Through Stone and Sea ndst-2

by Barb Hendee

  The back of her right knee buckled as something shoved hard against it.

  Wynn found Shade cowering behind her and put a hand on the dog's head, passing memories of their quiet times in privacy, but she still felt Shade's panicked rumbling.

  "This is madness," Chane rasped. "Which way do we go?"

  Wynn followed his gaze into the cavern's heights and was immediately daunted again.

  More tunnel openings filled the dome walls above, though these were smaller than those at floor level. And there were more people as well. Stone walkways the size of narrow roads passed between arch-supported platforms surrounding any column's upper reaches. Those paths eventually ended in more tunnel mouths at varied levels up the cavern's walls. Carters and peddlers as well as others hurried along the high paths amid large steaming crystals mounted in iron brackets upon the columns.

  So many voices, footfalls, and hawkers' calls amplified off the cavern's stone. In the rumbling din, Wynn's head felt like a beehive had been dropped into her skull.

  The whole place was like every open market in Calm Seatt packed into one giant hole in the mountain. There were too many choices, far more than she'd imagined.

  "Not above," she finally got out. "The trams have to be easily reached by cargo coming up the mountain."

  Wynn looked about for loaded wagons or carts that might point the way, but she saw none. Then she glanced back toward the way station outside. That was due east, and Sea-Side was roughly west by southwest. She rose on tip-toes, scanning about. One major tunnel seemed headed in the right direction. Shrugging her pack higher, she gripped her staff and Shade's scruff and pushed through the crowd.

  "Prunnaghvíâh!" a gruff voice called above the noise. "Prunnaghvíâh chûnré!"

  Someone was offering venison sausage for barter, and Wynn thought of Chap's taste for greasy foods. Shade suddenly lurched, pulling Wynn off course.

  "Whoa!" she cried. "Shade, stop … Shade!"

  Wynn stumbled in a rush as Shade's nose bobbed through the crowd. They broke into an open space with a cart-rack of smoke-cured meats and dangling sausages. Behind it stood an old male dwarf in a lopsided leather cap, and Wynn jerked Shade back with a groan.

  Shade's anxiety was overcome by her nose and stomach, just like her father. But it brought Wynn to her senses and the obvious remedy to their predicament.

  "Stay here," she told Chane.

  "Why?"

  "I'll ask directions." And she passed her hand over Shade's head.

  Wynn sent a quick memory of when she'd made Shade sit and wait while loading baggage during their bayshore journey. Then she hurried for the meat vendor.

  "Which way to the tram … to Sea-Side?" she asked in a rush.

  The dwarf started. He pushed back the leather cap on his half-balding head and frowned just a little. Wynn regained her manners. Information was bartered just like goods among the dwarves, but there were ways around the complication.

  "How much for a small sausage link?" she asked.

  "What you trade?" he returned in broken Numanese.

  Wynn hesitated. Dwarves didn't use coins like humans. They gauged them by the metal's bulk value, preferring more useful ones like copper and iron, or even steel. None of these were used for coins in human cultures, but dwarves sometimes took such from nearby cultures, especially Malourné, to be used in commerce with humans.

  Wynn had nothing to trade and fished out her coin pouch, offering up a silver penny.

  The vendor groaned as if it were a burden.

  "I just arrived," she explained. "It's all I have … and I offer it in whole."

  At that the dwarf chuckled.

  "Too much," he replied, and bent over.

  Hefting a loop of braided lanyard strung with punched disks of steel, copper, and a few of brass, he untied it. He sorted out two larger copper disks and traded these for the penny.

  Wynn had no idea what they were worth.

  The vendor handed over a sausage couched in a brown oak leaf made supple with some kind of oil. He pointed to the very tunnel she'd headed for.

  "All ways to all seatt places," he said. "Stay right when branch come."

  "Vuoyseag!" she uttered in thanks, and rushed back to Chane. "Come on; I know the way."

  While she wasn't looking, Shade snapped the sausage out of her hand, leaf and all.

  "My fingers!" she yelped. "You little … You will not turn into some pig like your father, I warn you."

  The sausage was gone. Shade lolled her tongue, trying to spit out the shredded leaf.

  Chane pulled the pack off Wynn's shoulder before she could stop him. He bundled it under his arm, slinging his own pair over one shoulder.

  "Lead," he said, "and take us out of here."

  Wynn grabbed Shade's scruff and pushed toward the second tunnel from the left.

  Sau'ilahk rose from dormancy, his slowly returning awareness filling with one clear memory.

  He could "awaken" to any place distinctly remembered, and he fixed upon the shadowed space with the fir tree beyond the temple of Bedzâ'kenge. He was instantly startled by sight of Wynn and her companions heading across the street and down wide steps. But he clearly heard her use the words "way station."

  Sau'ilahk sank briefly into dormancy, focusing upon another clear memory.

  This time he materialized inside a poorly lit alcove of one access tunnel into Cheku'ûn's great market cavern. He had been here before in his searches. Other quarry had passed this way, ones he had followed over the years, decades … centuries… .

  Others far more noteworthy than Wynn Hygeorht.

  Throngs of dwarves and scattered humans passed by the small tunnel's opening, but his height let him clearly watch the cavern's wide entrance. Waiting was something Sau'ilahk had turned into an art. Soon enough, Wynn appeared, along with Shade and the man who was there and not there.

  Sau'ilahk watched Chane's mouth move and then Wynn's. He seethed, not near enough to even read their lips. His black burial attire blended well with shadows, but he would not pass unnoticed in the open. Even if he did, the majay-hi would sense him if he came too close. For now, the masses of the living clouded the animal's awareness.

  His quarry pushed through the crowds, stopping only once at a meat vendor.

  Sau'ilahk did not have to follow to know where Wynn headed. It was unlikely, in leaving the temple, that she was going into the underlevels of this settlement. He let himself dissipate again.

  His presence faded as he sank once more toward dormancy—but not all the way into its pure darkness. He clung to the image of another well-memorized place. In a blink, he awoke some fifty yards down a tunnel beyond the tram station, standing between deep and wide ruts in its floor lined with scarred steel. Again, it was not long before Wynn arrived.

  Where was she going and why? Had she found some clue at the temple that might lead her to the texts—to the writings of Li'kän and Häs'saun and Volyno, three of Beloved's "Children"? A small wave of relief overtook him. This night, she might bring him to his desire. But spite followed quickly.

  Hkàbêv—"Beloved"—whom lowly Sumanese soldiers of old had called il'Samar, the Night Voice, had entrusted its treasures to the Children—vampires—rather than to Sau'ilahk's own caste of the Reverent.

  Beloved was as treacherous as glorious, as Sau'ilahk had learned an age ago. But even treachery could be turned to advantage, given patience and time. Sau'ilahk had learned patience in prolonged torment. In this moment, he was closer than he had ever been to what he wanted.

  Wynn Hygeorht believed she could find those texts and unveil secrets from what her sages called the Forgotten, a history so long lost that its fragments were bread crumbs scattered across a desert plain. When he had taken all she gained for him, he would feed on her little life, a morsel tasted before a lavish feast.

  But first he must learn where she was going and why.

  Wynn struggled to lead the way down the tunnel. The throng thinned as people finished thei
r passing barters, but more were coming out than going in. She tried to hug the tunnel's high wall as she waded against the flow. When the way branched off in a gradual curve, she glanced back, making certain she hadn't lost Chane. Then Wynn stumbled out into another wide cavern.

  It wasn't nearly as large as the market's, but she still pulled up short.

  In place of columns and crowds, two tunnels the width of three roads took off into the mountain's depths. One bore nearly southward, its destination likely Chekiuní, "Point-Side." The other aimed more west by southwest, and that had to be to Sea-Side.

  Two wide and long platforms in the cavern were made of stout wood planks and timbers like the docks of a harbor. Each aimed toward one tunnel, and triple sets of twined, steel-lined ruts in the granite floor ran from each platform into a tunnel's mouth. One of each trio was wider than the others, likely for a cargo-only tram.

  At the Point-Side platform, a few dwarves and a single human in gentleman's attire waited to board.

  Shade tried to back up, pulling on Wynn's grip as her grumble rose into a whine.

  "Odsúdýnjè!" Chane cursed in his native Belaskian as he scowled at a string of open-sided cars.

  "Would you two rather walk over the mountain?" Wynn returned.

  She was getting fed up with their reluctance for dwarven travel, though she was a little doubtful herself. The trams were basically a long string of connected cars constructed of solid wood. Painted in tawny and jade tones, they rode upon steel-and-iron undercarriages, their thick iron wheels shod with steel. Rows of benches faced ahead inside each car, separated by a narrow walkway down the center length. Passengers were protected on the outside by waist-high rail walls. Each car was roofed, but only their fronts contained a full wall and a door, probably to break rushing winds once the tram gained speed.

  A wide and paunched dwarf in a plain leather hauberk stood with his feet spread slightly on the platform. He cupped his mouth with gnarled hands, shouting, "Maksag Chekiuní-da!" and then repeated in Numanese—"Leaving for Point-Side!" He then trundled along the platform, shooing scant passengers into the cars.

  Wynn didn't watch him long. No sooner had the last passenger settled when a cloud of steam billowed around the tram's lead car, making it impossible to see clearly. She barely made out its front, which seemed to end in a point. She saw that much only because it glowed.

  Within the steam cloud, its front point burned like one of the massive pylon crystals. But it seemed larger still, more cleanly lined, and it pulsed in a slow rise and fall of light. A sharp explosion of steam belched from the lead car's undercarriage, and the glow brightened to a steady, hot yellow that hurt Wynn's eyes.

  The tram's whole chain of cars inched forward with a metallic scrape of wheels along the ruts. In moments, it picked up the speed of a trotting horse. As it bore into the tunnel, the sharp glow at its lead end lit the way, and Wynn heard its wheels' rhythm building steadily. As it vanished from sight, her mouth went dry.

  Chane stood staring after it as well.

  "Some arcane engine," he whispered. "And the pylon lights in the street and cavern. Do dwarves engage in thaumaturgy through artificing?"

  Wynn struggled for an answer. "Something like it. Domin Tilswith explained it more in terms of the dwarves' innate connection to the element of Earth. But he was rather evasive. I don't think he fully understood it himself."

  Watching after the vanished tram, Wynn felt Shade grow silent in quivering, as if too frightened to even whine. She stroked the dog's back, suddenly realizing what an ordeal this journey would be for Shade—underground, away from natural day and night, surrounded by masses of people, and traveling in such unnatural ways.

  "We need that one," Wynn said, pointing and heading off toward the other platform. "Shirvêsh Mallet believes High-Tower's family resides below Sea-Side. If we can find them, we might find his brother … and then the Stonewalkers and the texts."

  Again, there was only a passenger tram waiting among its three tracks.

  Chane quickly outdistanced Wynn. As he climbed the ramp ahead of her and gained the platform, he craned his head, trying to see the tram's lead car. It was already obscured in rising steam.

  Another stationmaster walked back along the platform, herding passengers into the cars. The Sea-Side tram was only slightly more full than the one to Point-Side.

  "Hurry," Wynn said, taking the lead, and she ducked into the nearest car.

  A young female dwarf was directing passengers to seats. She gave Shade a long stare but didn't object to the animal's presence.

  "How long to Chemarré?" Wynn asked in Dwarvish.

  The stocky girl put her hands on her hips and answered in a shockingly deep voice, "No stops on this run, so by Night-Summer's end."

  Then she was off through the forward door to the next car.

  Wynn understood why so many vendors sold food and drink in the great market cavern. It was well past dusk, even past mid-Night-Spring and the second bell of night. The trip would take over a quarter-night. She settled on a bench at the car's midpoint.

  Shade flattened, trying to crawl under the seat, but only managed to get half her bulk out of sight.

  Wynn reached down, scratching Shade's back. "It's all right."

  Chane piled their packs next to her and climbed into the next empty bench.

  "Did you pay for passage?" he asked.

  "Transport inside the mountain is a public service," Wynn answered. "The tribes and clans take pride in the upkeep of streets and access that serve their settlements."

  Chane barely nodded, watching the last travelers board—all dwarves. She and he were the only humans. Then he leaned over the rail wall, peering forward along the tram.

  Wynn knew he was trying to see the lead car—the "engine," as he'd called it. But he wouldn't from their current vantage point.

  "Are you acquiring a taste for dwarven culture?" she asked.

  He leaned back, and any wonder had already faded from his eyes. Perhaps someone like Chane couldn't allow himself to enjoy anything too much.

  "It is orderly," he answered, "even in its occasional chaos. I can appreciate this." Then he paused as if thinking. "Do they have a constabulary … or a city—settlement—guard?"

  Wynn frowned suspiciously.

  "Not precisely," she answered. "Each tribe has a warrior caste, somewhat like human armies, but they haven't known outright war since … I don't know when. Some clans man local constabularies in their areas, but there's little to no crime. Justice is handled by a clan conclave."

  "Conclave?" he echoed. "A council?"

  "Not exactly," she countered. "Council members are usually elected or appointed. It's more complicated with a dwarven conclave, from what little I know. And it always meets behind closed doors."

  "So, politics persist in all cultures."

  "It's complicated," she repeated, "in who sits on a clan or tribe conclave. Disputes between clans, and families of differing clans, or more complex issues are settled up at Seattâsh—Old-Seatt. That's where representatives meet for the conclave of five tribes. Why do you ask?"

  Chane glanced away.

  Wynn grew anxious to press him for answers, but then the tram car lurched. She grabbed the seat's edge as Shade let out a pitiful moan beneath it. The tram picked up speed, and Chane settled with his back to her.

  The journey through dark and stone began.

  Still in the tram tunnel's darkness, Sau'ilahk had to know where Wynn was headed. In the end, he had little choice but to expend preciously consumed life. Pulling back against the tunnel wall, he focused inward.

  In his mind's eye, in midair, he shaped a glowing circle for Spirit the size of a splayed hand. Within this, he formed the square of Air. And in the spaces between these nested shapes, he stroked the lines of sigils with his thoughts.

  Sau'ilahk fixated upon the glowing grand seal, and a part of his own energies bled away in a brief wave of weariness.

  A silent breeze built inside t
he tunnel.

  He ignored this side effect and called the air inward, into the seal that only he could see. There was no change of temperature in the tunnel, but the pattern's center space warped like the horizon across a hot desert. That nearly invisible distortion held its place within the seal's center—a servitor of Air.

  The most base of elementals, no more than a mindless automaton, awaited his implanted instructions.

  The effort of its creation left him lethargic, but he was not yet finished. He focused his will upon a tiny fragment of Spirit infused within the construction of Air and embedded five simplified commands in proper order.

  Target the being in gray robes.

  Record all sound.

  If target leaves this area, return to origin point.

  Reiterate all sound.

  Banish!

  Sau'ilahk released the glowing lines in his mind's eye.

  They faded to nothing—but not the small twist of Air. Freed of restraint, the faint warp of the servitor shot down the tunnel into the station's cavern to fulfill its purpose. Not even a breeze was raised in its passing.

  Sau'ilahk drifted toward the tunnel's mouth.

  No one noticed the fist-size warp. All were far too busy, including Wynn, as she led her companions to the nearer platform. This at least told him where she was headed, but he waited as the trio boarded and took their seats, and yellow-orange light erupted with steam at the tram's head.

  It gained speed and hurtled toward him in the tunnel.

  It could do him no harm, but he backed to the side before its glow bore through him. As the second-to-the-last car passed, he glimpsed Chane sitting before Wynn.

  Sau'ilahk still sensed nothing from this man. Chane seemed no more than an illusion of light and sound that somehow had gained physical presence.

  Who—what—was he?

  In Calm Seatt, Sau'ilahk had tried to drain that one's life with a touch and found only emptiness where life should have existed. Chane was indeed undead, but not like any that Sau'ilahk had ever encountered. Were he a vampire, his presence would immediately be sensed, and the dark majay-hì with Wynn would have attack him.

  The last car dwindled in the tunnel's distant darkness.