“Let us speak no more about them,” Ceravanne whispered.
“Yes,” Gallen whispered. “They are unpleasant to think about.”
Ceravanne raised the light toward the middle hallway, and began limping toward it. “Are you all right?” Gallen asked, taking her arm tenderly.
“Bloody, but unbowed,” Ceravanne said, smiling. And Tallea followed them down into the darkness, holding her own aching gut. The pain was bad, but tolerable for a Caldurian.
Long they journeyed into the heart of the ancient city of Indallian, until Tallea felt certain that darkness must have fallen outside, but Ceravanne led them on. Several times they found corridors that were blocked by falling rubble, and once the floor had caved in beneath them to a deep shaft where great caverns had been excavated.
Ceravanne kept having to turn aside into new hallways, and once she stopped and threw her hands up, crying, “This isn’t the way.” They had been traveling down a well-made corridor, but suddenly it turned into a crude cave, chiseled by rough hands. Ceravanne walked back a hundred meters, found a side passage that none of them had noticed, for it was purposely concealed behind a large stone slab. It took them in a new direction, and Ceravanne seemed less and less certain of this new path with each footstep.
Finally, she called a halt.
Tallea put down her pack, and the group sat wearily. They began eating a small dinner of apples and jerky. Their provisions were failing. In two or three more days, Tallea figured they would be down to scraps.
Ceravanne looked around the corridor worriedly, and Gallen whispered into her ear, “Perhaps we should scout ahead, while the others rest.”
Ceravanne bit her lower lip, looked ahead down the passage. “Perhaps we should.”
Maggie took two candles from her pack, lit them, and in moments Gallen and Ceravanne departed. Orick grumbled about the small dinner, and lay in a comer. Tallea went to him. “You can have my apple core,” she offered.
“Ah, I’ve plenty of winter fat to eat,” he muttered, but when she put the apple core under his nose, he gingerly took it in his teeth, gulped it down.
Tallea lay down beside him. She was falling asleep when Orick began muttering his nightly prayers. Cold from the stone seemed to be seeping into her wound, and Tallea lay wondering why the hosts of the Inhuman would remember this as a place of terror.
Tallea’s muscles had been strengthening daily, and she stretched her arms in spite of her fresh wound, hoping that she would soon be ready to begin exercise. She considered sparring with Gallen, wished that her ribs would stand for it, but she was still too weak. Perhaps in a couple of days she would be ready.
She listened long, and realized that in the distance she could hear a sound like wind rushing through trees. But it could only have been water cascading through some underground chasm. For a while she thought of searching for the source of the sound, so that she could refill the water bags. But instead she lay still, thinking to do it in the morning, and fell asleep to the gurgling of water.
Hours later, when she wakened, Gallen and Ceravanne were just getting back. Ceravanne seemed greatly relieved, and when Tallea put her head up, Gallen explained. “We’ve been lost in a side corridor, but Ceravanne found the main road once again.”
Tallea lay back down, and Gallen went to sleep beside Maggie while Ceravanne lay beside Tallea.
Tallea closed her eyes, and lay for a long while, but something felt wrong. She looked around, counted those sleeping nearby. Everyone was there, the candles were still flickering.
She sniffed, but could feel no strange air currents. And she held her breath. Aside from the soft snoring of Orick, there was no sound.
And then it hit her: no sound. She could not hear the rushing waters. Which meant that either the underground brook had subsided in a matter of hours, or else … someone had closed off a door, masking the sound.
Tallea loosened her knife in its sheath, and lay for the rest of the long night with her eyes open, perfectly still. Once, she thought she heard a distant thud, as if someone had stubbed a foot on the floor, but there was nothing else.
Still, when Gallen woke hours later, she whispered in his ear: “Take care. We may have visitors.” And as they quietly slipped away from their resting place, Tallea listened down each side corridor for the sound of running water.
For the next few hours they hurried along down passageways that were unimpeded, past storage rooms and old quarters where thousands of people had been housed. They were entering a section of Indallian that had been far more than the mere service tunnels or mining camps found at the east entrance. This was the full-fledged city, in its ancient glory, and often they passed through huge chambers where sunlight shone down through shafts in the ceiling upon vast reflecting pools, or where wooden bedposts still sat in the musty ground, petrified.
In these areas, where ancient shafts and fire holes littered the ceiling, they had little need for Gallen’s light, and Ceravanne nearly ran through the halls, filled with a new intensity. “This district was called Westfall,” she said as they passed through one great chamber where an underground river rushed through a stone causeway, spilling out into the light. “Children used to bathe here, laughing under the icy water.”
And in the next chamber, vast brick ovens sat next to each other. “Here the bakers worked night and day, cooking loaves for the household.”
And in the next great chamber, the tallest and grandest of all, sunlight shone down through five holes in the roof, two at one end of the hall, and three at the far end. There were long reflecting pools under each light, and all along the great chamber were statues of ancient warriors lining the central hall-short, fat pikemen of the Poduni race; Tacian giants with great hammers; the tall Boonta men with long spears and their narrow shields, an army of warriors representing many nations.
And at the end of the hallway were two thrones. “And here,” Ceravanne said nervously, “is where I ruled, beside my brave Belorian.”
She stopped, and looked away shyly. Above each throne was a vast statue of marble that had once been overlaid with gold, but the images had been defaced by thieves, all of the gold chiseled away.
Maggie gasped, and rushed forward to the statues, as did each of them. The statue on the right bore the image of Ceravanne, as one would imagine she would look in a few years. But the image on the left …
“Gallen?” Maggie called, and she looked back at Gallen, horror and confusion on her face. Ceravanne strode forward, clenching Gallen’s glow globe so that the light shone from it fiercely, and she held it up to the statue.
The image was chipped and scarred. The hair had been cut shorter than Gallen’s and the bearded face belonged to an older man. But there could be no mistake: the eyes, the chin, the nose, were all Gallen’s.
“Belorian?” Maggie asked, still confused.
“When the Rodim slew him,” Ceravanne said softly, “they destroyed his memories, so that he could never be reborn with those memories intact. But they did not obliterate his body. His genome was stored, so that his seed could be propagated, undefiled.”
Tallea heard Gallen gasp. “You mean I’m-But how?”
“When the Dronon came, it was a dark time. Across the galaxy, the cry came out. ‘We need more Lord Protectors.’ And of all the Lord Protectors on our world, Belorian was judged the most worthy of cloning.
“And so, the Lady Semarritte sent technicians to our world, and they took what they needed. Seeds for the future, as they also harvested seeds from other worlds.”
Ceravanne looked up at Gallen, and there were tears in her eyes. “I do not know your circumstances, but I can guess: you were born on a backward world, much like ours. Your mother and father had no other children, and it was voiced abroad that they were desperate.”
“I never heard that,” Gallen whispered.