Shadow's End (44 page)

Oh, but they scream. Blood has been shed. Violence
has been done. Worse than that! Worse than that! They have seen, oh, they have seen …

Leelson stumbles. He is attempting a tangential course, one that will carry us to the west, around the omphalos, but by this time the force of the whirling vortex has built into a tornado, a hurricane spinning uncontrollably, a maelstrom of wind! We run through air, legs churning space. We fly!

Beneath us I see musicians held in place by stout straps, kneeling circles of men chained to their eyelets. We are not chained and we spin, sucked down after the shaggy creatures, sucked down as the ghost-white skins of the Kachis are being sucked down….

Leely, Leelson, Lutha, the ex-king, and I, and as we go screaming down, in terror of the darkness below, our heads twist to keep sight of the light, the light, where other dark forms fly after us like the shadows of doom.

“MI … TI … GAN …” I hear the ex-king shout. “NO. NO. NO!”

Then only darkness and howling and shed skins making a horrid rustling sound and shaggy things with tentacles and sucking mouths all around us.

Then blackness, and pain, and no more story of Saluez. For a time Saluez is gone from the pattern and the weaving goes on without her.

T
hey did not know how much time went by. Lutha seemed to recall going in and out of consciousness, in and out of places, always borne on that terrible wind, unable to move except as it moved them. There were momentary pauses, as though the maelstrom had to switch gears or decide where to go next. During one of these, Lutha hauled on the tether between her and Leely, pulling him close, and with him Saluez, who clutched him tightly. It was then she realized there was light where they were, for she saw Saluez's face, eyes rolled back, only the whites
showing. Then the wind grabbed them up again, and they were away.

The next thing they felt was the crushing impact of hitting something solid and hard, of being dropped with enough violence to drive out their breaths and cause pain. Then was the sound of cursing and sobbing and fighting for air. Lutha was on top, with Leely sandwiched between herself and Saluez. For a moment she simply lay there, so thankful for the quiet that she didn't care whether anyone else was there or had survived.

Leelson's voice rose, cursing, then that of the ex-King of Kamir. Then another male voice, raised in challenge.

“Leelson Famber! Stand and die!”

“Don't, Mitigan!” cried the ex-king.

“What are you doing here?” snarled the stranger voice in a tone of furious surprise.

“Come to stop you doing what you're trying to do,” the king gasped. “I was wrong.”

“I swore an oath!” trumpeted the other. “We Firsters honor our oaths!”

“Oath or not, you won't get paid if you kill anyone! Take a new oath. I was wrong. I hired you to do it, I'll hire you not to do it. It wasn't his fault.”

Lutha pulled herself gingerly erect. Saluez was not conscious. Leely was simply asleep. He did that sometimes when things were confusing. Lutha pushed herself away from them both and struggled to sit up. At least one rib had something wrong with it, for it hurt to breathe. Light pouring through a jagged opening at her left disclosed a room-sized cavern, the rugged walls streaked with white, the floor leveled by deposits of gravel and stones and a million years' worth of bird droppings. Translucent membranes waved from a dozen places, and it took a puzzled moment before Lutha identified them. Kachis wings caught among the rocks, brought here by the winds. Leelson lay slightly above the others, prone in the slanted opening, feet kicking against the sky, mumbling about
wormholes. Somewhere nearby the sea swallowed and sucked, the stone vibrating in tidal rhythms.

The ex-king leaned against the back wall of the cave, facing the savage stranger. Jiacare winced as he rose to his full height and moved to put himself between the savage and Leelson.

“There's still the matter of my oath,” said the savage, curling his lip.

“Mitigan of the Asenagi, I will compensate your bruised honor,” snarled the king with equal force. “By your blood and mine, man! We've been sucked through a wormhole in space; we don't know where we are or when we are, and it's a poor time in my opinion to argue about honor!”

The man addressed as Mitigan did not put aside his bellicose manner, but at least he took his hands away from his weapons. Saluez moaned and put her hand to her head. Leelson went on cursing under his breath, the same words over and over. Lutha looked around for Trompe and then remembered.

“Was Trompe killed?”

“Yes,” gasped Leelson. “He was. For which someone will answer …”

His voice failed. Lutha blinked. Trompe had been a faithful companion. She wept into her cupped hands, regretting that they had not always seen their duty alike, that she had been impatient with him.

It was then that she heard another voice, sharp though rather plaintive, pitched to be barely audible over the sound of the sea. “Hello?” And again: “Hello?”

Leelson, startled by the voice, slithered down from the opening in an avalanche of gravel. Lutha detached herself from Leely's tether and crawled up into the space he'd left. Above the ocean the transformed Kachis were furiously feeding, dropping long lumpy tentacles into the sea and pulling up fish after fish, spreading their tentacles into nets to capture seabirds, meantime bobbing, weaving,
spinning as they increased the spaces between themselves, all the time gobbling voraciously. They stretched away in a level plane, a flat grid of bodies that met the flat surface of the sea at the horizon. Lutha risked sticking her head out of the hole just far enough to look along the cliff face. She saw nothing but rock and more rock, all of it splotched with salt and bird droppings and streaked with black ropes of what could only be seaweed.

“Hello,” she called. “Where are you? Who are you?”

“I saw somebody's feet!” cried the voice. “I'm Snark. Did you come to rescue me?”

What a question! Turning toward the sound, Lutha saw light-colored movement, something waving, a scarf or shirt, then a face peering down. The person was above them, almost at the top of the cliff, her head and shoulders protruding from a hole. Some other cavern, Lutha thought as she glanced out at the transformed Kachis, still busily eating.

“What place is this?” she called.

“Perdur Alas,” the other cried.

At the moment the name meant nothing to Lutha, though she was sure she had heard it recently. She rubbed her head fretfully, calling, “Don't go away.”

She squirmed back inside to tell the others there was a human being nearby and the name of the place. Leelson's and the ex-king's exclamations reminded her where she'd heard the name recently. Poracious Luv had said the sensory recording was from Perdur Alas.

Leelson felt his arms, groaning. “No doubt the woman who's calling to us is the observer whose senses we experienced.”

“Don't you find that unbelievable?” Lutha asked.

The ex-king said, “Those who encounter chains of events at two disparate points, without observing the connections, think they have observed coincidence when they have, in fact, seen only consequence.”

Lutha's mouth dropped open, and he grinned.

“I was a figurehead, yes, but I was allowed tutors.” Leelson started to laugh, cut himself off in midamusement, and rolled over so he could feel tenderly along his ribs.

Mitigan stepped over Leelson's body and looked out the entrance, then he helped Leelson up so he could do the same. The ex-king didn't bother.

“I'm no good at practical things,” he said. “I've had no experience.”

“You can keep watch, then,” Leelson directed him. “Sit in the opening there and tell us if any of those things come back this way.”

The ex-king obediently sat, throwing Lutha a good-natured glance as he pushed by her to get at the opening.

“How's the boy?” he asked.

“He's fine.” Leely was fine. She had no worries whatsoever about Leely. He had just wakened and now sat happily arranging bits of gravel while Leelson and Mitigan talked about getting out, and Lutha turned her attention to Saluez.

At some point in the wild journey, perhaps when they were dumped from the vortex, Saluez's head had been injured. She had a large bruise above her left ear, and as Lutha felt gingerly around the edges of it, she opened her eyes.

“Have we come to heaven?” Saluez murmured.

For a moment Lutha couldn't answer. Had they come to heaven! Hell, more likely, but she hesitated to say that, not knowing how badly Saluez was hurt.

“Dananana,” whispered Leely, laying his face against Saluez. “Dananana.” He pulled her veil aside and kissed her face moistly, repeatedly.

Lutha looked away. Just another of Leely's little habits. She took a deep, painful breath and turned to meet Saluez's terrified eyes. She'd had time to realize it wasn't heaven, which saved Lutha from having to break the news.

“We're not dead?” Saluez asked, sounding strangely disappointed.

“Not so far,” Lutha told her glumly. It would do no good to delay telling her the truth. “If the Kachis don't come back, we may even survive for a while.”

“They
went to heaven,” Saluez cried, her eyes wild with pain and confusion.

“They went out there to eat fish,” Lutha said as matter-of-factly as she could manage. “If the big creatures we saw are Ularians, then your beautiful people are baby Ulari-ans. Or maybe Ularian larvae. Or nymphs.”

“Imagos,” corrected the ex-king from the opening.

“Whatever.” Lutha shrugged, gasping at the pain. Shrugging was not a good idea.

“Mother,” Saluez cried, her eyes wide. “Mother.”

Lutha leaned forward to take Saluez into her arms, and for a moment Saluez clung to her before slumping into unconsciousness once more. The men stopped their talk long enough to cast a sympathetic glance toward the women. Leely scrambled up to the cavern entrance, crawled into Jiacare Lostre's lap, and stared out across the waves, waving his hands and saying over and over, “Dananana, Dananana,” at which the king looked rather more intrigued than Lutha thought appropriate.

After a time Mitigan took the king's place in the cavern opening and carried on a shouted conversation with the person in the other cavern, who identified herself as Snark. By this time it was becoming obvious to all those in the cavern that they could not simply climb up or down from where they were. The cliff was sheer below and overhanging above. Snark tried to get a rope to Mitigan, who leaned widely from the entrance, gripping the stone with one hard fist while he flailed unsuccessfully at the windblown line. After a time Snark shouted that she would go up on top and try it from the other side, but by this time Leelson had made a rope of Leely's harness, all
the belts and sashes, plus some strips torn from the bottom of the robes, and had weighted the end with a stone.

Mitigan succeeded in tossing the stone over the tree that protruded from the cliff just above Snark's hole and turned to the others with an expression of triumph. Then, inexplicably and simultaneously, they all gagged.

“Get in!” demanded Leelson.

Mitigan dodged back into the hole and lay flat.

“Ularians,” breathed Leelson, unnecessarily. Those who were conscious had already figured that out. They lay on their bellies, drooling onto the cave bottom, waiting for the taste to pass. Lutha was nearest the opening, and she actually saw one of them go by, like a hairy whale sailing out over the sea, long, tangled tentacles hanging like a tattered drapery beneath it. It should have seemed balloonlike, she thought. It should have seemed airy, but did not. Instead it breathed ominous cold, horrid intention, ghastly power. She felt the tears start and barely kept herself from moaning.

After a lengthy hiatus, the taste dissipated and they got shakily to their feet once more. When they looked out, Snark had already attached her rope to the makeshift line. Mitigan hauled it in. Snark made an amazingly acrobatic leap out from her cavern to the tree branch, squirmed up and onto it with the rope between her teeth. Shortly afterward she called, and Mitigan went up the line like an ape. Leelson went next, though with rather less agility, and the two of them raised the rest, one at a time. First Leely, then the unconscious Saluez, tied into a kind of rope sling, then Lutha, her head reeling from the height, the immensity of the sea, the nearness of the Ularians. The ex-king came last, looking around himself delightedly, his cheeks pink with excitement.

The entire process, though lengthy, took place in virtual silence, bouts of strenuous, grunting effort interrupted by periods of frozen stillness when they tasted
even the remotest presence of the great Ularians. Each time it was only a hint of taste, a momentary awfulness.

The sun was setting by the time all were assembled at the top of the cliff. Saluez lay wrapped in warm blankets—provided by Snark—while the rest hunkered down with their heads together, telling Snark how they had come to be with her and watching the sun set in a bonfire of reds and pinks and oranges against a purple sea and lavender sky. The shaggies had spread themselves evenly, a plane of blobby black shapes cutting the red orb of the sun into a knife edge of light.

“So you haven't come to rescue me.” Snark laughed. It was a harsh, self-mocking sound. She looked directly at Lutha. “I guess I knew that as soon as I saw your face, Lutha Tallstaff.”

“Why?” Lutha asked, puzzled.

Snark laughed again, like a cock crowing, half jeer, half boast. “I hate you, Lutha Tallstaff. And him, Leelson. Not that I can do anything about it. Prob'ly learn to hate him, too, the one that was king. Not her, though.” She jerked an elbow in Saluez's direction. “She's like me. Life ate her up and spit her out, din it.”

Lutha was both offended and mystified. “Have we met before?”