It had become so natural to him that he hardly remembered his first feelings of awe and nervousness at being underground. Cob’s wide eyes and quick breathing reminded him. “It doesn’t bother you at all?” Cob asked, when Luap looked back, having just remembered Cob’s lameness. He slowed, waiting for Cob to catch up, then forced himself to stroll as if he were not in a hurry.
“Not any more. It did at first, but we’ve been here now for several years and the walls don’t cave in and the light never fails.” He pointed out store-rooms, kitchens, the great water reservoir, as they passed them, and explained where the cross-corridors went. They came at last to the corridor behind the great hall, and the chamber where Luap had chosen to do his work. His scribe had heard him coming, and was looking out the door.
“Ah, Luap: did the Rosemage find you?”
“Yes—she’s on her way. Where’s the Khartazhi message?”
“Here, my lord.” He handed over the woven pouch, like a miniature rug, in which such messages were carried. Luap opened it, and looked it over. The king begged his assistance in the capture or destruction of lawless robbers who had attacked two caravans in the past thirg—a thirg, Luap knew, was about six hands of days. The king’s captain thought the robbers might number fifty—an unusually large band. The message finished with the flowery compliments he had come to expect in any communication from the Khartazh. “We could not send a formal answer, my lord, until your return . . . the messenger is waiting.”
But Seri had already gone, as if she had the right to anticipate his commands. Luap wondered why some were born with the will to act, and others always awaited permission. “Then I’ll dictate it now,” he said. “Or—better—write it in my own hand. This is Marshal Cob, by the way, an old friend from Fintha. Why don’t you fetch Garin, while I’m writing, and see if he has some salve for sunburn?”
“I can go,” Cob said. “No need to bring anyone to me.” Luap saw his gaze flick around the room, noticing the thick patterned carpets, the wall hangings, the stone ink-dishes, the racks of scrolls. He smiled at Luap. “I’m glad Vrelan will see this.” Just enough emphasis on Vrelan to make his meaning clear to Luap . . . a visit from Binis would have been a disaster.
“I won’t be long,” Luap said. He pulled a clean scroll from the rack kept ready for him, and stirred the ink his scribe had been using. Cob nodded and withdrew; Luap hoped Garin could ease that sunburn—it almost made his own face hurt to look at it.
By the time Cob came back, he had finished that message to the king’s captain, and seen his messenger on his way. He had also approved the revised watch-lists Liun submitted, and suggested to his personal staff that they minimize the formal courtesy for the duration of Cob’s visit. The scribes flowed in and out of his office with reports, messages, requests; he dealt with them easily, as always, sensing around him the whole settlement in busy, organized activity. When Cob came in, Luap smiled at him and said “Now—you must come see what I found when I first came by the mageroad.”
Cob’s reaction to the great hall was as strong as Luap could have wished. He looked up and around. “This is . . . this is . . . it’s all magery?”
“No—not now; it’s real enough. It was done by magery, though, and not by ours. The Elder Races built it; they have never told us why, or why they abandoned it.” No sense in repeating the vague warnings he had been given; if he didn’t understand them, Cob certainly wouldn’t.
“And those are the arches.” Cob walked toward them, as Gird had, with perfect assurance that he could do so. Of course, he had not come by accidental magic. Cob looked up. “Harp, tree, anvil, hammer . . . and the High Lord’s circle. This is the one that appeared when Gird came?” Luap nodded. “I’d have been scared,” Cob said.
“I was,” Luap said. “Do you want to go up and see it from above?” He nodded at the spiral stair.
Cob shook his head. “Not today; my foot’s climbed as far as it wants. Let’s go find one of those kitchens full of food, eh?”
Luap smiled, and led him slowly back the way they had come. Cob seemed to notice everything. “Big as this place is, I’m surprised your people are moving out into the canyons: why do the work to dig out a separate dwelling?”
“Convenience, mostly. It may not look it, but the lower terraces are a half-day’s walk down the canyon: it’s easier to live beside the fields. And it’s like the old palace at Fin Panir . . . living in a small house is easier. To have privacy here, you have to spread out into all the levels, but when you’ve done that, you’re a long way from the kitchens or the bathing rooms, or even a way out. Some things we have to do here, but families, in particular, seem to want their own dwelling.”
“Ah. And do they make these dwellings the old way, or by magery?”
“By magery, for the most part. Most are small, one room deep and several wide, just in from the rockface. You saw the way this stone breaks, leaving wide arches? They build within that, using magery to help shape the broken stone into blocks and then lift them to form walls.” He grinned at Cob. “They’re very odd-looking houses, by eastern standards, but they’re comfortable. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll take you visiting.”
By the next morning, all the travellers had rested and were eager to satisfy their curiosity. Some went out to the terraces in the main canyon to see how the mageborn farmed; some explored the passages of the stronghold itself, getting lost repeatedly. All climbed the spiral stairs at least once, to look out over the tangle of canyons and have the locals point out where they had been riding the day before.
“When will Seri and Aris be back?” Cob asked Luap at the midday meal. Luap shrugged.
“I don’t know. It depends on which canyon the robbers are in. Look—” He put his hand down on the table. “This—my hand—is the mountain we’re in—as if we were in the wrist. On the west end, six fingers stick out, with canyons between them—they could be in any one of those. That’s why the Rosemage went up here—” He pointed to his knuckles, “—to see if she could spot them from above and let Seri know.”
“Why not have a permanent settlement there, and then you’d know?”
“It’s the size: you don’t realize how far away that is. And those canyons face west, picking up all the summer winds, very hot and dry: you can’t farm in them.” Luap reached for another slice of bread. “We’re very few, you know, in a very large land.”
“So you do this king’s work for him, catching his robbers . . . ?”
“They’d prey on us if they could; some tried.” Luap remembered those early encounters with an echo of the same fear he’d felt then: his people were so few, so vulnerable. “Once the Khartazh realized we were settlers, not brigands, it made sense for us to help keep those canyons clean of trouble.”
“Ummm.” Cob blew on his stew, as if it were still hot. “And what do you get from this agreement?”
That was, of course, the problem. “Not a great deal yet,” Luap admitted. “But we can grow more food here than they can in the desert below the mountains. We take in fresh food to Dirgizh—the nearest town—for trade; they have superb weavers and smiths.”
“Do they know you’re mageborn?”
Luap pursed his lips. “They know we do some magery; I’m not at all sure they understand what ‘mageborn’ means to you and me. The king’s ambassador, when he first came, saw Aris healing. They have legends, they say, of the builders of this stronghold, and at first thought we might be those beings, or their descendants. We haven’t tried to conceal our powers, but neither have we tried to exaggerate them.” Much. He thought Cob would probably not approve his strategy of subtly encouraging the Khartazh to think the powers they saw were the least of those actually held.