“I found this in the same place. It’s a two-thousand-year-old Cythian mine plan. It shows the workings of the labyrinth of mines underneath the Seethings, as they were at the time of the First Fleet. I’m not sure what all the symbols mean.”
Aditty bent so low over the map that his nose touched the surface. He moved his head around for several minutes, his breath crackling. He checked the Cythonian map, then returned to the mine plan. He stepped away, coughed more grit up into his rag and nodded to himself.
“Well?” said Tobry, impatiently.
“Here,” said Aditty, stabbing a dust-impregnated thumb at the left side of the mine plan.
Tali could only see meaningless lines and symbols. “What is it?”
“A forgotten air shaft from ancient times.”
“How do you know it’s forgotten?”
“I’ve prospected all through the Seethings. Seen no sign of it. I reckon it runs through to Cython, about here.” Aditty gestured to the other map.
“That’s at the water supply pondages,” said Tali. “Why would an air shaft run there?”
“Mines in that area make water, don’t they? When the old mine was abandoned, it would have flooded in a few years.”
“The enemy went underground five hundred years after the first war started,” said Tobry. “If the old maps were lost, they wouldn’t have known the flooded air shaft was there. Good place for the water pondages, though.”
“How deep would the water be?” said Tali.
“How far underground is Cython?” said Holm.
“The climb up the sunstone shaft is a thousand steps — three hundred feet or more.”
“The bottom of the air shaft could be flooded twenty feet deep,” said Aditty. “Or sixty.” He nodded and went out.
“If we go down the shaft to the water,” said Tobry, “we might be able to dive and come up in the flooded area.”
“Twenty feet we might manage,” said Holm. “I can’t dive sixty.” He shuddered.
“There’s magery for that kind of thing,” Tobry said vaguely.
“What kind of thing?” said Holm.
“Breathing underwater. I’ll start working on it.”
“I can’t swim,” said Tali, another of her personal nightmares closing in around her.
CHAPTER 86
“No, like this.” Tobry supported Tali in the water with one hand and demonstrated the breaststroke with the other, for the tenth time.
“I can’t do it!” she wailed. The water was miserably cold and terrifyingly alien. “I’m not meant to swim. Get me out!”
He pulled her three yards to the edge of the river pool and helped her onto the bank. Holm, who was waiting beside a fire, wrapped a blanket around her. Tali sat down in the chair and lifted her blue feet onto a wrapped stone he’d heated in the fire. He handed her a large mug of sweet, steaming tea. She curled her hands around it.
“Then we’ll have to go to Cython without you,” grinned Holm. “Though I don’t see how we’re going to convince the Pale to rebel.”
“You two couldn’t masquerade as Pale in pitch darkness,” she muttered.
Tali had looked forward to this. Not for the swimming lessons, which she had known would be an ordeal, but because she’d be with Tobry. Now that they were just friends again, and working together on her plan, the tension between them was gone and it was a pleasure to be with him. It reminded her of old times.
But the water was so cold that it took her breath away, and Tobry had turned out to be a stern teacher who expected her to be able to swim after one lesson. The first time he let her go she began to flounder, panic set in and she sank. It had set the pattern for the day.
She could only last five minutes in the cold water, and each time she got out and warmed up it was harder to go back in. She eyed Tobry resentfully. His chest was bare and he hadn’t bothered to stand by the fire.
“One more go,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“You’re a horrible man. I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”
“I never understood it either,” he said, smirking.
“You’re enjoying my suffering, you beast.”
“Get in!”
She stood up. Holm took the blanket away, and the breeze struck through her wet shirt and knickers. “No more!” she gasped, staring at the hostile water.
“In, or I’ll throw you in.”
“One day I’m going to murder you, Lagger. One day!”
He rolled his eyes. Tali stepped in and all the carefully nurtured warmth was gone in an instant. She pushed her arms out, attempting a stroke, but her legs sank and she plunged to the bottom, thrashing and choking.
Tobry hauled her up by the hair and extended her horizontally along the surface. “Well done. You almost did a stroke that time.”
She thumped him and sank.
It was forty miles from Nyrdly to the forgotten air shaft that led into Cython, by the winding route they had to take to avoid detection, and it had taken them two nights to get there. Two exceedingly tense nights.
On Tali’s right, the mighty volcano called the Brown Vomit was erupting, casting an ominous red glare over the landscape. Fine ash was sifting down, getting into their eyes, noses and ears, and the ground quivered constantly.
Tobry had barely spoken the whole time. The magery to allow them to breathe underwater was proving a far bigger challenge than he had anticipated, and he was still struggling with it as they rode between the boiling pools of the Seethings, and across the boulder-strewn badlands between the Vomits and Lake Fumerous.
It wasn’t the only thing bothering him — or her. The eruption flares glistened on his sweaty face, and every so often he would twist around in the saddle and thrust out a hand, as if to ward something off, though there was nothing to be seen in the empty landscape. Was it a sign that shifter madness was closing in? An attack was often preceded by hallucinations and, she knew, could be brought on by stress.
If he had a bout of madness on the way down the shaft, when they were reliant on his magery, none of them would survive. But Tali could not do it without him. Without his underwater breathing spell she could not hope to get inside.
And then there was the circlet to worry about. How long before Lyf decided to look for it in Garramide? Or Grandys went there? Leaderless, Garramide would fall in a day, and there was nothing she could do about that either. She could not spare Tobry or Holm, and could not trust anyone else with the secret.
“I’ve just thought of another problem,” said Holm. “A big one.”
Tali groaned. “I don’t want to know. What?”
“If the worst happens, and we end up in a battle, what are you going to do?”
“We’ll have to fight.”
“Even if we can arm the Pale, they’ve no training with weapons.”
“Heatstone!” said Tali.
“What about it?”
“We chuck it at the enemy. When heatstone breaks, it’s like a grenado going off.”
“And wasn’t there something about it knocking the enemy unconscious, but not the Pale?”
“That was sunstone, but I’m hoping heatstone will have the same effect, since it’s stronger. Anyway, apart from Tobry’s magery, heatstone is the one advantage we have over them.”
“Why can’t they chuck it back at us?”
“They’re very superstitious about it; won’t touch the stuff.”
“Perhaps they sense its connection with king-magery,” Holm said thoughtfully. “That’s a good idea, but if you do end up in a battle, how are you going to direct it? It won’t be anything like directing a normal battle from the top of a hill where you can see everything.”
“Um…” said Tali.
“Cython is a maze of tunnels,” said Tobry. “And you’re…”
“Short?”
“I would have said petite. If there’s a row of enemy troops in front of you, you won’t be able to tell if there’s twenty of them, or a thousand.”
“And you won’t have a clue what’s going on in any of the other tunnels,” said Holm.