“And elvenkind?”
Gird’s face wrinkled. He had never said much about the elves, receiving the first elven ambassador with evident embarrassment and awe. “Think that their god made the world like a harper makes a song, if I understood what I was told—and I doubt I do. A song’s not a thing, like a stone you can count, or a lump of iron you can shape . . . it’s . . . it’s just a thought in the mind, until someone sings it again. It’s not really there, between singings. So how can the world be a song?”
“Maybe it’s not finished.” But even as he said it, Luap felt a shiver go down his spine . . . the world was, as Gird said: you could touch it, smell it, taste it. He could not imagine it as something becoming, not in its essence. Humans might move across the world, even change it, as the Aarean lords had laid waste some tracts of forest, but its basic reality didn’t change. He hoped.
Gird had grunted; now he prowled near the arches. “Dwarfkind, elvenkind, and this . . . I suppose . . . is for the gnomes?”
“What—lords of light and shadow!” That was a magelord’s oath, and earned him a sharp glance from Gird, but he could not help it. Luap swallowed an angular lump of confusion, and wondered if he should tell Gird that the arch he stood under had not been there before. Not there the previous trips, and not there a few—minutes?—ago when they’d first arrived.
“I don’t remember seeing this at first,” Gird said. His voice was husky; was he finally afraid of something? Luap swallowed again and forced the truth past his teeth, which wanted to grip it.
“It wasn’t here.” Gird gave him a long level stare. “I swear, Marshal-General—” in this context the title came easily, more easily than his name. “It was not here when I came before, and it was not here when we arrived.”
Over his head the arch bore the single unflawed circle of the High Lord, glowing with its own light, as the harp and tree, and the anvil and hammer. Up either column ran the same intricate interlacing patterns as on all other columns in that place, patterns he had seen in weaving or pottery all his life, now graved deep in polished stone. Gird’s hand reached out, drew back, went out again, thumbfirst, to follow one of the lines a short way.
“It must . . . must mean something. . . .” All the resonance had left his voice; his brow wrinkled. Of course it meant something; what else? But Gird stared up, mouth gaping as he leaned back. Luap wanted to say something, do something, but couldn’t think of anything effective. He wanted to think Gird was disrespectful, but couldn’t manage that, either. Gird reserved disrespect for humans. Now he gave Luap another one of his looks. “Did you go through, before?”
“Through one of these?” At Gird’s nod, he shook his head. “I would not chance it, marked as they were. And it felt wrong.”
“Humph.” Gird shook his head, to what question Luap could not guess, and turned away from the middle arch to Luap’s great relief. Back up the long, silent, echoing, empty hall, around the dais. “Back there?” Gird’s broad thumb indicated the openings hewn in the wall. Luap felt himself flushing, though why he couldn’t imagine.
“Yes . . . I did. Not far; I wasn’t sure of the light, of the directions—”
“Show me.” That was plain enough; Luap shrugged and led the way through the left-hand door. Heartwise, the peasant lore had it. Sunwise, to Arranha and the magelords. The passage ran as he remembered, with no surprising additions, level and dry, wide enough for three men to walk comfortably together. Gird crowded him, nonetheless. “Find any stairs to the outside?”
“No.” That had worried him; he knew there must be ways out, for the air to be so fresh. But in his limited explorations, all he’d found were empty chambers and these passages. Around a corner, then another. Ahead the passage forked. “I stopped here, and went back.”
“Wise, I would think.” Gird licked his finger and held it up. “Ah . . . we’ll try the left again.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“What?” Then he grinned, mischievous; Luap could have smacked him. “You mean being understone like this? That’s right—you came later. You knew I was with the gnomes, but not how long. All the winter that was, and never a day’s clean light, or living air. An hour or so of this won’t bother me.”
He wanted to believe that negated the courage, but he knew better. Gird had earned the right to be casual here, in those months with the gnomes. He followed Gird left away from the junction of passages, hoping his trailsense would hold here. Empty corridor followed empty corridor. Rooms opened here and there, blank and empty, floors gritty under his boots. Gird seemed to know where he was going, and Luap followed, stubbornly forcing his fear under control. Finally Gird stopped, and leaned on the wall.
“I’m tired. This could go on forever.”
“Mmm.” Luap leaned on the opposite wall, and looked down at his scuffed boots. He felt as if the stone were leaning back against him.
“We’ll go back.” Gird sighed. “I’d like to know where this is—which mountains. Dwarves would know.”
“Would they?” asked Luap. “If it doesn’t come out somewhere, maybe they never saw the outside. . . .”
Gird snorted. “They had to, to take out the stone they cut. And I’ve heard they know stone by its smell and taste . . . that a dwarf will know a rock brought from leagues away. The gnomes could do that, and they said dwarves could too.” He pushed himself off the wall. “Well. Back we go.” He led the way again, and Luap came behind, trying not to look back over his shoulder at what might follow the clangor of their voices. “You found a good surprise, Luap, I’ll give you that. Not like before, indeed.” He led on at a good pace, and soon they came back to the great hall; they could hear their footsteps ring in it before they arrived, as if it were a bell.
Luap let out breath he had not realized he held. “How did you know your way?” He could ask, now that they were safe.
Gird’s brows rose. “You didn’t? You count the turns, the doorways you pass, keep track of lefts and rights—”
And this was the man who formed half his signs wrong in writing, whose brow furrowed over a page of clear script, who could not reckon except by placing objects in a row and counting them. Luap managed not to shudder or glance back through the doorway. “And now?”
“Mmmm.” Gird looked around, up, around again. “I would still like to see the outside of this rock.”
And I, thought Luap fervently. He opened his mouth to say “Then we’ll go back.” and shut it, for Gird was strolling with perfect assurance—or what looked like it—down the hall toward the arches. He had never heard Gird pray, and he did not hear him pray now—but he was sure that pause before Gird walked under the arch with the High Lord’s sigil had in some manner been a request for permission. He himself did not run to follow, because (he told himself) it was disrespectful—he walked, quickly and quietly, and was in time to see Gird standing straddle-legged at the foot of a narrow curving stair that rose into the first darkness he had seen in this place. Gird turned and gestured.
“Come on, Luap; if it didn’t scorch me, it’s not going to hurt you.” Luap would have liked to be sure of that, but stepped gingerly through the arch, his heart pounding. It had not been there before, and now he had walked through it, and—he glanced back, to find the hall just as visible, just as empty, just as silent as before. From this side, too, the arches stood clear, each with its holy symbol.