Take me to the beginning of the world, he told it. Take me to my people.
He had expected difficulties. He had expected to have to use the full force of his will and all of his wits to break it. But it yielded at once. Filtered through the remnant of the Shadow, its voice was his own. Of course, it said. You have returned. Do not be surprised. I live in the place where the river meets itself. Of course I know you. I hope that I will see you again.
There was no time to frame questions. He was caught in air currents which sheared off the falling water. They buffeted him hard as he cut through them. The lifting surface of the kite boomed and shivered. The frame wrenched in his grip as if suddenly possessed of a will of its own.
You will not need the flying thing. I will guide you. Yama kicked his feet out of the rudders, unbuckled the harness. And gave himself to the air.
The kite slammed away above him, bucking and folding up as conflicting air currents caught it, a fleck of yellow that whirled upward, was gone. Yama arranged himself in the rush of air, his feet pointing down, his arms by his sides. It was the way he had so often dived into the deep water at the rocky point of the bay of the little city of Aeolis.
Something other than air gripped him. He drifted slowly toward the column of water. It was as smooth and dense as glass. It seemed to rise above him toward infinity. Beneath his feet was a rim of darkness, at one moment as flat as a ring of paper, the next infinitely deep. The tube of water narrowed as it swooped down. Water was not compressible, but somehow the river’s vast flow was squeezed into a tube so narrow that two men could have embraced it and touched fingertips.
Space-time distortion. The flow here is extended through time as well as space. It is easier than extending the size of the shortcut’s mouth.
Yama did not understand the words which appeared in his head.
He was falling faster now. Air ripped past. His cloak of uncured hide streamed up behind his head. He saw structures around the rim, geometric traceries of intense electric blue that extended wherever he looked.
And then he was gripped, turned, accelerated. There was an instant of intolerable pressure and brilliant light.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ship of Fools
A tremendous flood swept him forward. He thrashed toward light and air, but the water was already receding, a wave washing away in every direction.
He stood, water slopping about his ankles. The hide cloak was soaked through, and clung in heavy folds to his naked body. The light was dim, blood-red. The cold air tasted of metal. He was in a chamber so large he could not see its ceiling or any of its walls. Beneath the ankle-deep water was a floor of a smooth, slightly yielding black substance.
A shrine stood a little distance away. It was the biggest he had ever seen, a huge black disc that could have overtopped the tallest tower of the peel-house. Nothing woke when he addressed it, but he had the unsettling impression that its vast smooth surface somehow inverted for a moment.
Where was he now? And when? Was he in the keel of the world? Was this the time of its making? He flexed his toes against the black floor. It reminded him of a place Tamora had taken him to a lifetime ago, in Ys.
He chose a direction at random and walked a long time.
The water soon gave out. Once he shouted out his name, but the volumes of shadow and red light gave back no echo. He walked on, and a little time later felt the presence of machines far behind, and stopped and turned.
In the distance, tiny figures were moving at the base of the huge black circle of the shrine. He raised his arms above his head and shouted to them with sudden hope, and a narrow beam of intense white light swept out and pinned him. The figures were suddenly moving forward with impossible, inhuman quickness. Yama tried to question them, but their minds were opaque. Remembering the extensions of Dr. Dismas’s paramour, he turned and started to run, his shadow leaping ahead of him, and ran until he heard a faint whistle off to his left.
He stopped and looked back, half-winded and dazzled by the white light, and saw that the figures had already made up half the distance. The whistle came again, human, shrill and urgent. He turned toward it. The beam of light tracked him, and his shadow rose to confront him, thrown onto something that loomed out of the dim redness. A structure of some kind, a black blister or bubble no bigger than an ordinary house.
A figure jumped up right in front of him, throwing aside the cloth which had concealed it. Yama tried to dodge, but it was faster. A shoulder smashed into his belly, arms wrapped around his hips, and he was thrown to the floor.
He looked up in astonishment at a face so like his own it might have been his sister’s: pale skin, a narrow jaw, high cheekbones, vivid blue eyes. Her black hair was cropped short. Elaborate tattoos began at the angles of her jaw, reaching around under her ears to meet at the nape of her neck. She wore a loose, silvery, one-piece garment that clasped her ankles, wrists and neck. One of her calloused bare feet was planted on his chest, and she was pointing a slim wand at his face. He had the sense that it was a weapon. There was something odd about this strange yet familiar woman, a vacancy…
“What are you?” she said. She was breathing very hard. “A survivor from the holds or a stowaway?”
Yama had turned his head to hide the scarred side of his face. He was uncomfortably aware that he was naked under the heavy hide cloak. He said, “Am I in the keelways?”
“You mean the spine? Don’t fool. We lost those territories twenty generations ago. What are you?”
“A stranger to this place.”
“A savage on walkabout maybe. Whatever you are, I think you just killed us both.”
She let him stand. The figures were much closer now, silhouetted against the glare of the intense beam of white light, man-shaped, but oddly lopsided, running hard toward them.
Yama pointed at the blister and said, “What is inside this building?”
“An outlet. Even if we had a hot blade, we could not cut its skin.” The woman was folding up the black cloth which had concealed her. It made a surprisingly small square that went into a slit at the waist of her silvery garment.
Yama remembered the voidship lighter. The guard had done something to the material…
An opening puckered in the smooth black curve. The woman looked at him in astonishment, but followed him inside. The opening sealed behind them. For a moment they were in complete darkness, then the woman asked for light and a dim radiance kindled in the air.
They stood on a narrow walkway. It ran around a smooth-walled shaft that sloped down into darkness. The woman knelt and stared down into the shaft, then looked up at Yama. “That was a good trick,” she said, “but the regulators will get permission to unseal this soon enough.”
“What are they?”
“You don’t wear any mark. What family?”
“That is what I hope to find out.”
“You came through with the water, didn’t you? But we can’t stay here.”
“I will have to take off my cloak,” Yama said. “Then we will find out how far this falls.”
“A long way, I expect. It is one of the mains.”
Yama sat down at the lip of the shaft, took off the cloak and spread it out, hairy side down. He could feel the woman’s gaze move over his naked body. He said, “Sit behind me and hold onto my waist. The cloak will protect us.”
After a moment, she did as he asked. Her spicy scent and body heat gave him an erection; he felt a blush spreading across his face and chest.
The woman said, “I am Wery. If we survive this I’ll take you to my people and we’ll parlay. Bryn will want to ask you many questions.”