The Rivers of Zadaa (22 page)

“We are getting close,” Loor finally announced.

I took the parchment and saw that we were only a few turns away from the top of the map. The markings showed that the final tunnel led to an area with no detail. That had to be Kidik. My excitement started to build. Not only were we nearing the end of a dangerous journey, I was dying to see what an underground city would look like here on Zadaa. I tried not to think about the fact that we would be going from the frying pan into the fire. We were Batu. At least Loor was. I was kind of an honorary Batu. Bottom line was, we were the enemy. There was every possibility that the Rokador would capture us and lock us away. Or worse.

“Let's rest a minute,” I suggested.

We double-checked the map to make sure there weren't any land mines around, and sat down.

“There's something we need to talk about,” I said to Loor.

“What is that?” she asked.

I had been bothered about something since we decided to leave for Kidik. It was a problem I didn't know how to handle. Now that we were on the verge of arriving at our destination, it was time that I shared my concern with Loor. “We still have no proof that Saint Dane is controlling events down here,” I said.

“But he was there when Pelle a Zinj was assassinated,” Loor argued. “And Bokka said he is down here—”

“Yeah, I know, but we still don't know what he's up to. We're only guessing. Maybe he's just hanging around, observing.”

“What are you saying, Pendragon?” Loor asked.

“We came down here thinking that we've got to stop the war,” I answered. “I have no idea how we're going to do that, but it's why we're here. What are we going to do if we find out that Saint Dane hasn't influenced events after all, and the war between the Batu and the Rokador is the way it was meant to be? What do we do then?”

This truly was a dilemma. If Saint Dane wasn't controlling events, then the Travelers had no business being here and monkeying around. We're not supposed to mess with the natural course of a territory. That's not our job. We already screwed things up by putting Pelle a Zinj in a position to be killed.

Loor said, “I believe the real question is, am I here to do the work of a loyal Batu, or a Traveler? As a Traveler, I must do all I can to stop Saint Dane. But as a Batu, I must be loyal to my tribe.”

“Right, which means you might suddenly have to go from somebody who wants to stop the war, to being the first warrior who has to fight it.”

Loor looked at the ground, thinking. As we sat in that cavern, only a few yards away from Kidik City, we truly didn't know if Loor was there as a peacekeeper or an invader.

“That is our first challenge,” she finally said. “We must learn what Saint Dane has been doing. Once we know that, we will decide how to proceed.”

She was right. Until we found Saint Dane, we wouldn't know what to do. I took a tired breath and asked, “Is this Traveler stuff ever going to get easier?”

“I do not believe so,” Loor answered.

We continued on through the last portion of the tunnel. Up ahead I saw that the stone corridor turned sharply to the right, just as the map showed. My heart raced. Around that corner was our destination. Kidik. I was excited about what we would find…and scared to death.

“You ready for this?” I asked.

“Do you need to ask?” Loor shot back.

I gave her a smile, and we continued on. We reached the corner, made the turn, and came face-to-face with…a dead end.

There was no Kidik.

ZADAA

L
oor and I stood staring at a huge, blank wall of rock where there was supposed to be a city.

“No way,” I said.

It was the end of the line. There wasn't any way around it. Literally. The tunnel opened up into a large cavern, but instead of a city, there was nothing but a vast wall of rock. There were no tunnels. No doorways. No hidden passageways. We had come to the end of the map, but there was no Kidik.

“This doesn't make sense,” I said, looking at the map. “Did Bokka send us on a totally useless trip?”

“No,” Loor said defensively. “Why would he do that?”

“I don't know. Maybe, maybe…” A thought hit me. “Maybe we didn't get this map from Bokka after all.”

“You were there, Pendragon,” Loor said impatiently. “You took it out of his boot.”

“Yeah, but was it really Bokka? Maybe Saint Dane turned himself into Bokka to get us this map!”

Loor dismissed it, saying, “Then Saint Dane's ashes are now scattered across the desert.”

Oh. Right. Bokka died. Maybe I was getting a little too paranoid about Saint Dane turning up in various disguises. “Okay, so it was Bokka,” I said. “Then why did he send us into a dead end?”

Loor stared at the blank wall, looking to find some clue that would make sense of this.

She found it.

“Look!” she said, pointing to where the rock wall met the ceiling.

I looked. I didn't see a thing. “Look at what?” I asked.

“Look to where the wall in front of us meets the side of the cavern.”

I looked. Nothing. “I'm still not getting it,” I said.

“Look at the color of the rock,” she explained. “The wall is different from the ceiling, and the side. That is not natural.”

A closer look told me she was right. The ceiling and side walls were a different brown color than the wall. The dead end wall was ever so slightly darker.

“So what?” I asked.

“That is not natural, Pendragon,” Loor said. “I believe this wall in front of us was constructed.”

“Constructed?” I shot back. “You can't just build a huge wall of rock.”

“The Rokador can,” Loor said confidently. “How can you doubt that, after seeing the world they have built? I believe this is another attempt to stop the Batu attack.”

I took a step back and tried to imagine the wall not being there. Now that I was thinking that way, it did seem like where the wall met the sides and the ceiling, and even the ground, was a little bit too perfect and precise.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe they sealed off the cavern. It's still a wall of rock and we're still stuck.”

Loor smiled and said, “Maybe not.”

“It's a stone wall, Loor,” I said impatiently. “Whether it was made by the Rokador or not, we can't get through—” The words were barely out of my mouth when the lightbulb went on. I realized what she was talking about. “Are you serious?” I asked. “Do you really know how to use those things?”

Her answer was to take off running back the way we had come. Not knowing what else to do, I followed. Loor led me past the open area where we had stopped to talk, through another section of tunnel, and back to a larger cavern that had two sizable passageways off to either side. When I looked down one of these passageways, I saw something hidden in the shadows. It was the silver shell of a dygo.

“Wait here,” she said, and ran to it.

A few seconds later I heard what sounded like an engine starting up. But it was like no engine I was familiar with. It was a deep, growling buzz. A moment later the silver sphere came rolling out of the shadows. The giant ball rolled on treads. It moved to the center of the cavern with the giant drill bit positioned to the rear. It stopped, Loor lifted up a side hatch, popped her head out, and said, “Would you like a ride?”

“Oh, I am loving this!” I said.

She leaned back so I could get in. I stepped up on the tread and slid past her to enter the small vehicle. I had never been in a space capsule, but I imagined this was kind of the same thing. It was pretty cramped inside. There were two hard seats, side by side. In front was a window for both seats that was only about a foot high. It wrapped halfway around the sphere to give a little bit of a sideways view. There was no way to see behind us. The controls were in front of the left-hand seat. Loor's seat. The instrument console had a few switches, along with a round glass ball that looked like one of those compass things people sometimes put on the dashboards of their cars. There were two joysticks in front of the driver's seat. It didn't look all that complicated, but I was just as happy to know that Loor had driven one before. She sat in her seat and pulled the hatch shut. It closed with a solid thunk.

“The shell is thick,” she said. “It can withstand tons of pressure.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Let's not test it. What about air?”

“There are vents to the rear,” she explained while toggling a switch to the left of her controls. “They can be opened and shut, depending on what kind of material is being tunneled through. When they are shut, there is enough air inside to last several minutes.”

“Let's keep them open,” I suggested.

Loor grabbed the two joysticks and gave me a quick demo. She manipulated the sticks and the sphere instantly responded, moving quickly and smoothly to the right, then the left, up, and down. Our seats swiveled and rotated on yokes, so we were always upright. She cranked one stick one way and one the other, and we did a complete three-sixty. I noticed that the glass ball on the control panel always stayed in one position. I guessed this was the device that told you which way was up.

“The sphere moves in every direction,” she said. “As does the drill.”

She twisted the grip on top of the joystick, and the drill came over the top and settled in front of us. Since the huge drill was hollow, it was possible to see all the way through to the front and ahead of us. Loor moved it to the left, to the right, up, and down, demonstrating how it had complete maneuverability.

“So, this thing can drill any way but straight down?” I asked.

“It can do that too,” she said. “The treads move to the side and raise the vehicle up to allow the drill to face downward. It is quite ingenious.”

“The Rokador are pretty smart people,” I said.

“With machinery, yes,” she said, sounding a touch insulted. “There is much they are not as capable of.”

Meow. Loor's competitive nature was showing itself. But this wasn't the time to start a debate about which tribe was better, so I didn't press. Loor positioned the drill so it was directly in front of us, pushed her foot down on a floor pedal, and we moved forward. The ride was pretty smooth. I guess the treads softened out all of the bumps. Loor was pretty capable, too, steering the vehicle like a pro. It was a good thing the dygo was so small because we had to travel through some narrow passages to get back to the dead end. In no time we were looking at the blank wall of rock where the map, and our trip, had ended.

“What if we're wrong and there's nothing but rock?” I asked.

“Then it means Bokka has betrayed me,” Loor said. “I do not believe that is an option.”

“Let's go,” I said.

Loor toggled a switch on the control panel. The massive drill whined to life and the cutting rings began to spin. She pushed the joystick forward, and the dygo rolled ahead. The tip of the drill touched the wall, and cut through it as if it were cotton candy.

“Whoa,” I said, totally impressed. “No problem.”

It was amazing. The spinning rings were designed so that they not only cut into the rock, but pulled the material back and away, pulverizing it. The rock that was within the hollow drill bit was chewed up and spit out as easily as if we were shredding paper into confetti. The dygo vibrated slightly as it cut, but it was pretty minor considering we were boring through solid rock. It wasn't very loud, either. I guessed that was because we were sealed inside this thick sphere and insulated from the outside noise.

“Are the vents open for air?” I asked.

“Yes,” Loor answered, but kept her attention straight ahead.

“How thick do you think the wall is?” I asked.

Loor didn't have to answer. A few seconds after we started drilling, I saw light come through the hollow tip of the drill. The wall couldn't have been any more than a few feet thick. The drill kept grinding, though. We needed to make the hole large enough for us to move the dygo through. Moments later I felt the shuddering come to a stop. We were through. Loor stopped the drill, turned to me, and announced, “Now we can see Kidik.”

ZADAA

L
oor powered down the dygo and cracked open the heavy hatch. The first thing I noticed was the sound. We had been in closed tunnels for the last couple of hours, where the echoes from our footsteps bounced back at us. Here on the far side of the wall I heard something that didn't make sense at first because we were underground. But there was no mistaking it. I heard wind. Wherever we were, it sounded bigger. Loor crawled out of the sphere. I followed and took a quick look back at the wall to see we had cut a perfectly round hole.

“Wow,” was all I could say. “That is just flat awesome.”

“Pendragon, look,” Loor said.

I glanced over to see she was staring up at a building. Yes, a building. It looked like one of those pueblo structures that you see built into the cliffs of the Southwest on Second Earth. The structure must have been four stories high, with window openings and doorways and even balconies. All I could do was stare and think how impossible it was that we were underground. Several yards across from it was a similar building that was also built into the rock. The two stood together, like sentries guarding an entrance. Beyond them the rocky walls formed a slot canyon that wound its way into parts unknown. I felt sure this was the entrance to Kidik. The two of us stood there for a moment, knowing that we were about to face a whole new danger.

“You said that the Rokador had no chance of defeating the Batu, unless they were cunning,” I said.

“I did.”

“The tunnels were abandoned,” I continued. “The Rokador have retreated, but they have to be somewhere. Is it possible that the entire Rokador tribe is in Kidik, preparing for the attack?”

Loor glanced at the two buildings that guarded the entrance to the city. She had a dark look on her face. She didn't have to answer. I knew she was thinking the same thing. The two of us might be stepping into a city that was preparing for war…against us. Loor pulled her stave from her harness. I did the same.

“Be careful,” Loor said.

“Is that possible?” I asked.

Loor ran quickly to the building on our left. She didn't go in, but crept along the wall, headed toward the city. Smart move. We needed to be cautious. Walking down the center of the street might have been suicide. I hugged the wall behind her. I remembered back to what I learned during those long nights in the training compound when I got whacked around in the dark. My senses were on alert, tuned for anything that might foreshadow an attack. If a steel arrow came flying at us, I wanted to hear it hiss through the air. If a team of Tiggen guards charged, I wanted to smell their sweat. I had no clue if I was capable of that, but I had to try.

We quietly crept past the two buildings and along the rocky wall. The narrow canyon bent to the left. Loor slid ahead boldly, with me right behind. As we moved, I heard the same, strange sound that I heard when we first broke through the wall. It sounded like wind. It was spooky, actually, because it was more like a deep moan. I listened to this sound, trying to place it. It was then that I realized something was missing. There should have been another sound, but there wasn't. We should have heard the sounds of a city, with people. We didn't. All I could hear was that distant, spooky moan. I was beginning to think that Kidik was still a long way off, until we turned the corner.

I caught my breath. We had arrived.

We stood at the edge of an incredible city that was carved completely out of rock. The slot canyon we had come through opened up into an enormous cavern where the sides stretched high above us on either side. There was no sky, only a vast ceiling of rock. There were thousands of structures built on top of one another. The city didn't cover all that much ground, but the buildings rose up on either side of us, all connected by roads and pathways that snaked up and around on hundreds of levels. None of the individual buildings was very big. The tallest of them was maybe four stories. But there were thousands of them, all seemingly piled on top of one another and crammed in together. Like the two buildings we had first seen, they reminded me of Southwest pueblos. There were windows, but no glass panes. The doorways were open as well. I saw carved staircases leading up from the road on both sides and into the honeycomb of buildings. The effect was so vast, so complex, so impossible, I forgot for a second that we were stepping into enemy territory.

“It is empty,” Loor declared.

I was so awed by the spectacle, it hadn't hit me. She was right. Like the tunnels we had come through, there wasn't a single, solitary Rokador to be seen. Anywhere.

“This is impossible,” I said. “They can't abandon an entire city!”

“What do your eyes tell you?” Loor asked.

I glanced around, listened, and said, “Okay, maybe they can.”

We continued to walk, still cautious. There were about eight million places for somebody to be hiding, waiting for the first arrival of the Batu. We stayed close to the walls on one side of the street, just in case.

“Where is everybody?” I asked. “Obviously they're not all here getting ready to ambush the Batu.”

“I believe when we find that answer, we will have the truth that Bokka spoke of,” Loor said.

“He said that the truth was on the far side of the city, to the center,” I said.

“He also said that it was a nightmare,” Loor added.

“Yeah, swell,” I said. “Let's keep moving. Can't wait to see the nightmare.”

As we walked I couldn't help but wonder, again, what the Rokador were all about. They were definitely advanced technologically. Still, they not only chose to live underground, they carved primitive buildings out of stone that were barely more advanced than caves. It was a weird balance. They had no glass in their windows, yet they had streetlights on every level of the city. They built incredible machines that could drill through rock, but you had to climb old fashioned stairs to get from one level to the next. They figured out how to generate power, but didn't use it to create any kind of modern convenience beyond what was absolutely necessary. It seemed like they could have so much more, but chose not to. What a weird, freakin' bunch.

I tried to put myself in Saint Dane's place. What could I tempt these people with? What could I tell them they would gain by fighting the Batu? Bokka said their population was growing and they were running out of space. You sure couldn't prove that by what we had seen on our journey, because we saw nobody. No-body. The more I learned about the Rokador, the more of a mystery they became. Nothing was more mysterious than this complex, deserted city.

Loor and I kept sharp, watching everything, expecting an attack. The only sound we heard besides our own footsteps was the haunting, groaning sound that grew louder as we moved through the city. It was beginning to feel as if the place were haunted. The moaning sound grew louder by the second. We were approaching what looked like a dead end. We had been walking for ten minutes, so I'd say the city was about a half mile across. Looking ahead, all I saw was rock. It seemed as if the main street of Kidik was going to end at a blank wall that stretched up to the vast ceiling above.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The roadway rose slightly. When we reached the crest of the hill and looked down the other side, we saw that there was definitely a wall at the end of the street. Now that we were looking down on it, we could see that at the base there was an entrance to a wide tunnel. As we got closer we saw this opening was at the top of a flight of stone stairs that led down. Both the opening and the stairs were wide—I'd say about fifty yards across. The moaning sound was pretty loud now. Whatever was making it was at the bottom of those stairs.

“We've got to keep going,” I said.

We started down. The stairs were steep and long. Looking to either side, I saw that every thirty feet or so a flat ramp was carved into the stairs that was about ten feet wide. I figured this is where the dygos went up and down so they wouldn't chew up the stairs.

“What is that sound?” I asked. “It's making me crazy.”

Loor shrugged. She didn't have any more of a clue than I did. As we descended the steps it got cooler. Soon we were hit with a stiff breeze. Whatever was making this breeze had to be causing the howl, too. But what was it?

Loor saw it first. She was several steps farther down than I was, nearing the bottom of the stairs. The ceiling of the tunnel was dropping down on the same angle as the stairs, preventing us from seeing directly ahead until we were almost at the bottom. When Loor dropped below the ceiling, she was able to see what lay ahead. It was a large, empty cavern with a stone floor. Nothing all that out of the ordinary, at least for the underground world of the Rokador, anyway. She stepped down onto the stone floor, and looked to her right. What happened then was something that I never thought possible. On an adventure full of surprises, this one ranked right up there near the top.

Loor froze…and dropped her stave.

Uh-oh. Whatever she was looking at had shocked her so badly that she dropped her weapon. Let me write that again. Loor was so shocked, she dropped her weapon. Loor. I don't have to tell you how wrong that was. I hesitated a second. If something out there was so incredible that it could make Loor drop her weapon in shock, I wasn't so sure I wanted to see it. Of course, I had to. I grasped my stave tighter, in case I had the same reaction. Slowly I continued down. To be honest, I kind of squinted. I could still see, but somehow squinting made it easier to take, like I was in control. I used to do that in horror movies. I wouldn't fully close my eyes, I'd just squint. That way, if something icky jumped out, I could close them quick.

But no amount of squinting helped prepare me for what I saw when I hit the bottom of the stairs and turned to my right. I discovered what was making the moaning sound. It was wind. The mystery was solved, though a much bigger mystery had taken its place. What we saw was impossible, yet real—as real as the desert sand on the surface, miles above. Stretched out before us, as far as could be seen, was an ocean. An honest-to-god, underground ocean. The moaning wind slashed across the surface, kicking up whitecaps. I could feel moist air hitting me in the face. The sight was so impossible and so wrong, I'm surprised I didn't drop my weapon too.

I walked to Loor, and without taking my eyes off the water, I said, “Now there's something you don't see every day.”

Loor couldn't speak. It was like her brain wouldn't accept it. But it was no illusion. A forty-yard-span of stone floor stretched between us and the water. I left the cavern at the base of the stairs, passed under an archway, and walked across the deck to the edge of the water. There was something I had to know. I got down on my belly, and scooped up a handful of water. Touching it to my lips, I instantly realized that somebody somewhere had some serious questions to answer. This was freshwater. It was drinkable. I had no idea how deep it was, but the surface was vast. I had no doubt that there was enough water here to feed the rivers of Zadaa and end the drought.

Loor walked up behind me. “Someone will pay for this,” she said while staring out over the water. “My people are starving and there is enough water here to…” She didn't finish the sentence, that's how ticked she was. She gazed from right to left and said, “There.” She was pointing to the right of us, where I saw that tied to the stone deck, bobbing in the water, was a small boat.

“Bokka said a vehicle was waiting to take us to the center,” I said. “Do you think—”

Loor's answer was to walk quickly toward the boat. I followed. Without another word we boarded. It was about the size of a rowboat and made out of the same silver steel as the dygo. There was nothing sleek or modern about it, though. It looked to have been hammered out of sheet metal into a shape that was kind of like a Boston whaler with two bows. One end had a tiller, which made it the stern. Loor went right to work. There was a small control panel in the stern that reminded me of the instrument panel in the dygo. Loor toggled a switch, and I heard an engine start up with a low growl.

“Can you handle this thing?” I asked.

With one quick move she tossed the line back on the deck and gunned the engine. That meant yes. I sat down in the bow quickly, and not a second too soon. If I had been standing, I would have toppled. Loor kicked the throttle open and in no time we were bouncing across the waves. This wasn't a pleasant skimmer ride, like on Cloral. This was more like being in a small boat on the choppy Long Island Sound at home. It was dark, too. Once we got away from Kidik, there were no lights to guide our way. Of course, there was no moon or stars above either. Only the rock ceiling. I glanced back to Kidik and saw a giant wall of stone. At the base was the opening that led to the cavern at the bottom of the stairs we had just come through. The platform and cavern were lit up, but this light wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to help us see farther out over the dark ocean. I tried to memorize where this opening was, since we would have to come back this way. At least I hoped we'd be coming back.

Loor was focused. Her jaw set. She had been hit with a lot over the past few hours. I had no idea how close to the edge she was. I figured the best thing to do was try and diffuse her anger.

“Yeah, it sucks,” I said. “Bokka is dead, and it looks like the Rokador have been hoarding water from the Batu. But we gotta stay focused. There's more to come, I guarantee it. I need to know you're with me.”