Kingdoms of the Wall (21 page)

Change-fire, I thought. She has felt the touch of change-fire on her body, and it has done this thing to her.

"The Pit—" she murmured. "The Source—Stum—"

Her voice trailed off.

"Min? What are you saying, Min?"

Someone tugged at me. It was Jekka the Healer. He said, "Step aside, Poilar. Can't you see she's in no condition to talk right now?"

I gave way, and Jekka bent above her and touched her the way a Healer touches one who is ill. Deftly he redirected the flow of the life-forces through the channels of her body, guiding air and warmth and light into beneficial paths. After a time some color came into Min's cheeks and her breathing grew normal. She put her hand to her face, her shoulder, her arm, exploring the things that had been done to her. Then she made a little despondent sound and I saw her shape flicker quickly, as though she were trying to return herself to her proper form. A quick shuddering eddy of Change passed over her but when it ended her body remained distorted as before.

Quietly Jekka said, "Save your strength, Min. There'll be time later to put you back the way you were."

She nodded. I heard someone softly sobbing behind me. Min was a terrible thing to behold.

She sat up and looked about like one who is awakening from a dreadful dream. No one spoke. After a time she said, very quietly, "I've been among the Melted Ones."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, we know."

"They stole us in the darkest part of the night, Stum and me, so quickly we had no time to cry out. Hands over our mouths—they lifted us—carried us—"

"Rest now," Jekka said to her. "There's time to talk about it later."

"No. No, I have to tell it. You need to know this."

Nor would she be denied. Shaken and weak though she was, she forced the story out of herself.

She and Stum, she said, had settled down for the night at the edge of the camp, perhaps in an unwise location, where they were more vulnerable to marauders than the rest of us. But how a party of Melted Ones had been able to steal unnoticed into our camp, Min could not say: perhaps those on watch, whoever they had been at that time, had fallen briefly asleep, or perhaps a spell had been cast, or possibly the whole thing had happened so swiftly that even the most vigilant of sentries might not have noticed. In any event, however they had managed it, the Melted Ones had seized Stum and Min with great efficiency and had taken them quickly off into the darkness for a considerable distance in what Min believed had been the direction of the Wall: though she had been unable to see anything at that moonless hour, she was certain that her captors had been moving on a steady uphill grade.

"We entered a kind of cave," she said. "I think it must have been right at the base of the Wall. Everything was very dark all around, but the moment we were inside I could see a strange sort of light, a green glow that seemed to be coming right out of the ground. There was a sort of antechamber, and then an opening in the floor of the cave, which was the mouth of a long steep passageway that slanted sharply downward to form a deep shaft. The light was rising from the bottom of the shaft. The Melted Ones let us look right over the edge. It is the Source, they kept saying. It is the Source. They speak the old language, the Gotarza. We Scribes understand a little of that."

"Yes. Yes, I know," I said.

"I couldn't tell you what's down there at the bottom. Something bright, something warm. Whatever it is, it's the thing that melts the Melted Ones." Min's hand went to her transformed cheek, perhaps without her realizing it. A deep shudder ran through her and it was a moment before she was able to speak again. "They wanted to change us," she said finally. "And send us back to you as ambassadors of a sort, in order to show you what a wonderful thing it is to be melted. They pushed us forward—toward the rim of the Pit—"

"Kreshe!" someone murmured, and we all made the sacred signs that ward off evil.

Min said, "I felt the heat of it. Just on one side, the side of me that they were holding toward the glow. And I knew that I was beginning to change, but it was no kind of change I had ever felt before. I heard Stum cursing and struggling next to me, but I couldn't see her, because they had me turned facing away from her. She was closer to the Source than I was. They were chanting and singing and dancing around like savages. Like animals." Min faltered. She closed her eyes a moment and drew several slow, heavy breaths. Jekka put his hands to her wrists and held her, calming her. Then she said, "I kicked someone, very hard. His body was soft and it gave, against my foot like jelly, and there was a scream of horrible pain. I kicked again and then I got my hand loose and poked my finger into someone's eye, and my other hand was loose, and a moment later there was confusion all over the place. Stum and I both were able to break free. They came running after us, but I was too fast for them. They caught up with Stum, though. I managed to get to the mouth of the cave, but when I looked back I saw her still deep inside, practically at the edge of the Pit, fighting with half a dozen of them. She was yelling to me to get out, to save myself. I started to go back for her. But then they swarmed all over her and I knew that there wasn't a chance—I couldn't see her any more, there were so many of them—like a mound of insects, the whole heap of them piling on top of her, and all of them moving forward, pulling her closer and closer to the Pit—"

"Kreshe!" I muttered, and made holy signs again.

"I knew it was hopeless to try to rescue her. There was no way I could do anything for her and they'd only get me again too if I went back in. So I turned and ran. They didn't try to stop me. I came outside—it was still dark—and tried to find my way back to camp. I must have wandered in circles for a long while, but finally the sun came up and then I knew which way to head. There were Melted Ones everywhere around, but when they saw me they simply nodded and let me go by, as though I were one of them." The harsh glitter of sudden fear entered Min's eyes. She touched her altered cheek again, prodding it fiercely with her fingers as though the flesh were stiff as wood. "I'm
not
one of them, am I? Am I very ugly? Is it disgusting to look at me? Tell me—Poilar—Jekka—"

"One side of your face looks a little different," I said gently. "It isn't so bad. It won't be hard to fix it—isn't that so, Jekka?"

"I think we should be able to induce a complete counter-Change, yes," he said, in that ponderous way that Healers sometimes use. But it seemed to me that there was very little confidence in his tone.

* * *

We resolved to go into that cave and see what had become of Stum. By brilliant white noonlight Thissa cast a spell of wind and water that carried her into some other world, and when at last she rose from her trance she pointed a little way to the west and north and said, "There is the path we must take."

Would Stum be still alive when we found her? Thissa offered us nothing about that. But few of us thought so, and I for one hoped she was not. By now the power of that hot glowing thing which Min had called the Source must surely have transformed Stum into something that was very little like the good sturdy Carpenter we had known. Better by far that she had perished at their hands, or found some way of doing away with herself. Yet if there was any chance at all that Stum lived, it would be a sin to leave her behind, however altered she might be; and even if she were dead, honor required us to make an attempt at retrieving her body and giving it a proper burial.

So we broke camp and set out toward the cave of the Source along the route that Thissa had shown us.

Despite my fears the Melted Ones offered no opposition. Our bold decision to march on once again into their midst appeared to stun them, as it had before when we were on the other side of the river. They fell back once more like mere phantoms of air as we advanced, glaring at us in suspicion and hatred but retreating steadily with every step we took. Kath and a few of the others wondered out loud if we were marching into a trap. This is too easy, they said. And of course Muurmut let his doubts be heard also. But I ignored them all. Sometimes a time comes when you must simply go onward.

The soil here was dry and hard, gray and lifeless, with a disagreeable powdery crust. There was a distinct upward trend to the land: as I have said, we were nearing the end of the plateau at last, after all these weeks of flatness, and the next vertical level of the Wall, which once had been nothing but a rosy glow on the horizon, now was so close that it seemed we could reach forward and touch it. It soared above us in the sky, rising to some immense disheartening height, its lofty upper reaches lost in the clouds. But we could not allow ourselves to think about that now.

"There," Thissa said, pointing. "Over there. We go that way." And Min, who for all her weariness had insisted on walking at the front of our line of march, nodded and said, "That's the cave they took us to, right there. I'm certain of it."

I saw a dark round opening in the side of the Wall, a little less than twice the height of a man above the ground. A narrow pebble-strewn path led upward to it. It was like the sort of hole that you see sometimes in the trunk of a great tree, where a swarm of stinging palibozos will make its nest. Crowds of Melted Ones had followed us here; they spread out now to both sides and watched uneasily to see what we would do.

"Six of us go inside," I said. "Who volunteers?"

Min was the first. "No," I said. "Not you."

"I must," she said, with great force.

Kilarion stepped forward also, holding his cudgel high. Galli followed, and Ghibbilau, and Narril the Butcher, with six or seven others after them. Traiben was among them, but I shook my head at him.

"You mustn't go in," I told him. "If anything bad happens to us in there, your cleverness will be needed to guide the others afterward."

"If anything bad happens in there you may wish you had use of my cleverness then," he said, and shot me such a poisonous look that I relented. So it was Kilarion and Galli and Traiben and Ghibbilau and Min and Narril and I who entered the cave.

The place was wider and deeper than I had expected, a great roomy cavity with a high irregular ceiling. There was a small semicircular chamber at the opening, and a larger one beyond. An eerie green glow suffused everything, as though a fire fed by some strange wood were burning in back; but we smelled no smoke and saw no sign of flames. The light was rising through an opening in the floor of the rear chamber. It was clear and steady, not flickering as bonfire-light would be.

"The Pit," Min said. "Which leads to the Source."

Warily we went deeper in. Min would have moved more hastily. I wouldn't let her, catching her by the hand when she made as though to go plunging forward. A few of the Melted Ones came in with us; but they hung back, staying well out of our way. There was no immediate sign of Stum. I posted Narril, Galli, and Ghibbilau as guards between the two chambers, and went on inward with Min and Kilarion and Traiben.

"Look there," Traiben said. "Behold the Nine Great Ones of this miserable race!"

At the back of the cave, where the green light was strongest, the upper part of the cavern wall was furrowed and groined by a group of sharply outlined natural arches that sprouted just above the hole in the floor. Each one formed a kind of craggy perch; and from each a sleeping bird-like creature of great size was hanging head downward deep in dreams, with its huge shaggy wings wrapped close about its body. So far gone in their slumbers were they that our intrusion disturbed them not at all. A dozen or more of the Melted Ones knelt in pious postures below them, gazing up worshipfully at the dangling sleepers.

"The air-demons!" Min whispered. "The blood-drinkers!"

"Yes," said Traiben. "But the demons are at rest, now."

How peaceful they seemed, basking in the warmth from below! But I could see the dreadful wide-nostriled faces and the great curving yellow teeth, and what held them so tightly to their stone perches were the hooked talons that had gripped the victims whose throats they meant to rip. So this was how they spent their days, hanging in placid sleep above the Source that sustained them, before emerging at dusk to feed upon the blood of their faithful followers.

"Stum?" Min called. "Stum, where are you?"

No answer came. Min took a step forward, and another, until she was almost at the rim of the Pit. Holding one hand over the maimed side of her face as though to protect it from the force from below that had changed it, she looked over the edge of the abyss.

Then she uttered a sudden sharp cry and a moan; and I thought she was going to cast herself in. Quickly I seized her by the wrist and pulled her back. Kilarion took her from me and gathered her against his broad chest and held her fast. I went to the edge and peered down.

I saw a long sloping narrow-walled passageway, descending farther than I could measure. There was something that might have been a stone altar down at the bottom of it, with something dark and squat, like an idol, seated upon it. Pulsating waves of brilliant light radiated from it, crashing against the walls of the shaft and blurring my sight with its tremendous dizzying force. And I knew that the tales of change-fire we had heard during our training were true, that this must be one of the places where it radiates from the bowels of the mountain, that terrible force that we are shielded against in our snug village at the bottom of the Wall, because we live so far from its source. I felt the powerful warmth of that light licking against my cheek; I could feel the shapechanging power within my body instantly awakening and unlimbering itself, and fear ran through my soul. We were at risk here, I knew; and would be, I suspected, all the rest of the way to the Summit.