They had seen nothing in the city to suggest a passageway or stairway leading aboveground. Sophia had lost sight of the others circling the perimeter, though she thought she could hear them over the constant sound of running water. Their voices drifted suddenly toward her; low and distorted by the echo in the chamber, they sounded like different voices altogether. She paused for a moment, straining anxiously to hear, and then the strange voices faded and the bubbling water that wound its way through the city in pale, shallow gutters drowned them out. She shook her head to clear it and walked on.
She was on the verge of reminding Shadrack about the staircase cut high in the wall when something else caught her attention. She stopped in her tracks. There was something odd in the air, she realized: a smell—no, a temperature change. It was suddenly almost freezing.
Theo and Shadrack had stopped as well, and they turned to look at one another. “Is it colder in here?” Theo asked. His own words answered him as his breath turned white.
Sophia knew what was coming, but she did not feel afraid, only shocked. They were too late; the change had come. The glaciers were moving overhead. A sudden rumbling sound, like the roar of a storm, exploded all around them. The ground began to shake, as if quivering under the weight of some unbearably heavy mass, and the buildings around them shuddered. Then the walls of earth groaned in agony, and Sophia felt certain that they would burst, crumbling to pieces before her eyes. Suddenly, as quickly as it had begun, the groaning stopped and the city grew still. Sophia looked around her, stunned. Is that it? she thought. Why are we still here? She had dropped to the ground and she stayed there, crouching warily. The dirt beneath her fingers was still reassuringly warm. She looked at Shadrack and Theo, who wore similar expressions of confusion.
Then she heard another sound—one that was entirely unexpected: the crack of a pistol. The pirates don’t have their pistols, Sophia thought, bewildered. Suddenly a sharp report echoed just over her head, and a chunk of calcified rock crashed to the ground beside her. She turned, hardly believing her eyes: crouched low by one of the towers was a Sandman, pointing his revolver directly toward her. Three other men standing beside him took aim.
35
Below the Lake
1891, July 1: #-Hour
In some parts of the Triple Eras, there is a great devotion to the Chronicles of the Great Disruption. In Xela, believers celebrate the “enday of the world,” a day that will spell the end of the human world. Followers of the Chronicles claim that the Great Disruption was the first of many, and that the Final Disruption will result in an end of all days.
—From Veressa Metl’s Cultural Geography of the Baldlands
FAR ABOVE THEM, up past hundreds of feet of rock, the glaciers were encasing Lake Cececpan. Ice had surrounded the lake, sending the few families who lived on its banks fleeing northwest toward Nochtland. The waves of refugees from farther south had already rushed past the city, convinced that even the high stone walls would offer no safety. Though the Southern Snows were still out of sight of the city, no one could now deny their inexorable advance. A line of boldevelas streamed out through the northern gates, trailed by even longer lines of people who traveled on foot or in wagons. The exodus northward had begun.
But the glaciers had not yet reached Nochtland, and for the moment they had halted at the banks of Lake Cececpan. Though the lake was no longer visible, it was still there. It appeared to have been swallowed by a large chunk of ice shaped like a perfect pyramid. The ice struggled to gain purchase against the patches of hot soil that protected the lake and portions of the tunnels below it. The vast city below ground remained buffered from the frigid air, but beyond it, where the tunnels and caverns were cut from ordinary earth, the water had frozen solid, marbling the rocks with veins of ice. The freezing water loosened rocks, causing innumerable tremors and crumbling the walls of the underground warren. As the rocks settled, the shaking stopped and cold air filled the tunnels.
Down in the underground city, Sophia ran as fast as she could, her damp boots sticking to the dirt. She and Theo followed Shadrack as he raced through the city, away from the Sandmen’s pistols and the falling rocks caused by their bullets. Sophia tried to call to him, but she was so out of breath that she could hardly find her voice. They had reached a narrow avenue, and while Shadrack slowed to find the easiest way out, Sophia managed to say, “Shadrack, up there.” She pointed, feeling sure that she could see the staircase and the opening high in the cavern wall. As she did so, a bullet hit the tower near her and a chunk of white limestone splintered over her head.
“Go on, then,” Shadrack replied urgently. “Hurry.”
Sophia took off. Her breath came more and more painfully. She turned a corner, slipping on the loose soil, and sped over a broad archway that led to the aqueduct. This has to be it, she thought, running beside the aqueduct, following it under two slender bridges.
Abruptly she found herself at a gate identical to the one at the city’s entrance, only a few feet from the far wall of the cavern. And she had been right—the stairs were there: cut into the stone, they zigzagged upward precipitously toward the opening in the wall. “This is it,” she cried, turning to the others.
There was no one behind her.
She stood, stock still, staring in disbelief at the pale buildings. She could hear shots and the thundering of footsteps, but she could not tell whether they were near or far. She was about to dive back into the city in search of Shadrack and Theo, but then the rocks above her head splintered with a loud crack, showering her with dust.
One of the men had seen her. He came from beside a building a good distance away, advancing steadily. While he held the revolver with his right hand, he loosened the long rope of the grappling hook with his left. Sophia had only two choices: she could run along the perimeter or she could climb the stairs. For what seemed like an eternity to her, she stood, full of doubt, as the man came toward her. Then she whirled and began to climb as fast as she could.
The steps were only three feet wide, and there was no railing. She kept her eyes forward and did not look down. He won’t climb, Sophia thought desperately, he’ll shoot rather than climb. As she heard the wall splinter behind her, she knew that she had guessed correctly. I have to make sure the others see me. Without stopping, she reached into the pocket of her skirt and dropped a seed—she did not wait to see if it sprouted. Her legs were beginning to feel weak and she could tell, from the trembling sensation in her knees, that she was slowing down. The stair beneath her bottom foot suddenly gave way, and she looked down in horror to see it crumbling beneath the prongs of the Sandman’s grappling hook. Keep going, keep going! she told herself fiercely, gritting her teeth and pushing forward. She passed another turn and dropped another seed. There was another turn, another twenty steps, another seed, another turn. . . . How much longer? she thought, not daring to look up or down. She counted, ticking off twenty steps and a turn and then another twenty steps. And then, at the top of the next flight, there it was: a narrow entrance in the stone.