The water was a cold shock, but he had expected that. He dove deep and swam as hard as he could toward the spot where he had seen the light. The water was wonderfully transparent. Rock, just solid rock on the other side of the pool. Perhaps lower then. The water soaked into his clothes and helped pull him down, almost to the bottom, where a ledge cut across the pool. Below it, the current quickened and moved outward. Headfirst, pushing against the rock above, he went under, bumped along a short channel and was in the clear again.
Above him now was more light, far above, inaccessible. He kicked and stroked but it seemed to come no closer. The flashlight fell from his mouth and spun down to oblivion. Higher, higher. Though he was going toward the light, it seemed to be getting darker. In a panic he thrashed his arms, although they seemed to be pushing against mercury on some medium far thicker than water. One hand struck something hard and round. He seized it and pulled and his head was thrust above the surface of the water.
For the first minute all he could do was hang from the tree root and suck in great, rasping breaths of air. When his head began to clear, he saw that he was at the edge of a pond almost completely surrounded by trees and undergrowth. Behind him the pool ended at the base of a towering cliff that stretched upward until it vanished in the haze and clouds above. This was the outlet of the underground stream from the plateau.
He was in the lowlands.
Pulling himself out of the water was an effort, and when he was out, he just lay on the grass and steamed until some small fraction of his strength had returned. The sight of some berries on the nearby bushes finally stirred him into motion. There were not many of them, which was probably for the best, for even these few caused racking stomach pains after he had wolfed them down. He lay on the grass then, his face stained with purple juice, and wondered what to do next. He slept, without wanting to, and when he awoke, his head was clearer.
“Defense. Every man’s hand turned against the other. The first local who sees me will probably try to brain me just to get these antique furs that I’m wearing. Defense.”
His knife had vanished along with his flashlight, so a sharp fragment of split rock had to do. A straight sapling was raw material and he worried it off close to the ground with the chip of stone. Taking off the branches was easier, and within the hour he had a rough but usable quanterstaff. It served first as a walking stick as he hobbled eastward on a forest path that appeared to go in the right direction.
Toward evening, when his head was starting to swim again, he met a stranger on the path. A tall, erect man in semimilitary uniform, armed with a bow and a very efficient-looking halberd. The man snapped some questions at Jason in an unknown language, in answer to which Jason simply shrugged and made mumbling noises. He tried to appear innocent and weak, which was easy enough to do. With his drawn skin, tangled beard and filthy furs, he certainly couldn’t have looked very ominous or appetizing. The stranger must have thought so too, for he did not use his bow and came forward with his halberd only indifferently at the defense.
Jason knew that he had only one good, or halfhearted, blow in him, and he had to make it count. This efficient looking young man would eat him alive if he missed.
“Umble, umble,” Jason muttered, and shrank back, both hands on the length of stick
“Frmblebrmble!” the man said, shaking his halberd menacingly as he came close.
Jason pushed down with his right hand, pivoting the quarterstaff with his left so that the end whipped up. Then he lunged it forward into
the other’s midriff in the region of the solar plexus ganglion. The stranger let out a single, mighty whoosh of air and folded, unmoving, to the ground.
“My fortunes change!” Jason chortled as he fell on the other’s bulging purse. Food perhaps? Saliva dampened his mouth as he tore it open.
18
Rhes was in his inner office, finishing up with his bookkeeping, when he heard the loud shouts in the courtyard. It sounded as though someone were trying to force his way in. He ignored it; the other two Pynrans had gone, and he had a lot of work to finish up before he left. His guard, Riclan, was a good man and knew how to take care of himself. He would turn any unwanted visitors away. The shouting stopped suddenly, and a moment later there was a noise that sounded suspiciously like Riclan’s armor and weapons falling onto the cobbles.
For two days Rhes had not slept, and there was still much to be done before he went away for good. His temper was therefore not of the best. It is very unhealthy to be around a Pyrran when he feels this way. When the door opened, he stood prepared to destroy the interloper. Preferably with his bare hands so that he could hear the bones crunch. A man with an ugly black beard, wearing the uniform of a freelance soldier, entered, and Rhes flexed his fingers and stepped forward.
“What’s the trouble? You look ready to kill me,” the soldier said in fluent Pyrran.
“Jason!” Rhes was across the room and pounding his friend on the back with excitement.
“Easy,” Jason said, escaping the embrace and dropping onto the couch. “A Pyrran greeting can maim, and I haven’t been feeling that good lately.”
“We thought you were dead! What happened?”
“I’ll be happy to explain, but would prefer to do it over food and drink. And I would like to hear a report myself. The last time I heard about Felicitian politics was just before I was pushed off a cliff. How does the trade go?”
“It doesn’t,” Rhes said glumly, taking meat and bread from a locker and fishing a cobwebbed bottle of wine from its straw bed. “After you were killed, or we thought you were killed, everything came to pieces. Kerk heard you on his dentiphone and almost destroyed his morope getting there. But he was too late, you had gone over the edge of Hell’s Doorway. There was some jongleun who had betrayed you, and he tried to accuse Kerk of being an off-worlder as well. Kerk kicked him off the cliff before he could say very much. Temuchin was apparently just as angry as Kerk and the whole thing almost blew up right there. But you were gone and that was that. Kerk felt the most he could do for you was to try and complete your plans.”
“Did you?”
“I’m sorxy to report that we failed. Temuchin convinced most of the tribal leaders that they should fight, not trade. Kerk aided us, but it was a lost cause. I eventually had to retreat back here. I’m closing out this operation, leaving it in good enough shape for my assistants to carry on, and the Pyrran ‘tribe’ is on its way back to the ship. This plan is over, and if we can’t come up with another one, we have agreed to return to Pyrrus.”
“You can’t!” Jason said in the loudest mumble he could manage around the mouthful 0f food.
“We have no choice. Now tell me, please, how did you get here? We had men down in Hell’s Doorway later the same night. They found no trace of you at all, though there were plenty of other corpses and skeletons. They thought you must have gone through the ice and that your body had been swept away.”
“Indeed swept away, but not as a body. I hit a snowbank when I landed and I would have been waiting for you, cold but alive, if I had not fallen through the ice as you guessed. The stream leads to a series of caverns. I had a light and more patience than I realized. It was nasty, but I finally came out below the cliffs in this country. I knocked a number of citizens on the head and had an adventurous trip to reach you here.”
“A lucky arrival. Tomorrow would have been too late. The ship!s launch is to pick me up just after dark and I have a ten-kilometer row to reach the rendezvous point.”
“Well, you’ve got a second oar now. I’m ready to go anytime after I get this food and drink under my belt.”