All the women ate sparingly, not having to be reminded how low their supplies were. Stara had been able to supplement their meals by catching birds with magic, but the vegetation that grew in this harsh place was sparse and inedible. She was beginning to worry that Chavori had exaggerated when he’d described the valley they were heading for.
Rising, she hauled her pack onto her back. The others followed suit. Without speaking a word, they sought the start of one of the long creases in the slope, then began to shuffle along it, Stara in the lead.
After a seemingly endless stretch of time, she finally reached the top of the ridge. Dragging herself over the edge, she crawled forward, relieved to have the weight of the pack off her shoulders. She paused to catch her breath, then realised the air she was sucking in wasn’t the dry air that had parched their throats these last weeks. It tasted of damp and mould. Her heart skipped a beat and she pushed herself up and onto her knees.
The next wall was a few strides away. At the base of one of the creases in it was a dark triangle. A gap. She moved closer. From inside came the sound of water, and a gust of damp air.
The entrance was low – she would have to crawl to enter it. Hearing a sound behind her, she restrained her curiosity and moved back to the edge to watch over the next two women as they climbed up to join her. As they reached the top, their eyes went immediately to the opening.
“Sounds like a river inside.”
“Shall we go in?”
“No. Wait until we’ve all made it up,” Stara said.
Finally the last of the women had been helped up over the edge. They stood back and waited to see what Stara would do. She smiled and dropped to the ground like a slave, then crawled through the opening, sending a globe of light ahead of her.
The roof was low for several strides, then it and the floor curved away. She slid forward, then pushed herself up into a crouch. Her light failed to penetrate far in two directions, and from the way the sound of her movements echoed she guessed she was in a tunnel. It was like being inside a long, squashed tube, wider than it was high and on an angle that matched the creases in the rock walls. Along the bottom water rushed.
“Chavori said he thought this was recent, caused by the river changing course upstream,” Stara told them. “So let’s go upstream.”
A few hundred strides later they saw light ahead, then after a few hundred more they stood at the opening of the tunnel. The stream sparkled blue and white. Along its sides grasses stood almost as high as a man, but further from the water were low and dry. A few squat, ancient trees enjoyed a more sheltered position near the steep walls of the valley.
“What do you think?” Stara asked.
“Not quite what I expected,” Shadiya replied. “But we were hardly going to find cultivated fields, were we?”
“It needs the worst weeds removed. Then a few reber to get the grass down. Then water channels. Then we have to sweeten the soil before we can plant crops.” Stara turned to look at the speaker, Ichiva, impressed at her knowledge of farming. The woman shrugged. “When you’re not allowed to talk around men, you do a lot of listening.”
The others nodded in agreement.
“Yes, it needs a lot of work,” Stara said. “And it will be interesting getting reber up here. And then there’s the building of houses to do. We have much to learn. Shall we explore further?”
They smiled at her and nodded. Splitting up, they roamed in different directions. Stara headed out into the valley, examining the soil and wishing she knew enough to tell if it was fertile. The trees proved to be a lot larger than they appeared from a distance. Looking up into the branches, she found herself imagining children climbing along them.
Children. If we want them we can’t ban men from our lives completely. Perhaps we can avoid bringing them here, though. Those who want to can visit a town down on the plains and spend the night with someone they fancy.
But what of male children? There was no way any woman was going to agree to send her child away. She shook her head. Perhaps it didn’t matter so much that the Sanctuary was free of men, only that women controlled it.
“Stara!”
She turned to see Ichiva waving to her. The woman turned to point at the wall of the valley. Stara searched the rock surface, frowning as she tried to find what Ichiva was drawing her attention to.
Then suddenly she saw it. And it sent chills down her spine.
The wall of the valley was not natural. Not only could she see where the original slope abruptly changed to a man-made wall, but she could see the lines and curves of deliberate human carving all over the face.
With heart pounding, she hurried forward. The carvings had deteriorated badly, and in places sections had fallen away completely. Whoever had made this had done it many, many years ago. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands.
She felt a rush of excitement. Clearly, if someone had lived here once, others could do so again. The arches and lines looked like highly decorated frames of doorways and windows. Perhaps the ancient occupants had lived within the wall, in caves. As she reached Ichiva she saw that she was right. There was a rectangular hole in the wall. She shared an excited grin with the other woman.
“I don’t think we’re the first to take up residence,” she said. “Get the others. I’m going inside.”
Creating another globe light, Stara stepped through the doorway. Inside was a long corridor, and she could see light coming through the vegetation that covered other doors and windows. Roots splayed and wove together in tangles for the first few strides, but after that all was bare stone. Wide openings on the far wall beckoned her further inside.
She chose the closest. It was a wide corridor with rooms on either side. The walls between were almost as thick as the spaces. In places they were wet from seepage, but most were dry. Hearing footsteps, she waited for the women to catch up with her, then they all went on. After passing six rooms the corridor ended.
Returning to the main corridor, they continued exploring. One of them noticed shallow carvings of people and animals on some walls. Most rooms had one or two, but then they discovered a wide corridor covered in them. It led to an enormous cave. A crack in the roof high above them let in a weak stream of light and straggling roots. It had also obviously let in the rain, as there was a pool in the centre of the cave. Behind this was a raised section of floor, and on it a crumbling slab of stone.
They skirted the pool and climbed up on the dais to examine the slab. On the surface was the faint outline of a human shape, surrounded by lines radiating out from the chest area.
Shadiya peered closer. “What do you reckon that’s about? Is it a coffin cover? Or an altar for human sacrifice?”
Stara shuddered. “Who knows?”
“There’s another doorway behind here,” Ichiva said, pointing to the wall behind the dais. Then she looked to one side. “Do you think that was the door?”
They all stopped to look at a great disc of stone, split in two, that lay in front of the opening. There was a deep groove in the floor before the doorway. It was as wide as the disc, Stara noted.
“Perhaps it was rolled into place, and out again,” she said.
The women hummed in speculation, then turned to examine the opening. Stara directed her globe light inside. A narrow corridor continued into darkness. She stepped inside.