Kitabı oku: «Grey Sister», sayfa 5

7

‘Hurry up!’ Jula beckoned at them from down the rock passage, a black shape behind her lantern.

‘Breathe out. I’ll pull.’ Nona grabbed Darla’s wrist and heaved as the girl exhaled. Behind Darla the outside world intruded as a line of brightness, glimpsed through the cliff-face.

Darla lurched forward, gasping for air, free of the crevice. Further down the passage Ruli gave a brief round of sarcastic applause. ‘I still have that grease if we need it!’

‘I’ll give her grease,’ Darla growled, and followed as Nona hurried to catch the others. The Seren Way was not as well travelled as the Vinery Stair and the chances of discovery were small, but the longer it took Darla to squeeze through into the caverns the greater that chance grew.

Nobody had ever told the novices that they weren’t to explore the caves and passages that riddled the plateau but Nona always had the strong impression that this was because they hadn’t asked, and also because all the entrances known to the nuns were barred and gated, the locks inscribed with sigils to defeat any form of picking. When Jula had first discovered the caves a year earlier Nona had moved their weekly meeting underground where the chances of detection shrank to zero. Nominally the objective of the group was to recover the shipheart but for Nona it had always been about killing Yisht.

‘Hold up!’ Nona and Darla closed the last few yards on the others. Jula and Ara carried the only two lanterns and the footing was treacherous. ‘If we break our ankles back here it’s you lot who’ll have to carry us out!’

‘We’ll just leave you here and say you ran away with city boys.’ Ketti, the last of their number, grinned and made kiss-mouths. The hunska girl was just a few inches shorter than Darla now, though thin as a rail. She talked about city boys a lot and it was a wonder to Nona that she preferred to spend her seven-day exploring the darkness beneath the Rock of Faith rather than going into Verity to giggle at the opposite sex across Thaybur Square.

‘Come on!’ Ara led off, eager to reach new ground.

At the first fork, where a smaller passage led steeply down, Ketti took her block of chalk and reinforced the letter on the wall that indicated the path to take. The moisture tended to blur the marks. They moved on in single file, Darla at the rear, demonstrating her impressive range of oaths as she repeatedly grazed her head on the rock above.

Nona called a halt at Round Cave a hundred yards from the entrance. Darla had come up with the name, and whilst unimaginative it was at least accurate.

‘Who’s got something to report?’ Nona looked to Ruli first. Ruli was on gossip duty, gathering any snippet of information that leaked into the convent through its connections with the outside world. Ruli had a talent for both creating and gathering gossip.

‘I do! I really do!’ Jula stepped forward, half raising her hand before remembering that she wasn’t in class. ‘I was reading the appendices in Levinin’s older works. Everyone always quotes from the Seven Histories of Marn but—’

‘What did you find?’ Darla had even less patience for Jula’s booklore than the others.

‘More about shiphearts in one page than I’ve discovered in all the books I’ve searched through since we started looking!’ Jula grinned. ‘According to Levinin there were four shiphearts within the empire’s boundaries: the one at Sweet Mercy which is most closely tuned to quantals, another we knew about in the Noi-Guin’s keeping at the Tetragode, which is attuned to marjals, one he says is rumoured in the city of Tru, and one from a gerant ship in the keeping of the mage Atoan.’

Ara frowned. ‘I’ve never heard of a city called Tru or a mage called Atoan. And if a shipheart were in a city someone would own it or it would get taken.’

Jula nodded. ‘Levinin was writing two hundred years ago. Tru is under the ice now. The black ice! And it was ruins before the ice took it. Tru’s a city the Missing left. And Atoan died years ago but he had a son Jaltone who was also a mage and somehow is still alive!’

‘Him I’ve heard of,’ Darla said. ‘He lives on the coast and helped General Hillan when the Durnish tried to land at Port Treen two years ago. My father was the general’s second-in-command.’

‘It’s interesting and everything …’ Ruli said. ‘But I don’t see how it helps us. We’re not going to walk up to the Tetragode and—’

‘It helps us because we know where Sherzal will have to look next,’ said Ara.

‘And we are going to the ice …’ Everyone went on the ice-ranging in Mystic Class. Over the ice though, not under it. Nona remembered her father’s tales about hunting in the ice tunnels. The worst of them, the scariest stories, were from the time he ventured into the grey ice. The trip he never came back from was the one to the black.

‘The ice is a big place. And Tallow is never going to take us up to the black ice. Even if it wasn’t on the Scithrowl side of the mountains.’ Darla shivered. ‘Let’s go explore some caves!’

Nona looked around the circle of lantern-lit faces. ‘Any more contributions? No?’

Jula bit her lip. ‘Well I thought it was interesting.’ She shrugged and led off.

It took less than half an hour’s walk to reach the furthest limit of their explorations, but to expand their territory initially had taken the best part of a year, following dead ends or routes that grew too narrow or too dangerous. In several places they had fixed knotted ropes to aid in difficult climbs. It was Nona’s private hope that they would find an alternative route into the convent undercaves but there were no guarantees that the two systems connected.

‘I love it down here.’ Jula fell in beside Nona as they trekked the Gullet, a long water-smoothed passage wide enough to walk shoulder to shoulder. ‘It’s so quiet. Just the drip of water. And footsteps. And Darla swearing.’

They passed a stand of stalagmites, blunt and glistening in the lantern light. Ketti said nothing. Even she had grown tired of her innuendo after the tenth or twelfth time. A little further along a veil of dripping water crossed the passage. Nona hunched and pressed on through the icy deluge. Five tight, winding twists rising steeply took them past the niche where two skeletons lay, limed over with rock-scale. One grown and one a child, locked together. A rusty stain between them may once have been a knife. They always made Nona sad, huddled there in the dark, watching with empty sockets as the centuries scurried by.

After the rising turns came a scramble up a rock fall, with the cavern roof slanting just three feet above. Finally a cliff some twenty yards high, perhaps once a waterfall, the wet stone offering few handholds. Fortunately the old watercourse had allowed room to swing and throw a grapple. The locating and pilfering of both rope and hook had taken a week but the hours spent trying to catch some edge far above them had seemed much longer. On perhaps the seventieth throw Darla had snagged the hook and Ruli, the lightest of them, had scrambled up. The rope was now secure and knotted at intervals. Climbing it brought them to the limits of their exploration, a roundish chamber, mud-floored, from which three new passages led.

Nona stood with Ara, Jula, and Ruli, catching their breath, staring at the exits, Ketti and Darla still climbing behind them.

‘I want to get under the convent,’ Nona said. She blinked. She hadn’t been intending to speak, but now the words had left her mouth she realized it was better that the truth was out. For three years she had seen the only route to revenge on Yisht to be training. To make herself into a weapon suited to the task of finding then destroying the woman. Neither would be easy. The empire was large, and Yisht expert at hiding, deadly when found. Nona had been very lucky in their first encounter and had still only just survived. But Joeli’s taunting had put into Nona’s mind the idea that there might be some clue at the spot where Hessa died. Something the nuns overlooked. Something her friend left for her alone. It was a very faint hope. Too faint perhaps to justify exposing her companions to such dangers … but Joeli’s words were an itch that refused to be scratched. ‘Hessa’s name is so important to you? And yet you’ve never even visited the spot where she died.’ The accusation repeated in her mind, an echo that grew rather than died away.

‘I need to visit the shipheart vault.’ Nona spoke the words into the silence that had followed her first statement.

‘Because we won’t be in enough trouble just for being in the tunnels,’ Ruli said. ‘We should go where we’re more likely to be caught and will have broken more rules.’

Jula frowned. Despite her cleverness sarcasm always seemed to go over her head. ‘But—’

‘I’m banned from leaving the convent until next seven-day in any case,’ Nona said. ‘So if I’m right under it I’ll be breaking fewer rules.’

‘Go back to the vault?’ Ara asked, raising her lantern to inspect Nona’s face. ‘That’s madness. Abbess Glass will throw us out. You know what she said about the undercaves!’

‘I have to.’ Nona had to see it for herself. She had to set her hands to the spot where Hessa had died. Perhaps some clue remained that would help her find Yisht. ‘I have to. For Hessa. I felt her die. The rocks. Yisht’s knife. I felt all of it. If there’s justice to be had, or revenge, it starts there, where it happened.’

‘I don’t want to go near the convent. The sinkhole’s too close.’ Ketti got to her feet behind them after finishing the climb. ‘There could be tunnel-floods.’ She shuddered.

‘I still say they’ll have the undercaves blocked off.’ Darla followed Ketti into the chamber, brushing grit from her habit.

‘Maybe. But it’s as good a direction to explore as any other,’ Ara said. Nona thanked her silently.

‘I don’t know …’ Darla shook her head. ‘The abbess wasn’t joking when she put the undercaves off-limits. She wrote it in the book and everything …’

‘That was over two years ago.’ Ara came to Nona’s defence. ‘Plus, if they didn’t know Yisht was there for all those weeks and she was going to and fro from her room, they won’t know we’re there if we come from underneath for a quick look. Right, Nona?’

Nona nodded. She owed it to Hessa. She had let years slide by and done nothing to avenge her. Her friend had died and Nona had hidden in the convent, well fed, cared for, whilst Yisht walked the world with Hessa’s blood on her hands. But though the Corridor might be a narrow girdle to the globe it was still too wide for a lone child to find a woman like that who didn’t want to be found. And Yisht was an ice-triber. She might be anywhere in the vastness of the ice. ‘I can’t do this alone.’ The gate to Shade class had a sigil-scribed lock now: the thing would have to be blown off its hinges to gain access without the key. Coming at the Dome of the Ancestor and the shipheart chamber from below was the best option.

‘I’ll help.’ Jula spoke up, her voice thin in the cavern’s void.

Nona offered her a smile. Jula put an arm around her shoulders for the briefest hug.

‘So …’ Nona, even less at ease with physical affection than Jula, waved a hand at the tunnel mouths.

‘That one.’ Jula pointed to the leftmost tunnel, boulder- choked and leading down. She had an instinct for direction below ground that had proved uncanny. ‘Though it doesn’t look very safe.’

Ara led on and they followed, stepping over fallen rock, some of it still jagged. After a hundred yards or so the passage broadened and became a cavern so wide it swallowed their light and gave nothing back. For a moment Ara halted and they all held quiet listening to the silence and to the drip … drip … drip of water that was somehow part of the vastness of the silence. Nona glanced about at the novices around her, all illuminated on one side and dark on the other, and for an instant found herself outside her body, suddenly aware of herself as a tiny mote of life, warmth, and light in the black and endless convolutions of the cave system. Now more than ever she felt the irony that the Rock of Faith, named for the foundations of their religion, lay rotten with voids and secret ways, permeable and ever-changing.

‘We should go across,’ Jula said, her voice small in all that empty space. She didn’t sound as if she wanted to.

Ketti marked the wall with her chalk and drew an arrow on the floor.

‘We should follow the wall. We’re less likely to get lost,’ Darla said.

Ara took them to the left, staying close to the wall. Stalagmites rose in small delicate forests, stalactites descended in curtains where the cave curved down, glistening with an iridescent sheen like the carapace of a beetle.

‘Stop.’ Ruli turned and stared into the darkness beyond the lanterns’ reach. Nona stopped, the others too.

‘What?’ Jula raised her light.

‘Didn’t you hear it?’

‘No.’ Darla loomed beside her, her shadow swinging.

‘Something’s out there, coming for us,’ Ruli said, wide-eyed.

‘There’s nothing living in these caves,’ Darla said. ‘We would have seen bones or dung. What did it sound like?’

‘Dry.’ Ruli shivered.

‘Dry?’

‘I want to go back,’ Ruli said.

Ara advanced a few yards, lantern high. ‘There’s something here.’

Nona crowded forward with the others, leaving Ruli in deepening shadow.

‘What is it?’ Ketti frowned.

To Nona’s eye it seemed that a shadowy forest of misshapen stalagmites covered the cavern floor, some curving over in ways that such growths are not supposed to.

‘Bones.’ Jula saw it first.

From one instant to the next the scene switched from one of confusion to one of horror. Skeletons, calcified like those back in the niche, but more thickly: dozens of them.

‘Some of these have been here for an age.’ Ara pointed to a stony ribcage from which straw-thin stalactites dripped, and to a skull distorted by the weight of stalagmite growing upon it, like a candle from which half the wax had run.

Jula bent over to inspect something by the wall.

‘We really need to go!’ Ruli called at them, not having moved from where she stood. ‘Can’t you feel it?’

‘I don’t …’ But then Nona felt it and held her tongue. Something scraping at the edges of her senses, a dry touch from which her mind recoiled.

Holothour.

What?

Nona felt Keot moving beneath the skin of her back. Normally he was silent in the caves.

You should run.

You always tell me to fight.

Now I’m telling you to run.

‘We should go back. Now!’ Nona turned to follow Ruli who had already started to run back the way they came, into the blind darkness.

‘What’re you scared of?’ Darla called after them. ‘There’s nothing here.’ She laughed. ‘And neither of you have a lantern.’

Nona stopped at the margins of the lighted area, infected by a disembodied fear.

What’s out there, Keot?

Something Missing-bred. Something hungry. Run!

‘We need to go. Trust me.’ Nona’s voice sounded thin in the emptiness of the cavern. Behind her the sounds of Ruli’s stumbling panic.

Ara frowned then followed. ‘I don’t understand you, but I trust you.’ Jula fell in behind her. Darla, with the light now retreating from her, snarled in frustration and hurried after them.

The six novices picked up the pace, shadows swinging all around them. Nona could make out Ruli ahead, feeling her way. With each passing moment it seemed that something gathered itself behind them, as if the space now echoing with their footfalls was drawing in its breath. Nona felt the horror of it crawl along her spine. The darkness held something awful. Something ancient and waiting. The need to be gone made her heart pound and tightened her breathing into gasps.

‘Oh blood!’ Even Darla felt it now, her face white.

Nona knew with cold certainty that beyond the margins of their illumination the calcified bones stretched out yard upon yard, innumerable victims lying in meticulous order. How many centuries had they watched the darkness? And she knew that among them paced a horror. She felt it now, individual, condensing out of the night, taking form. Perhaps it wore a man’s shape. Perhaps even her own. And if it ever raised its face to her she would drown in nightmare.

By the time they reached the chamber where they had chosen between the three unexplored passages all of them were running. Ruli was already on the rope. Jula didn’t wait for her to get off. Ara stood with her back to the cliff, lantern high, staring at the tunnel mouth. Ketti and Darla crouched by the edge urging the others down. It was all Nona could do not to push between them and make her own grab for the rope.

‘Ancestor! Hurry it up!’ The cry broke from her.

Ruli and Jula reached the bottom together and went sprawling in a clatter of loose stones. Ketti began to climb. The darkness in the tunnel seemed to thicken, rejecting the light from Ara’s lantern.

‘It’s coming!’ Darla was sliding over the edge, hands white on the rope, her feet just a yard above Ketti’s head.

‘We can’t stay!’ It was all Nona could do not to scream. Fear filled her, trembling in every limb, fluttering the breath in her lungs. ‘Ara, come on!’

They descended the rope on top of one another, lanterns hooked to belts, burning their palms as they slipped from knot to knot.

A confusion of swinging lanterns, sharp rocks, and snatching shadows followed. Screaming, panting, glimpses of chalk symbols, running, scrambling, and finally a desperate squeeze and they lay in the improbable brightness of day, sprawled on the Seren Way, gasping for breath.

There in the light, with a cold wind blowing and the plains stretching out below them towards the distant smokes of Verity their flight seemed suddenly foolish.

‘I’m never going in there again. Ever.’ Darla rolled over onto her back, her habit torn and smeared with mud.

‘What were we running from?’ Ketti asked.

‘The first time when serenity would have really helped us …’ Ara sat up, shaking her head.

‘And we ran!’ Nona couldn’t believe she hadn’t reached for her serenity. Some novices still took a while to sink into the trance but many could summon the mindset in a few moments. The fear had got into her before she thought to wall it away.

‘Ancestor! Look at us!’ Jula stretched out her habit. Grey underskirt showed through a tear as long as her hand. Nona glanced down at herself. Smears of mud streaked her in horizontal lines where she had collided with walls on the mad dash out.

‘Sister Wheel will kill us!’ Ruli examined herself in horror.

‘Sister Mop you mean,’ Ara said.

‘Both of them will!’ Ketti jumped to her feet. ‘Let’s get back!’

‘You’re worried about Wheel and Mop?’ Nona pointed at the dark slot hidden back along the cliff side. ‘What about that. Just now?’

Jula frowned and brushed a grimy hand back over her hair. ‘I’m not going in there again.’ She looked down at the rip. ‘Oh, we’re in so much trouble.’

Darla followed Ketti, muttering to herself. Jula and Ruli set off up the track behind them. ‘Ara?’ Nona stood amazed. ‘What happened in there? Why are they just leaving?’

Ara looked puzzled. The smudge of dirt below her right cheekbone just seemed to make her more beautiful. She narrowed her eyes as if trying to capture some memory, then shook her head. ‘I don’t think we should come back.’ She glanced once towards the fissure, shuddered, and turned to go.

‘What’s that?’ Nona pointed to something gleaming among the rocks at Ara’s feet.

‘Oh.’ Ara didn’t look down. ‘It’s just a knife. Jula picked it up in the …’ She shrugged and turned to walk away.

‘Stay.’ Nona caught Ara’s hand in hers. ‘That thing in there … that monster. You remember it? Yes?’ Their fingers laced. Ara’s blue eyes met the darkness of Nona’s and for a moment there was a recognition of … something. Each took a step towards the other.

‘No.’ Ara shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’ The fragile moment broke. She pulled free and hurried after the others. And Nona felt as if some chance that might never come again had escaped her.

Nona stood watching the five of them wind their way up the track zigzagging its way up towards the plateau.

What just happened?

You shouldn’t go back to the caves.

Don’t you try and pretend something didn’t just chase us out of there.

It did. A holothour. I told you.

So why are Ara and the others walking away?

They don’t want to die.

I mean why are they more concerned about having to wash their habits and stitch a few tears … There’s something more to this. Don’t lie to me, demon. I’ll force you into my fingers and hold them to the flame again.

I’ll chew your bones and make you spit blood!

But you know I’ll win. So tell me.

The fear tied them.

Untied?

The threads that bound them to that place, to these caves – the fear untied them. It set those memories loose. By the time they reach the top this will all have been a dream for them. The holothour made them forget.

And me? Why do I still care?

I protected you.

I don’t believe you. You’re made of lies.

Nona bent to pick up the knife. ‘I know this weapon.’ A straight blade, dark iron, just a faint tracery of rust, the pommel an iron ball, a narrow strip of leather wound around the hilt. A throwing knife. She had found one of the same design in her bed once, and seen another jutting from Sister Kettle’s side.

Keot reached above the collar of her habit, a hot flush rising. I know it too.

You liar. How would you?

The woman who held it came to see a dead man.

Why?

To understand the person who killed him, so that she might in turn kill them.

Nona asked the question though she knew the answer. Who did she come to see?

Raymel Tacis. He was dead but the mages wouldn’t let him die. And I was the first to find my way beneath his skin.

And the woman?

Was a Noi-Guin. Tasked to kill you.