Daniel Akamarino rubbed at the fringes of hair spiking over his ears. “How?”
Silence. A l000ng silence.
When the Chained God spoke again, he/it ignored the question. “You are tired, all of you. Rest, eat, sleep, we will talk again tomorrow. If you will look behind you, you will see a serviteur, follow it, it will take you to a living area I’ve had cleaned and repaired for you. Daniel Akamarino, if you please, explain the facilities to your companions; you won’t find them too unfamiliar but if you have a question, ask the serviteur, it will remain with you and provide whatever you need, from information to food. Sleep well, my friends, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will be a busy time.”
They followed the squat thing the god called a serviteur through echoing metal caverns that existed in a perpetual twilight, the walls and ceiling festooned with ropy creatures whose pale leaves were like that rarest kind of white jade that has a tracery of green netted through it. Unseen things ran rustling through those leaves and the fibrous airroots brushed their faces like dangling spiderwebs. They walked on something crumbly that sent up geysers of dust at every step, dust that stank of mold and age. The farther they went, the stiller and staler the air became.
Daniel Akamarino stopped walking. “Serviteur.”
The iron manikin stopped its whirring clanking progress. Brann grimaced and felt at her own neck as it cranked its sensory knob about to fix its glassy gaze on Daniel. A crackling sound like dry resinpine burning lasted for half a breath, then words came out of it, odd uninflected words so empty of emotion that it took Brann several seconds and some concentration to understand them. “What do you want, Daniel Akamarino?”
“Get some airflow along here or we don’t move another step.”
“Air is adequate, Daniel Akamarino. A stronger current would disturb certain elements. Your quarters are nearby. If you please, continue.”
“With the understanding if your idea of nearby and
Shimmerglobes darted past Brann, went flashing through the nearest wall of a room like the inside of an egg, painted eggshell white with a fragile ivory carpet on the floor; there were a number of odd lumps about, they might have been chairs of a sort, or something far stranger. There were ovals of milky white glass at intervals around the walls, their long axis parallel to the floor. The room was filled with a soft white light though there were no lamps that Brann could see. It was as if someone had bottled sunlight and decanted it here. There were six oval doorways filled with a sort of glowing mist, a mist that swirled in slow eddies but stayed where it was put.
Ahzurdan stood looking about him. He felt uneasy, he did not belong here; the walls drew in on him and he found breathing difficult though the air inside the eggroom was considerably fresher and cooler than that in the corridor. He could sense lines of godenergy, of magicstrength, weaving an intricate web within the walls, but he could not reach them. There were other lines of other forces that shivered just beyond his vision, they were worse, far worse, not only could he not reach them, they threatened to bind him and he did not know how to keep them off. He moved closer to Brann.