Small alliances were made among the captives, the cats’ natural aloofness giving way slightly under the strain of the situation, but these comradeships were transitory, gone with the first dispute over food, or room to stretch out for a moment. There were few diversions and very little cheer.
One endless night, though, as the captives lay in their underground cave, someone called for a story. The audacity of this request made several captives look around fearfully for the Claws: it seemed as though someone would move to prevent such a straightforward pleasure as this. When no one appeared, the call was repeated. Earnotch, a battered old tabby from Rootwood, agreed to try. For a long time he stared intently at his paws, then with a last, quick look to the entrance shaft, began.
“Once, long ago—long, long ago—Lord Firefoot found himself on the shores of the Qu‘cef, the Bigwater. He desired to cross, for he had heard rumors that those Folk who dwelt on the other side—distaff descendants of his cousin, Prince Skystone— lived in a land of great beauty and plentiful hunting. Well, there he sat on the banks of the Bigwater, and wondered how to reach the other side.
“After a while, he called for Pfefirrit, a prince of the fla-fa‘az who owed him a favor from days gone by. Pfefirrit, a heron of great size, came down and hovered overhead—but not
too
close to the great hunter.
“ ‘What may I do for you, O cleverest cat?’ he asked. Lord Firefoot told him, and the bird-prince flew away.
“When he returned, the sky at his tail was full of fla-fa‘az of every description. At their prince’s command, they all flew down close to the Qu’cef and began to beat their wings, making a mighty wind. The wind blew so cold that the water soon froze over.
“Tangaloor Firefoot set out, the fla-fa‘az moving before him, turning the Bigwater to ice in his path so that he could walk across. When they reached the far side, Pfefirrit swooped down and said: ’That pays for all, cat-lord,‘ and then flew away.
“Well, cu‘nre-le, several days later Lord Firefoot had explored all the far country. It was indeed lovely, but he found the inhabitants to be strange and somewhat simpleminded Folk, much given to talking and little to doing. He had resolved to cross back over to his own land, and so he made his way to the water’s edge.
“The Bigwater was still hard and frosted, and he moved out onto it to walk home. It was a long way, though—not for kittenplay is it named the Bigwater—and when he was in the middle the ice began to melt. Firefoot ran, but it had been too long, and the Qu‘cef melted beneath him, dropping him into the icy water.
“He swam for a long time in the terrible cold, but his great heart would not give up. He struggled on toward land. Then, suddenly, he looked up to find a great fish with a fin on its back—and more fangs than the Toothguard—swimming in circles around him.
“‘Well, well,’ said the fish, ‘what is this tender morsel that I find swimming about in my home? I wonder if it tastes as good as it looks.’
“Now, Firefoot had been in despair when he saw the size of the fish, but when it spoke he was suddenly filled with joy, for he saw a way out of all his troubles.
“ ‘I am certainly good-tasting!’ said Lord Tangaloor. ‘All of the swimming cats are tender in the
extreme.
It would be a shame, though, if you ate me.’
“ ‘And why is that?’ said the immense fish, swimming closer.
“ ‘Because if you devour me, there will be no one to show you the sunlit cove where my people live and sport in the water all the time, and where a great fish such as yourself could eat and eat and never have his fill.’
“ ‘Hmmmm,’ mused the fish. ‘And if I spare you, will you show me where the swimming cats live?’
“ ‘Of course,’ said Firefoot. ‘Just let me climb onto your back that I may see the way better.’ So saying, he clambered onto the fish’s huge, finned back and they swam on.
“As they approached the far side of the Qu‘cef, the fish demanded to know where the cove of the swimming cats was.
“ ‘Just a little farther, I am sure,’ Firefoot said; so on they went, until they were very close to the shore. Again the fish demanded to know the place.
‘“Just a little closer in,’ said Lord Tangaloor. They came closer still to the shore, until—of a sudden—the water became so shallow that the giant fish found he was unable to move farther forward. Then he discovered he was too far aground to move backward, either, and could only roar in anger as Firefoot leaped off his back and waded to the sand.
“ ‘Thank you for the ride, Master Fish!’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m afraid we do very
little
swimming where I come from, but we do like to eat! I am going to find a few other of my Folk, and then we are going to return and dine on you the way you would have on us!’
“And they did. This is why, from that time forward, no cat has willingly entered the water ... and we eat only those fish we can catch without getting wet.”
The prisoners laughed as Earnotch finished his story-song. For a moment it was as though all the rocks and earth between those Folk and the sky had melted away, and they were singing together beneath Meerclar’s Eye.
The mound never slept. Like a hive of maddened insects, the labyrinth of tunnels and caves was alive with strange forms and unheard cries. The pale light of the luminous earth made the main corridors and caverns a shadow-play of teeming, flickering ghosts. Elsewhere there were unlit paths as dark as the spaces between worlds—but even in these black, desolate places unseen shapes moved, and sourceless winds blew.
The mound had not been long in the eye of the sun. Scarcely half a dozen seasons had swept by above since the blistered earth of the valley floor had first begun to rise, swelling like a tree limb seeded with wasp’s eggs. Like the wound it resembled, the mound covered on the surface the deeper and more profound disturbance below: leagues and leagues of tunnels stretching out in capillary profusion; passing away through the soil, beneath hill and forest and stream in all directions, like a stupendous, hollow spider’s web.
At the center of the web, beneath the blunt dome of Vastnir, the cruel, incomprehensible spider tested the strands, his body gross and immovable, his mind questing out to the limits of his spreading dominion. Grizraz Hearteater—born of Goldeneye and Skydancer, corrupted beneath the earth since the world was young—felt his time approaching. He was a
force,
and in a world scaled down by the passing and lessening of the Firstborn, he was a force to which no other could now compare. In the heart of his mound he lay, and his creatures multiplied around him, spreading outward. The tunnels, too, were spreading, riddling the surface world from below. Soon there would be no place so remote that it would exceed his grasp. And the night was his: his creatures, created in the dark of the earth, ruled the darkness above as well. When the last threads were complete he would also rule the Hours of brightness. All he needed was time, only a slim moment in comparison to the eons he had waited and schemed ... and burned. What could impede him now, so near to final sunset? His family and peers were gone from the earth without trace, except in myth and reverence. He was a
power,
and where was the power that would come against him?
His inexorable, cold intelligence weighed these arguments and found them solid—but still he was not free of a smallest, most insignificant mote of unease. Hearteater threw his mind outward again: searching, searching....
Since sunrise, Roofshadow had been pacing intently back and forth along the tree-sparse edge of Ratleaf Forest. To her west, across the broad expanse of valley, lay the slumbering presence of the mound.
Back and forth, soft gray paws laid delicately down one after another, Roofshadow walked a careful circuit. Her head was hung low, as if her pacing indicated deep thought or momentous decisions to be made, but in actuality she had already made her choice.
The sun, sparking the cold air and striking diamond gleams from the snowy ground, had passed the meridian and was beginning its winter-rapid descent when the gray fela stopped her careful treading and tipped an ear toward the earth. She was motionless for long seconds—as if the wind from the mountains above had frozen her, fur and bone, where she stood. Then, shaking her head gently, she lowered a snuffling nose, breathed for a moment, then suddenly canted her ear again. As if satisfied, she extended her paw, tapped softly on the crusty snow and began to scrape away the cold white skin of the sleeping earth.
Once through the powdery shell, she lowered her weight onto her back legs and began to dig in earnest. The soil was near-frozen and her paws stung, but she continued her rapid movements, sending flurries of mud and rock up from beneath her tail.
The Hour passed, and Roofshadow began to fear she had sensed incorrectly. The ground was hard-packed and firm; most of her small, slender form was below the hole’s rim when, without warning, a spading paw thrust through the bottom of the pit into emptiness beyond.
Warm, fetid air rushed up through the aperture, and she reared back in surprise. This was what she had sought, though. She grimly resumed digging. A short span of scrabbling and she was able to pass her head and whiskers through the opening. When she pulled her front paws through she felt a surge of panic as, for a moment, she was suspended over nothingness, dangling helplessly. The unknown darkness below her became a bottomless abyss. Her weight pulled her back legs past the crumbling rim of the hole. She fell only a moment, then touched lightly down on the loam on a tunnel floor.
She turned her eyes briefly back to the hole above her, which glowed with the light of the setting sun. It seemed a very small hole now, although it was not very far away. It was not far away, but it
was
behind her.
Head down, green eyes wide to gather what little light there was in this dark, unfriendly world, Roofshadow padded silently down into the earth.
23
CHAPTER
Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face.
—Robert Browning
Limping through one of the immense, stone-arched chambers, the ragged group of cats shuffled slowly toward the digging tunnels. Tailchaser searched the bobbing sea of hopeless animals for Pawgrip. He located the small, wiry cat at the rear of the marching party, and slowed down his already leaden pace until Pawgrip caught up.
“Hullo, Tailchaser!” Pawgrip said, a faint echo of his former sprightliness. “You look a little stronger. How does that shoulder feel?”
“Better, I suppose,” said Fritti, “but I doubt it will ever truly heal.” He raised and shook his front paw experimentally.
“Well,” said Pawgrip in a conspiratorial tone, “I got a message to that fellow in the upper Catacombs. He sent back to say that he hadn’t seen your friends, but he’d keep his eyes open.” Pawgrip gave a weak smile that was meant to be encouraging. They were passing beneath one of the huge inner gates now, and had to lower their voices to a whisper. The tunnel walls had become closer, and their speech reverberated in a manner sure to attract unwanted attention.
“Thank you for trying, Pawgrip,” said Fritti. “How was jumptall feeling this morning?” The Meeting Wall delegate had refused to rise for work the last two times, and as a consequence had also not eaten.
“Badly, I’m afraid. Just lies there, and says if he moves he’ll lose his tail name.”
They walked silently for a moment in the midst of the emaciated, staring-eyed cats. Hulking Clawguard walked the perimeter of the disheartened procession, occasionally moving forward to threaten or prod.
“Jumptall is going to die soon,” said Tailchaser. In the world above he would have been amazed to hear someone say such a thing in so calm a voice.
“He is no longer strong enough to live,” agreed Pawgrip. “His tail name is all he has ...”
In a cave on the rock wall above the Greater Gate, Roofshadow looked down upon the charnel life of the mound.
Dulled by the strain of countermanding her instincts, tired and frightened, she had groped her way steadily down into the throbbing center of the mound.
When the tunnel had ended precipitously, on the wall of the Greater Gate chamber, she had suddenly seen the entirety of the wrong, the
os.
The misshapen guards and sick and dying prisoners below, the weird lights and noxious heat of the air—all this had struck her like a palpable blow as she reeled above the cavern.
Unable to catch her breath for a moment, she stumbled back from the lip of the cave and slumped, a shuddering mass, to the darkened floor.
Far behind her, close to the surface, the pale, twitching nose of one of the blind Toothguard had detected a strange thing: an unauthorized tunnel opening to the world above; the soil was newly disturbed.
Escape attempts were frequent, of course, but invariably they failed. This seemed different, though. The keen nostrils of the hairless creature who had discovered the hole perceived a curious fact: something had been digging
in,
not out....
Somewhere deep in Vastnir, a shape appeared from one dark hole and entered a darker one. Heat and air currents led the shape to what it sought.
“Master Hisssblood!” it called. There was a pause, then:
“Sssskinwretch, I have long sssince ceassed to be entertained by your annoying presssence. I think I ssshall finally make an end of you.”
Even in darkness, the shape’s discomfort was recognizable.
“Pleassse, Lord, don’t do anything foolissh. I bring you important newsss!” Another long silence, and Skinwretch could smell and feel Hissblood’s approach as clearly as the Folk aboveground could see in the broadest daylight. He resisted the impulse to flee.
“What could you tell me that I might possibly find of value, you old ssslobberer?”