Some time around mid day the party took a longer pause and bolted a cold meal. Tilda remained standing as it had taken most of the morning for the stiffness to work out of her legs, but at least her headache had not returned. After noon the tunnels changed again as the narrow corridor hit a much wider passage that the gnome took to the right, and as much of her surroundings as Tilda could see in the lantern light thereafter were astonishing.
She was on an underground highway, Tilda quickly realized, a subterranean street that surely had been heavily trafficked in the distant past. The passage was as wide as a boulevard in the Miilarkian capital and lined with round columns under a high, arched ceiling even taller than the route was wide. Ancient plaster on the walls had long since decayed, exposing rough stone and leaving inches of powder on the floor which came up in little clouds as the group passed. Fitz distributed scarves to tie around mouths and noses and the group pressed on, and Tilda noticed that the soldiers now moved more warily and with their weapons in hand. The men with the lanterns often narrowed the beams to shine around columns, or played the light over the dusty ground whenever tracks were seen. Most of the tracks were left by small animals, maybe lizards or rats, but some were much larger. Tilda did not recognize those by the quick glances she took in passing.
Their boulevard met several others along the way. Each intersection was wide and round, with circular stone stairways ascending into the ceiling through open shafts. At the base of some of the shafts rotted timber squares were still connected to massive chains that lay broken now, but had once hung from huge winches strong enough to hoist whole wagons up to the level above. Tilda could only guess as to what had been up there, for each of the stairways was choked with rubble below the level of the ceiling. There were piles of shattered stones and broken bricks, many blackened all over as if they had been through a great conflagration. Tilda was curious enough that she would have asked Fitz about it whether Captain Block liked it or not, but like his men the gnome was wary and careful on this part of the journey. His big amber eyes scanned the darkness all around above the scarf bound over his bulbous nose, and he carried a hand-axe balanced for hurling at his side. Tilda left Fitzyear alone, and carried her gun in the crook of an arm rather than on her shoulder.
After hours and miles on the boulevard Tilda knew from her sore calves that the way had been gradually ascending all along. It turned even more sharply up as the group seemed to reach an end point, becoming a long ramp. The party had moved mostly down the middle of the underground road but Fitz now moved toward the right side of the passage where there was a narrow space between the edge of the ascending ramp and the wall. The stone dust was even thicker here, gray and black as it was mixed with ash, and as the group moved single file next to the ramp the soldier immediately behind Tilda must have noticed her peering ahead toward the top. He narrowed the shutter of his lantern to make a beam shine in that direction.
Tilda did not gasp, but she did stop walking for a moment. Far up the ramp where it passed through a gap in the ceiling the way was again choked with rubble, but some of it was largely intact. Plainly visible lying on its side was a fallen, square tower of smoke-stained white marble veined with black stone. Though cracked and broken the tower was in a sense still holding together, and Tilda could discern at least seven stories’ worth of narrow, arched windows. The tower must have been at least that tall when it stood. Tilda exchanged a wide-eyed glance with the soldier behind her, who nodded soberly.
As the road rose the space beside it became a narrow stone canyon between ramp and wall that came to a dead end several hundred yards in. At the head of the group Fitz patted his hands all along the wall while another of his men held his lantern aloft so the gnome could see, but nothing seemed to be happening.
“There is one intact Dwarf Door, just here,” Fitz whispered, his voice carrying easily down the line off the echoing stone. “Thought I left it open a crack…”
Without a word Block pushed past Dugan and two of Fitz’s men to stand beside the gnome. The dwarf reached out a hand and Tilda could not see just what he did, but there was an audible scrape and a vertical line appeared on the wall in the lantern light.
“Right,” Fitz said. “There it is. My thanks, Cousin.”
A soldier pushed one side of the wall while the gnome scrabbled at the line, and with another sharp scrape a section of brick moved silently around a pivot. Fitz stepped through and waved the others ahead, then pushed the swinging stone until it again appeared as unbroken wall behind them.
They had entered a small room at the foot of a plain stone stairway, which Fitz wormed around the others to lead the way up, and up, and up. The lanterns were awkward and useless in the tight space and were rapidly extinguished. The group went on one at a time in the dark with their hands and feet on the stairs wrapping around a long shaft. The way was at least not dusty here, and everyone lowered the scarves from their faces as all were soon huffing their way upwards. The stairs spiraled on. Tilda started counting after a while, maybe halfway along, and it was another hundred-and-fourteen steps to the top.
The top was a landing with a square chamber around the circular shaft, and Tilda blinked in surprise upon reaching it for while the lanterns had not been relit there was natural light shining in through wide double doors Fitz had already opened. Before Tilda stepped through the doors to clear room on the landing, she saw that the walls of the chamber and an arched hallway leaving it were all alike covered by bas-relief carvings. She only got a glance at the bearded face of an old dwarf carved as large as a real dwarf would stand, cut into the hard stone with as fine detail as she had ever seen on a painting.
The room Tilda entered was much like that in which the group had spent the last night. Same size, same fire pit in the center, and again with writing in a band around the walls. In place of a second door in the opposite wall were three windows. They were narrow but they reached from the floor to the ceiling and they were lit by the first sunlight Tilda had seen in almost two days. She walked directly to them and this time she did gasp, for each was a perfect pane of clear glass without so much as a whorl or blemish within it. They gave Tilda one of the more remarkable views she had ever seen in her life.
All she could compare it to was the view of the Miilarkian capital from the top of the Ghost Mountain, which Tilda had climbed without equipment to culminate the second year of her Guild training. These windows gave a view at a similar elevation, but not of an urban cityscape. Instead Tilda stared out at rugged mountainsides from deep among them, jagged crags throwing shadows from right-to-left as the sun set, giving the cloudless sky that was half the view a deep burgundy hue. Right in front of Tilda, just inches from her toes, the whole world seemed to fall away into a deep valley of darkening pine forest. Straight across the valley and looking as though it was close enough to touch was another great mountain with a white snow line almost at Tilda’s eye-level. Ancient glaciers nestled in purple shadow among the gleaming peaks.
“Almost worth the stairs, isn’t it?” Fitzyear said beside her. Tilda had not noticed the gnome step up to the window next to hers, and when she turned she saw Block was likewise standing at the third.