by Robin Hobb
“Art,” he repeated. He did not sound like a little boy as he went on, “Art is how we define and explain ourselves to ourselves. In this city, we decided that the daily life of the people was the art of the city. From year to year, the shaking of the earth increased, and the storms of dust and ash. We hid from it, closing our cities in and burrowing under the earth. And yet we knew that a time would come when we could not prevail against the earth itself. Some wished to leave, and we let them. No one was forced to stay. Our cities that had burgeoned with life faded to a trickle of souls. For a time, the earth calmed, with only a shiver now and then to remind us that our lives were daily granted to us and could be taken in a moment. But many of us decided that this was where we had lived, for generations. So this would be where we perished. Our individual lives, long as they were, would end here. But not our cities. No. Our cities would live on and recall us. Recall us—would call us home again, whenever anyone woke the echoes of us that we stored here. We’re all here, all our richness and complexity, all our joys and sorrows . . .” His voice drifted away in contemplation once more.
I felt chilled. “A magic that calls the ghosts back.”
“Not magic. Art.” He sounded annoyed.
Suddenly Retyo said unsteadily, “I keep hearing voices. Someone, talk to me.”
I put my hand on his arm. “I hear them, too. But they sound Jamaillian.”
With pounding hearts our little party hastened toward them. At the next juncture of corridors, we turned right and the voices came clearer. We shouted, and they shouted a reply. Through the dark, we heard their hurrying feet. They blessed our smoky red torch; theirs had burned out. Four young men and two women from our company hastened toward our light. Frightened as they were, they still clutched armloads of plunder. We were overjoyed to find them, until they dashed our relief into despair. The tale they told us was a grim one. The passage to the outside world was blocked. They had been in the dragon-and-woman chamber when they heard heavy pounding from the rooms above. A great crash was followed by the slow groan of timbers giving way. As a grinding noise grew in volume, the lights in the big chamber flickered and watery mud began to trickle down the grand staircase. They had immediately tried to escape, only to find the stairway blocked by collapsed masonry oozing mud.
Perhaps fifty other scavengers had gathered in the dragon-and-woman chamber, drawn back there by the ominous sound. As the lights dimmed and then went out, all had fled, some going one way and some another, seeking for escape. Even facing the danger of being trapped below the earth, their suspicion of one another as thieves had prevented them from joining forces. Their tale filled me with despair. Lost in the dark, and still these six clutched treasure and greed to their hearts. I was disgusted with them and said as much. To my surprise, they sheepishly agreed. Then, for a time, we stood uselessly in the dark, listening to our torch burn away and wondering what to do.
When no one else spoke, I asked, “Do you know the way back to the dragon chamber?” I fought to speak steadily.
One man said he did.
“Then we must go back there. And gather all the people we can, and pool what we know of this maze. It is our only hope of finding a way out before our torches are gone. Otherwise, we may wander until we die.”
Grim silence was their assent. The young man led us back the way they had come. As we passed plundered rooms, we gathered anything that might burn. Soon the six who had joined us must abandon their plunder to carry more wood. I thought they would part from us before surrendering their treasure, but they decided to leave it in one of the rooms. They marked their claim upon the door, with chalked threats against any thieves. I thought this foolishness, for I would have traded every jewel in the city simply to see honest daylight again. Then we went on.
We reached at last the dragon-woman chamber. We knew it more by its echoes than by the view that our failing torch offered. A weight of earth had collapsed on the grand staircase. A small fire still smoldered in the center of the room near the dragon’s feet, with a few hapless folk gathered around it. We added fuel to wake it to flames. It drew others to join us, and we then raised a shout to summon any who might hear us. Soon our little bonfire lit a circle of some thirty muddy and weary people. The flames showed me frightened white faces like masks. Many of them still clutched bundles of plunder and eyed one another suspiciously. That was almost more frightening than the slow creep of thick mud spreading down from the staircase. Heavy and thick, it trickled inexorably down, and I knew that our gathering place would not long be a refuge from it.
We were a pitiful company. Some of these folk had been lords and ladies, and others pickpockets and whores, but in that place, we finally became equals and recognized one another for what we were: desperate people, dependent on each other. We had convened at the foot of the dragon statue. Now Retyo stepped up onto the dragon’s tail and commanded us, “Hush! Listen!”
Voices ebbed away. We heard the crackling of our fire, and then the distant groans of wood and stone, and the drip and trickle of watery muck. They were terrifying sounds, and I wondered why he had made us listen to them. When he spoke, his human voice was welcome as it drowned out the threats of the straining walls.
“We have no time to waste in worrying about treasure or theft. Our lives are the only things we can hope to carry out of here, and only if we pool what we know, so we don’t waste time exploring corridors that lead nowhere. Are we together on that?”
A silence followed his words. Then a grimy, bearded man spoke. “My partners and I claimed the corridors from the west arch. We’ve been exploring them for days now. There are no stairs going up, and the main corridor ends in collapse.”
It was dismal news, but Retyo didn’t let us dwell on it.
“Well. Any others?”
There was some restless shifting.
Retyo’s voice was stern. “You’re still thinking of plunder and secrets. Let them go, or stay here with them. All I want is a way out. Now. We’re only interested in stairways leading up. Anyone know of any?”
Finally, a man spoke up reluctantly. “There were two from the east arch. But . . . well, a wall gave way when we opened a door. We can’t get to them anymore.”
A deeper silence fell on us, and the light from the fire seemed to dwindle.
When Retyo spoke again, his voice was impassive. “Well, that makes it simpler for us. There’s less to search. We’ll need two large search parties, one that can divide at each intersection. As each group goes, you’ll mark your path. On your way, enter every open chamber, and seek always for stairs leading up, for doubtless that is our only way out. Mark every path that you go by, so that you may return to us.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t need to warn you. If a door won’t open, leave it alone.
“This is a pact we must make: that whoever finds a way out will risk their lives again to return and guide the rest of us out. To those who go out, the pact we make is that we who stay here will try to keep this fire burning, so that if you do not find a way out, you can return here, to light and another attempt.” He looked around carefully at all the upturned faces. “To that end, every one of us will leave here whatever treasure we have found. To encourage any who find a way out to come back, for gain if not to keep faith with us.”
I would not have dared to test them that way. I saw what he did. The mounded hoard would give hope to those who must stay here and tend the fire, as well as encourage any who found an escape to return for the rest of us. To those who insisted they would take their treasure with them, Retyo simply said, “Do it. But remember well what you choose. No one who stays here will owe you any help. Should you return and find the fire out and the rest of us gone, do not hope that we will return for you.”
Three men, heavily burdened, went aside to heatedly argue among themselves. Other people had begun to trickle back to the dragon pavilion, and we quickly informed them of the pact. These folk, having already tried to find a way out, easily agreed to the terms. Someone said
that perhaps the rest of our company might dig down to free us. A general silence greeted that thought as we all considered the many steps we had descended to reach this place, and all the mud and earth that stood between us and outside air. Then no one spoke of it again. When finally all agreed to abide by Retyo’s plan, we counted ourselves and found that we numbered fifty-two bedraggled and weary men, women, and children.
Two parties set out. Most of our firewood went with them, converted to torches. Before they left, we prayed together, but I doubted Sa could hear us, so deep beneath the ground and so far from sacred Jamaillia. I remained with my son, tending the fire. We took turns making short trips to nearby rooms, to drag back whatever might burn. Treasure seekers had already burned most of the close fuel, but still we found items ranging from massive tables it took eight of us to lift to broken bits of rotted chairs and tatters of curtain.
Most of the children had remained by the fire. In addition to my son and Chellia’s children, there were four other youngsters. We took turns telling stories or singing songs to them, trying to keep their minds free of the ghosts that clustered closer as our small fire burned lower. We begrudged every stick of wood we fed to it.
Despite our efforts, the children fell silent one by one and slipped into the dreams of the buried city. I shook Carlmin and pinched him, but could not find the will to be cruel enough to rouse him. In truth, the ghosts plucked at my mind as well, until the distant conversations in an unknown language seemed more intelligible than the desperate mutterings of the other women. I dozed off, then snapped awake as the needs of the dying fire recalled me to my duty.
“Perhaps it’s kinder to let them dream themselves to death,” one of the women said as she helped me push one end of a heavy table into the fire. She took a deeper breath and added, “Perhaps we should all just go to the black wall and lean against it.”
The idea was more tempting than I liked to admit. Chellia returned from a wood-foraging effort. “I think we burn more in torch than we bring back as fuel,” she pointed out. “I’ll sit with the children for a while. See what you can find to burn.”
So I took her stub of torch and went off seeking firewood. By the time I returned with my pitiful scraps, a splinter group of one of the search parties had returned. They had swiftly exhausted their possibilities and their torches and returned hoping that others had had better luck.
When a second party returned shortly afterward, I felt more discouragement. They brought with them a group of seventeen others whom they had discovered wandering in the labyrinth. The seventeen were the “owners” of that section of the city and said that days ago they had early discovered that the upper stories in that section were collapsed. In all the days they had explored it, always the paths had led outward and downward. Any further explorations in that direction would demand more torches than we presently had.
Our supply of wood for the bonfire was already dwindling, and we weren’t finding much in the pillaged rooms that we could use for torches. Hunger and thirst were already pressing many of us. Too soon we would have to confront an even more daunting shortage. Once our fire failed, we would be plunged into total darkness. If I dared to think of it, my heart thundered and I felt faint. It was hard enough to hold myself aloof from the city’s lingering “art.” Immersed in blackness, I knew I would give way to it.
I was not the only one who realized this. Tacitly, we let the fire die down and maintained it at a smaller size. The flow of mud down the grand stair brought damp that chilled the air. People huddled together for warmth as much as companionship. I dreaded the first touch of water against my feet. I wondered which would overtake me first, total darkness or rising mud.
I don’t know how much time passed before the third party returned to us. They had found three staircases that led up. All were blocked before they reached the surface. Their corridor had become increasingly ruined the farther they had gone. Soon they had been splashing through shallow puddles, and the smell of earth had grown strong. When their torches were nearly exhausted and the water growing deeper and colder about their knees, they had returned. Retyo and Tremartin had been members of that party. I was selfishly glad to have him at my side again, even though it meant that our hope was now whittled to a single search party.
Retyo wished to shake Carlmin out of his daze, but I asked him, “To what end? That he might stare into the darkness and know despair? Let him dream, Retyo. He does not seem to be having bad dreams. If I can carry him out of here into daylight once more, then I will wake him and try to call him back to me. Until then, I will leave him in peace.” I sat, Retyo’s arm around me, and thought silently of Petrus and my erstwhile husband, Jathan. Well, he had made one wise decision. I felt oddly grateful to him that he had not allowed me to squander both our sons’ lives. I hoped he and Petrus reached the coast safely and eventually returned to Jamaillia. At least one of my children might grow to adulthood.
And so we waited, our hopes dwindling as swiftly as our firewood. Our men had to venture farther and farther into the darkness in search of fuel. Finally Retyo lifted his voice. “Either they are still exploring, in hope of finding a way out, or they have found a way out and are too fearful to return for us. In either way, we gain nothing more by sitting here. Let us go where they went, following their marks, while we still have light to see them. Either we will find the same escape route they did, or die together.”
We took every splinter of firewood. The more foolish among us gathered treasure to carry out. No one remonstrated with them, though many laughed bitterly at their hopeful greed. Retyo picked up Carlmin without a word; it moved me that my son was treasure to him. In truth, weakened as I was by hunger, I do not know if I could have carried my son. I do know that I would not have left him there. Tremartin took Olpey slung across his shoulders. The boy was limp as a drowned thing. Drowned in art, I thought to myself. Drowned in memories of the city.
Of Chellia’s two daughters, Piet still clung to wakefulness. She stumbled piteously along beside her mother. A young man named Sterren offered to carry Likea for Chellia. She was so grateful, she wept.
And so we trudged off. We had one torch to lead us, and one at the tail of our procession, so that no one would fall victim to the city’s allure and be left behind. I walked in the middle of the company, and the darkness seemed to pluck and snag at my senses. There is little to say of that endless walk. We took no rest, for our fire ate our torches at an alarming rate. There was dark, and wet, the mutter of hungry and thirsty and weary folk all around me, and more darkness. I could not really see the halls we walked through, only the smudge of light that we followed. Bit by bit, I gave up my burden of wood to our light bearers. The last time I moved forward to offer a new torch, I saw that the walls were of shining black stone veined with silver. They were elaborately decorated with silhouettes of people, done in some shining metal. Curious, I reached out a hand to touch one. I had not even realized that Retyo was at my side. He caught my wrist before I could touch the silhouette. “Don’t,” he warned me. “I brushed against one once. They leap into your mind if you touch them. Don’t.”
We followed the marks of the missing search party. They had marked off the dead ends and drawn arrows as they progressed, and so we trudged on, hoping. Then, to our horror, we caught up with them.
They were huddled in the middle of the corridor. Torches exhausted, they had halted there, paralyzed by the complete blackness, unable to either go on or to come back to us. Some were insensible. Others whimpered with joy at the sight of us and clustered around our torch as if light were life itself flowing back into them.
“Did you find a way out?” they asked us, as if they had forgotten that they were the searchers. When they finally understood that they had been our last hope, the life seemed to go out of them. “The corridor goes on and on,” they said. “But we have not yet found one place where it leads upward. The chambers we have been able to enter are windowless. We think this part of the city has always been
underground.”
Grim words. Useless to dwell on them.
And so, we moved on together. We encountered few intersections, and when we did, we made our choice almost randomly. We no longer had torches to explore every possibility. At each intersection, the men in the lead debated and then chose. And we followed, but at each one we had to wonder if we had made a fatal error. Were we walking away from the passage that would have led to light and air? We gave up having a torch at the end of our procession, instead having folk hold hands and come behind us. Even so, too swiftly we had but three torches, and then two. A woman keened as the final torch was kindled. It did not burn well, or perhaps the dread of the dark was so strong in us that no light would have seemed sufficient. I know we crowded closer around our torchbearer. The corridor had widened and the ceiling retreated. Every now and then, the torchlight would catch a silver silhouette or a vein of silvery mineral in the polished black wall and it would blink beckoningly at me. Still we marched hopelessly on, hungry, thirsty, and ever more weary. We did not travel fast, but then, we did not know if we had any destination save death.
The lost spirits of the city plucked at me. Ever stronger grew the temptation to simply let go of my puny life and immerse myself in the beckoning remembrance of the city. Snatches of their music, conversation heard in a distant mutter, even, it seemed to me, whiffs of strange fragrances assailed me and tempted me. Well, was not that what Jathan had always warned me? That if I did not take a firmer grip on my life, my art would immerse and then devour me? But it was so hard to resist; it tugged at me like a hook in a fish’s lip. It knew that it had me; it but waited for darkness to pull me in.
The torch burned lower with every step we took. Every step we took might be one more step in the wrong direction. The passage had widened around us into a hall; I could no longer see the gleaming black walls, but I could feel them commanding my attention. We passed a still fountain flanked by stone benches. We watched in vain for anything that might fuel our fire. Here, these elder folk had built for eternity, from stone and metal and fired clay. I knew that these rooms now were the repository of all they had been. They had believed they would always live here, that the waters of the fountains and the swirling beams of light would always dance at their touch. I knew that as clearly as I knew my own name. Like me, they had foolishly thought to live forever through their art. Now it was the only part of them that lingered still.
