Crown of Stars (Page 121)

It tapped, vanished. She scrambled up out of the hollow and picked up all her gear. After breathing a smoldering fire into the end of the rope, she followed it into the labyrinth.

The creature moved at a brisk pace. She often had to lope to keep up; there came no chance for her to mark her route. That was bad enough, but after they mounted the nearest set of stairs they soon looped into places she had no memory of, not that these corridors didn’t all look more or less alike. No landmarks measured her journey. Bewilderment led to confusion. Was it taking her back to the cavern at the Heart-of-the-World’s-Beginning, where she would become, again, Feather Cloak’s prisoner, a sacrifice for the Ashioi priests?

They will not touch me.

And anyway, she thought not. This was new ground, untouched. Probably she was the only human—such as she was—to ever walk this way.

“Where are we going?” she asked it, but it did not answer.

“What is your name?” she asked it, but it did not answer.

Twice she tried to get its attention by rapping on the walls, but it did not answer.

They climbed in long, slow inclines that at intervals cut back upon themselves at acute angles or twisted in half circles, but by the aching in her legs she knew that they moved steadily upward. Once she stopped and tried to get its attention, to let it know she needed to rest, but it kept climbing and did not glance back. It was difficult to keep going, but she dared not fall behind.

They came to a strange intersection, a narrow cleft. It squeezed through, and she after it, careful of her pouched tunic and coiled rope. They came into a low cave ragged with spears of stone fallen from the ceilings to litter the uneven floor. A dangerous place, made more so by the change in darkness and shot through with a tight smell of smothering earth and mildewed leaves. Pewter Skin trundled forward, deftly avoiding the debris or kicking it aside, and took the left turning where the narrow tunnel branched into two routes. Away down the other branch, water dripped.

The way grew steep. She toiled. Only imperceptibly did she recognize a change in light like the kiss of gray. Ahead lay daylight. Between one of her breaths and the next, the creature turned right around, brushed past her, and trundled away into the depths, soon lost to sight although for moments more she heard the scrape and whisper of its passing.

So much for fellowship!

She burned, thinking of those books, lost to her now. How had they captured aether in a form that could be contained in a pool? What manner of sorcery did they harness?

What did they know?

So much on and under and above Earth remains a mystery because so much remains unknown. The ceiling lowered until she could no longer stand upright. Crawling the last length, she mused as she placed hands and knees carefully among the dusty, slippery scree of rock that lined the tunnel’s floor.

So much to discover!

Smiling, relieved, weary, and triumphant, she pushed past a curtain of pale grass and scrambled onto a narrow lip of rock hung on a steep hillside. The ledge was no wider than the length of her leg from hipbone to knee and no longer than the span of her arms, fingertip to fingertip. A scraggly bush shrouded half of it. Grass hanging from the slope veiled the cave mouth.

She blinked, shading her eyes, and for a while had to cover her face with a hand as she adjusted to the strange, bright light. She knew what it was; it sprawled over her, and she basked, leaning back with grass crackling as the sparse vegetation was crushed between her body and the rocky hillside. Light. Warmth. Fire.

Sun.

After a bit she could see without her eyes tearing or black spots dancing in her vision. Ai, Lady, that sun felt so good! She marked it, and the lay of the shadows, and judged that it was late afternoon here, wherever she was. The sun was setting over distant, pale hills. North lay wasteland, cut off from the hillside by a road that glinted with chalk white. Blinking, she stared.

She knew this place.

She braced herself on the ledge and twisted to look up the steep hillside—it was at its steepest here where the cave mouth opened—to see what lay above her.

After all, this was not a place she knew. A tower rose along the crest of the hill, neatly fitted, freshly mortared, with walls reaching to either side and vanishing into pine forest. There was no telling how far such a wall extended, only that it seemed to mark the border of someone’s land.

Yet the sense of dislocation lasted only a moment. She shifted. Her right knee scraped against a sharp rock. Her left foot jammed up against the side of the hill. A stem of grass tickled her nose, and she sneezed, and everything transformed.

“Ai, Lady!” she said, and sat back on her heels, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.