The Bolg king gestured at the ground.
“Grunthor, can you tell what is beneath here? Is it sand and clay for as far as you can sense, or are there other strata? Is there a city below?”
The Sergeant-Major walked to the edge of the fissure, then jumped down onto a clay ledge and examined the ground. “The ruins o’ one, maybe,” he replied. “Can’t rightly tell— there’s somethin’ powerful in the way makin’ noise, masking whatever the Earth says. There seems ta be a lot o’ broken bits below, but that’s all Oi can tell. O’ course, we could just go see fer ourselves. There’s a right big tunnel just beyond this fissure, tall and wide—we could go below; we done it before, after all.”
Rhapsody shuddered. “Don’t remind me, please. The nightmares will only get worse. Let’s take shelter with the horses in the ruins.”
“Oi’ll go get the diaperin’ supplies and the rest o’ the provisions,” Grunthor said, jogging to the ruins. “Oi think you’re right about the young prince needin’ changin’.Hrekin.”
“You don’t want to see what’s below the sand?” Achmed asked while they waited. “No. I want to get to Ylorc, get out of the wind, and get started working on your bloody Lightcatcher. I don’t need a reminder of our travels along the Axis Mundi, thank you very much. I’m Lirin; we don’t belong underground, and you well know it.”
“Oh, come now, you said you were looking forward to returning to Elysian, and that’s underground,” said Achmed in exasperation. “What’s the difference? How can you, a Namer, pass up the chance to possibly find what sounds like it would be one of the greatest recoveries of lore in the Known World? If this is Kurimah Milani, do you want to leave it for someone else to find?”
“Yeah,” said Grunthor, dropping her pack in front of her. “What would ol’ Talquist make of this place, Oi wonder?”
“I will not deliberately take the baby into danger just to—”
“It can’t be any more dangerous than being out in plain sight, especially with night coming on,” Achmed said. “It could be a good deal less dangerous, miss,” said Grunthor seriously. “Look be’ind you.” Rhapsody and Achmed turned around simultaneously and were slapped full in the face by the sandy wind. From the west a great wall of dust was approaching, sweeping ahead of it whatever scrub vegetation had been drying in the wide expanse of red clay desert, its force growing with each second.
Grunthor leapt down into the fissure again and began clearing the sand away from in front of the rift where he had indicated a tunnel to be present.
“ ’urry in if you’re goin’,” he said. “Can’t ’old the bloody sand up fer long. Give me good ol’ Bolgish basalt any day.”
Achmed climbed down into the fissure and crawled within the rift, emerging a moment later. “It’s all right, Rhapsody—the ceiling is high, and it appears to be a vault or cavern of some sort. We can stay in here until the sandstorm passes, then be on our way.”
The Lady Cymrian exhaled, then climbed down behind him, followed by Grunthor, into a place of vast and endless darkness.
As the gathering windstorm approached, a shadow followed silently behind them.
32
Grunthor, can you see me in the dark?”
“Yes indeed, Duchess.”
“Can you give me the pack and some light, then?”
“Certainly.” A cold blue light emerged, casting a glowing radiance at the mouth of the tunnel. The three companions looked around. They were in a smooth hallway formed of ancient clay, with semicircular walls in which long deep grooves had been carved. The light of the globe reflected off those walls and glittered in the darkness with the same eerie radiance as that of the broken walls and towers of the ruins above. A cool breeze blew in from the darkness at the end of the corridor.
“Looks like a sluice of some sort,” said Achmed. Grunthor nodded assent. “Perhaps part of a sewer system.”
Rhapsody removed her cloak with the baby wrapped in its folds. “Wonderful,” she muttered as she riffled through the pack. “Why is it that whenever the three of us enter a city, we always seem to come in through the sewer? If I recall, that was our first sight of the Bolglands as well.”
“Seems oddly appropriate, given what you are currently engaged in doing,” said Achmed acidly over the soft cooing sounds of the baby. “Gods, Rhapsody, are you certain you’re not feeding him sulfur?”
“Fairly certain,” she replied, smiling down at the child in the dark. In the gleam of the cold light globe his hair and skin were almost translucent, the tiny vertical pupils of his clear blue eyes twinkling. She kissed his tiny belly, then swaddled him quickly as the howl of the wind rushed past them, screaming in and around the tunnel entrance. “Good thing you got over yer fear of the underground in time, Duchess,” said Grunthor, looking outside. “That’s a strong one, strong as the last. Oi ’ope the ’orses don’t get buried. Glad Oi got the supplies when Oi did.”
Rhapsody stepped over the grooves in the floor of the tunnel, cradling Meridion in the cloak, and sat with her back against the wall. Achmed and Grunthor turned away while she nursed the baby, watching the fury of the sandstorm outside the tunnel and listening as the harsh cry of the wind and the soft sounds of the child both faded into silence. When the storm appeared to have passed Grunthor hoisted himself out of the tunnel and looked around. “Fissure’s filled in a bit,” he reported upon returning. “May ’ave ta dig out when we leave.”
The Bolg king nodded, then turned and walked past where Rhapsody was sitting and followed the broken sluice down into the breezy darkness. He gestured to the others. “There’s a large opening ahead at the tunnel’s end, where that wind is coming from. Bring the light, and we’ll have a look around before making camp for the night.”
Grunthor offered Rhapsody his enormous hand and helped her to her feet, then took out the light globe. They followed the Bolg king down the sluice to the end of the tunnel where a dark opening yawned.
As they neared the opening, both Rhapsody and Achmed flinched. A humming drone of immense volume was issuing forth from beyond it, echoing up the sluice tunnel and vibrating against their skin and eardrums. It was not the deep, slow song that Rhapsody had described, but more the noise of static, a discordant buzz that was electric.
Rhapsody’s eyes glinted nervously in the cold light. “I’m not certain this is a good idea, Achmed,” she whispered. “Isn’t that constant droning irritating to you?”
“Your constant droning has been irritating me for fourteen hundred years,” he replied. “I will survive. Better to know what is in there than to be caught unaware. Stay here. Grunthor, give me the light. Careful; the floor has some oily spots beyond here.”
The blue-white ball was passed forward; the Bolg king stepped up to the opening, avoiding the thick pools on the floor, holding the light ahead of him. He leaned in and looked around. “Well, that explains the bees,” he said after a moment.
Rhapsody and Grunthor exchanged a glance, then joined him at the opening. Beyond the hole was an immense cavern, the ruins of what may have at one time been a huge public bath. Gigantic stone columns glittering with mother-of-pearl held up the remains of the ceiling that had at one time been painted with extravagant frescoes, intricate mosaics lined the walls, formed from tiles of fired glass, the colors still brilliant though partially obscured with grit, the reds especially vibrant, even in the cold blue light. It was difficult to see much of the floor below, hidden as it was in shadow beyond the light’s reach, but the remains of a system of water delivery could be made out, leading away from the sluice, where long trenches lined with colored tile fed into long-dry fountains containing what appeared to be rows of stone seats. An enormous vault reached into the darkness above, shattered at one end. The trickling sound of water could be heard, just below the droning hum that rose to the level of a roar past the opening.