‘At least you can believe us, then,’ Tynisa stated. ‘Those other creatures didn’t – the slaves.’
‘Believe?’ Orothellin echoed mildly. ‘Dear girl, I remember. I remember the sun and the sky. I remember rain.’ His voice was hoarse with wonder.
‘When did you come here?’ Tynisa demanded. ‘If there’s a way in—’
‘I have always been here,’ the great man told her. ‘Since there has been a “here”, here I have been.’
‘But that’s—’ Tynisa started, but Che put a hand on her shoulder.
‘It’s possible,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s just possible.’ How long ago was it, really? How old is this man? ‘But, yes, we come from above – from the Old World, if you want. Please . . . we need to get back. The Seal . . .’
The huge man gave out a low moan. ‘So it has happened at last. They broke the Seal.’
‘It was broken from the surface, by the Empress of the Wasps,’ Che told him, but of course he had no idea who he meant, or what Empire that was. ‘She has released the Worm,’ she pressed on. ‘She will ally with them, make use of them. She must be stopped.’
‘One does not ally with the Worm.’
‘She will,’ Che insisted.
Another vast sigh from Orothellin. ‘The Worm does not negotiate or deal. It cannot. It has only one goaclass="underline" for there to be nothing in existence but the Worm. All you see here, all those poor wretches in Cold Well, they are kept solely because their toil and their tax make them more useful to the Worm than their deaths would, but in the end all will be the Worm. That is what the Worm wants. And if the Worm can breach the surface, then perhaps it will not need any of this down here, not for much longer.’
‘Then we must stop it – but from up there,’ Che insisted, hearing the ragged sound of her own voice. ‘Please, you have magic. Can you send us out?’
‘If he could do that, do you think he’d still be here?’ Thalric demanded sharply.
‘Perhaps I could have left here a long time ago,’ the massive man mused, almost to himself. ‘I had power then, but it has bled away over the ages while I have hidden away here. I have a bare shadow of it left, now: so little that my kin would weep.’ He shook his head slowly, even that motion seeming to tire him. ‘If I could only sleep a little, then perhaps some might be saved up again, and I might accomplish something. But the Worm hunts me always. I have not slept in so very long.’
‘How long?’ Che asked, voice hushed.
He met her eyes, and she had to fight to hold that weighty ancient gaze.
‘I don’t think I have slept in a thousand years,’ he whispered.
‘Excuse me, sieur,’ Maure put in. ‘I am a magician of some small skill, back in our home. Here . . . I cannot find any strength here.’ Her hands were clasped together, wringing and twisting. ‘There is nothing . . . even in the great cities of the Apt it was not such a desert as this. But you . . . you hid us. That was not Art nor skill; that was magic.’
Orothellin smiled slightly. ‘I am pleased you think so. It was almost the last of my poor marshalled strength. I have that little only because the Worm does not know me. I have evaded its notice for all the time I have been down here. If it turned its gaze on me, I would be as helpless as you. More so: you at least could run.’
‘Then there’s nothing . . .?’ The halfbreed magician trembled, staring at the man’s sloping bulk as though she was starving.
‘Ah, little one, I am sorry.’ He took her hands, losing them entirely within his vast, gentle grip. ‘I have no gifts any more. A thousand waking years, what could there be?’
Che saw the woman twitch, eyes wide. The power that leapt between them was a mere spark with no tinder to goad into a blaze, but for Maure it must be water in the desert.
‘I am sorry,’ the big man repeated. Maure was weeping, though, holding her hands to her face to shelter that tiny mote of strength Orothellin had given her.
The big man turned his sorrowful gaze on the others. ‘You see, it is useless,’ he murmured. ‘I’m all used up. I can’t get out, and I can’t get you out. I can barely keep the Worm away for a few moments, perhaps not even that any more.’
‘Yet the Worms get out,’ Thalric objected. ‘Why not us?’
‘The Worm.’ Orothellin made a curious stress of the singular. ‘Can you walk the Worm’s path? The Worm has ways, but they are its own ways. My poor children,’ he said softly, ‘to find yourselves in this place. Can it be done? I cannot think it, but I can’t know, can I? The Seal has always held until now, no ray of hope in this place, no sun or moon. But perhaps you are right. Perhaps the boundaries between the New World and the Old are crumbling as we speak. Bring Messel back. Let me speak to him.’
Esmail, who had sat silent and unreadable throughout, went out to fetch the blind man, and Che leant closer to Orothellin, glancing sidelong at Thalric, whose expression was still one of fierce suspicion.
‘When the Seal . . . when it happened, why did you stay?’
Orothellin raised his eyebrows, as though he could not quite remember. ‘In all conscience, I stayed – we stayed, my countryfolk and I – because we were responsible for this place and the doom of all who were trapped here. Many of my people escaped at the start, while they still had strength. Of those who stayed, all the others have been found and killed. To my knowledge, I am the last.’
‘But Argastos made the Seal,’ Che argued.
‘His idea,’ the great man said, ‘but we all agreed, my people included. We are all responsible for this place. We – I – had hoped that I might help. I am dearly afraid that I have not been of much help to anyone, until now.’ For a moment he stared desolately into space, then: ‘I see how it may be done.’ It was as though he were divining, not by the ragged ends of his magic, but simply by thinking through each possibility, over and over. Messel had returned by then, to be greeted with: ‘You must be her guide.’
‘Not just her,’ Tynisa said instantly, but Orothellin held up a broad hand.
‘One alone might escape their notice. Messel, the Turning Spire, you know it? It overlooks . . .’
‘Their city,’ the blind man finished grimly. ‘If they catch us there, we will have nowhere to go.’
‘But she will see. Will you go, Messel?’
Che could read the blind man’s agitation, eyes or no, but at last he nodded. ‘Yes, Teacher.’
‘The rest of you . . . here is shelter, warmth, some food.’ A nameless expression crossed Orothellin’s haggard face. ‘And if you would keep watch, then perhaps I might sleep for even a day, an hour . . . it has been so long.’
After Che had gone off with Messel, Tynisa was left with the others, standing guard over the great bulk of Orothellin who lay sprawled at the back of the cave. The man had gone down like something punctured, sagging in collapsing folds until his massive frame was stretched out in sleep, his breathing slow but ragged.
Thalric wanted a fire but, without Messel or anyone from this otherworld to advise them, the others refused. Besides, what had they to burn? Nobody much fancied trekking out into the abyss to gather fungi and lichen, or going tapping the rocks in the hope of striking coal. So they huddled there in the cave and listened out for movement in the chasm of the world beyond, their only lights the distant false stars, and the darkness so absolute that Tynisa was scarcely better off than Thalric himself. Only Maure’s heritage gave her good enough eyes to pierce it.