“We were lucky,” Wiltzon agreed. “We must be more alert in the future. Did they really fail to put the logs in place? That is frightening.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “But what happened? In all of this confusion, I forgot why you were away. Did the thing work?”
“It worked perfectly. The first flare went out during passage, and that worried us. I fastened the others to stones to keep them upright, and they kept burning.”
“The rabbits?”
“As far as we could tell, they went precisely where we intended them to go and arrived in excellent condition. There is quite a jolt to the landing, and some of them seemed momentarily stunned, but they got over it quickly and hopped away. The sending has never been a problem. It is the sending to a precise place and a precise time that is difficult. Now Egarn has identified two places and two times, and that gives him a basis for calibrations.”
“What did Egarn say?”
“He was pleased, of course, but he said little. He is extremely tired. He has been working too long without a break. I wish we could make him rest occasionally.”
“Did you remind him about the money?”
Arne shook his head. “We were much too preoccupied with the experiment. But he will remember. He will scan again today, I’m sure. Perhaps he will be able to suck some up for you.”
“The money is important. Roszt and Kaynor are having trouble understanding it. Don’t go—you are hurt, and you have been up all night. Rest yourself and take some food.”
Arne shook his head impatiently. “I must see about replacing a rotten bridge plank.”
“Surely it can’t be that urgent!”
“It must be done at once. I will tell you about it later. Everyone deserves a rest, especially Egarn, but he won’t take one, either. It was an eventful night. Tell Roszt and Kaynor, will you?”
“I will tell them,” Wiltzon promised. “It has been an eventful morning, too. Don’t try to do more than you have to.”
Arne nodded and went out. In his anxiety about the prince and her lashers, he had forgotten just how eventful the night had been. When Inskor first mentioned Egarn’s plan to him, he thought it an old man’s senile fantasy. Now each incredible step forward seemed no more remarkable than reaching the next kilometer stone on a well-marked road.
And the Great Secret was still safe. The villagers he came in contact with on this day might notice that he seemed more tired than usual, but none of them would suspect that he had just spent a night looking some three hundred sikes into the past and transposing objects through time.
8. EGARN
Old Marof, moving his creaky bones with determined steadiness, took twice as long to reach the ruins as he would have normally, but on this day there could be no mistake. He followed the most devious route possible, using paths and dim forest trails known only to local one-namers, and he paused repeatedly to make certain he hadn’t aroused the curiosity of a lasher patrol.
Finally he arrived at one of three locations called “checkpoints”—one of Egarn’s strange words that Marof always meditated while he waited. This “checkpoint” was located in an overgrown hollow, so why was it a point? Marof seated himself on a log, leaned back comfortably against a tree, and relaxed. Eventually, when the sentries were positive he hadn’t been followed, one of them would come for him. Egarn called the watchers above ground “sentries” and those below ground “guards,” which gave Marof more words to meditate.
Egarn also called everyone living and working there— sentries, guards, helpers, and crafters—his “team”—another strange word. Marof occasionally acted as sentry when one of the regulars was sick or had another job to do. He admired Egarn, but he preferred to work for Arne. Arne always let a helper know what was happening. Few of those on Egarn’s “team” seemed to understand what he was doing except that it was something important to all of them.
Local people had a superstitious dread of the ruins and avoided them. Marof could understand why. From his position in the hollow, he could see the mysterious tower looming above the overgrown remains of collapsed buildings like a petrified monster about to feed on them. As a sentry, on days when absolutely nothing was happening, he relieved the monotony by contemplating the tower’s graceful, curved shape and wondering how it came to be there and what purpose it could have served. Egarn knew, of course, and Wiltzon, but their answers to his questions never made sense to Marof. From his position in the hollow, the tower seemed to be intact; from the opposite side, it looked as though a larger monster had taken a bite out of it. Around its base, the ruins that cluttered the forest floor reared up from deeply delved concrete roots to flaunt their strangeness. An enigmatic people of the past had lavished long forgotten skills on them and then, for inscrutable reasons of their own, left them for time to erode.
The sentry approached soundlessly. He was Havler, a middle-aged man with a crippled leg. Like most of the members of Egarn’s team, he was a one-name refugee who had lost his family in the wars. He was an excellent sentry. He moved slowly, but he saw and heard everything.
Marof delivered his message in a whisper, made certain Havler understood it, and then left immediately. He had his own work to perform, and the sooner he reached South Wood Road and began inspecting bridges, the better.
Marof vanished into the trees; Havler turned in the opposite direction and chirped a bird call before he limped soundlessly toward the ruins. Just outside the concealed mouth of a tunnel, he whispered Marof’s message to Connol, who was serving as head sentry for the day.
Connol gestured at the ground. “I suppose they should be told.”
“Aya,” Havler agreed. “They certainly should.”
“I’ll go,” Connol said. Havler’s lame leg made him a slow messenger on stairs, and there were multitudes of stairs between them and the first of the guards stationed below. “Hold the post for me.”
Havler drew back into the trees and seated himself. He would act as head sentry until Connol returned. Arne had issued a stern order: the post could not be left unattended unless a raid were in progress—in which case the head sentry himself was to pull the alarm wire, make certain that the alarm actually sounded, and then withdraw with the other sentries, trying to distract the raiders’ attention from the ruins. The alarm wire sent a large basket of stones and scrap metal cascading down those endless flights of metal stairs, and if the racket this made was not quite loud enough to raise the dead, as the old saying went, it certainly would attract the attention of anyone below who was still living. Havler had heard the alarm tested.
The tunnel’s entrance was concealed by a layer of sod attached to a base woven of sticks. Connol pulled it open just far enough to admit him and closed it after him. There was barely enough room inside for him to crawl through the darkness on hands and knees. He made his way blindly around several obstructions, followed a sharp turning, and saw, far ahead of him, jagged patches of light that marked rents in the tunnel’s roof. The tunnel seemed to curve into infinity; actually, it went nowhere. When Connol reached a bulging rock, he scraped dirt from its edges and pressed on it until it pivoted to reveal an opening. The rock was a hollow shell fashioned of clay and fired to simulate a real rock. Connol entered and pivoted the fake rock into place behind him. On his return, he would replace the dirt.