He looked down at the clear spring at his feet. Water, yes. It had to be. What did it matter that the air was breathable, if the water was undrinkable. Without water they would die, too. They were marooned.
Casting helmet and mask aside, MacArthur fell to his knees. He sniffed at the pulsing fluid, smelling only the horrid air. He sipped at the water, trying to sample it, but thirst trampled caution, and he drank noisily of the sweet liquid.
Chapter 6. Cliff dwellers
The gods of the sky were angry, and Brappa bore witness to their displeasure. Brappa and the other sentries had seen flyers descending from the heavens. They had not been drunk on thickweed. There had been thunder in the morning skies and star bursts to the east. Not lightning but bright blossoms of red and yellow—in a sky devoid of clouds! After the brilliant lights came more terrible noises, more thunder! So loud, his ears rang. And from out of the bright fires and noise came four flyers, high overhead in the cold, liftless morning skies, flying toward the lakes.
Brappa, son-of-Braan, lead sentry of the morning watch, danced nimbly down the precipitous granite face. The golden glow of dawn overflowed into the river valley, illuminating and melting the thin crust of frost decorating the upper rim. The sentry chased the sunrise down the chasm's walls, jumping lightly into the air every few steps, spreading diaphanous membranes and gliding softly to a next landing, there to run three or four landbound steps and jump and glide again. His leaps covered many spans. He could have soared the entire descent, but he needed time to think.
Brappa passed a vent and relished its sulfurous wetness, the vaporous plume quickly dissipating in the cold air. His descent brought him into an ever-increasing field of spewing mists and steam vapors, the air redolent of minerals and humidity. He neared the lacework of terraces that defined his home. The river, visible through wisps of steam, moved powerfully, its might channeled within the cliff-sided chasm, slate-gray in the early light, the sun not yet able to mottle its turbulent surface with splotches of pale green and white.
Brappa, son-of-Braan, landed softly on the moist granite terrace before the assembly portal. Sheltered above by a ragged cornice of quartz-veined rock, the shelf was the largest terrace on the cliff, ten spans deep at its widest point and running for more than seventy along the sheer face. A low crenellated wall bordered its precipitous edge. Between the crenellations grew an abundance of brilliantly flowering plants, giving off a heady conglomeration of aromas. Beyond the wall, steam poured upwards from the chasm, showering the plants in a persistent mist through which sunlight dappled and danced in beaded rainbows.
Penetrating the cliff face was a peaked arch looming two full spans higher than Brappa' s knobby head—the assembly portal, crafted of obsidian and mounted with a massive lintel of contrasting white jade. Skillfully sculpted pink marble boulders stood at the shoulders of the entryway, spreading outward in diminishing sizes. Gurgling water splashed over those boulders, draining into pools. Rock-lined gutters at the base of the cliff face carried the waters away. An ancient foot-worn stairway, elegantly hewn in the granite bedrock, emerged from the rough terrace and climbed thirty wide steps into the cavern.
Brappa sedately folded his wings into a complex double overlap and scaled the steps. Dark-mantled and hump-backed, he had bowed legs and a head shaped like a black mattock. Sinewy, hard-muscled forearms, each with three slender digits and a long opposed thumb, hung past his knees. A soft pelt of fine black fur covered his body, excepting his chest and belly which were covered with longer cream-colored fur, the markings of a flying cliff dweller—a hunter. Less than half a span in height, but he was young.
Three quite taller figures appeared at the threshold of the portal. These creatures' heads and necks were covered with charcoal fur similar to that of the smaller figure, but their body fur was completely cream-colored. Also cliff dwellers, these were guilders, their heads large and rounded, whereas the young hunter's crown revealed a marked protuberance. Over the eons the echo-ranging and soaring abilities of the larger guilders had atrophied, and their bodies had evolved for different needs. Guilders were taller, heavier, more skillful, and in many ways more intelligent. Hunters would say guilders were less brave.
The tallest guilder was ancient and wore a necklace of beaded emeralds and garnets, the badge of the gardener guild. Brappa halted and bowed low, hands flat with palms up, in obeisance to the council member. Brappa had much to say, but the rules required silence.
"Why art thou here, hunter?" the council elder whistled ceremoniously but with a tremor. He, too, had heard the distant thunder.
"I bid thee long life, elder. On orders from Kuudor, captainof-sentries, Excellency, I am the morning watch, bearing tidings of strange happenings over the lakes," Brappa squeaked and chirped.
"Follow," the old one commanded as he turned slowly and retraced his steps. Brappa followed the glum elder into the antechambers. Vaulted arches and delicate columns of wondrous craftsmanship stretched ever higher as they progressed down the widening hallway; intricately carved alabaster and jade mosaics lined polished alcoves. The domed assembly hall, a cavernous amphitheater over fifty spans square, opened before them, illuminated by the yellow glow of guttering spirit lamps.
Brappa had attended assembly before; but the young hunter was conditioned to the anonymity of the crowd and to the hushed babble of the masses. On this morning the great hall was empty, all but silent; water gurgled through aqueducts, and echoes of their shuffling footfalls seemed deafening. Brappa' s talons clicked on the sparkling stones inlaid in the black marble floor. The brittle stillness discomfited him, but as a hunter—even if only a sentry—he displayed courage. With repressed disdain he noticed guild apprentices pushing mops and sponges, laboring to stay ahead of the natural humidity of their labyrinth. Hunters did not push mops.
Brappa and his escort skirted the grand hall and mounted a divided stairway curving around each side of a cantilevered marble balcony. Atop the stairs the elder signaled for Brappa to wait, languidly waving a bony hand toward the balcony as he disappeared from sight behind staggered rows of columns. Brappa squatted on a varnished wooden perch, intrigued by the intricate drainage system running about the periphery of the great hall; most of the channels were not visible from the lower levels. He traced the paths and confluences of the aqueducts and cascades as they drained the upper levels and brought the water out of the rock for use by the commune, both as aqua vitae and as natural art.
Braan, leader-of-hunters, stood in the stone dock. The old one entered and took his ordered position at the inferior end of the black marble table. The old gardener had seen over a hundred winters, yet he was still the youngest of the eleven ancients. There were no hunters on the cliff dweller council, for hunters did not live long enough. Cliff dwellers, hunters and guilders together, had no leader, only the eldest: Koop-the-facilitator, wearing the green jade of the fisher guild, was exquisitely ancient, his unruly fur completely turned to radiant white.
"Braan, clan of Soong, leader-of-hunters, speak thou for the sentry?" twittered old Koop.