They walked on, and the floor beneath her boots grew soft; she bent down and touched the ground with her fingertips, and discovered with a thrill of disbelief that she walked on grass. A sigh swirled around her, and seemed to breathe through the halls. She looked up, startled, and saw that Matthiall had stopped. She guessed he looked at her, though she could make out nothing of his face.
"I have heard nothing like that in time out of mind," he whispered. "You summon life to these ancient stones, fair guest."
He didn't say she or Jay could speak, so she didn't say anything.
They came around a curve in the stone passageway, and the darkness of the halls opened into the interior of an enormous dome, hung about with thousands of tiny lights that mimicked the twinkling of stars. Fireflies flickered, warm yellow in the near dark. The rich blue of twilight where sky would have been and the dew-and-grass scent of meadow, the sounds of whippoorwills and katydids and the bright chirping of little frogs brought a lump to Sophie's throat and tears to her eyes. For a moment, she felt like an eight-year-old again, in the long evening of summer, out on the lawn with her parents. The pang of the loss of both of them, and a wistful ache to return to childhood, caught at her with startling tenacity.
I feel I could be barefoot and running around with a Mason jar, she thought, full of wonder. Like I still weighed sixty-five pounds, like I was still all skinny legs and knobby knees. Like summer was going to last forever, like Mom and Dad were going to be around forever.
One hot tear burned down her cheek. She swallowed and sniffed.
"My God," Jayjay said slowly. "Do you know how much this reminds me of the park behind our houses when we were kids?"
"Yes." Sophie wiped the tear from her cheek, grateful no one could see it in the dark. "Something about the smells and the sounds."
"Yeah." Jayjay sighed. "I haven't thought about that place in years."
"I still go there sometimes," Sophie said. "It's beautiful, but I'm not eight anymore. You know?"
"I took my very first real date there when I was sixteen, ostensibly to go fishing." Jayjay laughed. "Instead, he and I necked alongside one of the hiking trails, and the little shit gave me my very first kiss…and my very first hickey. I nearly swore off kissing right then."
Sophie smiled. She remembered catching fireflies; Jay remembered a boy. It figured. Then she frowned. "You got your first kiss at sixteen?"
"I was a slow starter."
Matthiall hadn't stopped them from talking. Instead, he'd listened.
A rushing fountain gurgled off somewhere in the distance. Instantly Sophie felt hot and tired and thirsty and filthy. She wanted to wash the tear streaks from her face, and drink cold, clear water until she put the memory of the happy past safely away. She headed toward the sound, but Matthiall saw her wander from him and caught her elbow.
"Follow me. You don't want to get lost here."
Sophie sighed. Nearby, she heard bursts of song and laughter so high and giddy it could only have belonged to children. But she saw no one.
Then the faintest hint of movement caught her attention. She looked hard, and discerned the lumpish outlines of a huge dark mass piled against one of those beautiful carved pillars. She wondered at first if someone had left boulders sitting there, or bags of potatoes, or something equally ungainly. She couldn't see what had moved on that pile, until the boulders themselves shifted forward slowly, terribly slowly, with a sound of rock grinding on rock, and Sophie realized they were alive. It was alive. The enormous creature sniffed the air as she and Jayjay and Matthiall drew nearer. The giant misshapen boulder that was in fact the creature's head turned, and two tiny glowing red eyes searched myopically in Sophie's general direction, swung back and forth past her, then focused on her. The thing growled—a rumble like an earthslide—and the sound shocked Sophie into stillness.
"Keep moving," Matthiall snapped. "He's slow and stupid, but if you stand there and tempt him, he'll come after you."
"What in God's name is that?" Jayjay asked. Sophie could hear her voice shake.
"The gods had no hand in him. Only the Aregen," Matthiall said, hurrying past. "If you stay well away from him, he won't bother you."
"But I want to know," Jay insisted.
Matthiall stopped and turned, and Sophie got the impression that he stared at Jayjay. His gorgeous voice dropped to a low, ominous growl. "If you want to know so badly, why don't you walk over and ask him?"
Jayjay dropped back to Sophie's side and said nothing else as they walked through the grass, under arches that had been carved to look like trees, along a stream that ran through the middle of the enormous, many-vaulted dome, and at last into another hallway that ran to a series of little grottolike rooms.
"You'll be here until I decide what to do with you."
"If we aren't the people you were looking for, why don't you let us go?" Jay asked.
"You are the people we were looking for," Matthiall said. The way he said it made Sophie's stomach twist. "I simply don't know yet whether that's good for me, or whether it's bad for me. I'll be back when I've figured it out." He growled something Sophie couldn't hear, then added, "In the meantime, no one will find you here." With that remark, he hurried away.
Sophie and Jay stood perfectly still in the nearly lightless grotto for only a moment. Then Jay said, "We're going from bad to worse. We have to get out of here."
"Back the way we came," Sophie agreed. "I still have some markers so that we can keep track of our path. You still have your flashlight?"
"Yes. Right here." Sophie heard a soft click, and a muddy brown circle of light appeared on the grass. "Great," Jayjay muttered. "Give me a chance to change the batteries…I have some in here…"
Sophie heard her digging through her pack.
While she waited for Jay, she stepped forward, nervous but determined to at least take a look down the passageway outside the grotto. When they ran, she didn't want to walk into the talking dogs—no, the warrags—or the red-eyed stone monster or any other horror hidden within the bowels of Cotha Maest. Her right foot swung toward the invisible line that separated the inside of the grotto from the passageway…and stopped. Sophie tripped, flung out her arms, and bounced off of nothing. She landed hard on her backside in the grass and sat staring at the doorway.
What in the world—?
She crawled forward and reached out a hand. Nothing stopped her. She crawled a bit further and stuck her head out into the passageway. No resistance. She crawled further; both shoulders went through with no problem. Had she imagined a barrier? Had she simply tripped over her own feet, or slipped on the grass?
She had her waist in the passageway, and suddenly she couldn't go further. She moved both legs; they worked fine. She pulled with her arms and shoulders; nothing wrong with them either. But when she tried to put everything together and get out the door, she…couldn't.
More magic. She felt a coldness in that invisible, intangible barrier; a coldness that seeped into the marrow of her bones. It was nothing natural—nothing that belonged in the real world. It resonated of infinity, of an evil time lost and misplaced and forgotten and suddenly resurrected, brought from its dank cell into a world where it had never been meant to exist.
She backed up and drew her knees tight against her chest and shivered. Wrongness. When she'd felt the forest watch her, when she'd felt the ground shifting beneath her feet, that had been imbued with the same feel. But this was worse. Whereas she had been able to rationalize the feel of the forest and the ground, this was clearly magic. When she'd read the Fodor's guide, she had seen proof of magic, of course, but it had felt small and human and somehow accessible. With the act of trying to go through that empty doorway, she touched another kind of magic, an enormous cold magic that made her realize in the universal scheme of things, she was no more significant than an ant.
"There!" Jay said, and suddenly a circle of brilliant white light illuminated the grotto. "Much better."
Sophie turned to J
ay. "We can't go anywhere. Look at this." She demonstrated the arcane properties of the invisible barrier, pulling away quickly after she did. That invisible barrier had the coldness and the stillness of a serpent waiting for prey to fall into its jaws. It felt watchful, malign. Something about it sucked at the soul, reaching in and touching hope and turning it into despair. Sophie couldn't stand the coldness on her skin, and this second time, she had to wait much longer before the ice thawed in her blood.
"That explains why Matthiall didn't worry about us wandering off, doesn't it?" She flashed the light over the opening, then stepped forward. Her right leg swung out, caught in midair on nothing, and bounced back. Jay pushed her hands through the invisible barrier, then pulled away as if she'd been burned. She pushed one finger back into the barrier, stood there for a moment wearing an expression of intense concentration, then jerked her hand back again. "Christ," she said, rubbing her arms and shivering, "that's evil."
"So now we wait?"
"Yes. I wish we knew for what."
Thirty-two
Hultif's black mirror reflected the faces of the two captives. They weren't at all what he'd imagined; they were women, tallish, slender, older than they looked. They hadn't been bent by the weary physical labor and endless childbearing that broke Machnan women by the time they reached thirty.
Matthiall had hidden them deep within the ancient labyrinth, in a section and level that had been sparsely populated when there had been enough inhabitants, Kin and Kin-hera, to fill the Cotha to overflowing. Now, for a while, the success of the Aregen plans depended on Matthiall's actions, and Hultif was helpless to influence those actions. Matthiall could never suspect that his actions served anyone but himself. If Hultif and the omens had done a good enough job of choosing this unknowing agent, though, the rebirth of the Aregen would soon drive Alfkindir and Machnan into their old bondage, and Hultif and the few survivors of his kind would stand free on the surface of the earth for the first time in his life.
Hultif smiled. He'd done a good job. He knew he had. Through his cat's-paw, he was about to destroy Aidris Akalan for killing his family, and most of his kind.
"Rise, Aregen, and retake your throne," he whispered. "Paint it with the blood of your enemies. Build new cothas from their toil and sweat, and triumph."
He smiled. He hoped he would have the chance to rip the arteries from Aidris Akalan's throat himself. "Mother," he whispered, his grin stretching wider. "I'm coming for you, Mother."
Thirty-three
Jayjay paced through the dark room, staring at the flashlight that grew dimmer by the minute. Eight hours and twenty minutes. She'd rested, paced, rested again, but she avoided sleep. Since she'd arrived in Glenraven, nightmares punctuated her sleep. She preferred being awake. She was weary of the darkness, weary of the pale pretense of light that the false stars in the ceiling scattered down into the room. She chafed at the confinement, at not knowing what would happen to her next.
Being in the forest had been better. Not good, but better; at least she'd been able to act. They couldn't act anymore. All they could do was wait.
If something happens to Matthiall, we'll be trapped in here until we die, Jay thought. As soon as she thought it, she wished she hadn't.
Sophie rested next to the stream that ran through the grotto; running water, cool and sweet, with a little hot spring that bubbled up off to one side and drained out through a hole in the wall. The same sort of barrier that blocked the door blocked the ingress and egress of the stream. As prison cells went, it was comfortable. Fresh water, a self-flushing toilet of arcane design hidden behind a lush stand of head-high, plumed grass. Soft grass to lie on. But human beings weren't meant to spend their lives in perpetual gloom. They needed some sunlight.
"God, I wish it was brighter in here," she said.
For a moment she didn't realize anything had changed. Then she noticed that she could see details of Sophie's face, even though she was on the other side of the grotto. The false stars that shimmered on the ceiling began to grow brighter. And brighter. And brighter. Shadows sprouted beneath her feet, and grew sharp, hard edges. The room became sunny and warm, and the grass beneath Jay's feet waved slowly back and forth in a breeze she didn't feel. At the first touch of bright light, the delicate petals of pale white flowers curled shut with the slow sensuousness of a cat stretching. They were night bloomers, she supposed. After a few moments, other flowers began to dot the grass; little yellow and red blooms opened and waved on slender stalks.
"The room is a little too bright," Jay announced, watching for a reaction.
She got one. The stars dimmed fractionally.
"Halfway between this brightness and the previous one will be perfect."
The stars glowed brighter.
Well. That was impressive.
Sophie sat straight up as the lights brightened, staring around the room. Now she stood. "Do you suppose if we asked the door to open for us, it would?"
"Maybe."
"We need to leave," Sophie said, walking toward the door. She tried to step through, hit the invisible barrier, and bounced back. "We need to go home," she amended.
The barrier remained impermeable.
"Open, sesame."
Nothing.
"Damn," Sophie said.
"It was worth a try."
"There's no telling what else this room would do if we could only figure it out."
Jayjay nodded. "Pity it doesn't come with an operators manual."
A thoughtful expression crossed Sophie's face. "We need an operator's manual for this room."
Again, nothing happened.
"Maybe," Jay said, "the only thing the room does is brighten and dim its lights." But the idea of the operator's manual got her thinking. She pulled out the Fodor's guide. She hadn't put Cotha Maest on her itinerary, so she hadn't bothered to read much about it. Now she thought she could stand to know more about her enemies, what they were likely to want, why they would capture her and Sophie in the first place.
She flipped to the entry for Cotha Maest.
"Always an Alfkindir stronghold, Cotha Maest dates from the beginning of the Kin's Age of Mastery. It is the primary citadel of Aidris Akalan, Hereditary Watchmistress of the Alfkindir. Unexplored and unmapped by humans…"
Hello, Jay thought. Unexplored by humans? What do the writers mean by that? What about the ones who brought us here?
"... Cotha Maest has been rumored to contain passageways that connect it magically to the other Kin territories, and to places beyond the Timeless Realms."
Jay knew the guidebook hadn't said anything about magic when she'd first read through it. So this was another example of its self-editing. She frowned and started reading again.
"Not that the history of the place is going to be of any use to you now. If you don't end up dead, it's going to be a miracle. Aidris Akalan will figure out that you're here to bring her down, and she'll kill you the instant she's sure of it
Here you are, summoned to be Glenraven's heroes, destined to bring freedom to the Timeless Realm's enslaved people…and you, our rescuers, need to be rescued instead.
Idiots."
Jay closed the book, holding her place with one thumb, and took a deep breath. She couldn't decide which upset her more—that the news was so bad, or that the book was so obnoxious in delivering it.
"Soph." Sophie looked up. "Read this and tell me what you think."
Sophie took the book. She looked down at the page Jay indicated and sat reading. When she finished she looked up and made a face. "Charming." Sophie handed the guide back. "Let's take a page from ancient history and kill the bearer of bad news, shall we?"
Jay laughed in spite of herself. "What do you have in mind?"
"Throw the book in the water. Set it on fire. Rip it to shreds."
"All those ideas have their appeal, but it might still be useful for something. Besides, I'm getting the headache from Hell. Why don't we both take a nap? Maybe things will look better when we
wake up."
Sophie nodded. "Sounds good. Maybe when I wake up, I'll discover this has all been a dream."
Jayjay sighed. "A dream. That would be almost perfect. Wake up back in Peters to discover that I was twenty years old and that I merely dreamed all three husbands into existence. Yeah, I could live with that." She sprawled on her stomach and pillowed her head against one arm. Amazingly, the ground seemed to give beneath her, to cradle her and support her, to float and conform to her body. Better than an expensive waterbed, she thought.
Then she was walking. I'm dreaming, she thought. Dreaming about walking. Not going to get much rest…
Walking.
No details at first. Just her legs moving, moving, moving, and for a minute she figured she was going to trip on something and wake herself up. She hated that. But no, she kept on walking, and suddenly realized she wasn't walking aimlessly; she headed toward something. Noise. Water. Yes, the sound of falling water, and something light and airy. Laughter. Children's laughter; but not quite children, either. In her sleep, she felt suddenly that she was walking in a place she had no business being, in a world where she did not belong. She had the sudden urge to keep quiet, to keep to the shadows, to hide.
And a chill passed over her, through her, and she began to notice details. Light, shimmering little pinpoints of light—rainbow-colored—that flickered, floated, spun dizzily. She followed them, for they went in the same direction she wished to go. They went toward the laughter. She walked, hurrying, suddenly aware that her feet never touched the ground.
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01] Page 19
