They crossed the ring-road at the bottom of the steps as quickly as possible and plunged into a bewilderment of back-streets. The buildings drew increasingly close together, hiding the moon. Here and there, through a gap between jostling roofs, Fern saw the dome of the temple away to their left, like the rim of a planet rising into a blue-black universe. Her sense of direction was poor but she guessed they must be some way east of the inn where she had spent the preceding night. This was an area given over to street-bars and snack vendors, skulking taverns, anonymous doorways emitting the throb of jungle drums where sinister wardens vetted all comers. Women lounged on corners with their lips tinted purple or blue, many of them showing bare breasts under the obligatory veil. Rafarl turned into an archway so dark that its guardian could hardly be seen except as a pair of huge shoulders heaving themselves out of the gloom.
A voice like gravel said: “They’re looking for you, Dev.”
“I know.”
“You and a girl.” There was a glint as eyes swiveled in an unseen face.
Rafarl ignored the implicit question. “Do they know my identity?”
“No. Only the description.
We
know. That dodge with the scorpion . . . you’ve used it before. A giveaway.”
Rafarl did not comment. “Is Ipthor in?”
“Probably.”
The shoulders moved aside; Rafarl stepped forward into almost complete blackness. Fern, behind him, grabbed a fold of his loose shirt. “Stairs,” he warned her. She felt her way down the irregular treads which twisted dizzily deep into the ground. At the bottom, Rafarl thrust another door open and she found herself following him into a wide chamber. It was very large but low, as if the weight of the city, pressing down from above, was gradually compressing the space between ceiling and floor. The ceiling in question was coved, dipping at intervals to meet squat pillars; the walls were enlivened with gargoyle-carvings. Many of the monsters held colored lamps in their gaping mouths, or candles in translucent vessels: the light these emanated was multi-hued and erratic, making separate caves of green and scarlet and magenta, leaving some corners—the room contrived to have many corners—in darkness. Several musicians were playing in a remote alcove, a soft background rhythm consisting mostly of thrumming strings and drumming fingers. Rafarl roamed the chamber, peering into the shadows, stopping at length beside a niche where two men were sitting close together, rolling dice.
“Ipo.”
One of the men gathered up the dice and dismissed his companion with a quick jerk of the head. “Sit down, Raf. I’ve been expecting you.” Rafarl sat on the bench opposite him; Fern perched on the end. Ipthor gave her a swift glance that might have been cursory but was not. What little light reached them was greenish and unsympathetic, washing the warmth from Rafarl’s skin, highlighting the slight roughness of pock-marks or old scarring on Ipthor’s sunken cheeks. He was darker than Rafarl, yellow as drab, and his whole face appeared concave, as if he had been punched by a huge fist early in life and all his features had been driven inward. His eyes were crooked and set in a downward slant, making his expression seem both sly and sad. His clothes were ragged but he wore golden ear-rings and there was the glint of commonplace gems on his fingers. The winnings from recent gambling were stacked at his elbow; Fern automatically suspected the dice were loaded. “I hear you’re in a lot of trouble,” he remarked conversationally. “The guards came here—”
“Here?”
“Only out of politeness. In a street search, it’s considered insulting to overlook anywhere. The captain was suitably respectful. He turned over a few shadows, swatted a barfly, apologized to the management in the same breath. He has some bad habits he wouldn’t want his colonel to hear about.” Ipthor grinned nastily. “But then, so has the colonel, only his are more expensive.”
“Will they come back?”
“
Né.
They know we know you—they know we know they know—but they won’t push their luck. Nor should you.” His gaze slid briefly toward Fern. “I said the
nympheline
would get you into the
morrh-dhuu
if she could.”
“Different girl,” Rafarl said shortly.
“Prolific, aren’t you?”
“Leave it. Ipo, we need to get out, lie low for a while—”
“So I see.” Ipthor chewed thoughtfully on something which might have been tobacco. “The
Norne
is at her mooring right now and my uncle will be drunk for at least a week. How about piracy on the high seas? You’ve always said that’s what you wanted. And there’s a dozen of us ready to follow you.”
“No.” Fern heard, rather than saw, Rafarl’s grimace. “I can’t go for good.”
“Your mother?”
“Mind your own business.”
“Too many women in your life, if you ask me,” Ipthor opined.
“I didn’t.”
“So what have you got in mind?”
“Somewhere. What I need is to leave the city—now. Quickly and very quietly. There’s blood money on offer and plenty who don’t object to the stain on their hands. Even here. You know that.” Ipthor gave a grunt which might have been assent. “It has to be the secret way. Tonight.”
“It’ll cost you.”
Rafarl produced a small leather pouch and tipped a coil of dull glitter onto the table. Fern opened her mouth to comment and closed it again without speaking.
“Your mother’s jewels. Well, well. Did you pinch this or did she give it to you?” Rafarl didn’t answer. “And what makes you so sure you can trust me?”
“I’m not,” he retorted, scooping up the necklace and replacing it in the pouch. “Payment on delivery. Lose me, you lose your fee.”
Ipthor spat out his tobacco and laughed.
They left the city via the sewerage system, through a darkness smelling of feces and rustling with rats. Fern had sufficient experience of cities to be accustomed to such odors, but still she shrank from the putrid water that licked at her feet. There was nothing she could do about her clothes. Already she could feel her gauze trousers growing clammy around the ankles from splashback. This, too, is the fairest of cities, she thought. The bowels of Atlantis. And suddenly she felt she was beginning to understand it: a gilded powerhouse ruling an empire of the despised, and the mentality of a people who believed instinctively in their own superiority. Here, all the ugliness was below ground, hidden away in tunnels and catacombs. Out of sight, out of scent. The sewers, the dungeons, the torture chambers. The stainless streets and shining domes sprouted on top of this noisome labyrinth like roses on a dung heap. Let the mainlanders wallow like animals in their filth, the Gifted people were made of finer clay; they had lifted themselves far above their own excrement. But it’s still there, thought Fern. Atlanteans are no different from other men. We all shit: it’s the great common denominator. And if you ignore it then the shit will accumulate and accumulate, until the whole world is defiled. Vaguely she detected in the attitude of Atlantis the beginnings of a deadly trend, but how it would evolve or where it might lead she could not remember, though she thought she ought to know.
“You’re lagging,” said Rafarl, looking back. “Try to keep up.”
Ipthor’s torch flickered and smoked some way ahead. Fern ran a few steps to catch up with them and almost lost her footing when something wriggled from beneath her shoe and vanished into the slime. There were other things in the murky stream which did not wriggle, drifting sluggishly or wedged on an unseen snag, things with matted remnants of fur or peeling scales, invariably gnawed and incomplete. On some a trace of blood still showed dimly red. The passage gradually widened and the noxious flow grew correspondingly swifter and deeper: floating objects were now carried past them instead of being left behind. Once, Fern saw a jagged ridge, several feet in length, just breaking the surface, and somewhere in front of it a pair of eyes that stood out of the water all by themselves. “Keep well to the side!” said Rafarl. Ipthor quickened his pace.
Fern had no idea how long the journey lasted. Eventually they halted at the bottom of a vertical shaft soaring upward into utter blackness. A ladder-like system of grooves was cut into the rock, with metal spikes, rust-smeared, alternating on either side. Ipthor slotted his torch into a wall-bracket. “You’ll have to do without light,” he said. “I need both hands.” He removed his shoes and began to climb; Fern, at Rafarl’s instigation, followed him, her sandals hung by their straps around her neck. She did not ask the height of the shaft or how long it would take. As she gripped the first spike her fingers looked very puny, her arms surely too slight to sustain her bodyweight for more than a few minutes. She hugged the rock wall, clinging on with her toes, concentrating on achieving a rhythm of progress. She felt Rafarl move up close behind her, so close that once, when she flagged, a supporting hand was pressed into the small of her back. The torchlight dwindled below them into a circle of sooty orange, shrinking slowly to the diameter of a coin, thankfully obscured by their intervening limbs. Ahead—well ahead by now—Ipthor scrambled up the rock-face like a lizard; she could not see him but she could hear his rapid movements, the occasional gasp or oath as he stubbed a toe. Now and then he dislodged a loose chipping that bounced off her scalp or shoulder. With the sounds of his ascent gradually receding above her and the light retreating below she succumbed to the illusion that she was suspended in a limbo of darkness, always climbing, always still, going nowhere. It reminded her of some incident in the very recent past—an endless stair, dream-like archways, walls and pillars insubstantial as vapor—but although the memory seemed so near and so vivid that she was sure it must be important, she could not quite catch hold of it. She was desperately grateful for the proximity of Rafarl, encouraging her without words, impelling her on by his very presence. She did not speak at all. Possibly she was afraid her voice would let her down.
And then the noises above ceased; there was a long pause, a scraping groan like the sliding of a bolt in a rusty socket, the creak of an old hinge. A disc of vague pallor appeared, gray against the dark, quickly broken by the silhouette of Ipthor, crook-legged and nimble, more insect than reptile. Fern climbed faster. It was only when she was finally outside, gulping the wholesome air like a parched nomad at an oasis, that she found her limbs were shaking from the effort and her fingers, cramped from clutching the spikes, would not immediately uncurl.
“Where are we?” Rafarl demanded.
“See that road over there? That’s the eastward road to the Bay of Lhune. It crosses the coast road about a mile from here. Where are you headed?”
“I’ll know when I get there. Here—” He tossed the pouch to Ipthor. “Thanks.”
Ipthor tugged it open, automatically checking the contents. “Diamonds!” he sighed. “Diamonds are for desperation. Ixavo would have paid in hard currency. Five hundred
phénix
apiece, no less. Or so I was told.”
“You should have taken it,” Rafarl said lightly.
“Ara-yé.”
The evil grin danced and fled. “Too late now.”
He disappeared back into the shaft, pulling the trapdoor shut behind him. Fern sat down on a milestone which announced they were three leagues out of the city. “We’ve got a long walk ahead,” Rafarl told her. “Put on your shoes.”
The night was growing old; they had been many hours underground. The sky over the eastern horizon was already starting to lighten: Fern could see distant mountain-shapes emerging to the north, maybe part of a volcanic chain with the natural fortress-harbor of Atlantis as an isolated outpost. The broad valley-plain lay between, perceptible in the gloaming merely as fields of shadow stretching away and away, with few trees and only a single gleam of water far off, reflecting the moonlight long after the moon had set. The paved road marched across the landscape with the resolution of its builders, straight as a rule. “We must reach the crossroads before dawn,” said Rafarl. “After that, we have to get out of sight.” They set off along the empty road, listening for horses’ hooves and the rumor of pursuit, hearing only the zither-music of the cicadas and the call of a night bird, flying home before the onset of morning.
They reached the coast just short of noon. Turning north at the crossroads they had gone only a short distance before Rafarl chose a faint track on the right which meandered uncertainly through the pale grasses, petering out close to an abandoned farmstead. But Rafarl had found another path, even if it was not the one he was looking for, keeping in the lee of any available trees, descending at last into a gully where the thread of a river gurgled half-heartedly in a bed of cracked mud. They had followed it, screened by the banks, until the ditch became a cleft and the languid water gathered itself together for a final sprint and poured in a slender fall down a low cliff toward the sea. Fern and Rafarl clambered down beside it, drinking from the pool below, which was clear if not particularly cold, before skirting the sand and crossing a stony promontory to the next cove, and the next. They had traveled perhaps another mile when Rafarl alighted on the destination he sought. It was a shallow cave, its entrance almost hidden by a rock-fall, evidently cut off at high tide since damp weed sprawled on the threshold, but within the floor sloped upward and the sand was powdery and dry. Fern sank down on it, exhausted from a long day and a longer night, dizzy from walking under the relentless sun. She was too tired to eat the food Rafarl proffered, too tired even to bathe or wash the filth from her clothes. She curled up on the sand with her head on a weed-cushioned boulder and fell instantly into sleep.
When she awoke, the first thing she heard was the sea. The familiar sense of dislocation ensued, but this time she thought that outside the cave there was a shoreline of silver, and fiery waves spreading their sparks upon the sand. She felt no panic, only a singing in her blood and a moment of hopeless struggle, as she snatched in vain at a long-lost image, too precious to forget, too magical to remember. And then she came to full awareness, and saw there was daylight beyond the cave-mouth, and all the details of their escape from the city returned to her, driving the fleeting impression back into the realm of fantasy.