“I don’t know,” said Ith, after a very long pause indeed. “… I heard a voice.”
“What did she say to you?”
Rhiow’s ears twitched at that, and then at the slow certainty that started to come into Ith’s voice, replacing the half-sullen, half-angry tone that had been there even while talking about his people’s coming triumphs. “She said, ‘The Fire is at the heart, and the Fireisthe heart; for its sake, all fires whatever are sacred to me. I shall kindle them small and safe where there are none, for the wayfinding of those who come after: I will breathe on those fires about to die in dark places, and in passing, feed those that burn without harm to any; the fire that burns and warms those who gather about it, in no wise shall I meddle with it save that it seems about to consume its confocals, or to die. To these ends, as the Kindling requireth, I shall ever thrust my claw into the flames to shift the darkening ember or feed the failing coal, looking always toward that inmost Hearth from which all flames rise together, and all fires burn undevouring, in and of That Which first set light to the world, and burns in it ever more…’ ”
Saash, still walking along nearby, was watching Rhiow sidelong, obviously so stunned that she hardly dared to think out loud. Rhiow had hesitated only once over what she’d heard, the word “confocal,” but the Speech made sense of it:those who sit about the same Hearth, the same fire.Rhiow licked her nose and swallowed, for all the rest of it she had understood perfectly. The words resonated in her chest and itched in her bones, as if she had known them forever, though she had only now heard them for the first time, in another species’ idiom. The Oath, there was never any mistaking the Oath.
Yet at the same time she heard in her mind the words of the Ailurin verse:Iau Hauhai’h was the Fire at the Heart…
Why is this coming inouridiom?
“She said, ‘If you desire the fate that awaits you, then go to the heights, go to the forbidden places, the halls of the doors. Through those doors your fate will find you, and lead you to its heart…’ ”
“She”? Which Power is he talking about? Which Powersdealwith saurians, for pity’s sake, except for the Lone One, way back when?Rhiow listened … but no answer came.
She licked her nose.But, oh dear Iau… another wizard. Asaurianwizard.
Thefirstsaurian wizard?
And carrying his species’ version of the Oath: an Oath in force. On Ordeal. Another wizard on Ordeal—
Great Queen of Everything, we’reallgoing to die down here!
Chapter Twelve
The walk went on, and on, and on, always downward, and the air got slowly more chill. Memory of past minutes started to dull for Rhiow in the wake of the repetition of stair after long stair, endless tunnels and dark galleries. The adrenaline jangle of the earlier hours had passed now, leaving only a kind of worn feeling, a state in which moving cost much more energy than usual. Light was at a premium down here, everywhere but near the central chasm: and Ith kept leading them farther and farther into tunnels in the living rock, away from the central delving.
Maybe“living” was a bad choice of words,Rhiow found herself thinking, for once again she was starting to get that feeling that the stone was leaning in and listening to her, or as if she were trapped in some huge dark lung, the walls pressing in on the exhalation, out as the mountain breathed.
Every now and then their path would take them out again toward the edge of the abyss. All of them went with great caution then: Ith himself began to creep along like a cat, taking a step, pausing, listening, taking another step … sometimes crouching hurriedly back into the dark with the rest of them as, some ways ahead, a muttering party of other saurians would pass. The occasional narrow window would give them a brief glimpse down into the abyss, but as they went deeper, Rhiow was finding these looks out into the open less of a relief from the claustrophobic “breathing” feeling than they had been at first The buildings, the terrible dark sculptures, the scale of the place itself were beginning to weigh on her spirit. Rhiow had heard that there had beenehhifin times not too long past who had meant to build in this idiom: vast belittling architectures, meant to make the creatures using them feel small and impotent, minuscule parts of some mighty scheme instead of free creatures all walking in the air under Rhoua’s Eye together.The Sun,Rhiow thought,wouldn’t I give a great deal for a sight of Her now? Real Sun, through real air… even New York air as brown as one of Urruah’s hamburgers and full of ozone…
But there was no hope of that now … and maybe never again. All Rhiow’s life, it seemed, was being gradually drowned out in this darkness, with the occasional punctuation of glimpses of that faraway fire down at the bottom of the abyss. The city streets, sunrises and moonsets, the sound of honking horns, wind in the trees of the Park, all of it was being slowly dissolved in still black air, humming sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, with the buzz and hiss of saurian voices in their hundreds of thousands.Maybe their millions. It seems likely enough…And as they crept very slowly closer to the fire at the bottom of things, paradoxically the cold increased: they couldn’t yet see their breaths, but that would come soon, Rhiow thought. She shuddered. She hated the cold, but she hated more, at the moment, what it stood for—the One Who doubtless awaited them down at the bottom.
“These long walks,” Saash said somewhat wearily, coming up beside Rhiow, “they really take it out of you. Remember that time on Mars?”
“Oh, please,” Rhiow muttered. Early in their work together, she and Saash had been involved in the rescue of an Andorrin climbing expedition that had come hundreds of thousands of lightyears to scale Olympus Mons … not in present time, but while it was erupting, in a previous geological era.The rescue had involved a timeslide that Rhiow and Saash had had to pay for, long walks through endless caves looking for the lost climbing party, much hot lava, and a lot of screeching from the expedition leader when the climbers were spirited out of the mountain just before it blew its top in thefinal eruption that made it the biggest shield volcano in this or any other known solar system. After days of trekking through those caves, hunting the lost ones by scent and lifesigns, and not a word of thanks for their rescue out of any of the Andorrins’ multiple mouths, Rhiow had come away from the experience certain that wizardry and its affiliated technologies should be confined to the Art’s certified practitioners. But there were large areas in this universe where (in the words of a talented and perceptiveehhif)science had become truly indistinguishable from magic, mostly because they were recognized as merely being different regions of the same spectrum of power, both routinely manipulated side by side by species among whom wizardry was no more covert than electricity or nuclear fusion.
Rhiow glanced ahead at Arhu, half-expecting some reaction along the lines of“You’ve been toMars?”—but he was paying no attention. He and Ith were still walking together, talking quietly. The temptation to eavesdrop was almost irresistible. Two wizards on Ordeal, one of them almost certainly the first of his species …what was going on?Impossible to tell, but their body language had not warmed in the slightest. The brains holding this discussion might belong to wizards, both part of the same kinship—but the bodies were those of cat and serpent, distrusting one another profoundly. Arhu was stifflegged and bristling, and looked like he wished he were anywhere else. As for Ith—Rhiow was uncertain what his kinesics indicated, except that his body was leaning away from Arhu while his head andneck curved toward him as they talked. At the very least, the message was mixed.
Saash was watching them, too. After a while she glanced over at Rhiow and said silently,We’reallgoing to die down here, aren’t we? It’s not just me.