Ceravanne looked about the room to the others. “We could take the Tower Road.” She sighed. “But much of it lies underground-through forty kilometers of stone. You, Caldurian, what do you say?”
“Indallian is legend to me,” Tallea said. “I not know if holds danger.” Yet she feared it. Many races lived underground, and they could see in the dark. As aboveground, the most peaceful peoples tended to die out, while the fierce races thrived. And if Tallea had to fight underground, she knew she would be at a disadvantage. Indeed, her wounds were not all healed yet, though she found she could swing her sword.
“It is not a legend to me,” Ceravanne said. “For eight thousand years, the city called to various peoples, and the Hollow Hills were carved with measureless tunnels. For long, it was but a peaceful city where folk of the underworld lived in harmony. Then the emeralds were discovered, and peoples flocked to the city in ever greater numbers. Even in its glory, when the city of Indallian was under my full sway, it was said that ‘no man knows Indallian,’ for no one could explore all of the many caverns in one lifetime. Indeed, there were rumors of strange and malevolent peoples inhabiting the far bounds of the realm even then.
“And I will be honest with you all,” Ceravanne concluded, visibly shaking. “I fear that place.”
“Still, three hundred years ago, I heard rumors,” Gallen said, “that one could travel the Tower Road for over five hundred kilometers-from Ophat to White Reed. And that is a crucial stretch in our journey. And you must consider this-the Telgood Mountains form a formidable obstacle. No army could cross it on foot, not even an army of Tekkar, so the mountains themselves will form a wall to protect us.”
“So that is why you brought us to this entrance,” Ceravanne said, gazing away toward the back halls. “I suspected as much. Yet the road is dangerous. In many places aboveground, it will have crumbled away. And belowground, many of the caverns have fallen in, floors have collapsed into chambers beneath. There is good reason that no one has taken that track in ages. And when we do reach the city of Indallian, what will we do for light?”
Gallen reached into the pocket of his robe, pulled out a small crystal globe, and squeezed it. A brilliant white light shone from his gloved fingers. “I see,” Ceravanne breathed. “Technologies from other worlds. And you are determined to leave the travelbeast behind?”
“I am,” Gallen said. “The closer we get to Moree, the more impossible it becomes to travel openly, and the beast only marks us. Do you think you can guide us?”
“Perhaps.” Ceravanne breathed deeply. “The road is easy enough to follow aboveground, and I know some paths below, though I am not certain they will be open.”
And with that, they were off. Gallen went out to the travelbeast and whispered in its ear, pointing back north, and in a moment it nodded its shaggy head and raced down the mountain road.
Then they packed, and headed to a hallway where a statue of a giant stood guard beside a great stone door. Gallen pulled mightily on the handle, and cold air hit them, smelling of dampness and minerals. Ceravanne held up Gallen’s glowing globe, and gazed down a stair that curved into the dark, and they began to descend, and to Tallea, the Tharrin looked as if she were a goddess, carrying a star in her hand.
“Wait,” Gallen said, and his voice echoed through the corridors. He went back to the room, hoisted the dead scout on his back. “We’ll leave it down below, where other scouts will not find it.”
Then they began their descent. The stair went on and on, and Ceravanne led through the dark at almost a run. Their footsteps echoed off the stone. Tallea was acutely conscious of the noise they made, and she strained her ears for sound of pursuit.
Twice, during the long race down, they passed side tunnels of poor make that had been dug in more recent years, and from one of them they smelled the acrid stench of Derrit dung and cold ashes.
Beside that door, Gallen cast down the dead scout, leaving it as a meal for the beasts, and once again, as she had over the past several days, Tallea saw the craftiness in what he did. The Derrits would certainly prefer the carrion of a recent kill to hunting a party of armed men with bright lights and sharp swords.
The tunnel seemed endlessly long, and the cold of the rock seeped into her bones. Even as she ran, Tallea could not seem to warm enough to fight this cold.
In two hours they came out of the cavern under the mountain’s shadow and found themselves on a broad road in the sunlight. Over the ages, stones had rolled down the hillside, so that in many places it would have been impassable by horse, but they were able to run and climb on foot.
Tallea’s side ached from her recent wound, and though the sun warmed her a bit, she found that it didn’t warm the wound. Instead, it burned like ice all along its length.
Still, they ran for hours, passing through more tunnels. Gallen took the lead, and twice he warned the others of Derrit traps-deep pits overlaid with a framework of twigs, then covered with hides and dust.
Tallea was glad for Gallen’s sharp eyes, for she herself spent her time watching the skies for sign of wingmen, and secretly she felt relieved each time they were forced to make their way through a tunnel.
Thus, they spent the day running, and camped in a tunnel by dark. Tallea’s wound throbbed through the night, and it heated up, as if it had become infected. She slept poorly, but was forced to run again at dawn.
That day, the road took a long, steady climb, higher into the bleak, gray mountains, so that the air was frigid, and they ran along a ridge that was incredibly steep and long. The mountain rose on their left like a wall, and dropped for five hundred meters below them. In places along the road, they found the splayed prints of mountain sheep, but no other sign of use.
That day they passed two ancient outposts, high stone citadels along Tower Road, and on one crenellated tower, twigs and leaves stuck out like a great nest, three meters across. Only a wingman could have carried such large sticks so far from the valley below.
Gallen called a halt, then crept up the crumbling stone stairs to the tower himself, with Tallea and Orick behind. The nest was old, the twigs whitened by age and rotted so that they could hold no weight, proving that the nest had been abandoned for years. But among the yellowed bones of sheep and deer was a human arm and skull, with tatters from a bloody wool tunic.
They climbed back down, hurried on their way, watching the skies. Gallen rounded one long arm of the mountain ridge, then dropped to the ground, warning the others with a wave of his hand to stay back.
Tallea dropped and crawled forward, and together they looked over the bluff. A wild white river churned through a gorge far below, and pines climbed halfway up the mountains in a green haze.
Sweeping over the canyon in wide, lazy circles, a lone wingman hunted on leather wings. Tallea watched the creature. Its underbelly was pale blue in color, so that it was hard to spot from below, but its back was a mottled gray and green. If it had been sitting high in a tree, with its wings folded, it would have been hard to spot from the ground. But from above, while in flight, it was easily discernible.
“It’s watching the valley,” Gallen said, “hunting for deer or wolves. We’re lucky that it’s below us.”
“Not much eat up here,” Tallea agreed. The wingman would not bother hunting this high road through the barren, gray mountains. She watched the creature, and wondered. According to common wisdom, all of the races on Tremonthin had been adapted from human stock to live on other worlds. But of all the peoples in Babel, she found the wingmen to be the strangest. They did not look humanoid at all. The creature was large, perhaps ten meters from wing tip to wing tip-much larger than scouts. It had a broad tail that it used as a rudder as it flew, and fierce, razor-sharp hooks of a bloody red were attached to its wings. Its long flat head was filled with great teeth that Tallea could see even from this far distance, and its scaly hide was nearly proof against a blade. And it was said that the wingmen saw other peoples not as kin, but only as food. One could sometimes reason with a Derrit, but never with a wingman.