House of the Rain King, page 22
All along the bank, the other marge-men were doing the same. The effect was hard to conceive of, even as it happened before her eyes. She was reminded of a great fair held on Kelki’s Common when she was a girl. There had been a big tent sewn together from multiple sheets of canvas, and the Kingfisher sisters had enjoyed unlacing some of the ties and slipping between the sheets—inside, outside, and back in. That was what it looked like now, as the marge-men burrowed into the space between river and riverbank.
Now they were tugging at Pelomeda’s and Emwort’s hands. It was obvious what would come next.
“Is it… safe?” said Pelomeda.
The marge-men only pulled more firmly. One of them lifted up the ‘sheet’ of the water and beckoned.
Emwort swallowed. “I’ll go first,” he said.
“No,” said Pelomeda. “Together.”
So they went—headfirst, together, into the slimy depths of the place between.
27
THE SHAFT
Tarwin had no hope of sleep that night. Shivering and damp, he suffered through a shapeless expanse of time. Thoughts of water poured endlessly through his mind.
The Sparrows had made camp outside, under the trees. They could have been a little drier if they had slept inside the Tombs, but nobody had wanted to lie down in that blackness with the dead things moving beneath. So they slept on the hillside, first digging trenches to route the water around the camp. Their beds were made from she-oak needles and fallen leaves.
There was a watch set on the Tombs. They had barricaded the stairway to keep the dead sealed below. If anything tried to break through, the sentry would hear it and rouse the camp.
Each watch was an hour; at the end, the sentry would return to pass their lantern on to the next. Those flickers of rain-slick light, those soft murmurs beneath the leaves, were for Tarwin like islands in a vast sea. He was sure each hour was twice as long as the last. He would lie awake thinking: now... now… now it must surely be time for the next watch. But time would crawl on, undefeated.
It did crawl, though. So at last it came to Tarwin’s watch.
He had practically begged Fitchin to let him have this. Fitchin had shrugged and put Tarwin in at the sixth hour—between Spinney and Fitchin himself. Now Spinney was finished at last. She lumbered down the slope like a sleepwalker, kicked Tarwin once on his shoulder, and dropped the lantern by his head. She was under her cloak and snoring by the time Tarwin had got to his feet.
He trudged up the hill, between the brambles. Finding a slightly sheltered spot within view of the Tombs’ mouth, he settled down to wait. There was an hour’s worth of oil in the lantern. When it began to burn low he would wake Fitchin for the next shift.
He was not going to go inside.
As Fitchin had said, there was no point knowing the height of the water. But the not-knowing was unbearable. And this hour dwarfed all those that had passed before it in the dreary night.
He went back and forth with himself for a long time. The oil was more than half burned away. At last he made a silent prayer to the Ancestors for guidance, and that decided it at once. Would Kelki hesitate at such a threshold? Would Gweir be afraid of an empty chamber, with friends and aid only a shout away?
The upper level was cleared and the entrances below were all sealed. It was as safe as anything could be. And he was only going to look, after all.
Leaving the lantern behind, Tarwin crept back to the camp’s edge and grabbed a spare coil of rope that was sitting under a tree. He had—if he was being honest with himself—already noticed it, already been aware of how easy it would be to take.
With the rope over his shoulder and the lantern in his hand, he slipped in through the mouth of the Tombs. Everything was just as they had left it. Nothing moved but the endless dripping of the water. He went quickly through the central chamber and into the room with the shaft.
The shaft was narrow, no more than six feet across. The Sparrows had blocked it by laying some heavy planks over the gap, with a box of rusty garden tools on top as a makeshift alarm. Tarwin carefully lifted box and planks aside. Beneath them was the black pit, the water pouring down into the deep.
He took out the rope. The Sparrows had brought it, but he recognised it as Rain House rope, good strong hemp, and therefore he felt he had a right to it. He tied one end around a wooden pillar a few feet from the opening. The other end he tied to the lantern. Then he began to lower it, foot by foot, into the shaft.
The light went away from Tarwin very quickly. He was left in darkness, looking down into the shaft that was now full of light. The waterfall gleamed, so that the lantern seemed to be shadowed by a ghostly twin.
Tarwin counted as he payed out the rope, foot by foot. A fizzy elation began to grow in his stomach: There is still time…! At ten feet the lantern passed an archway in the wall. That would be the second level. At twenty feet there was only blank wall. Then, at thirty feet, another entrance. Thirty feet! The Tombs ran deep into the hill, far deeper than anyone in the Tile had ever suspected.
Tarwin got excited. He started to pay the rope out faster. That was why he hit the skeleton on the head.
There was a muffled clang. The lantern swung and Tarwin saw the dead all packed together. There were dozens of them crammed into the narrow throat of the shaft. All of them were drowning.
Here was the waterline at last. But the water itself was hardly visible beneath the crush of skeletal bodies. They fought constantly toward the light and air, but thwarted each other forever. As soon as one got purchase on the wall, other hands reached up to drag it down. Whenever a dead mouth opened to draw breath, it was pulled back and flooded with water.
Tarwin watched, frozen by horror. The skeleton he had struck with the lantern now shook its head in a horribly human gesture. It blinked up at the sudden light. Then it lifted its hands and clung to the lantern with all its strength.
“No—!” Tarwin hauled on the rope. The skeleton hauled back. In its eyes there was no hatred, only terror. It held the lantern as only a drowning person could. Tarwin felt a kind of revolted sympathy for the dead things then. But it would not stay his hand. He would cut the rope at once, before they had a chance to climb. Where was his knife? Had he left it by his bed? He took a step back and trod on one of the wooden planks. It slid underneath him and he pitched forward into the shaft.
The fall was only air, darkness, singing guts. No thought. Halfway down he struck the far wall—a mighty wallop across his thigh, hip and shoulder. He bounced. The rope slithered through the air beside him. He clutched it to himself with both arms and legs, a desperate embrace. His mind was still empty but his instinct said hold, hold and he held.
The rope pulled taut with a snap that shook every bone in his body. It rushed through his hands and burned his palms like fire. Dizzy, in a matrix of cavorting shadows, he swung above the pit and knew he could not hold on more than a moment longer. He saw the faint outline of a ledge and lurched for it. Landed on hands and knees. Sucked in a breath and staggered to his feet.
The lantern’s light had gone dim. He could just make out a narrow chamber around him, and the rope drawn taut in the shaft.
The rope…!
He was still alright. All he had to do was climb back up the rope.
He reached for it, and in doing so looked down. It was a horrible sight. The lantern was now completely encased in skeletal bodies. They wrapped themselves around it like the painted dancers on a shadow-lantern, casting images of bone and sinew across the walls. They clung to the rope for salvation. Those that could not reach the rope itself clung to those that could, linked limb to limb in a single desperate mass. All of them hauling themselves up toward Tarwin.
He had to climb. His hands were already rope-burned raw. He thought about wrapping them in his cloak—
The rope snapped.
The dead plunged back into the water. For a moment Tarwin could see their staring eyes, their mouths gaping in dismay. Then the lantern sank under and went out.
The darkness was absolute. It struck him like a physical blow. He fell back, crushed by the enormity of how badly he had gone wrong. He sat on the cold stone floor and shuddered, wracked by his mistake, pinned by it. The feeling that overwhelmed him was not terror, but shame. Shame for his fool’s confidence, for his self-reassurances: It will be fine. What could go wrong? He had thought he was a man, but he was only an idiot boy. And now he was going to die for it.
He had just enough presence of mind to stay quiet. He listened. Besides the splashing from the shaft, there were other noises. Soft scratchings in the dark. He could not tell if they were near or far; the stone halls magnified every sound but stripped it of location.
Shakily, he got to his feet. From the brief glimpse he’d caught before the light went out, he thought he was in a landing room much like the one he had fallen from. There was only one door. He groped forward blindly and found it. By the Saints’ grace it was already closed; he fumbled for the bolt and drew it shut.
His mind still rang with recrimination, a looping call like some rare judgmental bird: STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. But beneath that, in a calm reservoir, he was already nurturing thoughts of how to survive.
The next watch was Fitchin’s. It would probably begin in a quarter-hour or less. Of course, Tarwin was meant to go back to camp and wake Fitchin up. But Tarwin had already seen that Fitchin had an uncanny ability to sleep exactly as long as he intended to. Fitchin would wake at his appointed time, and come looking for Tarwin.
All Tarwin had to do was wait.
Time and the darkness tortured him. Everything he had suffered through that sleepless night now came back to him a hundredfold. Listening for Fitchin’s footfalls, he heard things that were not there, murmuring voices that sounded like Kittan, Bors, or the orphan-master of the Rain House. He saw things also: darkness within darkness, worms and black sparks tunnelling across his sight.
When the light really did come, he thought it was another illusion at first. But no, there could be no doubt. Lantern light gleamed once more on the waterfall and cast shadows down the shaft.
Tarwin felt sick. He drew in a breath and gave a whisper-shout, as loud and quiet as he could make it: “Fitchin!”
The light shifted. Fitchin’s aquiline face appeared at the top of the shaft. He looked for a moment, then vanished again. The light retreated.
Tarwin bit back a sob.
He will come back he will come back he will—
The wait was probably less than a minute, but it felt longer than all the dark hours combined. Finally Fitchin reappeared. Tarwin had to stifle tears of joy. He whispered up the shaft: “I’m here! Fitchin, I fell—”
Fitchin raised a finger to his lips.
Very swiftly, he took off his cloak and boots. He looped the ring handle of his lantern through his belt, so it sat against his hip. Then he leaned forward and dropped catlike into the shaft.
His bare feet and hands shot out, and with his body like a bridge he braced himself against the opposing walls. He came to a halt. Then he descended, quickly and calmly, hand by hand and foot by foot.
Tarwin barely spared a thought for what a feat of strength it was. All he knew was the craven relief flooding through him: Fitchin is here, Fitchin is here. He backed away as Fitchin arrived, swinging crisply down onto the ledge.
“Fitchin,” said Tarwin. “I was so stupid, I—”
Fitchin snatched Tarwin’s hand and turned it over. He examined the rope burns. “Can you hold an unknotted rope?”
“I think so. I should have—”
“I have roused the camp. They will come soon with a rope. If you cannot hold it, I will need to tie a harness under your armpits.”
Then Fitchin froze. He cocked his head to listen. A moment later Tarwin heard it too: dry footsteps beyond the door. Something pushed on the door, gently at first, then with greater force. The bolt rattled.
There was a hiss of breath into desiccated lungs. Then the door leapt as though it had been struck with a sledgehammer. Directly after came the clatter of more skeleton feet, more horrid wheezing breaths.
“Hold the door,” said Fitchin. Tarwin ran forward and put his shoulder against it. The next blow nearly knocked him off his feet. The wood around the bolt was starting to splinter.
“How long till they come with the rope?”
“Too long,” said Fitchin. “We must seek another course.”
He scanned the room with his lantern. There were no other exits. There was nothing at all, really—only a few collapsed shelves, and a big stone basin set into the wall. Underneath it was a recessed firebox, the stone blackened by long-dead flames.
Fitchin thrust the lantern into the firebox. There was nothing there, only ash. Next he put the lantern into the tub.
“Here!” he said.
At the back of the basin was an opening. A channel leading into the wall. As the light played across it, something—a rat?—scuttled away out of sight.
“We will hide in here,” said Fitchin. “You must go first.”
“We won’t fit!” said Tarwin. The channel was perhaps two feet across and half as high.
“Your body will surprise you,” said Fitchin. “Go now.”
Without waiting for an answer, he darted back to the edge of the shaft. There he drew a very slim knife from his belt and tossed it upward like a juggler. The blade spun out of sight and did not come back down.
“You have to go back,” said Tarwin. “You can climb the shaft! Leave me here and—“
“I cannot do that. We signed a contract.”
Another mighty blow struck the door. Tarwin cried out, ran to the basin and thrust himself in headfirst. The darkness inside was horrible. He could move forward only by drawing his arms up to his chest and wriggling forward like a worm.
Panic drove him on—panic, and the determination not to shame himself any more than he already had. He went on and on into the darkness, scraping his belly and shoulders and back.
Behind him, he could feel Fitchin following, pushing the lantern in between them. They writhed forward a few moments more, then Fitchin hissed: “Stop! Quiet!” And he blew out the lantern, and the darkness was absolute again.
They lay still. There was a crash as the door finally burst open, followed by skeletal footsteps in the room. Tarwin could picture the dead so clearly, standing in the blackness, swinging their heads back and forth in search of their prey.
He held his breath.
From the top of the shaft came a voice amplified to enormous proportions. It was Warlock.
“Fitchin? Fitchin! …Where in all gods’ names are you?”
28
VERBS AND NOUNS
Warlock stood looking down the shaft. The stuff Fitchin had left behind was laid out like the components of some shitty riddle. A soldier climbs down a dank hole in the middle of the night, leaving the following: his boots, his cloak, a broken rope, and a signal dagger. Where did he go and why?
Warlock was groggy, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. Magpie Daughter had woken him only a few minutes earlier. She had been crouching over him, whispering: “Warlock… this dagger landed by my head!”
The signal daggers were an invention of the Commander’s, though it was Fitchin who had truly mastered their use. The curves of each blade carried a hidden meaning: trap here or don’t trust or be ready to leave. The Sparrows had not made so much use of them in recent years, but Warlock still knew all the codes. The knife Magpie Daughter had brought him meant: gone in, follow me.
Warlock had roused the camp with a roar. Not waiting for anyone else, he and Magpie Daughter had gone straight into the Tombs, and the shaft was the very first place they’d looked. That was where they found the second signal dagger. Just lying there on the water-slick stone.
The meaning of this one was: pinned down, send help.
It was the last dagger the Commander ever left them, two days before they died.
“Fitchin!”
Warlock’s voice came back to him a hundredfold. There was no answer. But down in the shaft he could see the shapes of skeletons, sticking their heads out and glaring up at him, like downstairs neighbours irritated by the noise.
The Sparrows were packing into the landing room now, carrying lanterns, weapons, rope. They were leaderless, but the strength of the Sparrows was that everyone had a good head on their shoulders. Without being ordered, a couple were already guarding the stairway door, and others were searching the rest of the upper level.
“Who was on watch before Fitchin?” Warlock asked the crowd.
“It was—”
“Tarwin.”
“Where’s Tarwin? Anybody?”
A forest of shaking heads. Magpie Daughter clutched her feather cloak around herself.
“You don’t think he went down there, do you?” she said. Her voice grew faint. “But nobody could possibly… survive…”
“Not true,” said Warlock. “Fitchin threw this dagger. It means send help. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think he had a chance.” He turned to the Sparrows. “They could both be still alive down there.”
A dozen people started talking at once. To their credit, they all stopped pretty quick and looked at each other. They needed a Captain.
“Who’s got the command?” asked Mulefire.
“Knocks,” said several people. Fitchin had nominated him as second, so in Fitchin’s absence he would be the new Captain.
“Where is he?”
“I’m here,” said Knocks, who always faded into the background unless you were looking for him. “I’m thinking. Alright. Sable, run a lantern down the shaft. Warlock, with me. Everyone else search the rooms upstairs.”
