Bones of the Past (Arhel) (35 page)

“Pretty,” Choufa said. She thought she would like one of those lightstones to keep where she slept at night, so the darkness would never frighten her again.

“Kirtha,” Runs Slow called softly. “Kirtha!”

The little girl didn’t answer.

They walked on, away from the light, farther down the slope. In a short while, they reached another spot of light and left it behind, then reached another. Choufa noticed that the ground beneath her feet no longer felt like stone. She bent down and touched it. It was soft and grainy. She scooped up a handful of the stuff and it ran through her fingers.

“What are you doing?” Runs Slow asked.

“Touch the ground. What is this?”

Runs Slow crouched and picked up a handful. “Sand,” she whispered. “It is a kind of dirt that grows near the salty lakes.”

“Are we near a salty lake?”

“We might be.”

Choufa noticed, when they reached the next light in the tunnel, that one small set of footprints preceded them, going in the same direction they travelled. The rest of the sand had been carefully swept smooth in huge semicircles. They followed the footprints.

“Kirtha!” Choufa called. “Kirtha! Come here!”

They listened to their cries echo away to nothing.

Then they heard a faint, answering call. “Come see!” the high, piping voice shouted, and the echoes of that shout whispered past their ears and came back to them again.

“YES!” Runs Slow shouted.

“She’s not hurt!” Choufa yelled.

They both broke into a run, keeping their eyes on the faint trail of tracks in the sand. They passed two more lighted areas, and then the path leveled out and turned abruptly to the right.

They raced around the corner and came face to face with Kirtha, who sat cheerfully beside one of a multitude of large, round boulders that covered the floor of the cavern. She played in the sand under the sad eyes of yet another of the giant painted monsters.

Choufa looked up. Tens and tens of tens of the sparkling lightstones dotted the roof of the cavern. They made the room bright as outside, and lit the rows of big white boulders. All the boulders were covered with the funny lines and dots the peknu got so excited about. Around the room, more monster statues sat, and the expressions on all their ugly faces were sad.

There were two arching passageways out of the cavern besides the one the girls had come through. Choufa, no longer frightened by the monsters or worried about Kirtha, found that she was curious. She trotted across the warm sand to the first, which lay to the right side of the cavern. She peeked down it.

At the end of a short, dark tunnel, she could see the lights of another cavern, full of more round boulders just like the ones behind her. She went to the other passageway.

Like the first two, it held the carved boulders. But a brighter, yellower light emanated from around the corner and out of sight. Choufa called to the other two girls, “Come down this way! There’s something here!”

Runs Slow hurried to her side. Kirtha dawdled behind, playing in the sand until Runs Slow called her in that other language. Then she came quickly enough. They walked down the passageway together, noticing that the light grew more and more brilliant the closer they got.

It’s beautiful
, Choufa thought.
Light yellow as the taltiflowers that grow in the tops of trees
—

They reached the end of the short passageway and peeked to one side.

There, caught up in a pillar of the yellow light, a man knelt on one knee, held his sword in one hand and raised a giant stone cup aloft with the other. He didn’t move—didn’t even seem to breathe.

Choufa looked at his handsome face and fell in love. She thought she had never seen anyone so beautiful.

* * *

Thirk waited until everyone was busy doing sketches of the site or taking rubbings of the directory before he interrupted Roba. She tried not to show her annoyance, but she wished she could just tell him to go away.

“I need to talk to you,” he told her, and his voice was urgent.

She suspected she knew what he wanted to talk about She was going to have to deal with it sooner or later—later would have been much more pleasant but—

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere else to talk.”

She led, and as her site, chose one of the giant, sunken circles that were a feature of the green room. She sat down on the edge of the circle and waited for Thirk to join her.
We’re far enough from everyone else that they won’t hear what we say
, she thought,
but close enough that they can get here fast if he takes this worse than I’m expecting
. She wasn’t sure how Thirk would take her news of her defection from the Delmuirie cause—she didn’t know him that well. Her caution seemed necessary.

Thirk sat beside her, and got right to the heart of his concern. “Why didn’t you defend your paper—and why did you let them laugh at Delmuirie without saying anything?”

How badly do I need my job?
she wondered. It was a thought that had crossed her mind frequently—and as she sat in the midst of the most incredible archaeological find in the history of Arhel, she decided,
Not very badly at all
. As codiscoverer of the site—and with priority access to everything in it—her future was guaranteed. She would be able to claim a senior mage post in the historical department of any university in Arhel—including Daane. She smiled as she thought of returning to her alma mater in triumph.

She decided she could afford to be brutally honest. She thought after an instant’s further reflection that she would probably even enjoy it.

“Thirk,” she said, “you have to realize that I wasn’t making enough money as your assistant to keep up with rent on a single-room apartment in the Hout-Cadhay Quarter. I was eating badly once a day and hiding from my landlady. I couldn’t afford ghostlights. I was heating and cooking on dried dung. When you made any possibility of a raise contingent on my becoming a member of the Delmuirie Society, I had no choice but to become an enthusiastic supporter of Delmuirie.”

“So you’re saying that you took advantage of my generosity by pretending to support the aims of the Delmuirie Society—”

Roba cut him off. “I’m saying I did what I had to do to put food on my table. This isn’t a question of how much I do or don’t believe in the contributions of Edrouss Delmuirie to society. For the record, I doubt that there ever was an Edrouss Delmuirie, and I think the Delmuirie Society is composed mostly of lunatics, fanatics, and romantic fools dreaming big dreams.” Roba caught her breath, and clenched the muscles in her jaw and went on. “This is about my survival. I had two options. I could starve—or I could do something that I found repugnant. And while I had quite a few options in the repugnant category, yours was the one that didn’t have acquiring a social disease as a probable outcome.”

She locked her fingers together and glared at Thirk. “So I joined your stupid society, and when you asked me for a theory for presentation, I gave you a theory.”

Thirk’s face was a mask. He nodded once, curtly. “Tell me how you came up with your theory, won’t you?”

“Kirgen and I dug out every old historical myth we could find that dealt with Edrouss Delmuirie. We scrounged out every piece of tripe we could find in Faulea’s library, then went over to the Daane library and pulled out records so ancient we had to scrape the dust off them with a knife blade—we took legends from every discredited historian Ariss ever produced. We didn’t hide our sources—you saw them. I gave you plenty of time to check them.”

He nodded and his mouth thinned to a grim line. “So you intended your theory to make fools of the Society members.”

“I intended it to keep my job for me.
Which
,” she added with a snarl, “I don’t need anymore.”

“Of course.” Thirk Huddsonne looked down at his hands and sat motionless for a moment. Finally he looked up. “You don’t have your job anymore. That can only be what you expected. However, you are quite correct, I’m sure, in assuming you will have more offers than you could possibly accept. Your association with this find will almost certainly guarantee that—in spite of the references you’ll get from me. They won’t be good,” he said softly, “but I’m not foolish enough to think that will make any difference.

“You’ve put me in a bad position, Roba.” Thirk played absently with the fringe of his belt. “I’m left having to find Edrouss Delmuirie’s final resting place by myself. I thought I had someone who would help me.” He looked at her sadly and slowly shook his head.

Roba couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Weren’t you listening, Thirk? There is no ‘Delmuirie’s final resting place’—certainly not here, and probably not anywhere. That theory we put together was
worthless
. Just do First Folk research here with the rest of us. You can come out of this with extra funding for your department, recognition by your colleagues; gods, man, this place can
make
your career. You could be Saje Primus of Faulea by next year.”

Thirk gave her a strange little smile. “I can be anyway—but on my terms. You discredit your theory.

I don’t. I believe the gods who guide all things bring Truth to the fore in their own time and their own way. I believe the gods have worked through you—in spite of you.” His voice got louder and took on a ringing quality. “And when I go back to Faulea, it will be to restore Edrouss Delmuirie to his rightful place in history. I’ll change Arhel.” He stopped, and his face grew pale, and suddenly he hung his head. In a softer voice, he said, “No. That is boasting. Through me, Edrouss Delmuirie will change Arhel. Remember, when that time comes, that you could have been at my side. That will be punishment enough for your faithlessness.”

Roba stared at Thirk. Then she gave him a little half-smile and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I guess it will be,” she said. She stood and slowly walked back to the directory, where the rest of her colleagues were still hard at work.

That man
, she thought,
has transported body without brain
. She shoved her thumbs into her belt and looked back to where the saje sat and stared off into nothing.
He’s communing with the Mocking God. He’s drunk from the Well of Delusion. He’s insane
, she decided as she reached Kirgen. Of all the ways she had thought Thirk might take her news, going mad hadn’t even occurred to her as a possibility.

She knelt beside her young saje and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come see something,” she whispered. “And tell me what you think.”

* * *

It had been an exhausting day, and Medwind felt drained. Worry about Nokar took most of the pleasure out of the discovery of the library. Other concerns combined to distract her, too, until at last she found herself not cataloging numbers and headings, but simply staring at the directory and tracing the First Folk symbols with one finger.

When she realized she was in the way of people getting real work done, she excused herself and climbed up the side of the mountain back to the airbox. Once there, she rummaged around through the back storage compartment until she located the large padded leather bag that held her dearest possessions. She removed the bag along with a bedroll that held the rest of her gear, and carried her things to the nearest of the First Folk buildings.

The building she chose was large—round, two-storied, and domed. The central room was bright and covered with charming mosaics. But a bright room wouldn’t meet her needs. She went through the rounded doorway into the adjoining room. There, too, the walls were covered with mosaics—but the room itself was suitably dark.

She made herself a place to sit and an altar, unpacked her vha’attaye and reverently set them out. Then, following the ancient ritual, she began to call forth the waking dead. Incense smoke coiled out from the painted skulls’ nose holes and grinning mouths. Her tiny travel drum pittered like rain on a b’dabba. She hummed and stared into the light of her two little candles, and began to sing. And as she sang, the darkness that surrounded her grew darker, and the hair rose on her arms and the back of her neck, and cold walked through her body and ached in her bones. Thick emerald tendrils of light began to coalesce around first one skull, and then all but one of the rest. Joy filled her. Most of her vha’attaye had found their way home. The file-toothed skull of Troggar Raveneye, best enemy, remained dark and empty. Medwind channeled more of her magic into the summoning—to no effect.

Perhaps he is still lost
, she thought.
Perhaps he will soon return, as the others have returned
.

The ghostflesh finished forming over the bones of the vha’attaye, and the ghosteyes lit with their uncanny fire, and the ghostmouths opened and closed, clicked and skritched. But though they muttered among themselves, the dead gave her no greeting.

Medwind pressed her forehead to the floor, then rose slowly.

“I come to honor you,” she whispered to the impassive faces of the waking dead. “I come to cherish you, and to give you my love.”

Still the vha’attaye withheld their greetings.

“Please speak with me,” Medwind pled. “I have longed for the voices of my loved ones.”

“Don’t waste your love on the dead,” Rakell Ingasdotte whispered. Her bonevoice scraped like claws on dry wood—a cold parody of the warm, vibrant voice Medwind remembered. “We are greedy, but not for love—only for life. The little driblets you feed us when you call us forth make us hungrier for what we cannot have. We dried bones have forgotten love.”

Medwind stared into the ghostly eyes of her dead friend and colleague and said, “That isn’t true. You remember our friendship as well as I.”

“The place between the worlds is a poor place for remembering friendship,” the vha’attaye said. “It is a better place for learning want.” The ghosteyes narrowed while ghostflesh twisted into a semblance of a leer. “I
want
more life. If I can’t have mine, I’ll take yours!”

The green glow around the skull blazed brighter; it grew, like a well-fed flame; it pulled and drew energy and life from the Hoos warrior.