People stumbled through the roils of dust, screaming, trying to avoid the collapse at their backs. Priests, girls, acolytes, they disappeared with awful finality as the floor opened before them.
They were swallowed up as a leem swallows a lopy.
The shaking shudderings of the whole place abruptly ceased.
Dust hung smokily on the close air, choking us, bringing stinging tears. I shook my head and stood Lally up, making sure she understood that the immediate danger was past. This was a foreshock. There might be more before the big quake. That would be followed by the aftershocks. Perhaps, I hoped, this was a mere warning, and the main earthquake would not arrive. No one could tell.
San Paynor stood up. Duven, as I had with Lally, made sure the san was in possession of his senses. Then the young priest crossed to the newly-created crevasse. He peered down.
Joining him, I too peered down through the hanging dust.
“The folk are trapped on the ledge.” Duven spoke flatly.
What he said was frightfully true. A huddle of people, those who so far had been lucky, clung together on a narrow ledge of the floor below. At their backs, the sheered side of the torn earth, reared a wall. Before them across the narrow lip of the ledge the black emptiness went on down and down and down.
Rather unhelpfully, I commented: “That looks like the entrance to the Ice Floes of Sicce down there.”
Duven did not reply.
The sheered wall offered precarious hand and foot holds. I thought that even if we climbed down safely, we’d never get those frightened people to climb that vertical face.
The whole situation was one of deadly peril. Many of the lamps had fallen; but there was ample light — light from burning curtains and furniture. The oppressiveness of the scene, the sense of being deep underground, the pressure of the rock all about, the smoke and dust, the flickering eerie lights, the shadows, threatened to overwhelm us. We could all be buried alive down here.
And the next shock might occur at any moment.
When it did those trapped people on their fragile ledge below would be tossed into eternity.
Duven threw off his robe and stood forth in a brown breech clout. He flexed his muscles. He swung himself over the edge of the chasm.
“Cymbaro the Just is with me, Drajak. So fetch a rope.”
There was absolutely no question of protocol here. Duven had acted. I must respond immediately.
Running back I shook Logan’s arm. He was staring about vacantly, trembling in expectation of the next shock.
“A rope!”
He looked at me, and he didn’t see me.
What of curtains there might be in this windowless space were burning, their pullcords flaring with them.
San Paynor in his firm soft voice, said: “The serving hatch from the kitchens, Drajak.”
I grasped his meaning at once and as he pointed I hared off to the undamaged wall. A small counter fronted a wooden hatch. I shoved this open viciously and, yes, there was the food lift with its rope. Wasting no time I hauled the rope in, flinging the coils back onto the floor. All the time I expected the next quake to bring everything tumbling down in final destruction about us.
I had no weapons, no knife. I bit through the rope where it was fixed to the food platform. Hauling the line abaft I raced back to the lip of the chasm. Dust still hung stingingly in the air.
Paynor was speaking to Logan in a quiet, almost cooing voice. He mentioned Cymbaro a number of times, and the love of life, and the utmost necessity of helping. There was no time to worry over that.
Looking over the lip I saw that Duven had almost reached the ledge. He descended with cautious and limited movements. I judged that he had done his share of rock climbing and knew what he was about, although just before he reached his goal he made two steps I considered risky, hanging from only one point before clamping onto a second. The situation was so desperate that I concurred with his judgment that the risk had to be taken. He was one tough bird, all right, by Krun!
Some of the trapped people were screaming, others sobbing, most were praying to Cymbaro. You could taste the stink of their fear. Duven climbed down to reach them.
Rapidly knotting a bowline on a bight I ladled the rope over the edge. “Rope below!”
Duven glanced up, his eyes white rinds. Bracing himself against the back wall he threw the loop over the nearest person, a mature priestess. He held the line, taking up the slack, and pulled her into position.
“Haul away.”
Obediently, I hauled in, knowing the poor woman was being scraped and bounced against the wall and collecting more bruises. When she came in over the top her face was beet red, tears gushed, and her robe was ripped to her waist. She fell against me. Working as fast as I could I took the loop off and payed it out again.
“Logan!” I bellowed, without turning around, supporting the priestess with my left arm. “Brassud, dom! Come and help.”
What San Paynor said to Logan I didn’t know; but they both came across and took the woman away. I looked down into the chasm.
Duven yelled: “Hurry up, Drajak!”
The next was a girl who came up surprisingly lightly. Her bright black face with the cut glass features composed. “Thank you,” she said, as she pulled the loop from around her and tossed it down. She needed no help from the two sans at my back. She was a splendid example of the best of the Xuntalese women allied to her faith in Cymbaro. So, one by one, I hauled them up.
Whether or not they were being pulled to safety was entirely another matter, by Krun.
By the time there were only three priests left I began to hope that the quake had been an isolated shock. The crowd in the shambles of the saloon were quietening down. Logan had recovered from his first terrors and worked like a hero.
One more came up, then the penultimate one and the rope went down for the last.
With the bight safely around him I leaned back and hauled away and the ground shuddered like a beast in torment.
It was very necessary to spread my legs wide and to lean back and not to lose my balance and to haul like a madman.
The world vibrated all about me. People were screaming. Rubble fell and the noise hammered mercilessly. I slipped and recovered and clawed at the line and so brought the last priest inboard. Then I looked over the edge.
The ledge had vanished.
Duven was still there.
He clung to a knob projecting from the face, legs dangling. The look on his face was one of ecstatic joy.
Any second and he’d be gone, slipping down and away and vanishing in the turmoil of dust boiling in the abyss.
The reason for his heightened sensory state was obvious. He had performed a great deed in the service of Cymbaro and now he was about to die. His name would be remembered. Cymbaro would welcome him. There would be no long and painful struggle through the Ice Floes of Sicce, through the mists and the perils to the sunny uplands beyond. He would die a hero and a martyr to the dread forces of evil that lurked deep within the earth.
Well, by the disgusting diseased eyeballs and putrescent nostrils of Makki Grodno! He’d proved himself. He shouldn’t have to die now. Not if I could prevent it.
I yelled at Logan and Paynor as the shocks ceased abruptly.
“Get some people! Tail onto this line!”
Give Paynor his due. He was the first. He marshaled the others and a party tailed on. Over and down I went like a grundal.
Twice the line jolted and swung down savagely as those above relaxed their grips. If those people up there let go I’d be taking a swallow dive out and down headfirst into the Ice Floes of Sicce.
When I reached him, Duven said with a twist to his lips: “You needn’t have—”
“Get this bight around you, dom, sharpish.”
The old Dray Prescot intolerance must have blazed out then for he did as I’d bidden him. I had a hand over the projection; but my feet had no support. Between us, one hand each, we got the rope around him. I thought back grimly to my assessment of the risks he’d taken first climbing down here.
When we were settled, he in the bight and I with a fist clutching the line, I leaned my head back and hollered: “Haul away!”
They’d make heavy work of it, the frightened folk up there. I did not wish to contemplate sticking to the sheer face like a fly whilst they pulled Duven up and then lowered the line for me.
But — if they couldn’t haul both of us, then, by Vox, that was precisely what I’d have to do.
We lurched away from the wall, swung, and then started to inch up and at that self-same instant the next shock struck.
I swear blind the wall before me danced a saraband. We were swaying and swinging, swinging and swaying, as though perched in a swinger of far off Aphrasöe.
We’d have been all right, too, for the people up there stuck bravely to their task. They did not let the rope slip.
The sense of tons of rock poised above my head ready at any instant to come tumbling down in an avalanche that would bury me for good and all gave me a most queasy feeling, most queasy, by Krun.
Duven was gripping the rope just beneath my fist and my other arm wrapped about his body. We swung out, away from the face as the world went crazy, the ground tormented by forces powerful and violent. We swung in catastrophically.
The smash as our bodies hit the rock jolted me clear and I felt my fingers slipping from the line. A desperate clutch, a heave, the harsh line tearing at my skin, a final exhausting grab — and I was clear, free, floating, spinning over and over and falling headlong into the boiling turmoil of dust in the abyss.
Dust choked up into my nostrils, stung my eyes half-blinding me, scoured in ribbons across my face. Over and over I went hurtling, down and down and down.
I really began to think this colossal cleft in the earth went all the way down to the center where the fiery sprites worship their demons of flame, where Imphlor’tain pours rivers of molten lead that hold Kregen’s course steady among the stars they can never see.
The dust thinned at last and with streaming eyes I could see below the sullen redness nearing as I fell all askew. Getting a few breaths of dust-free air into my lungs came as a blessed relief. With the relief, fresh alarm, as the unmistakable stink of sulphur, mixed with tar, pitch, and an acrid unfamiliar stench, billowed up, making me visualize the enormity of my perilous situation.
Down below probably bubbled a lake of boiling pitch. Even if I fell into a lake of clear water, and there are plenty of those beneath the earth’s crust, I’d be done for. If I hadn’t already reached terminal velocity I would very soon do so. I’d smash every bone in my body.
I let rip with a ferocious roar — and out croaked a husky little voice: “Star Lords! Everoinye!”
May Opaz make them hear! I said to myself. “Star Lords! Get me out of this! Put me back on duty guarding the numim twins!”
Of reply there was none. I continued to tumble helplessly down towards the redly glowing radiance beneath.
Well, if this was the end, then this was the end.
So much for the Star Lords’ grandiose designs for me to become the Emperor of Emperors, the Emperor of All Paz!
When I scrunched into a bloody mess the joke would be on them.
Something fine brushed across my face. Like spider silk a strand drew tight under my nose and broke. Another filament caught at me, and another. I stopped thrashing my arms and legs about and spread them out like a star.
Whether or not this was the work of the Everoinye I did not know. They would not tell me, as was their custom, until such time as in telling me they could make a point and put me in my place.
The strands thickened. They were difficult to see except in mass, where they bunched. Down I plunged through a gathering collection of filaments, fine as gauze, streaming them back as a seed streams back its silky coverings. Was my speed slackening?
There must have been other earth shocks as I fell. Rubble tumbled from the one wall I could make out in the lurid light, the sheer rock flashing up past my ear. That debris pitched in long streams down below me, going faster than I was. I had to be slowing this crazy descent; rather, these clumping streaming strands were slowing me down, acting like a drag parachute.
Wrapped in a gossamer cloud I fell. I just hoped that would not be a gossamer shroud when I landed.
The gory glow below shone to one side. Slower I went down, slower and slower, the silken strands wrapping me and tailing away aft so that I must have looked like a comet. The redness poured up from a veritable boiling lake of lava and the heat started to stifle into the close air. Underneath my falling body the spider silk clumped thickly. I readied myself for one almighty crash. When I did touch down the end swooped up with unexpected swiftness.
Flat on my back I hit the piled fluffiness. The experience was weird, as of falling listlessly in a dream. Strands covered me everywhere and I plunged beneath them. At once I started to thrash a way back to the top. I could be suffocated in here, by Krun!
The combined downward movement and my efforts succeeded in driving me into a slanting course, through the mass, still downwards but at an angle.
Eventually, breathless, panting, slapping clinging strands away, I tumbled out onto a moss-covered slope.
I staggered up. The air shimmered redly. The piled mass of spider silk reached up a long way, between me and the lake of fire.
“Thank Opaz!” I said, and to a Herrelldrin Hell with any futile thoughts I’d been saved by the Everoinye.
As far as I could see in the direction away from the silk and the lake of fire the rocky walls stretched into a horizontal cleft. They reflected the crimson glow. The moss underfoot was a sickly pallid off-white, springy, and quite pleasant walking.
There was only one thing to do in all of Kregen. So off I set, walking resolutely along the slot in the earth, seeking ways up.
An eerie blue column of fire grew abruptly directly before me. I stopped. The blue wavered, distorted, changed shape, almost died and then grew and thickened.