The Keeping Place Page 9

  Eventually, the river looped back to meet us. When the undergrowth became less dense, we mounted up and alternated between trotting and walking, reaching the base of Tor late in the afternoon. Here the Suggredoon poured itself into the mountain via the gaping tunnel that led to the huge underground cavern housing the drowned Beforetime city.

  We dismounted when we were within sight of the campsite, just as two teknoguilders came stumbling out of the tunnel, both blue to the lips and deathly pale. At first I thought something terrible had happened, but the coercer who had been on guard merely wrapped them in blankets, shaking his head.

  I noticed both had wet hair. Without saying a word, I turned and strode into the tunnel, where the Teknoguild had chiseled a walkway above the water level. It had been widened considerably by the teknoguilders, but I was too outraged to pay much attention to this or to any other improvements.

  I heard footsteps behind me. “What is the matter?” Miryum asked, her voice bouncing oddly from the stone walls.

  “I don’t know, but I mean to find out,” I said grimly.

  There were rush torches set into wall grooves, and these provided light as daylight faded behind us. We came into a newly widened section of the tunnel, where a shallow inlet had been created. Several rafts were tethered to a small wooden ramp. Here the walls were damp enough to provide habitat for the glowing insects that fed off tainted matter.

  Miryum, Fian, and I boarded a raft, but the coercer-knights declined, preferring to walk. Miryum shrugged and poled us from the makeshift shore until the current picked us up and propelled us along the curving tunnel to the main cavern. She knew the currents, having been into the caves several times before. She did not like boat travel, but time on a raft did not affect her as sea travel had when we had gone to Sador.

  As ever, I felt both wonder and horror at the sight of the Beforetime towers half submerged in the dark, oily-looking waters. From a distance, it seemed they had been untouched by the ages, but up close, their eroded surfaces resembled rich embroidery. Here and there were glowing patches of insects, and in other places gaping holes, or jagged sections where segments had fallen away.

  I ran my eyes over the crumbling buildings, trying to envisage how they had looked when people had dwelt in them. Even now, flooded and cloaked in shadow, the city was an awe-inspiring creation. The horror was to understand that a people who had risen so high could have fallen so low.

  The failings of the Beforetimers brought me back to Garth, and my anger swelled again. I was tempted to ask Fian if he had any idea what his master was up to, but I held my tongue, thinking I would give the edge of it to the Teknoguildmaster soon enough.

  There were lights down at the end of the cavern, where the building that housed the Reichler Clinic Reception Center stood. Unlike many of the dead towers, this was built up at the shallow end of the cavern and had escaped the drowning. Or so we had imagined. If what the young teknoguilder said was true, what we thought of as the Reichler Clinic building was only part of it. The Teknoguild concentrated their activities here, not just because of our interest in the Clinic, but because the relative shallowness of the water meant there was less of a current and access to the dry parts was easier.

  Miryum let the current carry us toward the light and wielded her pole only to prevent our being beached on the rubble islands created by fallen buildings. But when we were closer, she bid Fian take a pole, and between them they brought the raft out of the main channel and into a quiet canal that, far below, would be a side street. To go farther with the current would be dangerous, for it led to the hole where the water plunged steeply to the lowlands. Having miraculously survived that journey once, I had no desire to repeat it.

  Gliding between the empty buildings, I imagined Hannah Seraphim hurrying along this very street with a book under her arm, or peering out one of the windows above.

  Looking around, I spotted a haze of lights on a small pile of rubble partly obscured by other buildings. I pointed, and Miryum nodded and directed the raft that way.

  As we drew nearer, I saw there was a great mass of things heaped about the edges of the isle. Some I recognized as equipment from the Teknoguild caves, but more looked as if it had been salvaged from the drowned city. The teknoguilders were all up at one end, clustered around a mass of tubes and lines of rope running from a square metal instrument down into the water. Several teknoguilders seemed to be working very hard operating the machine, while the rest stood by the water, looking down.

  Garth was almost facing me as the raft made land-fall, but so intent were they all on what they were doing that they did not even notice us.

  “Do you see her?” I heard the Teknoguildmaster ask.

  I signaled for Fian and Miryum to be silent so that I could listen, and stepped carefully from the raft.

  “I think I see a light.” That was Louis Larkin’s voice. He was on his knees, peering into the water.

  “There!” a girl cried. “It is a light. She’s coming up.”

  “Silly little fool,” Garth muttered, sounding more exasperated than relieved.

  I stepped up behind him and peered over his shoulder into the water just in time to see a pale, glowing face rise out of the depths. I gasped, for the body emerging was terribly bloated.

  Garth clutched at his chest in fright and whirled to face me. “Elspeth! You gave me a fright coming up behind me like that!”

  I couldn’t speak, though it was clear now that the girl was not gross from immersion but was clothed in some strange fleshy-textured suit, which even now Louis and the others were peeling from her. As with the two teknoguilders I had seen outside, her lips were blue and she was trembling violently. Around her neck swung a pair of glass goggles.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded of Garth.

  “Do n-not bl-blame the guildmaster,” the young teknoguilder said through chattering teeth. She took my wrist in an icy grip. “It is my fault for st-staying so long. G-Garth warned me but you cannot imagine how w-w-wonderful it is down there. You don’t even re-realize how cold you are getting.” She turned back to Garth. “It is lucky the glows started to fade—not a disadvantage after all th-that th-…” She could say no more for shivering, and Garth told her to go back to the camp with the others.

  “We’ve done more than enough for the day,” he said, and looked at me cheerfully. “I hope you brought some food. I’m afraid there is not a great deal left to eat.”

  I was speechless with outrage that he would dare to babble of food instead of explaining and defending his activities.

  “I’ll gan out an’ light a fire,” Louis said with a laconic glance at me. He helped the shivering teknoguilder onto one of the rafts, and some of the others climbed aboard before Louis threw off the tether rope. Everyone else began to move about, covering equipment or winding tubes.

  Garth sighed. “I know you are troubled, Elspeth, but they will push the time limit. Let us get back to camp.”

  Fian and two more teknoguilders were already on a raft, and Miryum helped Garth and me aboard a third. When we were under way, he asked with infuriating calmness what brought me to Tor.

  I gritted my teeth. “I came because I suspected you were having people try to swim down to this wretched cellar you’ve discovered. I couldn’t believe you would condone something so dangerous!”

  “It is not terribly dangerous. The divers are well protected by the suits, and if they obey the time limits, they do not even become very cold. We did a great deal of research before anyone went down. Tomorrow I will show you how the air pump works. I assume you are staying the night. We have found a few interesting bits and pieces you might like to see….”

  My anger gave way to a kind of exhaustion. Talking to Garth was like trying to build a sand bridge in the path of the sea.

  Miryum brought us swiftly to the small bay where the other rafts were tethered, and we were soon walking toward what little remained of the daylight. Garth was questioning Fian about Sador.
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br />   “I hope you have made proper notes,” he said at one point. “I am always having to impress on you young people that being a teknoguilder is not just exploring and digging. It is good careful records….”

  I decided it was simply a waste of energy to be angry with the Teknoguildmaster. Let Rushton rage at him. But I would learn exactly what the teknoguilders were up to, and unless I was satisfied there was no danger, I would exercise my power as interim master and demand the entire guild’s return to Obernewtyn.

  An hour later, it was full dark, and we were all seated around a roaring fire, which threw an eerie dancing light against Tor’s weathered rock face. I felt somewhat calmer since Garth had explained that in the Beforetime, many people had dived deep in the great sea out of sheer pleasure at seeing the world beneath the water. It was an ancient science of submerged exploration, and there were many ways in which people had carried air with them. There were tanks, which had somehow compressed air into pod-shaped metal cylinders that were strapped to divers’ backs; there were entire sealed vessels that could be driven beneath the water; and there was also something called a hookah, which allowed air to be pumped from the surface. This was the simplest method and the one used by the Teknoguild. They had constructed a simple pump that could be worked by hand to force air down long, flexible tubes constructed from the same material as the suits.

  Of course, it meant the divers could not venture anywhere the tubes could not freely follow. If they were bent or snagged, the air supply was instantly cut off. This had happened, but additional air lines were always sent down with the divers, and in an emergency, several could take turns breathing from the same tube.

  The flabby suit I had taken for grotesquely water-logged flesh had been constructed by the guild to preserve heat and had in fact been formed from melted and remolded plast. Three divers went down in a strictly timed sequence. They wore thick belts into which were sewn heavy lumps of metal or stone. Before pulling themselves back up by a knotted rope, they could remove the belts and place them in a basket with the small glass bulbs of glow insects they took down for light. The basket of weights and glows could then be retrieved separately.

  Garth explained that each of the divers had a teknoguilder monitoring their air hose above the water, ready to stop the air three times, by the simple means of pinching the tube closed, if there was a need for the divers to return quickly to the surface.

  “Yet you said they stayed down longer than was safe,” Miryum said.

  Before Garth could respond, all three of the Teknoguild divers began talking at once of how the world shivered green and mysterious far below and of how it felt to fly down and down to it. There were many incomprehensible machines to be puzzled over in the Beforetime roads. One had seen a skeleton inside a machine, and another had seen what appeared to be a face but had been a monstrously deformed statue. Another talked of savage eels that lurked in the water, and another had been frightened by a strange glowing snake coiling in and out of the wavering purple forest that rose from the streets. It was enough to explain why they had lingered. I found myself envying them their unique experience, though in truth I had no desire to descend into the cold, silent darkness of that long-dead city.

  But even as these thoughts passed through my mind, a vision rose before my eyes of Rushton swimming in darkness. I shook my head. No doubt I was putting things together wrongly. My every instinct told me that Rushton would never make such a dive.

  I caught Louis Larkin’s eye, and he came around the fire. “Not often ye gan away from Obernewtyn these days,” he said.

  I smiled ruefully. “I wish I could do it more often, but it becomes harder to justify it. Rushton and guildmerge always speak against guildleaders putting themselves in danger.”

  Louis shrugged. “It makes sense not to let yer head gan chopped off, if ye can lose a hand instead.”

  It was a harsh philosophy, but I made no comment about the ill fortune of being a hand. I had wanted to see Louis for another purpose than to complain about my lot.

  “You know the great carved doors that used to be at Obernewtyn’s front entrance?” He nodded. “Do you remember anything about them being installed?”

  Louis chuckled. “I remember they were a memorable pair that brought them.”

  “Brought?” I could not help a note of excitement entering my voice.

  “Well, it was nowt th’ doors they brought,” Louis corrected himself. “Them carved panels that was in th’ midst of th’ doors came in a wagonload of carved work. Th’ idea of havin’ them made up as doors came from th’ master’s bondmate.” He curled his lip in memory of Marisa Seraphim, whom he had feared and disliked. “She turned those yellow eyes on th’ master an’ said she would like two grand front doors fashioned about th’ panels. She said she had some special idea fer the border carvin’, if it could be done. Th’ gypsies said it would take a while, but they was happy to stay an’ do th’ job.”

  “Gypsies?” My voice was so sharp that Miryum looked over at us. I lowered my tone. “Are you saying that the people who brought the carvings were gypsies?”

  Louis nodded. “Nowt just gypsies. Twentyfamilies gypsies, though I didna truly ken th’ difference back then. I was just a lad, an’ my mind was more on fishin’ an’ catchin’ sight of Guanette birds than on gypsies.”

  I thought of Swallow’s elaborately carved gypsy cart and remembered his saying proudly that such work was a specialty in his family. The style of carving had even reminded me of the Obernewtyn doors.

  I forced my reeling mind back to Louis, who was watching me expectantly. “Do you remember if these gypsies seemed to offer the panels for sale especially, or did Marisa simply choose them of her own inclination?” I was not sure what I was groping for.

  The old man screwed up his eyes as if he might pierce the veil of time and see back to that day. “We didna have many visitors in th’ mountains, an’ any were occasion fer interest. But it’s long ago just th’ same. I recall us young ’uns was all about crawlin’ over th’ wagon an’ pettin’ th’ horses an’ gawkin’ at th’ carvin’s. There was th’ old man almost like a carvin’ hisself, an’ a sturdy young lad with dark curly hair an’ dark eyes. Th’ old man was kin to th’ boy, I’d guess. His grandfather, mebbe.” His forehead crinkled. “Now I think back, I wonder that an old gaffer like that made such a trip. In them days, all above th’ Gelfort Range was wild country, an’ th’ road little more than a rutted animal track, yet up they come uninvited, sayin’ they’d heard there might be work fer carpenters an’ carvers. Th’ master was pleased to have them, of course, fer it were hard to get any workers up here. Then Marisa come out an’…yes. I do remember. Th’ old man sparked up sudden-like, though he’d let th’ lad do most of th’ talkin’ afore that. He said as how they had a couple of special panels as she mun like.” He nodded, confirming his memory. “Yes, th’ old man offered them in particular.”

  I could barely take it in, let alone respond in any sensible way to Louis’s obvious curiosity.

  Louis interpreted my silence as the desire for more information. “They stayed all winter, carvin’ th’ design th’ mistress wanted round th’ edge of the doors an’ tappin’ tiny sheets of gold into th’ gaps. It was a thing she had seen in one of them books she was always gettin’ sent to her, an’ she worrit an’ worrit at them gypsies till they did it exact as she wanted. They finished all th’ chores th’ master wanted th’ first sevenday, but he was glad they were about workin’ on Marisa’s doors when this or that cropped up, an’ they ended up doin’ a lot of small jobs. They was here fer ages, but they pretty much kept to theyselves. To my mind, th’ oddest thing was that there was just two of them. Gypsies always travel an’ camp in troupes.”

  Unless they had been sent to perform a special mission, I thought. “What about the panels? Did they say anything within your hearing about why they offered them to Marisa? Or about who had carved them?”

  Louis reflected for a while. “It’s funny ye sh
ould ask. At th’ time, I supposed th’ old man had done th’ work. But thinkin’ back, I dinna recall either him nor th’ boy ever sayin’ th’ work was their own. You could see th’ panels were finer work than th’ rest of th’ doors, though. Pity ye burned th’ doors, else ye could see fer yerself. To tell ye th’ truth, I always felt it was a shame to destroy them fer a bit of gold.” He scratched at the fluffy tufts of hair rising from either side of his bald pate until they stuck out comically.

  I took another breath but still felt breathless. I watched Miryum bring more wood to the fire, wondering if it was madness to speculate that the panels had been carved by Kasanda. Yet the overguardian said she had possessed futuretelling abilities, and so might she not have foreseen Marisa and her desire to hide her map to the weaponmachines?

  But how had gypsies become involved? There was no doubt that they were the perfect messengers because of their wandering ways, but under what circumstances could Kasanda have encountered them? And when?

  Then an incredible thought smote me: If the panels had been brought to the mountains with the gypsies at Kasanda’s behest, then how that had come about was less important than why. And there was only one answer to that.

  She must have wanted me to see them.

  8

  “WHAT IS IT?” Louis asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, forcing myself to be calm, though I felt like riding to Obernewtyn at once and demanding that Maruman take me on the dreamtrails to see the doors, for I was suddenly certain they contained the first of the clues I had to uncover before returning to Sador to learn the fifth clue from the Temple overguardian. What a terrible irony that I had ordered them burned! Maruman was now my only hope of learning what message Kasanda had left for the Seeker.