At the door she glanced back. Spray slid down the perfect arc of the dome. For a second she imagined how it might be to stand here at night, in a storm maybe, the great swell crashing high, flinging spray over the tiny room lit only by Maker-lamps. Who had looked out from here all those years ago?
Not the Sekoi, that was sure.
“Thanks, Flain,” she said. Turning to the door she touched the discreet handle. The door slid aside, soundlessly, just as the doors in the House of Trees had done. Cautiously, Carys stepped out.
She was in a corridor. It ran into darkness in both directions. A low, barely heard hum filled it.
There were no windows. Light came from tiny studs in the floor; as she walked over them they lit up, and those behind her went off again. Amused, she stood still. The lights stayed with her, lighting again as she walked, a ripple underfoot of pale glimmers. She had no idea if this was the right way. But it sloped down, and after a while the chill deepened and the walls became rock.
She was under the seabed.
At the end were some stairs. They were wide and the balustrade had been carved into ornate festoons of fish and shells. As she crept silently down, small lamps lit for her passing, held in the rigid tentacles of stone octopuses, slithering around the handrail.
At the bottom was a hall. It was enormous, smelled salty, and the floor was covered with water. At first she thought this was some Maker-trick, but when she touched it with her foot it rippled; a shallow flood, right across the tiles. Under it eels seemed to slither, long watersnakes with raised fins, their colors blurring from green to turquoise in the gloomy light.
Carys splashed across. Was it supposed to be wet, or was there a leak in the roof? She quashed that thought and looked at the doors. There were at least eight. Choosing one at random she slipped through and stared.
She was in a gallery, and the whole roof and sides were made of the thick glass so she could see out, up through green depths of water. Terrified it might crack, and the vast implosion of ocean sweep her away, she stared up, shadowed by the creatures out there, great billowing rays, shoals of vivid fish, darting and flickering. Huge crabs scraped their shells soundlessly over the glass, and in places spiny coral had colonized it forming fantastic sacks and bizarre brittle structures that ribbon-snakes slithered through.
She wandered the gloom of the gallery in fascination, barely noticing the door at the end until it slid open with a hiss that made her whip up the crossbow, stepping into the darkness warily.
No lights came on. It felt like an enclosed space. She stepped forward and into something. A barrier. Gripping the cold tubing, she peered over, and bit her lip in awe.
A great pit opened in the floor. It plunged endlessly down, dizzyingly deep, as if for miles below. At intervals a ring of small purple lights glowed, so close to each other down there, they seemed continuous.
Giddy, Carys jerked back. She scratched her hair with cold fingers and laughed shakily. “The Sekoi certainly have secrets.”
Perhaps her voice activated something. Because the lights instantly changed color. Far down in the depths a dim whine started up.
Carys ran. She panicked, racing back through a door that slid open into another corridor, then down it, her heart thudding.
When she stopped herself she gripped both fists and tried to think. The Sekoi had gone. So there must be a way out. It would just be a matter of finding it.
Half an hour later, she knew the place was a maze. It must run for miles under the sea, surfacing here and there in strange atolls and domes. Weary and dispirited, she wandered rooms with vast lakes where mer-fish swam, and past a whole series of waterfalls that cascaded down walls. An entire chamber was built of mother-of-pearl, another of white bone like a whale’s great belly. She stared up at it. It was as if she had been swallowed. And Galen was in trouble.
“Flain!” she yelled in sudden fury. “Were you only part of a story after all? How do I get out of here!”
She hadn’t expected an answer. But as she swung away, to her horror, the air spoke.
“I thought you’d never ask,” it said.
Carys whipped around. She jerked the bow up, taut.
“Come out,” she snarled. “Slowly!”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” The voice sounded amused. “I can’t come out. I’m not physically focused in quite the way you mean.”
It was a cool voice, oddly difficult to identify. Not a man’s. Or a woman’s.
Carys backed to the wall. The room was empty. She could see that.
“Who are you?” she breathed.
“I am the palace.”
“The palace?”
“Of Theriss. The Drowned Palace, the Sekoi call it, though that is something of a romantic fallacy. They’re a childlike race. But better company than none.”
Carys lowered the bow. “How can you be the whole palace?”
“In theory,” the voice mused, “you are, of course, right. It is a misconception. However, that is how I’m referred to. Specifically I am the intelligence of the palace. Its systems. Is this clear?”
“No.” Carys rubbed her hair and found it soaked. “Are you alive?”
“You do ask some interesting questions.” For a moment the voice sounded sardonic. “That one could take some time to answer. Let’s say I’m not a person as you’d define one.”
“Not . . . one of the Makers?”
Then it did laugh, an echoing sound. “I love it when you call them that. Tamar would have roared.”
Behind Carys a door swished open. She jumped and whipped the bow around but the voice said silkily, “Shall we chat as we go? You did ask for the way out.”
For a moment Carys hesitated. Then she propped the bow under one arm and marched out, head high, feeling very small and grubby.
“This is ridiculous,” she hissed. “They couldn’t have made the air talk!”
“They didn’t, of course. This way. And hurry. I have to keep the power down.”
The corridor lit up, a glimmer of pale light. Carys stalked down it in silence.
After a while the voice said acidly, “I appear to have annoyed you.”
“It’s just,” Carys snarled, “that I’ve been wandering around here for hours . . .”
“Yes, I was aware of you. I thought . . .”
“You can see me?” Carys stopped dead.
The palace laughed. “You are a philosopher. I can’t tell you what a change this makes. The Sekoi, bless them, tell everything in narrative. It takes so long! Their minds are not good at the abstract in any sense, though Flain told me once they’d be the real survivors. He’d be amused that they . . .”
“They brought me here.” Carys walked on quickly. She felt totally at a loss; this was another situation the Watch had never foreseen. But she had to get as much information from this patronizing creature as she could.
“They did. I’m always happy to let them in. Though they have strange ideas.”
“How long ago?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Since they brought me.”
“One day, six hours, twenty-seven minutes.”
“Flainsteeth,” Carys hissed. But it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought.
The palace laughed. “Left here. Watch the whirlpool.”
Dark water gurgled down a channel deep in the floor. Carys sidled past it. “Did the Makers live here?”
“Not as such. It was their pleasure palace. Mostly they were based in Tasceron, though Kest . . . Well, never mind Kest. How is the dear old city?”
“Black,” Carys said grimly. “Haunted. Soaked in eternal darkness. No one goes there.”
There was silence. When the palace spoke again its voice was oddly subdued. “The Sekoi told me that. I had hoped it was one of their tales.”