered no one and saw no other signs of life. After several days, just at the point where Tanist judged from the maps they must be passing under the barrens, there was an abrupt change. They came to an unusually large camp cave, high-roofed and walled with smooth stone of a pale golden colour which seemed to glow with its own light, softly illuminating every part of the cave. There were no hooks in the ceiling for suspended food containers, for the roof was too high. Instead free-standing wooden poles held the supplies, and behind them a row of raised hearths with stands for pots, with strange stones underneath which already glowed with heat. A little fiddling with nearby levers induced flames to rise and fall, as required, but the stones neither burned away nor went cold.

They all walked round the room in wonder, touching the glowing wall, which seemed warm under their hands, and carefully examining the cooking hearths.

“What is this place?” Tanist asked, in the hushed whisper such mystery seemed to deserve.

It was Dethin who answered. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been here before. At least, not here precisely, but somewhere just like it. I woke up in a place like this.” Unlike the others, he seemed subdued rather than awed.

“Not in the funeral tower?” Mia said.

“No funeral tower in the Ring,” Gantor said. “Everyone who dies there has to be given to the wind. If they’re really dead, of course.”

Hurst saw Mia shiver at the thought. That was a ritual Highers feared, for unless their body was consumed by fire, they couldn’t go to the Life Beyond Death to join the Gods. But then she rallied, perhaps remembering that everything they had been taught about the Gods was a lie. He smiled at her, and was pleased when she smiled back.

Beyond the first large room were several smaller rooms, one with a series of water rooms, one fitted with shelves filled with an array of clothes, and a third with a deep pool which constantly filled at one end with hot water and emptied again at the other. There was even soap.

“Right,” said Mia in a tone that brooked no argument. “I’m first.” She took a selection of clean clothes and disappeared into the bathing room, closing the door firmly.

Hurst sat on the floor outside to make sure no one burst in on her, and Tanist and Gantor found him there and sat beside him.

“This is a strange place,” Tanist said. “Beyond here, the whole tunnel is made of this stone.”

“You mean – glowing? How does that work?” Hurst said.

They both shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gantor admitted. “Never even heard mention of walls that light up all by themselves. No wonder the Slaves wanted to keep curious eyes away from the tunnel.”

“And the constant hot water…” Tanist said in bewildered tones. “And those cooking things… It can’t be magic – can it?”

“No such thing,” Gantor said sharply. “It’s just some weird kind of stone, that’s all. It’s odd, though…” His eyes became distant.

“What is?” Hurst said.

“Well…” Gantor said slowly, “there must be eight of these places, right? Eight tunnels leading to the tower, and presumably eight of these big cave places at the extremities.”

“So?”

“There were rumours
– just hints in some of the oldest records – that the tower was originally connected to eight holds by way of some secret passages. This dates back to before the Catastrophe, of course. Afterwards there was nothing very much for a long time, until the Petty Kings came along. The holds were destroyed, like everything above ground outside the Ring.”

“Wait
– are you saying that these tunnels predate the Catastrophe?” Tanist said. “That’s – what? Thousands of years ago. How is that possible?”

“The tower’s older than that, so why not? The rest of the tunnel system
– I don’t know about that, they’re still building it beyond the border, so that may be more recent, but this part… Let’s be honest, we have nothing like this now, do we? No glowing walls, no permanently burning cooking stones, no constantly running hot water. It was all built by greater minds than ours.”

“Or by magic,” said Hurst, grinning. He ducked as Gantor aimed a slap at his head, wincing as he failed to move quickly enough.

Later, when Mia had finally relinquished the bathing room, and Hurst emerged, warm, clean and slightly damp from the first group of men to try it out, Dethin slipped something into his hand.

“Thought you might want to have these,” he murmured. It was a small bottle of green glass, stoppered and sealed, rattling slightly. Pain-relieving lozenges. “I thought the leg seemed a bit worse lately,” he added apologetically.

“Thank you!” Hurst said, with genuine pleasure. “Where did you find these?”

“There’s a room at the back
– for anyone sick. Lots of bandages, ointments, that sort of thing.” He seemed almost embarrassed.

“But how
—?” Then he remembered. “You’d been flogged, hadn’t you? Your back must have been in a bad way.”

Dethin just nodded. “It was a few days before I was up to travelling, and then I had a cart all to myself. I’ll tell Tanist about the medicines. He might want to stock up on a few things.”

~~~

Despite the luxuries of a hot bath and clean clothes, Hurst was uneasy entombed in the strange glowing walls. Sleeping in the constant light was difficult, so he was restless and woke often. When they moved on the next day, it was not just the light that was different. There were no side tunnels, no Godstowers, no vapour pipes and no rushing water beneath their feet. The floor of the tunnel was as smooth as the walls, and the carts ran along with the softest whisper. Occasionally there were markings on the wall, written with dots, like Kannick Old Script, but although Mia could sound out the words, it was no language any of them knew. The dots were neither carved nor painted but seemed to burn in shimmering colours. Nor were there any more gates; instead there were marker stones at roughly gate intervals, giving the sole remaining distance
– to the tower.

“I suppose no one was able to engrave these walls,” Gantor shrugged when Hurst wondered why.

The trouble with sitting in a cart and being pushed effortlessly along, Hurst thought gloomily, is that you have altogether too much time to think. Even his leg was no distraction now, for he was free of pain for the first time in many weeks. Inevitably, he found himself thinking about Mia. Now that they were getting closer to the most difficult part of the journey, he was beginning to regret bringing her along. They had not really needed her skills with the signs, for the route they needed to take had never been in doubt. The main tunnels were all as straight as rulers. Everything about the Karningplain was straight, he thought sourly. The roads, the sky ship ways, the Karningholds… only the Ring was filled with circles and spheres and domes and curvaceous roofs.

But what if he had left Mia behind? She would have been safe from whatever dangers they might encounter in the days to come, but she would have belonged to Heddizan, he supposed, and no one would be happy with that situation. It was the main reason Tenya had come along, too. There was no knowing what might happen at the tower. Maybe they would all die, or maybe they wouldn’t be able to get into it at all. And even if they were able to secure it, and throw out the Servants, what then? Just his father’s half-thought-out plan to talk to the Karningholders and Gantor’s confidence that the scholars would be willing to help.

It was all too vague. He liked to be able to prepare for every possibility, and there were just too many unknowns ahead of them. He hated loose ends. He supposed, if he was honest, that was what made him so good at the skirmishes, where there were limited options and he could devise a plan for each one. He wasn’t so good at crowns, where there were almost unlimited possibilities and the best players were able to respond to whatever was thrown at them. They were engaged in a life-sized game of crowns now, and Tanist was the best player he knew. And Gantor, too. Even Mia could beat him at crowns – she placidly waited for his moves and then countered with better ones.

For two more days they endured the tunnels with their strange oppressive light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. There were no more camp caves, just occasional alcoves to one side or another with a water room and a few benches, but nothing else. They rested as best they could, although it was hard to sleep in the constant light, and lived on the supplies they carried with them. Clearly whoever had built these tunnels had no need for overnight stops.

“Could anyone get from the tower to that big camp cave in a single day, do you think?” Hurst asked. It disconcerted him to lose all the facilities they had relied on.

“They must do,” Tanist said with an indifferent shrug.

“These carts could go a little faster,” Gantor said, “if we were reckless enough. You could do it in a day, but it would be a very long day. Most likely they had something faster when the tunnels were first built.”

When the marker stones showed only five gate-distances to go, they stopped to wait for Walst’s group. While the rest settled in one of the alcoves, Tanist, Hurst, Gantor and Trimon cautiously walked forward the last few miles. Hurst had never been sure quite what he’d expected to find, but he’d always imagined that defenders of some sort would come into it. Guards with their ceremonial sticks, probably, but something more formidable was likely too. Who would leave the tower, the epicentre of power in the Karningplain, entirely undefended? It was unthinkable.

Yet it was so. At the end of the tunnel was a vast circular hall, made of the same softly glowing material as the tunnel. The floor was mosaic, covered in indecipherable patterns, and the walls contained more of the flame-like writing. Far above them was a blank, smooth ceiling. There was no one there.

After some dithering, they crept out and walked about unmolested. There were more tunnel openings around the perimeter, and in the centre eight vast pillars, very gently tapered, reached up to support
the tower above. Between the pillars were elegant wrought metal gates reaching right to the ceiling. Within the gates a delicate spiral stair rose up, narrowing as it went, to the floor above.

“Well, there’s our way in,” Tanist said.

All the gates were locked and this time there were no familiar levers.

“These little knobs look as if they might do something,” Gantor offered. “Shall I play around, see if anything happens?”

Tanist shook his head. “The something that happens might be us ringing the doorbell, followed by a horde of men brandishing swords. Let’s wait until we’re all here and have some chance of fighting our way through.”

By the time they got back to the alcove, Walst had already arrived, grinning with amusement at having caught them up so soon.

“Such slowsnakes you are,” he chortled, thumping Hurst on the back. “We were only an hour behind you.”

“Then you were moving too fast,” Tanist said, glowering at him. “Follow orders, Commander, if you please.”

“Sir!” Walst said, saluting smartly, but not in the least subdued by the reprimand.

Hurst felt the same excitement as everyone else to press on at once and begin the final phase of their journey, but Tanist insisted they all rest for a few hours. They were too large a group to fit into the alcove, so they spilled into clusters sitting around in the tunnel itself, eating and talking in low voices. No one was relaxed enough to sleep. Guards were posted in both directions, but everyone was so edgy that after a couple of hours, Tanist decided to move on.

“No point delaying,” he said in a quiet voice to Hurst. “We’re as prepared as we’ll ever be, I suppose.”

They took the carts as near as they dared to the great hall, and then parked them in the last alcove. The warriors donned full battle gear. Dethin was assigned to protect the two women, while Walst was to take charge of small defensive groups providing cover for Tanist who would be exploring. As they walked quietly down the last stretch of tunnel, the light became brighter until it was almost dazzling. It was daytime, and great windows far above cast vivid bolts of colour into the vast space of the hall. The metal gates shone with silvery flashes as they moved forward, and even the floor was too brilliant to look at.