Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (8 page)

15 Delving

We three—Bulna, Jubah, and I—were to go delving in seven-hour shifts, staggered, with an hour overlap in the cell at each end. It was Jubah’s shift now; my first delve would follow.

Bulna woke up from a nap—we were always napping in there, it seemed—and looked long and searchingly at me. “Listen,” he said. “About my past. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to be secretive. But Jubah is a bit of a scandal-monger. I don’t like to encourage him. You understand?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“He’s had a hard time of it here. Granny threw him into the pit as a clown, a foil for a real slayer. It didn’t turn out well.”

“He got hurt?”

“No, the slayer got eaten.”

“How did you fare in the pit?”

“Me? I never fought. I refused to. What am I, a savage?”

“How did Granny like that?”

“Well, you said it yourself. You just have to know how to handle her. If you scrape and bow, as Jubah sometimes does, then she’ll abuse you. If you bully her a bit then she’ll complain about it but do what you want. Within certain limits, of course. It actually pleases her, I think. Here in Hela, abuse is a common substitute for love.”

“You seem to know her quite well.”

Bulna shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t pretend to understand her, but I can generally predict her actions.” He was silent for a moment with pursed lips. “Are you really from Arras?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How many of you are there?”

“I’m the only one. The rest all died. That’s why I left.”

“What was it? A plague?”

“Poison in the wells. There was a storm, and then death seeped into the water.”

“Let me ask you something, Keftu. Did your people speak like we do? I mean, did they put words together in the same way?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “How else would they speak?”

Bulna shrugged. “It’s a theory I have. While I was an apprentice, I sometimes amused myself by constructing new ways of speaking.”

“You mean, making up different words for things?”

“Words, yes, but sentence structures, too. And different types of words. As far as I could tell my inventions were perfectly consistent. I began to wonder if perhaps there might be men somewhere who speak…differently.”

“That’s a curious idea,” I said. “Our wisdom held that men were first taught to speak by the seraphim.”

“How long have you been down here?”

“Days or weeks, perhaps, or maybe a lifetime. It’s hard to remember.”

“You came straight to Hela when you arrived in Enoch?” he asked.

“Yes. I hardly glimpsed the streets. I found myself in the dungeons before I knew it.”

“That’s the Cheiropt for you. It routed you down here, straight into the old lady’s clutches. A curious thing, the Cheiropt. It seems almost unreal, and yet there’s no resisting it. It’s a living prison of black iron, bristling with traps to swallow the unwary. All you do is set foot in the city and you’re in its toils.”

“I don’t understand how people can live here,” I said.

“It’s very simple, my friend. They don’t know they’re in prison. That’s the most secure kind of prison there is! But even those who try to escape only succeed in extending its boundaries. There’s no way to fight but along the established channels. Take the Misfit, now. The fractious and the rootless hail him a hero. The misbegotten worship his sandals. But they’re just organs of the Cheiropt. If the prison really broke open, they’d hide in the shadows and wait for someone to repair it. The same goes for the Misfit. He’ll be reabsorbed sooner or later.”

“But there’s you,” I said. “What about your theory?”

“Don’t forget, I’m part of the Cheiropt, too. Don’t trust a word I say. Perhaps I’ve seen the prison for what it is, or perhaps my conception of the problem misses the point entirely.”

“I came here because I wanted the key to eternal life,” I said. “I thought I would find it in Narva. But now it seems I may never get there.”

Bulna nodded. “The Tower of Bel stands at the center of a labyrinth. Enoch is the labyrinth. Getting across it isn’t a matter of time or space. It’s only two miles from swamps to sea at the widest, but it’s the human distance that counts. The Tower itself rises from the abyssal plain to the stratosphere, but in terms of human distance it reaches from the netherworld to the stars.”

“Has no one succeeded in reaching the Gardens?”

“To my knowledge, only one man has gotten around the generational ascent.”

“Who?”

Bulna leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Few people know what really goes on in the Palace of Collections. Experiments take place there; some of the guardians have curious connections. You hear things if you keep quiet and do as you’re told. I heard of an alien who gained access to Narva, who labors in secret for the happy Narvenes.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. They call him the Adept.” He leaned back. “Of course, it may just be a wild rumor. My information may be bad. I was a bit of a misfit even in the Palace.”

“Jubah called you a Recusant.”

“He was only guessing. Recusants follow the old seven-day week, so the Cheiropt keeps them in the interstices. I think I come of an old Recusant family; I don’t know for certain, of course. What he said about my mother was his own invention, but it might very well be true.”

“Who raised you, then?” I asked.

Bulna seemed surprised. “Here, Keftu, it’s considered shameful even to know one’s blood relatives. The Cheiropt imparts the Agoge. The phylites are like a gas: members of different phyles don’t interact, and members of the same phyle are interchangeable. The helot class is more like a liquid, composed all of one type. Helots live in households but there are no hard divisions. Their offspring are reared by the Cheiropt.”

“The helots—they are a separate race?”

“Not exactly. They arose from the same stock as the phylites during the Age of Glory. They’re descended from the serfs of the old industrialist-princes. The great factories are no more, but the helots remain.”

“I thought they must be a conquered people.”

“That goes against the popular conception. When the phylites think of them at all—which is seldom—they do so in carefully circumscribed ways. To them the helots are peers who have sunk to Hela through their own social incompetence.”

Another inmate appeared in the doorway. “I think it’s wonderful that you two find so much to talk about,” he said, “but I’m trying to sleep. Would you mind shutting your traps?”

That ended our conversation.

*          *          *          *          *

Jubah returned from his delve. He and Bulna conferred in a corner just before it was time for me to go. They seemed to come to an agreement.

“Listen, Keftu,” said Bulna. “We’re going to tell you a secret.”

“Yes?”

“Some time ago I discovered an old treasure house down below. Jubah and I share it now. We’ve never brought anything from it that Granny didn’t like. But we hold it in reserve. See what I mean? We come up with an item or two at a time, and don’t say a word about where we found it. Otherwise she’d get greedy, and there’d be no pleasing her. Can we trust you with it?”

“Of course,” I said.

Bulna explained where it was. “A thoughtful person like you should find it interesting. It antedates the city, I think, and this is a very old part of the city. But remember not to bring back more than one or two items. Hold off on the costlier stuff for now.”

The guard came for me a few minutes later. We went through the store into a cavernous cellar filled with more junk. I followed him down a path to an iron-bound door at the back. Granny was waiting beside a mechanical winch. She and the guard locked a metal harness around my shoulders and breast, then attached a chain to a ring at the back. The chain was as fine and supple as silk thread, but extremely strong, too. Most of it was wound around the spool of the winch.

“This is so you don’t get lost,” said Granny. “When it’s time to head back we’ll give it a tug. Mind that you heed it. We’ll reel in the slack as you come. One or two delvers have tried to get clever. We always get the harness back. The delver, sometimes not.” The guard laughed.

Next she picked up a glass phial. It was bound with tarnished silver and filled with a milky fluid. She twisted the end cap, and white light with a slightly greenish cast poured through her fingers. She clipped it to the front of my harness. “This is one of the only nephridium lamps in Hela,” she said. “They don’t make them anymore. It’s worth ten of you. Take care of it.” She fitted a metal muzzle over my mouth and locked it behind my head. “There,” she said. “Now, off you go. Bring back something worth selling.”

Beyond the door a spiral stairwell led steeply down. In places the stone had crumbled or fallen through to a lower turning, but there were chains fixed to the wall so that I could lower myself without slipping.

I reached the bottom after ten rounds. The tube at my breast lighted my way through the maze of gaps and crannies that honeycombed Hela’s foundations. At last I stepped through a crumbling brick wall into an alley, and paused to get my bearings.

The track was paved with big, round stones. Two ruts ran across them, worn by chariot wheels in long-ago days when the way was still open to the sky. In one direction was unmitigated blackness, in the other a rectangle of shuddering umber. I went toward the light.

The doorway gave upon an overarched chasm lit by the eternal sunset of the methane lamps. The walls were mostly mud-brick, pocked with doorways blackened from the smoke of a million holocausts. Here and there helot thaumaturges peered out like melmothim from their nests. Yawning tunnel mouths on the level of the floor were guarded by carved sphinxes of elder days.

Before anyone saw me I turned and retraced my steps in search of the hole Bulna had told me to look for. I found it in the darkness beyond where I’d emerged upon the lane. From there I wormed my way through the leftover spaces, going deeper with each step. The primative earth bore up my tread as I chased a paved path running along the hill’s contour. The treasure house was close by now, I knew. I climbed over heaps of rubble, and wriggled under fallen blocks, and rounded a bend. And there it was.

The door was triangular: two huge blocks were angled toward one another with a wedge in the gap at the top. Next to it was the stone that Bulna had levered out of the way. I crept through the triangle and down a passage hewn out of the hill, emerging at its end into a small, domed sepulcher.

In the center of the paved floor was a circular hole, an upright grave with a stone lid. Treasure-laden shelves ran around the perimeter, with empty spaces showing where Jubah and Bulna had carried things off. The sloping walls and ceiling were tiled with malachite and gold and lapis lazuli. A circular recess at the top mirrored the lid of the grave.

I looked up at the recess. The memory of a dream tugged at my mind. After gathering some slack in my chain and dropping it to the floor, I went back to the entrance, sprinted down the passage, and leaped up to the circle. I caught at the lip with my fingertips and hung there. With one arm I pushed at the disk. It gave, sliding into a recess at the side. A dark shaft rose straight up above it.

This was something my friends had never found. I dropped to the pavement, took off my sandals, and ran and jumped to the hole again. Using the edge of the disk to pull myself up into the shaft, I somehow got my back against the wall, with my feet pressed against the opposite side. I began to inch my way up.

The shaft was about twenty feet high. At the top I emerged into a long vault with walls of orange-streaked white onyx. The tables were laid with wares for the occupant’s afterlife. Everything was rich but practical, in contrast to the luxury items below.

In an alcove at one end stood a panoply on a stand, curiously wrought of bronze, green with eld. The cuirass had jointed shoulder guards, breast plates, and skirt plates. Detached arm guards and greaves hung beside and below. A dragonfly stood out on the cuirass; moss-forests were wrought on the greaves. The helmet had down-sweeping cheek guards with a sloping nose guard between them.

I longed to put it on, but my harness and muzzle made this impossible. I donned the arm guards and greaves just the same. They were much lighter than I had expected. A wave of vigor washed over me. Streaks of green like old bronze forked along my arms. The vitality of elder days gathered in my loins.

The shaft beckoned to me. I went and looked down it. It was like a black hole to the nether abyss. I stepped off the edge, plummeted past the lid, and landed on my feet, unhurt. Then I bent my knees and sprang. With that one leap I ascended halfway up the shaft. I shot out my arms and stopped myself there, then worked my way back up to the vault.

Hope beat high in my heart now. I wouldn’t be in Hela forever. The seraphim had not forsaken me.

I took off the armor and returned it to its place. The green faded from my limbs. I lowered myself carefully back down the shaft and replaced the lid, having decided to keep the antechamber of heaven to myself. I went out, taking an alabaster headrest with me.

The rest of my time I spent exploring around the maze of foundations, building a mental map. Then I felt the chain’s tug, and set my face toward Hela.

Granny was there when I stepped into the cellar. She approved what I had brought back.

“I have news for you,” she went on with an ugly smile. “We just made a good sale. Your woman brought a high price. From a friend of a friend of mine.”

Dead at heart, I let them take off the harness and metal mask. I went back through the store with the guard. When I passed the treasure case I looked through the bars. Deinothax was gone, too.

I balled my fists. Soon I would act.

16 Entrails of Enoch

Days passed. The cycle of delving repeated. I planned my escape. I didn’t tell my cellmates about it because I was afraid they’d oppose it and try to stop me. But I intended to give them a chance to come at the last moment.

My plan was something like this. Granny’s familiar had shown herself my friend, whatever Jubah and Bulna might say. I hoped she would bring me the keys if I asked her. I would attempt to slip out, not through Hela again, but through the lower levels. Once down below I would retrieve the armor and make my way up to the surface. I wanted to find Seila. That was my first goal. The friend of which Granny had boasted had some connection with the Misfit. Of that I was certain. I would try there first. Once I found Seila I would resume my quest for Narva.

The only problem was that I hadn’t seen my friend since my fight with the cyclops. For all I knew she was dead, or gone somewhere else; perhaps she simply never ventured into that ward. There was nothing to do but wait, however. In the meantime I devoted my delving to exploring the maze of foundations. The chain always gave out before I could find a way upward, though. Sometimes I returned with a find, sometimes not. The reward system I ignored entirely.

One day while I was returning empty-handed the chain stopped being reeled in. I waited for a while, then continued on my own. I spiraled up the stairs and stepped into the cellar. No one was there. I went across it and peered into the store.

The floor was crawling with strange, silent intruders. They were pawing at things, sniffing at jars and vases, peering into holes and tubes. They seemed more like animals than men. Their master, a phylite, sat primly on a dusty settee. He was perfectly bald and had pale, powdered skin. His cranium was soft-looking, like an infant’s. There was a jeweled ring on each of his fingers. His expression was friendly and his eyes twinkled.

Granny was beside herself. She followed now this man, now that, complaining about how they were overturning her store. “There now,” she was saying to one, “that’s a collectible. From the Third Chiliad, that is.”

“My dear woman,” the little man said suavely, “please calm yourself. All will be restored to order in due time. This is only a routine check-up, I assure you.”

The old woman addressed her answer to the nearest of the mutes as though he were the one who had spoken. “I don’t understand it,” she whined. “I’ve always been a good helot. The Cheiropt has never bothered me before. I—I have connections, you know.” She seemed not to know whether to use the Misfit’s name.

The man smiled genially, revealing a set of filed white teeth inlaid with gold filigree. “Everything will be sorted out,” he said. “Chances are you’ll be back here in no time.”

That made Granny start. “You mean I’m to be arrested.”

He waved his hand. “Oh, I’d hardly call it that. ‘Detained’ might be a better word.”

Her eyes got the mean look that I had come to know so well. The vertical lines above her lip deepened. “No,” she said. “I’m no fool. If you’re here, then that son of a maugreth, Jairus, must have let you come. Or asked you to, more likely.”

The man became a shade more polite. “If you don’t come willingly, it will be necessary for us to insist.”

With surprising swiftness Granny struck out at the mute she’d been addressing. A knife had appeared in her hand. The man clapped his paw to a bleeding ear and scuttled off into the shadows, squealing. The master whistled and pointed. The other mutes converged upon Granny with drawn blades. She struck out again, then went down, screaming horribly. An angry red splash appeared on the front of her gown.

I, who had gone unnoticed up to that point, leaped into the fray, laid hands on one mute’s shoulder and neck, and smashed his head against a stone pillar. I picked up the dropped poniard and threw myself against the others. Two of them I wounded. The rest gave back.

To my surprise, Granny was getting her flabby body to its feet. She was gibbering hysterically. I maneuvered her behind me.

The mutes were still at bay. The man on the settee eyed me ironically. “Well, well,” he said. “Now I’ve seen you at last. You’ve made quite a name for yourself. Someone I know is interested in meeting you.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re being foolish, young man. Why don’t you hand over that knife and come with us peaceably?”

I was backing toward the cellar door. Granny was still behind me. “You first,” I said to her. Then, to the master: “Another day, perhaps. On terms of my own choosing.”

We were through the door. I slammed it shut and threw the bolt. The mutes began banging against it immediately. Granny was still holding her side. Her dress was red and sodden. Something moved beneath the cloth. My senses reeled. “Let me see,” I said. She let me, nodding weakly while avoiding my eyes. I drew the gown up gingerly, expecting to see her sides spilling out.

Instead I saw a huge cavity in the side of her distended body, a kind of burrow under her ribs. Tucked inside it was her familiar, curled up in the fetal position. There was a dark red hole under her little armpit. She writhed around, saw me, and held out her paws. I took them and lifted her out. The pouchy skin that lined Granny’s cavity was unbroken. The little one alone had been injured.

I cradled her like one of my godmother’s babies. She looked up at me, whispered one word. She said it as though the weight of the universe hung from it. But it meant nothing to me. A red bubble rose to her lips and burst, and she was dead.

Gently I closed her eyes. “Your sister?” I asked.

Without answering Granny took the little body out of my arms. She placed it carefully back in her hollow and drew down her gown.

The pounding on the door hadn’t let up. The hinges were starting to give. “We have to go,” I said. “Quickly, unlock me.”

“I can’t,” Granny said hoarsely. “I don’t have the keys.”

My heart fell. “Well, there’s no help for it,” I sighed. “Let’s go anyway.” I led the way to the stairs. She went past me and waited. I dragged a chest into the shaft and wedged it against the closed door, threading my chain through the space at the bottom. Then we went down the stairwell. Granny leaned on my arm. She was careful to keep the little one’s body in place.

When we reached the foot she paused. “Here,” she said, drawing a tiny pair of shears out of her pocket. They snipped through the chain as if it had been a cord of hair. My heart became lighter. I was still locked in my harness and mask, but at least now I couldn’t be reeled in like a fish.

We went on through the maze. “I don’t understand it,” Granny kept muttering. “It all began with that chit of a girl. And then you showed up and strangled that brute, and they were so anxious that you should have her. And now she’s sold—why? they don’t tell me!—and here we are in the pits.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Who was anxious?” But the old lady didn’t hear me, or pretended not to. She stopped muttering.

We reached the ancient alley. I started toward the light. “No,” said Granny, “not Sabhenna. They know me there. Down, deeper down.”

I complied. We went the other way, into the darkness. I had her pudgy hand in my own now. At a place where a cave-in had blocked the tunnel, we turned aside into a space between two foundation piers like monstrous ziggurats. Granny slipped on the scree, pulling me with her. Together we went slithering down the slope. We came up with a bang at the bottom, bruised all over and sticky with blood.

Still we went on. We passed through a grid of tall, square chambers with ceilings hidden in darkness. I’d never been so deep. Huge, hard, chitinous sacs clung to the walls, brown and glossy. The floor was littered with rotting bones. The air grew more humid and foul with each step.

We emerged into a black cathedral space, a titanic corridor of ribbed stone twisting through Enoch’s entrails. I helped Granny down the side of a buttress to the floor. After a rest we went on.

The floor was moist and rotten. Eyeless things crept over the stones and splashed in the pools, untroubled by the light at my breast. Colorless trilobites skittered across the walls. Nests of white worms with scarlet plumes writhed in dark hollows. Giant pillars and wrecks of iron beams rose toward the unseen ceiling like gods of elder days.

At an angle in the corridor we came upon a tribe of pygmies huddled around a cesspool. They were eyeless and hairless. A disturbed stone sent them scrambling into the shadows, grunting and clicking in a strange, guttural tongue. “The wretches,” I whispered. Silence settled back down like a pall.

A wide pool prevented further progress. “I have to rest here,” Granny said. I helped her up a hill of rubble to a sheltered hollow at the top. She settled herself down and I sat beside her, poniard in hand, peering into the darkness.

“Why did you help me?” she rasped.

I shrugged my shoulders. “It wasn’t my way to do otherwise.” Silence fell between us. “What were those men?” I asked. “Those ones who couldn’t talk.”

“Ghulim,” wheezed Granny. “Eaters of the dead. Animal men. Without souls.”

“What is this place?”

“Don’t know. Never been this deep. Footsteps of the Eldenes.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. There was no answer. The blank night swallowed my words. Granny had fallen asleep. I let her rest.

For several hours I sat there, looking out into the darkness. There was no mistaking it, despite the horror. I had found the songlines of Enoch.

I began to grow desperately hungry. I wouldn’t be able to eat until I got off the muzzle, and, if I succumbed, then Granny would die, too. I laid my hand on her shoulder to rouse her. She was as cold as ice. Her heavy body slumped sideways.

I held the lamp over her. Something had eaten half of her face. She must have died the moment she finished speaking. Upon searching her gown I found three rods she wouldn’t be needing and stowed them away in a pouch. Then I raised a barrow of rocks over the sisters and went on my way.