Ill give her grease, Darla growled, and followed as Nona hurried to catch the others. The Seren Way was not as well travelled as the Vinery Stair and the chances of discovery were small, but the longer it took Darla to squeeze through into the caverns the greater that chance grew.
Nobody had ever told the novices that they werent to explore the caves and passages that riddled the plateau but Nona always had the strong impression that this was because they hadnt asked, and also because all the entrances known to the nuns were barred and gated, the locks inscribed with sigils to defeat any form of picking. When Jula had first discovered the caves a year earlier Nona had moved their weekly meeting underground where the chances of detection shrank to zero. Nominally the objective of the group was to recover the shipheart but for Nona it had always been about killing Yisht.
Hold up! Nona and Darla closed the last few yards on the others. Jula and Ara carried the only two lanterns and the footing was treacherous. If we break our ankles back here its you lot wholl have to carry us out!
Well just leave you here and say you ran away with city boys. Ketti, the last of their number, grinned and made kiss-mouths. The hunska girl was just a few inches shorter than Darla now, though thin as a rail. She talked about city boys a lot and it was a wonder to Nona that she preferred to spend her seven-day exploring the darkness beneath the Rock of Faith rather than going into Verity to giggle at the opposite sex across Thaybur Square.
Come on! Ara led off, eager to reach new ground.
At the first fork, where a smaller passage led steeply down, Ketti took her block of chalk and reinforced the letter on the wall that indicated the path to take. The moisture tended to blur the marks. They moved on in single file, Darla at the rear, demonstrating her impressive range of oaths as she repeatedly grazed her head on the rock above.
Nona called a halt at Round Cave a hundred yards from the entrance. Darla had come up with the name, and whilst unimaginative it was at least accurate.
Whos got something to report? Nona looked to Ruli first. Ruli was on gossip duty, gathering any snippet of information that leaked into the convent through its connections with the outside world. Ruli had a talent for both creating and gathering gossip.
I do! I really do! Jula stepped forward, half raising her hand before remembering that she wasnt in class. I was reading the appendices in Levinins older works. Everyone always quotes from the Seven Histories of Marn but
What did you find? Darla had even less patience for Julas booklore than the others.
More about shiphearts in one page than Ive discovered in all the books Ive searched through since we started looking! Jula grinned. According to Levinin there were four shiphearts within the empires boundaries: the one at Sweet Mercy which is most closely tuned to quantals, another we knew about in the Noi-Guins keeping at the Tetragode, which is attuned to marjals, one he says is rumoured in the city of Tru, and one from a gerant ship in the keeping of the mage Atoan.
Ara frowned. Ive never heard of a city called Tru or a mage called Atoan. And if a shipheart were in a city someone would own it or it would get taken.
Jula nodded. Levinin was writing two hundred years ago. Tru is under the ice now. The black ice! And it was ruins before the ice took it. Trus a city the Missing left. And Atoan died years ago but he had a son Jaltone who was also a mage and somehow is still alive!
Him Ive heard of, Darla said. He lives on the coast and helped General Hillan when the Durnish tried to land at Port Treen two years ago. My father was the generals second-in-command.
Its interesting and everything Ruli said. But I dont see how it helps us. Were not going to walk up to the Tetragode and
It helps us because we know where Sherzal will have to look next, said Ara.
And we are going to the ice Everyone went on the ice-ranging in Mystic Class. Over the ice though, not under it. Nona remembered her fathers tales about hunting in the ice tunnels. The worst of them, the scariest stories, were from the time he ventured into the grey ice. The trip he never came back from was the one to the black.
The ice is a big place. And Tallow is never going to take us up to the black ice. Even if it wasnt on the Scithrowl side of the mountains. Darla shivered. Lets go explore some caves!
Nona looked around the circle of lantern-lit faces. Any more contributions? No?
Jula bit her lip. Well I thought it was interesting. She shrugged and led off.
It took less than half an hours walk to reach the furthest limit of their explorations, but to expand their territory initially had taken the best part of a year, following dead ends or routes that grew too narrow or too dangerous. In several places they had fixed knotted ropes to aid in difficult climbs. It was Nonas private hope that they would find an alternative route into the convent undercaves but there were no guarantees that the two systems connected.
I love it down here. Jula fell in beside Nona as they trekked the Gullet, a long water-smoothed passage wide enough to walk shoulder to shoulder. Its so quiet. Just the drip of water. And footsteps. And Darla swearing.
They passed a stand of stalagmites, blunt and glistening in the lantern light. Ketti said nothing. Even she had grown tired of her innuendo after the tenth or twelfth time. A little further along a veil of dripping water crossed the passage. Nona hunched and pressed on through the icy deluge. Five tight, winding twists rising steeply took them past the niche where two skeletons lay, limed over with rock-scale. One grown and one a child, locked together. A rusty stain between them may once have been a knife. They always made Nona sad, huddled there in the dark, watching with empty sockets as the centuries scurried by.
After the rising turns came a scramble up a rock fall, with the cavern roof slanting just three feet above. Finally a cliff some twenty yards high, perhaps once a waterfall, the wet stone offering few handholds. Fortunately the old watercourse had allowed room to swing and throw a grapple. The locating and pilfering of both rope and hook had taken a week but the hours spent trying to catch some edge far above them had seemed much longer. On perhaps the seventieth throw Darla had snagged the hook and Ruli, the lightest of them, had scrambled up. The rope was now secure and knotted at intervals. Climbing it brought them to the limits of their exploration, a roundish chamber, mud-floored, from which three new passages led.
Nona stood with Ara, Jula, and Ruli, catching their breath, staring at the exits, Ketti and Darla still climbing behind them.
I want to get under the convent, Nona said. She blinked. She hadnt been intending to speak, but now the words had left her mouth she realized it was better that the truth was out. For three years she had seen the only route to revenge on Yisht to be training. To make herself into a weapon suited to the task of finding then destroying the woman. Neither would be easy. The empire was large, and Yisht expert at hiding, deadly when found. Nona had been very lucky in their first encounter and had still only just survived. But Joelis taunting had put into Nonas mind the idea that there might be some clue at the spot where Hessa died. Something the nuns overlooked. Something her friend left for her alone. It was a very faint hope. Too faint perhaps to justify exposing her companions to such dangers but Joelis words were an itch that refused to be scratched. Hessas name is so important to you? And yet youve never even visited the spot where she died. The accusation repeated in her mind, an echo that grew rather than died away.
I need to visit the shipheart vault. Nona spoke the words into the silence that had followed her first statement.
Because we wont be in enough trouble just for being in the tunnels, Ruli said. We should go where were more likely to be caught and will have broken more rules.
Jula frowned. Despite her cleverness sarcasm always seemed to go over her head. But
Im banned from leaving the convent until next seven-day in any case, Nona said. So if Im right under it Ill be breaking fewer rules.
Go back to the vault? Ara asked, raising her lantern to inspect Nonas face. Thats madness. Abbess Glass will throw us out. You know what she said about the undercaves!
I have to. Nona had to see it for herself. She had to set her hands to the spot where Hessa had died. Perhaps some clue remained that would help her find Yisht. I have to. For Hessa. I felt her die. The rocks. Yishts knife. I felt all of it. If theres justice to be had, or revenge, it starts there, where it happened.
I dont want to go near the convent. The sinkholes too close. Ketti got to her feet behind them after finishing the climb. There could be tunnel-floods. She shuddered.
I still say theyll have the undercaves blocked off. Darla followed Ketti into the chamber, brushing grit from her habit.
Maybe. But its as good a direction to explore as any other, Ara said. Nona thanked her silently.
I dont know Darla shook her head. The abbess wasnt joking when she put the undercaves off-limits. She wrote it in the book and everything
That was over two years ago. Ara came to Nonas defence. Plus, if they didnt know Yisht was there for all those weeks and she was going to and fro from her room, they wont know were there if we come from underneath for a quick look. Right, Nona?
Nona nodded. She owed it to Hessa. She had let years slide by and done nothing to avenge her. Her friend had died and Nona had hidden in the convent, well fed, cared for, whilst Yisht walked the world with Hessas blood on her hands. But though the Corridor might be a narrow girdle to the globe it was still too wide for a lone child to find a woman like that who didnt want to be found. And Yisht was an ice-triber. She might be anywhere in the vastness of the ice. I cant do this alone. The gate to Shade class had a sigil-scribed lock now: the thing would have to be blown off its hinges to gain access without the key. Coming at the Dome of the Ancestor and the shipheart chamber from below was the best option.
Ill help. Jula spoke up, her voice thin in the caverns void.
Nona offered her a smile. Jula put an arm around her shoulders for the briefest hug.
So Nona, even less at ease with physical affection than Jula, waved a hand at the tunnel mouths.
That one. Jula pointed to the leftmost tunnel, boulder- choked and leading down. She had an instinct for direction below ground that had proved uncanny. Though it doesnt look very safe.
Ara led on and they followed, stepping over fallen rock, some of it still jagged. After a hundred yards or so the passage broadened and became a cavern so wide it swallowed their light and gave nothing back. For a moment Ara halted and they all held quiet listening to the silence and to the drip drip drip of water that was somehow part of the vastness of the silence. Nona glanced about at the novices around her, all illuminated on one side and dark on the other, and for an instant found herself outside her body, suddenly aware of herself as a tiny mote of life, warmth, and light in the black and endless convolutions of the cave system. Now more than ever she felt the irony that the Rock of Faith, named for the foundations of their religion, lay rotten with voids and secret ways, permeable and ever-changing.
We should go across, Jula said, her voice small in all that empty space. She didnt sound as if she wanted to.
Ketti marked the wall with her chalk and drew an arrow on the floor.
We should follow the wall. Were less likely to get lost, Darla said.
Ara took them to the left, staying close to the wall. Stalagmites rose in small delicate forests, stalactites descended in curtains where the cave curved down, glistening with an iridescent sheen like the carapace of a beetle.
Stop. Ruli turned and stared into the darkness beyond the lanterns reach. Nona stopped, the others too.
What? Jula raised her light.
Didnt you hear it?
No. Darla loomed beside her, her shadow swinging.
Somethings out there, coming for us, Ruli said, wide-eyed.
Theres nothing living in these caves, Darla said. We would have seen bones or dung. What did it sound like?
Dry. Ruli shivered.
Dry?
I want to go back, Ruli said.
Ara advanced a few yards, lantern high. Theres something here.
Nona crowded forward with the others, leaving Ruli in deepening shadow.
What is it? Ketti frowned.
To Nonas eye it seemed that a shadowy forest of misshapen stalagmites covered the cavern floor, some curving over in ways that such growths are not supposed to.
Bones. Jula saw it first.
From one instant to the next the scene switched from one of confusion to one of horror. Skeletons, calcified like those back in the niche, but more thickly: dozens of them.
Some of these have been here for an age. Ara pointed to a stony ribcage from which straw-thin stalactites dripped, and to a skull distorted by the weight of stalagmite growing upon it, like a candle from which half the wax had run.
Jula bent over to inspect something by the wall.
We really need to go! Ruli called at them, not having moved from where she stood. Cant you feel it?
I dont But then Nona felt it and held her tongue. Something scraping at the edges of her senses, a dry touch from which her mind recoiled.
Holothour.
What?
Nona felt Keot moving beneath the skin of her back. Normally he was silent in the caves.
You should run.
You always tell me to fight.
Now Im telling you to run.
We should go back. Now! Nona turned to follow Ruli who had already started to run back the way they came, into the blind darkness.
Whatre you scared of? Darla called after them. Theres nothing here. She laughed. And neither of you have a lantern.
Nona stopped at the margins of the lighted area, infected by a disembodied fear.
Whats out there, Keot?
Something Missing-bred. Something hungry. Run!
We need to go. Trust me. Nonas voice sounded thin in the emptiness of the cavern. Behind her the sounds of Rulis stumbling panic.
Ara frowned then followed. I dont understand you, but I trust you. Jula fell in behind her. Darla, with the light now retreating from her, snarled in frustration and hurried after them.
The six novices picked up the pace, shadows swinging all around them. Nona could make out Ruli ahead, feeling her way. With each passing moment it seemed that something gathered itself behind them, as if the space now echoing with their footfalls was drawing in its breath. Nona felt the horror of it crawl along her spine. The darkness held something awful. Something ancient and waiting. The need to be gone made her heart pound and tightened her breathing into gasps.