Sartor (27 page)

He looked at tired little Julian and the other grimy, exhausted
faces, and he couldn’t regret the decision. The morvende had all agreed,
though they knew the rules: they were to check ahead before bringing Sunsiders
down underground. It was the first rule. But the emergency (they all agreed)
was greater.

Mendaen was pale, almost greenish, with relief, and Hinder
felt a wash of sympathy. Even if he ended up exiled sunside forever, it would
not be so bad if he could save his friends. “Come on,” he said.

They ran.

And so it was they topped a steep cliff just as Kessler and
his riders entered the narrow rocky defile below.

Kessler reined in when the little rocks fell on them, and
looked up. Atan and her group looked down.

Kessler and his people were tired, too, for they’d had
less rest than the kids had. He lifted a hand to ward the low winter sun that
had just topped the southeastern mountains, and surveyed the little group. He
saw a black-clad child with ruddy hair, and recognized his Landis. Except who
was the tall one next to her with the long brown braids and filthy riding
clothes? The morning sun on her face illuminated every feature, including the
eyes shaped so much like his, and it glinted on the ring she wore on one grubby
hand.

As he compassed the fact that he had been wrong from the
outset, and that this one was the Landis, Atan recognized those blue eyes, that
black hair. Here was the villain who had threatened her early on their journey,
and had grabbed Lilah—and a glance at poor Lilah, who looked as if she’d
been stabbed, proved her right.

Kessler said, “You’ve nowhere to run.”

“I know,” Atan said, and as she wiped a
wind-stirred strand of dirty hair from her face, she glanced covertly behind
her, at where Hinder was gesticulating violently from the lee of an outcropping
of rock, where the Norsundrians couldn’t see him, as Sin and two others struggled
with some precariously balanced big stones.

Stall them
, Atan guessed.

“Go away and leave us alone,” she called.

The Norsundrians laughed and settled back to watch the show.

“Or what?” one of them called, causing a guffaw
down their line. “You’ll cry us to death?”

Hinder and Sin belly-crawled up and grabbed the youngest
kids. They began hauling them backward, as Hannla blocked them from view by
walking along the ridge, wailing and shaking her fists.

“Go away! Go away!” Atan shrilled, causing more
laughter. “Leave us alone! We never did anything to you!”

Brick and all the Poisoners joined in, howling and bellowing
threats and pleadings, as the Norsundrians richly enjoyed protracting the kids’
fear.

One by one the kids vanished, until only the teens were
left.

“Now,” Hinder hissed from behind.

Atan’s heartbeat thumped in her ears. During her days
in the forest, she’d been catching up on kids’ slang and gestures.
Keeping her gaze on Kessler’s watching face she lifted a hand, put her
thumb to her nose, and wiggled her fingers skyward.

Then she turned and ran.

From below came the clatter of horses’ hooves as the
Norsundrians started up the gulley in pursuit.

Atan and the last of her friends scrambled down the back of the
ridge in a welter of rubble. Following Hinder, they ducked around some big
slabs, and into the darkness beyond.

The morvende did something to some precariously balanced
boulders, which teetered, toppled, cracked, clattered, and bounced down the
hillside, bringing a train of smaller rocks with them, which in their turn
skirled up a popping, spinning cascade of pebbles. By the time the Norsundrians
reached the far side of the ridge, they discovered an avalanche, which sent up
a choking cloud of dust. Their quarry had vanished, apparently beneath it.

The world had vanished.

Atan stretched out her hands in the darkness. Coughs,
sneezes, and muffled cries sounded around her, followed by whimpers of fear,
hisses of excitement, shuffling, and blind steps echoing weirdly. The younger children
pressed close to one another.

Atan whispered, “Julian?” and a quiet sigh
escaped her when a small, cold hand slid into hers.

Then the little hand was tugged away, and Irza whispered, “Julian,
stay by me. I’ll keep you safe. Your cousin has important things to do.”

Hinder’s voice rose, joyful and clear, “We’re
home!”

The morvende lived in this darkness? Atan bit her lip. She
would be grateful for the rescue. She had to hide her dismay.

Then Sin said, more quietly, “Not yet. Take hands. We
still have a ways to go.”

Hinder couldn’t wait. He ran ahead down the tunnel,
right hand out, talons trailing along the wall that guided him downward,
distinctive carvings warning him of twists and turns as well as naming byways.

When he came out of the access tunnel, the blue-white
glowglobes, and the smells of old stone and pure water made him shiver with
longing and familiarity. Though he loved life sunside, now that he was here,
the old remembered smells and the beautiful diffused light hurt inside, making
him feel that he’d been gone forever.

The soft sough of the wind through the great cavern and the
dark tunnels sounded of emptiness, as if it had been a long time since anyone
had come this way.

He ran across the floor of the cavern, scarcely heeding the ancient
paintings glowing down at him from the high walls, or the old gray of aged clay
smoothing the smaller tunnel walls. He’d ruined an access for a
generation or two, but at least it wasn’t one that people depended on. The
carving that had named the access had felt very old, untouched; he wondered
when it had last been used.

At the far end lay the dark pool he sought. Sunsiders might
have hesitated before that blackness, but he plunged into the warm water,
concentrating on his family, and when he came up gasping, glad to be rid of his
coating of mud and dust, he found a ring of people waiting.

His attention homed straight to the oldest, a man with long
hair braided in the leaf pattern. “Hinder, welcome home.”

“Grandfather Lonender,” Hinder said in their own
tongue, holding out his dripping hands as he sloshed out of the pool. His
grandfather clasped him in a damp hug, and Hinder smiled, then sobered as he
stepped back. “I have brought sunsiders down. We were chased by
Norsundrians, and with us is Atan Landis, daughter of the last king and queen.”

The gathered circle exclaimed in soft voices at this news.

“Where are they?”

“Below the fireflower access,” Hinder said. “I
left Sin with them.”

Lonender clasped Hinder on the shoulders reassuringly. “Well
then, we must welcome them.”

Not just relief but joy brightened Hinder’s heart. He
would not be exiled from his family, or his home—but more important, his
judgment had been deemed good.

“Are we far?” Hinder asked.

“Not at all,” Lonender said, smiling. “No
need to transfer there and greet our guests dripping wet. We will proceed as we
are.”

Hinder agreed, hiding his impatience. He wanted to find and
greet his mother, yet he felt he should accompany his grandfather.

Lonender saw Hinder’s glance toward the inward access,
and said, “We will bring them here and prepare a feast. Rejoin us when
you have seen your family.”

Hinder flashed a happy grin, then raced across the rocky
ground, his feet slapping the cool stone. How familiar that was! He dashed up
to the dwellings shared by his mother and her sister, to meet them on the
rockway down.

“Hinder!” He’d forgotten how musical his
mother’s voice was. Joy was tempered with guilt—he knew she’d
be disappointed that he’d never settled down to be a chamber-singer, and
she would try to hide it.

“I’m back, with news,” he declared, when
everyone had exchanged hugs and kisses.

“Sin?” asked Aunt Adel, as she brushed back
Hinder’s damp hair.

“She’s with the sunsiders we brought.”

His mother’s amber eyes narrowed, but she smiled and caressed
his forehead and cheek with her fingertips.

They smiled at one another again, and he followed them back
up to the pretty caves he’d been born in. How small they seemed! But they
were snug, and he still loved the bright shades of green that his mother and
aunt had chosen for rugs and pillows.

“You were right to have me go sunside in Shendoral,
for the binding magic over the rest of the land was still strong,” he
said. “Here’s why I did not come back. I found others my age living
in the forest, rescued by a mage called Savar...”

They listened quietly as he told the story. But as he talked,
he watched their faces. Aunt Adel listened with her eyes narrowed, looking so
very much like Sin. His mother smiled wistfully, and at the end, when Aunt Adel
excused herself to get him some rice cake and pressed cider, his mother
murmured, “So you have not quenched the sun-thirst?”

He shook his head.

She pulled him up against her in a warm, understanding hug. “We
are all human,” she said, quoting the old, old proverb. “And humans
were born under sky and stars.”

o0o

The line of kids following Sin was startled when a
soft-footed group of white-haired people appeared. Some were grownups, a thing
many had not seen for a very long time, discounting those sinister figures on
horseback. Most of Atan’s little band fell back in doubt and
apprehension.

“Welcome,” a woman said in Sartoran. Her voice
was clear, a singer’s voice, Sana recognized with an inward shiver of joy.
“Come and eat, and drink, and rest. There will be time to talk as well.”

Irza stared around. The cave really wasn’t as awful as
she’d supposed—not at all like those they’d been forced to
hide in, with fungus all over, and rubble, and spider webs, or stinky animal
nests. The air smelled clean and fresh, and she heard the hush of steady wind
and the running chuckle of water. Light came from somewhere, though she could
not find the source; it almost seemed to be part of the air.

As they walked along a series of accesses, reaching at last
a big cavern, an involuntary “Oh!” escaped her when she saw the
stylized paintings along the walls. Intricate weavings of bird shapes, painted
many colors and edged with the rich glow of gold, fascinated not just Irza, but
all those who responded to beauty.

Irza began to understand why morvende had so honored a place
in history.

She’d seen nothing but a hole when Hinder had gotten
them away from those Norsundrians. And though she’d looked back, she’d
only seen the light source suddenly cut off, and then she’d heard the
roar of falling rock.

But now they were
in
, and she hoped that that meant
they would become the Chosen. Or at least Atan would—and if she did, why
not those of noble blood? It was not necessary for the descendants of the
trades to be Chosen to know the accesses, for they would never become leaders,
surely.

The kids were invited to sit on woven rugs set on the stone
near a black pool that was the first uninviting thing she’d seen. There
seemed to be no equivalent of a high table, a place where nobles took
precedence. Irza waited, without being obvious, to see where the others sat. Where
would be the center?

Atan hadn’t yet sat. She was talking to the old man
with the braided hair.

“I’m tired, Irza.” Julian tugged fretfully
on the hem of Irza’s tunic.

“Go, then.” Irza shook the child’s fingers
free, and sighed with relief when Julian flung herself down beside Arlas, who
was yawning as she slumped on the blanket next to Sana.

Irza noticed a couple of the others looking her way, so she sat
down with care, trying to move with grace and dignity as befitting Ianth House.

Good smells assailed her nostrils. Morvende moved among the
children, carrying bowls of something steaming. Servants? She glanced at the
old one still talking with Atan.

Irza only nodded and smiled her thanks to the two adults
that brought her a steaming bowl of golden tea and a plate of some kind of cut
fruit and some crunchy cakes, but the girl morvende who came last with a jug,
looking to refill the tea dishes, she put out a hand to stop.

“Is that your king?” she asked, indicating the
old morvende with Atan.

“We do not have kings,” the girl said. Her
accent was pretty, reminding Irza of Hinder and Sin when they first arrived at
the dell. “He is...” She tipped her head. “It translates only
as ‘Grandfather.’ But this—Grandfather or Grandmother—is
how we call our oldest and wisest.”

Irza nodded her thanks and then said, as casually as she
could, “I suppose you’ll need to make a new access? I’m
afraid we ruined the one we came in. But you know, everyone here would be
willing to dig and help restore it, or to make another.”

“It is kind,” the girl said. “We give
thanks for generous offer.” She moved away, stooping to refill cups of
everyone who needed more, never asking their status, or giving anyone deference
or precedence.

Irza sighed inwardly. She’d have to wait, and
meanwhile, did the morvende have cleaning frames or would they get to bathe?

The bath was offered after everyone had eaten. They were led
to a chamber lower down that steamed at one end and had a waterfall at the
other. Around a corner was another one, almost its twin. The boys got one, the
girls the other.

Atan soon floated gratefully in bubbling water, which
churned and fizzed around her like gentle fingers brushing over her skin. Not
only the grime of their terrible journey washed away, but the aches in her body
as well.

Happy shouts echoed up the rock walls into the dark shadows
above. There were no straight angles in these caverns. The rock was not uniform
gray, but a rich variety of subtle colors, compressed into sedimentary lines. It
all was testament to the violent tectonics of the past, possibly going back to
the world’s birth.