The Sea of Time (5 page)

ONCE AWAY, Jame tried to clear her senses in order to pick up Graykin’s trail again. It came to her, faintly, and she followed it back into the forest of ghostly towers.

Finally here was one that seemed, after a fashion, to be occupied. At least it had a door and, inside, dusty tapestries hung on the walls between the arched windows. Most of the weavings depicted shadowy figures with their backs turned although a few pale, hooded visages faced the room. A thicket of pillars held up the roof. As she entered, a murmur as if of conversation died.

“Hello?”

Only silence answered her, and flickers of movement seen out of the corner of her eyes. There were definitely people in the room, standing behind the pillars, shifting as she moved to stay out of sight.

“I’m looking for a Kencyr named Graykin,” she told the room at large.

“So are we,” replied a husky whisper at her elbow, making her jump. One of the gray figures had joined her. She could see half of his face under the hood—a sharp nose and a narrow chin, thin lips pursed as if at the taste of something nasty.

“How long has he been missing?”

“Fourteen days. Are you one of his clients?”

How to answer that? “We have done business before. Is this the Intelligencers’ Hall?”

“It is.”

Belatedly, it occurred to Jame that she didn’t know what Graykin’s relationship was to the spies’ guild. If he hadn’t registered with it, they might well be hunting him.

More gray figures detached themselves from the pillars and the wall to surround her. They smelled of dust and dank, like dirty linen. Now she could see them clearly direct on, but out of the corner of her eye the room appeared to be empty.

“Who speaks for you?” she asked.

“One who is not here. I will show you where he was last seen.”

That confused Jame. “Where who was?”

The thin lips twisted without mirth. “The one whom you seek.”

There seemed no answer to that except to follow her gray guide out of the room and down the stair that angled around the corners of the tower. They passed a door at each level, all shut, but by the dingy underwear hanging from balcony wash lines Jame guessed that the guild occupied the entire structure. She tried to keep her focus on the spy who led her as he flickered in and out of view. Her sense was that he was playing with her. Whatever Graykin’s association with the guild, hers with him had gained her little credit.

At last they reached the ground on a dirty back street many rings removed from the city’s colorful center.

“There,” said her guide, indicating a wide circular hole in the roadway, its cover dragged to one side.

Jame peered into the depths. “The Undercliff?”

“Yes,” he said, and pushed her in.

IV

JAME FELL HEADFIRST into darkness, trapped air snatching at her clothes. Close-set walls echoed back her startled cry. Above, the circle of light receded but, twisting, she saw a dim glow below. Its ghostly light shone on the bars of a ladder flashing past beside her. She reached for it. Its rungs rapped her knuckles sharply, then she caught it. The wrench nearly dislocated both shoulders. For a second she dangled there, breathing hard and scrabbling for a foothold, then her grip weakened and she fell again, onto a sloping pile of rubble at the ladder’s foot.

Sweet Trinity. She would never take the mere falling down of stairs seriously again.

When she got her breath back, Jame propped herself up and looked around. She had come to rest against the wall of a huge cave. Light filtered into it through the vines curtaining its mouth. The shadowy, stalactite-fanged roof must have been a good two hundred feet up and it was nearly as wide side to side. Its floor, while undulating, gave the impression of having been cleared of all obstacles and trampled smooth.

A number of people had turned to witness her sudden descent. Their curiosity satisfied, they went back to work. Jame saw that she had fallen into a subterranean marketplace. As above, so below? Getting shakily to her feet, she limped over to the nearest stall where the merchant in charge handed her a tin of cold water.

“Dropping in on us, eh?”

Jame gratefully drained the cup. The water tasted strongly of iron. “Am I welcome?”

“So long as you don’t come to spy.”

Still collecting her wits, she inspected his wares. Very dingy they seemed—scraps of thin gray cloth, a vest, a codpiece.

“Woven only of the finest spider web,” he said proudly, “and you know how strong that is. One of these strips will stop an arrow.”

He named a price that made Jame blink. It seemed to be her day to meet armorers.

Besides his stall, she saw others selling such basic necessities as fuel and food, the latter rather dispirited, apparent rejects from the market above. Sprinkled among them were more wares native to the Undercliff: multicolored mushrooms, small rock formations apparently intended to be shrines, and water bottled from various subterranean pools. There were also sizable chunks of diamantine softly aglow, priced quite cheaply for such a valuable substance. The Undercliff seemed in general to cater as much to the Overcliff as to its own inhabitants.

The distorted echo of music reached them from farther back in the cave.

“Here they come,” said the dealer. “Happy Vediafest.”

Girls clad in yellow and black robes danced out of the shadow of towering stalagmites playing pipes. As they neared, Jame saw that each one was wreathed with similarly colored snakes, their tails knotted together behind the girls’ necks. Each also carried a long wand at the end of which, tethered with a leash, fluttered a bat. The snakes strained to reach it, coil and strike, coil and strike. When one succeeded, cymbals clashed and the girls cried out in triumph. Supplicants wriggled on the ground at their heels, apparently hoping to see their particular bat caught. Jame saw the bright clothes of Overcliffers and the sturdy cottons of farmers among the drab Undercliffers. Some had obvious injuries; others wore their suffering in their expressions or in the twist of their wasted bodies.

In their midst came a litter carried shoulder high on which sat the statue of a matronly woman festooned with stone serpents.

“Mother Vedia!” the stall holder called out to her as she passed. “Grant good health to me and mine!”

“I didn’t see anything like this above,” Jame said.

“You wouldn’t, not since King Kruin drove all the Old Ones Undercliff. Seems he didn’t want any rivals to his own godhood. Well, his loss, our gain.”

A girl with a bald, tattooed head darted through the celebrants and stopped the litter. The statue quivered. Its surface, laced with cracks and white dust, floated down as both woman and snakes stirred to life. She rose, knelt to listen to her petitioner, then signaled her bearers to set her down. While the dancers continued to thread back and forth between the booths, still singing, she and the girl hurried off. On impulse, Jame returned the tin cup to the merchant and followed them.

They climbed a chiseled stair and ducked into a side cave full of limestone columns with space enough between them for two dozen child-sized sleeping mats. The children themselves were clustered around an alcove at one end of the cave. Jame came up behind them to peer over their heads. In the alcove was a bed and on it lay a restive child with a blood-stained bandage wrapped around his head, supported by a lanky, ginger-haired young man, well endowed with pimples. The bald girl hovered nearby while the matron consulted with another young female, this one plump and blond, wearing a white tunic.

“I
told
you that my powers are limited Undercliff,” said the latter, with the hint of a child’s pout. “If Kroaky hadn’t been so insistent, I never would have come. Mother Vedia, can
you
do any good here?”

The matron rubbed a hand over her face, smearing the dust there into a network of wrinkles which the limestone had glossed over. In general, she looked older and more dumpy than she had before as a statue. The snakes slithered restlessly over her plump form, in and out of her loose clothing. Two snapped at each other until she absentmindedly slapped them apart.

“I should have been called sooner, say, when the boy first fell.”

“He seemed all right then,” the bald girl said truculently, revealing filed teeth as she spoke and snapping off her words. Jame recognized her accent from the Cataracts. A Waster, here? “Then he was drowsy and complained of a headache. That was a week ago. Now we can’t get him to rest.”

The boy struggled in the young man’s arms. “It hurts!” he whined.

Jame wondered if this was the unlicensed child-thief whom the guards had thrown down the drain.

Mother Vedia rested a hand on the boy’s head. Her fingers sank down through hair and skin to the bone beneath, which she felt.

“He’s lucky not to have split open his skull. As it is, he’s merely cracked it. Now, which one . . .” She fumbled among a collection of small bottles that hung clinking from her belt. The snakes selected one. “Ah, yes. I can at least make him sleep. Now, drink up, little man.”

The child tried to refuse, but the youth with ginger hair held his nose and ruthlessly poured the potion down his throat. Soon his thrashing quieted. The young man settled him back on the pallet, then raised hazel eyes to regard Jame over the intervening heads.

“And now, as for you . . .”

Jame found herself suddenly the focus of all eyes. The children scattered as the bald girl hurtled through them. Jame countered her charge with a water-flowing move that sent her stumbling among the columns. She came back with a knife in her hand.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m not a spy, but I am looking for one—Graykin by name. Have you seen him?”

Ginger slipped between them. “Hush, Fang,” he said, in a nasal voice that Jame almost thought she recognized from sometime earlier that day. “Not everyone from above is an enemy. What is this man to you?” he asked Jame.

“A servant. If he imposed on your hospitality, I apologize for him. He can be . . . overzealous.”

“And who are you?”

“Many things. Call me the Talisman.”

The youth smiled, baring big, white teeth. “Well, then, call me Kroaky. Fang, my dear, he’s your catch. Will you surrender him?”

The Waster glowered. “Don’t call me ‘dear.’ Anyway, should we trust an Overcliffer?”

“She apparently trusts us.” He indicated the ragged band of urchins who had spread out around Jame and were watching her closely. “Will you fight these, Talisman?”

“Not willingly. They look too fierce.”

The children nudged each other and giggled.

Fang reluctantly sheathed her knife. “Well, all right. He’s more trouble than he’s worth, anyway.”

She led Jame to the back of the cave and a hole in the floor, extending down into a bottle-necked cavity. Firelight glistened on water on its floor. The pit appeared empty, until a white face turned to peer up from the depths.

“Graykin?”

“Lady?” His voice echoed hollowly. “At last! Get me out of here!”

“Are you sure you want him?” asked Kroaky.

Jame sighed. “No, but he’s my responsibility.”

A coiled rope lay nearby, fixed at one end to a rock formation. Kroaky kicked it down the hole. The line went taut. Scrabbling and cursing came from below, then a thin, grimy hand groped over the stone lip. Jame seized it by the wrist and helped a scruffy figure to climb out.

Graykin shook out his wet robe, looking furious. “Days I’ve been up to my knees in that stinking water, pelted with stale bread. Didn’t you hear me yelling for you?”

“Not really,” said Jame apologetically. “I gathered that you were annoyed, nothing worse.”

“Huh! Why did you chuck me down there anyway?” he demanded of Kroaky.

“I didn’t. Fang did. She doesn’t like spies—and none of your Intelligencer’s tricks: they don’t work down here, as you may have realized.”

“Why
did
you go Undercliff?” Jame asked as they made their way back to the ladder leading to the Overcliff.

Receiving no immediate answer, she glanced back at Graykin who trudged mulishly at her heels.

“You told me to find out all I could about Kothifir.”

“Well, yes. I didn’t expect you to get quite so . . . er . . . immersed, though.”