by Larry Niven
“Why?”
The general looked at him carefully and seemed to be mulling a decision. “The Hundred have a project which must remain secret … for longer than you would believe. This tunnel was one of the means by which it might one day be discovered. So the tunnel must be sealed, eventually. I knew it of old, and in fact it was in investigating it that I found the location for the party.”
“Coincidence.”
The general had finished looking through his clothing. He was bruised and cut, and he limped. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
The brush they had piled into the tunnel opening shook as wave after wave of birds thundered into it. They were crawling through, breaking their wings on the branches. Chittered, until Mijista Wile clapped her hands over her ears and screamed, “Make them stop! Make them stop, please!”
“It’s that damned hunting lure again,” Aros said.
“Then if I strip?”
“It’s too late,” Aros said. “It’s all over you now. They’ll kill you no matter what.”
Madam Silith clung to her husband. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
Silith stood up, bleeding, leaning back against the wall. “I can lead them away. You’ll survive.”
Seven words to say good-bye.
Given the general’s enormous vitality, in an hour he might have recuperated enough to be able to do it, but in the current condition there was no chance. None.
Unless.
“Give your clothing to me,” Aros said.
“What are you doing?” Silith was hurrying, stripping off his clothing.
“Here. Mijista, love, take the water. Mix it with earth and smear the general with mud. Dampen the scent.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to lead them away,” Aros said. Would Neoloth rage if Aros saved the general again? Ah, well.
Mijista clung to him, eyes pleading. “You can’t. They’ll kill you.”
“They have to catch me first,” he replied, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded.
A few more birds managed to wiggle their way through the briars. The servants thrashed and stomped at them in desperation.
“I’ll draw them out,” he told the servant. General Silith’s brow still oozed blood into his eyes, so much so that it almost blinded him.
“Boy,” he said to Aros. “You are the biggest fool I’ve ever met. Either that or…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Say it,” Madam Silith said. “Say it, damn you. He’s about to die for you. At least you can acknowledge him.”
Silith sighed. “Either that … or you are my son.”
Aros laughed. Damn, that felt good. “Let’s save the family stuff for later.”
Silith doffed his shirt, displaying his massively muscled upper body. An older warrior he was, but still impressive in every way.
Aros took the shirt, breathed in it … and was unable to smell anything but General Silith’s sweat and blood. Then … far down at the base of the grime was a different smell, something that seemed rather like a sweetness, vaguely decayed, perhaps something that wouldn’t be detected unless one was looking for it.
Oddly, he was relieved. At least this wasn’t Neoloth’s work. He’d been afraid to think that thought.
“Do you smell anything?” Silith asked.
“Not quite the same as with the cannibal worms,” Aros said. “Who laid your clothes out for you today?”
“Someone I’m going to have a very hard conversation with. When we’re through this.”
Madam Silith embraced him while the servants screamed at the blockade, waving their torches to drive the shrikes back.
Aros donned the clothes. Mijista Wile kissed him deeply. “Come back,” she said.
“Good plan,” he replied, and then turned toward the opening.
“Peel a corner!” he called. This would be brutal. He covered his face, except for his eyes, and pulled his hands down inside Silith’s cloak so that nothing was visible.
“Stop. I know a way out. Halt, boy!”
When Aros turned to look at him, there was an expression on Silith’s face he had not before seen. Fear? Silith examined the men and women crowded into the passage, eyes filled with strong emotion. But … what?
“You would do this thing?” Silith asked him, and his black eyes searched Aros’s face deeply. “For me and my family. You would give yourself?”
Aros shivered. “I might get away with diving off the cliff. Doff the clothes. Swim.” Miss the rocks? Was it even possible? And if he did, would the birds kill him even in the water? As frenzied as they were?
And what amazed him was that he knew there was a part of him that did not care.
“Yes,” he said, meeting Silith’s gaze with cold control of the fear he felt boiling within him.
Jade Silith brushed his cheek with the back of her hand as Mijista wrapped her arms around him.
And then both of them looked at Silith, as if hoping for a miracle.
Silith sighed deeply. “I believe you,” he said. “And that is why I cannot let you do it.”
The birds chittered behind them. Starving. Angry. “Take that off,” he said. “Slather yourself with mud: wash as much of the smell off you as you can. And then … I will show you something. But”—his voice rose to reach the servants and soldiers—“you must swear not to reveal what I show you, to anyone. Do all of you so swear?”
They nodded, mumbled. Aros had no idea what was about to unfold but recognized the voice of command when he heard it. He stripped off the clothes and slathered mud over his body. Mijista helped, and, although her hands were brisk and businesslike, she found time and opportunity for a few lingering touches.
When he kissed Mijista, Madam Silith smiled through her own pain.
General Silith had taken his torch down the cave and was examining the rock face. Aros stood at his side, striving to see what he saw. Nothing but the end of the cave.
“Here,” Silith said. “Strike here, with Flaygod.” He indicated the rock.
“What?”
“Strike!” the general roared, and Aros struck overhand with both arms. Once, twice, three times, and on the fourth he felt the rock shudder oddly, and was heartened, and on the fifth it crumbled.
The rock had not been natural rock at all, but something else, fibrous stuff that resembled stone but was less sturdy.
Now they tore at it with their fists. The lower corner of the rock wall crumbled, leaving a space wide enough for a man to crawl through, and this the general did, on hands and knees. “Hand me the torch!” he called back.
Aros handed the torch through the hole and then, growing impatient, crawled after him.
He stood on the far side, next to the general. The torch cast light for twenty feet or more, but then darkness swallowed the illumination. Behind him came a servant, who helped Jade through, then Mijista. Then more.
“What is this?” Aros whispered.
“When I was a boy,” Silith said, “I knew every inch of these tunnels. It was part of why I knew the plan could work.”
“What plan?” Aros asked, mystified even more.
Silith’s face was grim, his gaze a self-crucifixion. “You will see. They didn’t tell me everything, but I have spies. Shrike help me, you will see.”
They pulled others through the hole. Sixteen had crawled through before they heard screams on the far side, and the fluttering of wings: the birds had pecked their way through the makeshift barrier.
The last servant tried to crawl through the hole. His face was a mask of blood, eye sockets crimsoned. He screamed: “Go! Go!” He shuddered, balling himself up, perhaps to minimize the amount of skin exposed to the birds, perhaps to plug the hole.
The birds were devouring him alive.
“As he wished,” Silith called. “Fill the hole!”
And they did, piling rocks to cover what was left of the body, and then the hole.
The sixteen survivors panted
, faces pale and strained in the light of their flickering torches.
Aros brought up the rear. “This way,” Silith called back.
“Husband,” Jade asked. “Who did this? Who sealed up this tunnel? What is this all about?”
“I did,” he said. “With the help of those who tried to kill me. For the second time. Hang on to each other; don’t get separated. My spies tell me we’ll see things that aren’t there.”
She seemed about to ask him another question, but he waved it away. “There will be a time for questions later. Now … watch your step.”
He showed them the edge of the trail, leaned over into a pit deep enough that the torchlight ended in midnight. He nudged a rock over the side with his toe, and it fell for two long breaths. They all stuck closer to the wall after that.
THIRTY-TWO
Tunnels Branching
“Put out the torches.” Silith put his own out. “There are explorers all through here. We don’t want to be seen. There will be a kind of light.”
Now Aros’s hands had to serve as his eyes.
Silith talked, his voice a little blurred by cave echoes. “The cavern runs from a wide mouth into channels that fission out like tributaries of a river. It may have been formed by an underground river. When witches within the Hundred talked of a river of time, it seemed to fit what I knew of the cavern.”
There was light … was that light? Or a flickering in Aros’s brain? He saw blocky, glassy shapes reaching high, lined with rectangular arrays of lighted dots. His hands told him where the cave walls were, and they didn’t match this oddness.
The general called, “Stay together. What do you see? Great buildings? Heek! Watch it through here; there’s a flash of light.”
For Aros the flash came several steps later. It burned through his closed eyelids for just a moment. When he saw again it was a fiery cloud, shaped like a toadstool. Gone now. Stumps of enormous buildings.
The general called, “I’m turning us around. We took the wrong direction, into one of the futures.”
“Dear? One of the futures?” Jade was losing her emotional balance. The birds hadn’t done that to her, but this did.
“The Hundred were able to turn the cavern system into a map of time,” Silith said. “There are many futures. I never dared walk these paths myself, but I listen. The less likely futures pinch off. Getting into these worlds, getting magical stuff out of a future, requires spells I don’t know.”
Aros said, “A spell must be working here.” He wasn’t touching rock with his left hand. This was a smooth surface, curved metal. A cleverly shaped handle. Pull, reach inside … leather … buttons and twisty things … a sudden cannonade of light.
“Leave it, Kasha. Don’t lose touch,” the general said.
Here was a building, seen by night, that ran up and up and … “I heard of this. It goes up to reach the stars,” Silith said. “A cable. One of the Hundred tried to tell me how it hangs from itself, from the sky, but I didn’t understand. I know where we are, though. We turn here.”
Aros considered silence, but then he’d never know. “Why did you need slaves?”
“Sacrifice powers their magic,” Silith said.
Aros said, “There were children among the captives I saw.”
Jade said, “Dearest?” on a rising note.
“No! No, dear. No, Kasha. No children are sacrificed. The children are needed for the exploring.”
Aros said nothing.
“Turn here and I’ll show you. Feel how the rock converges? This one’s short. To get farther into this future, you need to be small, a child or a dwarf.”
“I’m small,” said Zunsher, one of the younger soldiers. “I can … here, I’m holding something the size of a man. A barrel, weird to the touch, like a big pisspot, from the smell. Squeeze past that and…” The voice trailed off.
Jade asked, “Why did Kasha see more children? When do the Hundred have enough?”
“I asked. They get lost,” the general said. “Or they run, when they find a future they desire. Freeman Zunsher, where are you?”
Nothing.
* * *
They went up and down and around through chambers and caverns, and past running water that flowed in streams and cascades and constantly moistened the air and filled the chambers with echoes. Aros had never been in caverns like these, with sawtooth daggers projecting from the ceiling to gouge a scalp. Bats, disturbed by their passage, flew above them.
Mijista Wile had dropped back to his side and took his arm, as much for affection as comfort. “I’m glad you’re with us,” she said. “And I think that Jade and the general feel much the same.”
“I’m glad you’re not here without me.”
“Really?”
“Woman, you must have noticed that I’m not allergic to your company. How can we not share these wonders?” What they saw was not the cave but a line of messages glowing in weird colors, every message different, running on both sides of a wide, flat, glistening wet stone path. The cavern followed for a bit, then veered away.
She laughed and snuggled closer to him, and in the cool air of the cave, he noticed more than ever her warmth.
He asked, “Can you see the opportunities?”
“To see the future? But there must be many wrong futures.”
“Even those must hold miracles. And we’re being led past them. These wizards are looting time, and killing to do it.”
Silith called, “I’ve finally put us in the main trunk, going back into the past. This’ll get us home. We may have to fight.”
The troop followed a curve, following Silith. Aros’s questing hands found—“Hold up a breath, General?”
“Yes, but keep talking, Kasha.”
“It’s too narrow for my shoulders, but I can get my head—Hello. It’s a melee. Or looting after a battle.” In a glare of wizard’s light, Aros was looking at an array of random wealth and a swarm of strangely garbed folk grabbing at it all, sometimes fighting over it, clothing, tools, dishware, silverware. A nine-year-old girl was staring solemnly at Aros. Her arms clutched a silver flagon with a lid and a cord trailing down from it. Her clothes were familiar, Quillian garb.
Aros gestured to her. “Come, girl. Come with us.”
She shook her head. Turned and walked away. “She’s escaping, General,” Mijista called. “Maybe she’ll find…” She trailed off.
The general moved on, and they followed.
“I was saying that you have been accepted,” Mijista said. “By me … by Jade, and now the general. But I can feel that you aren’t comfortable with it. And that makes me wonder why.”
“Everyone seems to believe that I’m this prince,” he said, finally, realizing the source of his discomfort. “What if I’m not? What if I’m just a wanderer?”
“Maybe you’re selling us short,” Mijista said. “Perhaps we see clearly. Perhaps we see who you are now, not what you might have been years ago. Did you not consider that?”
Aros nodded in the dark. “I’d considered it, yes…”
“You saved General Silith. Were willing to die to protect us. Does it not occur to you that those things, in themselves, would earn affection?”
Aros wanted to grumble, to say wait, not me, not ever me …
But could not. Here, in this place below the earth, perhaps outside the earth, they didn’t care. And if they didn’t, why couldn’t he accept the gift of their regard?
The line came to a halt. He looked ahead and saw that the general had raised his hand: stop.
Aros squeezed Mijista’s arm and made his way along the line, noticing how tired and frightened they seemed. The path had widened. Thirteen, there were only thirteen now. Near panic.
When he reached the general, the larger man said, “We are near the main cavern. You will come with me?” Aros noted the question. And, clearly, the general was uncomfortable about something. In a lesser man, he might have been seeing fear or guilt.
Silith went to his wife, Jad
e, who was clearly near exhaustion and trembling. “I’ll be back.”
“Are you taking Kasha with you?” she asked, looking anxiously from one of them to the other in the glow of timelight.
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said. And then she looked at Aros. “Keep him safe.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She kissed Silith. And then, impulsively, kissed Aros as well.
He felt dizzy.
* * *
The background light, the timelight, had faded almost to nothing.
Together, Aros and the general crept forward. At first they sidled along a wall and then moved down to all fours as the ceiling dropped. He had no idea how the general was finding his way through the gloom, but he never seemed to hesitate.
Then there was a glimmer ahead, and a shimmering radiance that grew brighter and wider, expanding as they approached. Silith stopped, and a moment later the great man’s hand was on his shoulder. “This I’ve seen,” he said.
Wizard light lit the cavern mouth. Not far within was what looked like a heap of wire netting covering something Aros did recognize: a stone altar of a type used across many of the southeastern lands. He looked for bloodstains but saw none.
Aros asked, “Did you see it used?”
“No. They wanted me intimidated, not terrified.”
Aros was about to ask another question when he heard a scream. Seeking its source, he saw a man, muscular and stripped to the waist, dragged into the mouth of the cave, toward the netting.
The man was struggling, and if his arms had not been tied behind him and his feet shackled, Aros would have given him an excellent chance against the pair dragging him to the altar.
The netting stood up. It wobbled into the shape of a spherical cage, five-sided outlines with the altar in the center. Aros remembered something from his past and said, “Pentagrams. It’s all pentagrams.”
“Does that matter?”
“I don’t know. Wizards like pentagrams. Are you moved to interfere, sir?”
“Not yet,” the general whispered.
They chained the half-naked victim to the altar, which was of polished stone, with shackles positioned for a spread-eagle victim. They attached each wrist to an iron cuff. He managed to wrench an arm free and smash his fist into a captor’s face before the arm was grappled down and anchored.
