City of Sorcery (51 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They could wander in these caves for days; except that Acquilara’s gang would find them sooner or later, more likely sooner, and bring them to a quick and messy end. Acquilara had wanted to use her, but she did not deceive herself that there would be any kindness or forbearance shown.

Not drugging, this time. Death.

Vanessa was making her way very slowly around the walls, feeling every inch with outstretched hands before her. She slipped, recovered, let herself down on one knee and beckoned. They came on tiptoe to join her. She had fallen over a cluster of large sacks, one or two of which had been opened and folded over at the top.

One held dried fruit; the second held a kind of grain, millet, probably intended as food for pack animals. At Cholayna’s gesture they filled their pockets from the sacks. It might mean, in that bitter cold outside, the narrow razor edge of separation between life and death.

Beyond the piled sacks rose a long stairway; dimly they made out that the steps were carved in part from the soft limestone, filled in with a kind of rock and cement and smoothed over just enough to climb without falling. The steps were wet, slippery and treacherous, and Magda hesitated to set foot on them.

“Do you think this is the way out? Or does it go farther into the caves?”

“Let’s find out first.” Cholayna began slowly groping her way around the rest of the wall. Magda tried, automatically, to reach out with her
laran
, to try to see past the opening of the stairs, but there was only a dull ache.

In her… eyes? No. In her heart?
I can’t identify what’s missing, but I’m only half there
. She banished the thought, forcing herself to go slowly around the dripping walls. Back at the feed sacks she bumped gently into Vanessa.

“There’s a big door over there,” Cholayna murmured. “I’d like to get out of here before that guard over there wakes up and we have to kill her.”

“I think it’s the stairway that leads out,” Vanessa argued. “I can feel air blowing from up there.”

“I’m not so sure. Think, Vanessa. Could they have carried all of us down these stairways without at least one of us waking up?” Cholayna sounded persuasive. Vanessa said, “You’re the boss.”

“No. It’s too serious for that. You and Magda have a stake in this too. Magda, what’s your best hunch?”

Grimly Magda reminded herself that Cholayna had no idea how that question would seem a wounding prod of her loss; Cholayna meant it at strict face value.

“Don’t have any just now, remember? But I’d like to have a look at that doorway before we try climbing the stairs.”

“But hurry,” Cholayna fretted, and Magda began silently feeling her way. It was very dark. She could hardly make out her spread fingers before her face. Vanessa murmured something and slid away into the darkness. After a heart-stopping time she came back, carrying one of the low-sputtering torches.

“I had to step right over her. I took this one. It seemed to have more time left on it than the others, but none of them looked all that great. I wish I could find where they keep their stash of fresh ones.”

“That’s another thing,” Cholayna said between her teeth. “Unless we find our way out damn fast, we’re going to need light; we could, literally, wander the rest of our lives in these caves.”

“Hold this,” Vanessa said, thrusting the low-burning torch into Cholayna’s hands and slipping away again. After another long time and some curious soft scraping sounds, she returned, breathless, her arms filled with the torches. One or two had a coal or so on the end; the others had been extinguished.

“Sorry I was so long about it,” she whispered. “I had to pull them down off the wall. Now we’d better get moving - one look at the place and anybody will know we passed through. Let’s move.”

Cholayna reached out and gripped her wrist. She said, “Good thinking. But get one thing straight, Vanessa: from this very minute, we stick together, we don’t get separated. Understand? You may know mountains; I know something about caves. You stick close; better yet, we stay in physical contact all the time. If one of us gets lost or separated we can’t even yell to find each other!”

“Oh. Right,” Vanessa said, sobered.

Magda took the burning torch from Cholayna’s hands. “I won’t go out of sight. But I’m going up to see where these steps lead. There’s no sense of all of us coming if it’s a blind chimney,. or another empty chamber.”

“I doubt it’s blind; the stairs look too well-used for that,” said Cholayna, bending low to scan the marks on the roughly floored surface.

Holding the torch before her, Magda slowly climbed the steps.

She looked back at Cholayna, standing at the foot of the crude stairway. It was not blind. It led into some kind of chamber above, and there was light there. Daylight, already? She thrust her head up over the edge and instinctively recoiled.

She thrust the torch behind her to conceal its light. At least two dozen women lay sleeping in the chamber above; Magda could see at the far end of the room Lexie Anders’s curly blond head. She did not see Acquilara. Slowly she began to withdraw down the steps, placing each foot carefully on the stair below.

The woman nearest the stairhead opened her eyes and looked straight at Magda.

It was Rafaella n’ha Doria.

Magda never knew how she stifled a yell. She withdrew swiftly down the stairs, and Vanessa, watching her precipitate retreat, snatched out her knife and stood braced.

But nothing happened. Silence; no outcry, no rousing of the legions, no outraged hordes pouring down the stairs with weapons raised.
Was she fast asleep? Didn’t she see me? Did she decide to let me go for Jaelle’s sake or because we used to be friends
?

Then, stealthily, Rafaella came down the stairs. Vanessa held her little knife at the ready, but Rafaella gestured to her to put it away and motioned them all to a safe distance from the stairway.

“You can put it away, Vanessa n’ha Yllana,” she said. “If you are leaving, I’m going with you.”

“You had me fooled,” Magda said in an undertone.

“Oh, don’t deceive yourself,” Rafaella said sourly. “You haven’t converted me to the rightness of your cause, or anything like that. I still think Jaelle would be better advised to work with them than with that other crew. But I don’t like what they’ve done to Lexie and I don’t want them doing it to me.”

“Do you by any chance know the way out?”

“I think I can find it. I’ve been in and out twice since the storm.” Rafaella led the way swiftly through the other large doorway and into a chamber strewn with rubble and rocks. Phosphorescent fungus shed an eerie light from the walls, and the torchlight wavered on giant formations of limestone, pale and gleaming like bone, folded and layered most marvelously. “Careful here. It’s wet and dripping all through here, but at least the water’s pure and good drinking, and there’s plenty of it.” She scooped up a handful from a little stream that ran downhill beside where they were climbing.

“If you get lost again in here remember to follow the stream
uphill
. If you follow it down it leads
way
down - I’ve only been down three or four levels; they say there are at least ten levels below this, and some of them are filled with old books and artifacts from a time - they must be thousands of years old. Lexie went down and saw a few of them and said there had evidently been a time of very high technology on Darkover, though none of it looked Terran. Which surprised her. She said Darkover was once a Terran colony, but this was completely different. Then Acquilara told her that it was
before;
that there was a whole civilization before humans colonized this world. You’re the specialist, Margali, all that stuff would interest you, and Mother Lauria would go crazy over it, but it’s not for me.”

At the far end of this chamber lay a gleam of light - not daylight, but a faint glimmer somehow different in quality from the guttering torchlight. From it they could all feel a faint breath of the terrible chill outside. Magda shivered, buttoned up her heavy jacket, drew on her gloves. Vanessa arranged her blanket snugly over her shoulders like a mountain man’s plaid. Four abreast, they moved stealthily toward the entry.

Magda always swore that for what happened next there was no natural explanation. Vanessa said she came from the staircase and they never stopped arguing about it. Magda saw a faint blue flare, a shrill faroff shrieking like a hawk, and Acquilara stood in the doorway before them.

“Are you leaving us? I’m afraid I can’t relinquish your company so soon.” She raised her hand, and Magda realized there were women warriors all around the entrance chamber. They struck the torches from Cholayna’s hand, knocked Vanessa to the ground, took her knife, then dragged them along with Magda and Rafaella back into the chamber of fires, where all four of them were held securely.

The room filled up with women, some of them, Magda was sure, hastily roused sleepers from the chamber above.

“I am too lenient,” Acquilara said. “I can tolerate no traitors.
Terranan
- “

Lexie came forward through the crowd.

“I underestimated her strength and intelligence,” Acquilara said, indicating Magda. “Once she is broken, we can find a use for her. But I must make an example of what happens to those who mock my clemency. This one betrayed us.”

She went to Rafaella and took the knife from her belt; handed it to Lexie.

“Prove yourself loyal to me. Kill her.”

Cholayna cried out sharply. “Lexie! No!”

With brutal deliberation Acquilara backhanded Cholayna across the mouth. “It should be
you
, freak,” she said. “
Terranan
, I wait.”

Lexie barely glanced at the knife and dropped it.

“To hell with your tests of loyalty. If you need them, to hell with
you
.” She let the knife lie where it had fallen.

Magda thought Acquilara would strike Alexis down where she stood; she had defied her, risked letting the sorceress lose face before her women. Acquilara stood frozen for a moment, then evidently decided to salvage what she could from the incident.

“Why,
Terranan
?”

“She knows the mountain roads. She is competent. She will be needed to escort them back to Thendara when the time comes; by that time she will know better than to defy or disobey. Killing her would be waste. I abhor waste.” Lexie spoke coldly, without the slightest emotion.

Now is she telling the exact truth, or is it some latent loyalty in Lexie? After all, they traveled over the mountains together, and they must have
some
kindness and respect for one another after sharing an experience like that
. Magda ached for the touch of
laran
which would make it possible to know.

Soon they found themselves back in the cavern from which they had come. Rafaella was dragged along with them, and unceremoniously dumped there. Their hands were tied, and Acquilara ordered her women to go around and take their boots off, one by one.

Cholayna protested. “You have not even told us why we are your prisoners. And without our boots we will surely freeze.”

“Not if you stay in these caverns, where the temperature all year round is sufficient to keep water from freezing,” Acquilara said. “Only if you try to leave them will you suffer the slightest harm. I should really take all your outer garments as well.”

But she did not carry out that threat; she even left the blankets. She also posted a pair of guards, armed with knives and daggers, at the door of the chamber. She would not, Magda thought, underestimate them again.

Cholayna wrapped her blanket around herself, clumsily, using her long, prehensile toes, and told the others to do the same. “We need to keep warm, stay as strong as we can.”

“Jaelle - they didn’t kill her, did they?” Rafaella asked, shrugging into her blanket as best she could with her hands tied.