Our Lady of the Islands (34 page)

Within moments they were headed down the tunnel to their left, along a wide path bordering the deep, but now placid, stream of water flowing from the falls. This new passage was lined in tiles cast as tiny faces, grimacing mouths with squared teeth and narrowed eyes. She could not be certain in the globe’s blue light, but it looked as though the glazing had once been riotous with color, so that the tunnel walls resembled a stone garden of demon-faced flowers. The effect was both wondrous and terrifying, an aisle of blank stares watching over the two of them as they walked farther into this dank netherworld. “Where … what
is
this place?”

“In the time of Ancients,” Arian called back, “most of the islands were connected — below as well as above. We can only guess at whether these were used for moving water, or for transportation, or … well, we just don’t know.” By now, they’d wandered far enough from the shaft to dim the sound considerably. “That’s much better, isn’t it?” Arian said, turning to Sian.

“I was always told that such tunnels were just a fable.”

“I know,” Arian smiled, her face ephemeral in the globe light. “They were only rediscovered a few decades before Alizar’s uprising, I’m told, and they’re deliberately kept secret now.”

“But … why? All this could be put to use in so many ways.”

“Not so easily as it may seem. The system is riddled with leaks and collapsed sections. Some parts are even flooded. Yet, for all that damage, the materials these tunnels are built from seem as nearly indestructible as those from which the ruins up above are made, which makes repairs and modifications as impossible down here. Simply building over such a huge labyrinth of passages would be unthinkably costly, without even taking into consideration the huge new layers of bureaucracy required to supervise and maintain it all.”

“Pardon me,” Sian interjected, “but even if they can’t be put to some profitable use, I still don’t see why they’ve been kept so secret.”

“Can’t you? Really? Even now, as you and I make use of them to sneak out of the temple?” Arian turned and began to walk again. “These tunnels were instrumental in Alizar’s defeat of the continental Factor. Their existence had been kept from him and nearly everyone except the Alizari loyalists who had been fortunate enough to rediscover them first. When the rebellion came, the rebels were able to move great numbers of people and virtually any supplies they wished more quickly and easily than they could have on the surface — and quite invisibly, of course. The occupying Factor faced an enemy who just kept coming up out of the very ground beneath him without warning.” She shook her head. “That’s why the war here was so brief, and so decisive — and a large part of why the continent was so willing to just let little Alizar go. If we’ve been as successful in suppressing knowledge of these tunnels as we hope, they still have no idea how Alizar routed their government with such ferocious ease.”

“Amazing,” Sian said, wondering how they’d buried what must have been such a widely known secret by the end of the rebellion.

“After the war, I’m told,” said Arian, “there was some discussion about opening the tunnels for other uses, but it was quickly decided that their value as a weapon was both too valuable to the new Alizari Factorate, and too dangerous to them, too. It was decided then to conceal their existence and promote the belief that any stories told about them were just childish tales. All the entrances to Home have been blocked off, of course, lest someone do to us what we did to the continental government then. Other portions of these tunnels have doubtless been walled off as well as well, by other parties, for similar reasons. The few who do still know about them despite all our efforts, likely have good reasons of their own for not wanting their existence guessed at either. So they remain one of our nation’s best-kept open secrets.”

“Does Escotte know about these tunnels?” Sian asked.

“Yes. Unfortuantely, he is among the few who do.”

Let’s hope he doesn’t tell the temple if he learns of our escape
, she thought.

Sian followed Arian, still gaping at the weird beauty of this entirely hidden place. To have lived in Alizar all her life, and never have suspected that the giant ruins above ground were barely half of the equation! She found herself wondering again who the Ancients had been, where they had gone, and what unimaginable force had it taken to ruin structures made of such seemingly indestructible materials. Might the Butchered God have been a harbinger of their return, after so much time? If so, might Alizar still learn what power had destroyed the Ancients’ city? It was a frightening thought.

Among so many others, of course — some as mundane as starvation.

“I’m sorry, Arian,” Sian said, coming to a halt. “But I don’t know how much farther I can go without some food. I’m always so hungry after healing, and with all the rest of what we’ve been put through since last night … I’m amazed I had the strength to make it down that shaft. Aren’t you at least a little hungry too?”

Arian nodded. “Ravenous, actually. Which is strange, for me at least. We’ve missed nothing but breakfast. But … maybe we can find something …” She began to wave the globe around again, searching their surroundings as if she thought there might be a small tavern set into the tunnel’s walls nearby.

“What are you looking for?” Sian asked.

“A map. Or some store of supplies. There should be powder flares cached down here somewhere. How long did you say this little ball of light will last?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve only ever used them once, the last time I escaped. But that took me no more than an hour or so. How many do we have?”

“Two more, I think.” Arian reached inside her robe to check, then nodded.

“What kind of map do you expect to find down here?”

“There are markings carved into the walls that tell what lies ahead, how far away, and in what direction. When I find one, we’ll be better able to orient ourselves.”

“How do you know all this?” Sian asked. “Have you been down here before?”

“Not clear out on The Well, and not for many years, but yes. Viktor used to bring me down here. He liked hunting these tunnels for antiquities. He collects them, you know.”

Sian thought of Escotte, wondering if this thirst for ancient artifacts was some inbred habit of the elite.

“We spent entire days down here sometimes, when we were first married.” Arian smiled wistfully. “He was so adventurous then. So full of plans, such confidence and optimism. He wanted me to see every part of his … his
kingdom
, I suppose. Whatever Alizar pretends it is.” She grew quiet. Thoughtful. “Our first time here, he brought a picnic lunch along. We sat on a high ledge in a cavern underneath Viel and spat our plum-pits down into the water.”

“I wish we had plums now,” Sian sighed.

“Oh!” Arian exclaimed. “The water! Yes, of course. How silly of me!” She bent down beside the watercourse they followed, waving her light just above the surface, then reached in with her other hand to wrestle something loose and pluck it out. “Breakfast!” she said proudly, standing up and coming to show her harvest to Sian.

As she approached, Sian held out her hand, into which Arian dropped two small shells clamped tightly shut.

“Mussels?” Sian asked. “Down here?”

“They do not require light to live,” said Arian. “Viktor often roasted them for me when we came down exploring. There are some very tasty snails in these channels too, as I recall.”

“We have some way to make a fire then?” Sian asked, reawakened to the chilly temperature, even through her cape.

“Well … Not yet. Until we find a cache of powder flares, at least. But Escotte often serves raw shellfish at his dinner parties. It’s considered quite a delicacy.”

Sian looked at her askance, remembering the smell of sewage back up in those drainage tunnels they had snuck through to reach the shaft that fed this very stream. “My tastes are … less refined, perhaps,” she said, handing the mussels back to Arian. “I think we ought to wait until we have some fire, at least.”

“Suit yourself,” said Arian, though she made no effort to pry the creatures open and pop them into her mouth either. She just tossed them back into the water as she turned to carry on. “There should be plenty more around wherever we find the map and a supply cache. They were usually located together, as I recall.”

Though Arian walked along with confidence, their footsteps echoed oddly in the tunnel, making it sound, at times, as if they were being followed. Periodically they paused to listen, but decided that nothing followed them but their own noise, or at times, the scuttling swarms of tropical cockroaches that infested any of the islands’ darker, damper places.

“I am glad for your company, healer,” Arian said quietly after one such pause.

“I am glad for yours as well,” said Sian, wondering if her refusal of those mussels had been hasty. “Can we rest another minute? Would you mind?”

“All right,” Arian said, reluctantly.

Isn’t she tired too?
Sian wondered. Or did the drain of energy Sian experienced when she healed transfer into extra strength and energy for the recipient somehow?

Sian sank down against the tunnel’s tiled wall, as Arian sat beside her, giving their little globe another shake. It felt unbelievably good to stop. Even if she weren’t starving, Sian was too old for this kind of adventure: too old by far. She leaned back and closed her eyes, rubbing them with grubby fingers. If she caught some horrible infection from the grime and filth down here, she could just heal it, she supposed.

For some reason, these thoughts of infection brought Arouf to mind, his face red with incoherent anger after she had healed Bela. Then real rage — at their parting. Before that day, she had never imagined him quite so … unhinged. Though large and strong, he’d always seemed a gentle man.

“It must be something new husbands do,” Sian said, “picnic lunches. My Arouf took me to the top of Little Loom Eyot when we first bought the island, before we’d built anything at all there. He pretended we were just going up to survey the site — deciding where to put the loom house and the dye works, where to build our home. But when we’d hacked our way through the jungle and reached the summit, he pulled out a white damask tablecloth and a whole delicious meal he’d hidden all the way up there beforehand; that morning, I suppose, while I’d still been sleeping. Even a jug of wine!”

“Viktor had the entire Factorate House rebuilt so that I would feel ‘at home,’” said Arian, “though his ideas about what ‘home’ should look like were, perhaps, a bit more ostentatious, and a trifle less tasteful, than my father’s had been.” She laughed softly. “My husband is a good man, Sian, if not entirely practical, sometimes.”

Sian thought about the Factor’s
impractical
handling of that giant corpse now hailed as the Butchered God, but said nothing. She thought as well of the few times she’d visited the Factorate House. It had seemed a fairly nice palace to her, though she did not say this either. “Arouf is not managing things as well these days,” she was startled to hear herself say instead.

Arian gave her a sober look. “To be honest, neither is Viktor.” She looked away. “And I fear it is, at least in part, my fault.”

“Your fault?” Sian asked hesitantly, wondering, suddenly, if it was quite safe to be sitting here with the Factora-Consort of Alizar, discussing the details of their marriages. Were the Factor and Factora-Consort’s private troubles and uncertainties proper fodder for such conversation with a common anybody? Then again …
She is a woman, just as I am,
Sian thought.
Flesh and blood. Love and loss. Wife and mother. Why should two women — relatives in fact — not discuss their men?
“How exactly, do you mean?”

“I have allowed him … no,
encouraged
him to rely on me too much,” said Arian. “I have
managed
him to the point where he is incapable of facing his own place as Factor here without me. And now, he is without me. At such a time.” She gazed at the dark water. “Is he crumbling beneath the strain, I wonder? Or finding some inner strength at last, now that I am absent?” She released a quiet, bitter laugh. “And which of those do I most hope for, deep inside?”

Sian shivered as Arian’s words struck home. “It is … the same, I think, with Arouf and me.” She felt astonished, having thought for all these years that he must be grateful for her part in their success! “For years, I have managed our business, our whole lives, and he just … lets me.” She turned to stare at Arian. “Our marriage too was so lively once. So full of passion. Now, we live as nothing more than acquaintances — or did, at least. Before all this. We have not even shared a bedroom since our younger daughter was born. Is this why? Have I … put him to sleep somehow? By doing everything, and leaving him without anything of his own to strive for? Any sense of equal purpose?”

“Viktor’s bedchamber and mine are not even in the same wing now,” sighed Arian.

They sat in pensive melancholy for a while.

“I am rested enough,” Sian said, climbing back up to her feet. The thoughts roiling through her mind now made her want to move. “Let’s get you back to Viktor. Just in case he does still need your help.” They smiled at one another as Arian stood too.

As they set off again, Sian struggled with this new frame Arian had given her through which to view her troubles with Arouf. Had she stifled him? Was she at fault for their waning relationship? The idea did seem somewhat compelling, and yet, she still felt very angry with him, though the reasons for that anger seemed more muddled now. She saw she’d likely had a part in their disintegration, but she certainly felt no new desire to go running back and apologize.

As focused as she was on this new line of questions, it became harder and harder to ignore her stomach. She found herself recalling every detail of that long-ago picnic on the unnamed island which had become Little Loom Eyot. Arouf had been so proud of his culinary prowess then, though he was a far more accomplished cook now. Not that she would ever taste his spicy sweetprawn stew again … A tear or two mingled with the dampness of the air on her face, though whether for the loss of her husband, or of his cooking, she was still unsure.