“Who do you think?” Rhiow said.
Arhu stared at her, completely bemused.
“They eat each other,” said Urruah.
Arhu’s jaw actually dropped. Then he laid his ears flat back and scratched the floor several times with one huge paw, the gesture of revulsion that many People make when presented with something too foul to ingest, either a meal or a concept. “They deserve what we did to them, then!” Arhu said. “They would have done that tous—”
“Almost certainly,” Saash said. “But as to whether they deserve to be killed, I wouldn’t care to judge: the Oath doesn’t encourage us to make such assessments.”
“Why not? They’re just animals! They come running and screaming out in big herds, and try to kill you—”
“We have responsibilities to animals too,” Saash said, “the lower ones as well as the higher ones who can think or even have emotional lives. But leaving that aside, you haven’t been in their minds enough to make that assessment.” Saash wrinkled her nose. “It’s not an enjoyable experience, listening to them think and feel. But they’re sentient, Arhu, never doubt it. They have a language, but not much culture, I think—not since their people were tricked by the Lone One. There are memories.” She looked thoughtful. “Anyone can be delusional or believe lies that are told. But almost all the minds of theirs you might touch will have heard stories of how things were before the Lone One came—how their people really had a right to be called what we still call them as a courtesy-name, the Wise Ones; how they were great thinkers, though the thoughts would seem strange to us now … maybe even then. All very long ago, of course … but nonetheless, the Whispering seems to confirm the rumors. Now they have nothing left but a life in the dark … nothing to eat except each other, except at times when so many of them die off that they’re forced to go up into the sunto try to hunt; and not being adapted to the present conditions here, those who trythatmostly die, too. If the saurians hate us, they may have reason.”
“I don’t want to know about that,” Arhu said. “We’re going to have to kill a lot more of them if we’re supposed to do whatever it is you have in mind. Knowing stuff like that will only make it harder.” He stalked ahead of them, the epitome of the hunter: head down for the scent, padding slowly and heavily, eyes up, wide and dark in the darkness.
The other three went silently along behind him as they continued downward through the caverns, now slipping through unfamiliar territory and moving a little more slowly. Rhiow was still thinking of how she had seen the saurians eating one another, down there in the dark, with a ready appetite that suggested this kind of diet was nothing new at all. They would be seeing much more of that kind of thing, she was sure.I should be grateful, maybe,she thought,that my emotions are so dulled at the moment, that everything seems so remote…
“So where are all the lizards that came out of the gates the other day?” Urruah said softly, behind Rhiow now.
“Maybe they all came out,” Saash said, in an oh-yes-I-believe-this voice, “and they all died.”
“I doubt that very much,” Rhiow said. “Never mind. How was the catenary itself?”
“Structurally sound. But something is starving it of power, from underneath.”
“Could it be reactivated later?”
“Probably,” Saash said, “but I’ve got no idea whether the rules for reactivating it will be the same as they were yesterday.”
Arhu had gone down and around a corner, ahead of them, out of sight, and Urruah paused for a moment, looking up.“Interesting,” he said, coming over to Rhiow. “Look at the ceiling here.”
Rhiow and Saash gazed up.“Very round, isn’t it?” Saash said.
“One of those bubble structures you get down here,” Rhiow said. “The water comes in through a little aperture and then rolls loose stones around and around inside the larger one. It hollows the chamber right out, as if someone blew a bubble in the stone. There are a few chains of them down here; they show on old Ffairh’s map. He seemed to be interested in them.”
They walked on down through the spherical chamber, up and out the other side, and went after Arhu. There was indeed another such chamber on the far side, and they went through it as well, down into the depression at the center and up again to the exit. Past this was a long, high-ceilinged corridor devoid of the usual stalactites and stalagmites, trending very steeply downward so that they all had to slow and pick their way as if they were coming down one side of a peaked roof.
At the bottom of the corridor, the tiny point of greenish light that they had been following vanished; then their vision caught its glow, diminished, coming from off to the left, and reflecting on the shadowy shape of Arhu heading around the corner and leftward as well. The sound of water could be heard again, soft at first, then getting somewhat louder: an insistenttink, tink, tinksound, almost metallic in the silence.“Are we still going to be following that catenary down the tree,” Urruah said, “or is it another one?”
“Another. We pick it up”— Saash looked at her own mental “copy” of Rhiow’s map— “another five or six caverns down, and a little to the east. Maybe a hundred feet below where we are now.”
“I hate this,” Urruah muttered, as ahead of them the light got dimmer, and they followed it doggedly. “All this stone on top of us—”
“Please,” Rhiow said. She had been trying not to think about that Now, abruptly, she could feel all the weight of it pressing on her head again.As if I need this now! This isn’tfair—
Urruah looked up and suddenly stopped. Rhiow plowed into him and hissed; Saash ran into her but held very still, following Urruah’s glance. Rhiow looked up, too.
“Is it just me,” Urruah said, “… or does that look like a perfectly straight line, carved from the top of this tunnel all the way down?”
Rhiow stared at it—
The light ahead of them went out.
They all stood stock still, not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe.
No sound came from above but the steadylink, link, tink, tink…
And there were stumps of the stalagmites and stalactites back there,Saash said suddenly,but where were the leftover pieces? They should have been all over the place. And what about your stone bubbles? Where were the little stones that should have been left lying around?…
Rhiow licked her nose, licked it again. They stood there blind in the dark; even People must have some light to see, and the darkness was now absolute.
Arhu!Rhiow said inwardly.
No answer.
Arhu!!
I’m trying to sidle,he said silently,and I can’t.
But what for?Rhiow said.
It’s going to cause you tremendous trouble to try to sidle down here; there’s too much interference from the catenaries, even when they’re down,Saash said.Stay still. What is it?
There was a silence, and then Arhu said,They’re down here. I put the light out. They didn’t see me.
In absolute silence, Rhiow and the others inched their way forward, going by memory of what the corridor had been like before the light failed. Rhiow’s heart was hammering, but at least this time the light had gone out for a reason she didn’t mind.
“They?”
I hear five of them breathing,Arhu said.They’re not faraway.
Rhiow and Saash and Urruah crept forward. Then something tickled Rhiow’s nose, and she almost sneezed. It was Arhu’s tail, whipping from side to side.
Which way?Rhiow said, as soon as she got control of her nose again.
Straightforward. Then right. See that? It’s faint—
Itwas: Rhiow could hardly see it at all. From ahead and to the right, and sharply downward, came the reflection of a diffuse light, reddish, seeming as faint as their own had. It leached the color out of everything: there was nothing to be seen by it but furry contours in dull red and black. In utter silence, they crept closer; and in her mind, Rhiow felt the familiar contours of the neural-inhibitor spell, felt for its trigger, that last word. She licked her nose.