Palimpsest

There was a period, not long after the era of the seven, when the great powers turned their attention to the north. The surface route is barred. No expedition mounted across it has ever returned. An attempt was made, instead, beneath the mountains.

The workings of the Coldmarch were begun in that period and continued for a century before they were abandoned. The records of the project are sparse. Those that survive describe the early galleries as worth the continuation of the work, and the later galleries to the north as the reason the work was stopped. The records do not describe the later galleries further. They describe nothing further.

— from a fragment recovered at the site of an old library, attribution lost

Chapter 35 Darkness of the Mountain

Perhaps four hours had passed since they had gone into the cave, but Kaelin had lost her sense of time about an hour in. Since they had started walking through the cave, the adrenaline in her body had drained, and the aches all through her had become much more vivid. When she wasn't pushing herself the pain eased; when she pushed, it made itself known much more sharply. That night in the village she had hardly felt it at all. Perhaps the drink had helped — but what Darian had said was beginning to make much more sense. It was as if she had wounds in the middle of healing, and the more she pushed herself the more they hurt. She was carrying the pain of wounds the others had taken, almost as if they were her own.

Ravah, at the front, was lighting the way with her small oil lamp; Tivver, right behind her, said in a tired voice, "How much further are we walking?"

"We need a much bigger chamber for camp," Veylith answered from the rear. Kaelin, walking right ahead of her, turned her head back at the question, because she had been wondering the same thing. "These little oil lamps are better than torches, but if we keep burning fire in a place this narrow and closed we'll suffocate," Veylith added in a way that left all of them uneasy. "We need a wide space with at least two openings, three would be better. Even then we'll only be able to burn one of these lamps at most."

"So we're going to freeze to death, in other words," Tivver said, still walking.

"Until we get out we'll have to lie close together to keep warm," Veylith said, her tone unchanged. Since no one had anything to say to that, they walked on in silence.

A few minutes later Tivver, who couldn't help himself, started up again. "There were stories told about these mountains. Anyone remember them?"

"What stories?" Darian put in; he was walking right behind him.

"Fifty years ago a company of soldiers coming back from the war, instead of crossing in the cold weather through the passes, tried to cut through the mountains. I heard it once in a tavern full of warden soldiers."

"And?" Darian asked, though now there was a slight tremor in his voice.

"Only three men made it to the other side. When they joined up with the other companies they acted as though both of them had lost their minds. At any sound they'd jump up and start running. When the others asked what had happened to the rest of them, they all gave the same answer: the whistles in the dark. They took them, one by one."

"Great story, very warming," Vaelra called from behind them. "Now, shut up, Tiv?" Every one of them, Tivver included, tensed up, and they walked on without speaking. The horses beside them, the dim light of the two lamps in the dark, they made what speed they could.

The constant clop of hooves echoing inside the cave had begun to give Kaelin a headache. Irritated, she glared at the silhouettes of the horses in the dark. Then her eye drifted to Elis on the horse. She still looked like she was in pain, but she wasn't saying anything. She must have been through too much, Kaelin thought. Then she looked at Vaelra, who was leading the horse alongside it. Without even being properly healed herself, Vaelra had taken on the care of someone else without a second thought. I've never met anyone as good as her, Kaelin thought, casting a brief, uncomfortable glance back at her own past.

As she watched the two of them she thought, for a moment, of the first night she had spent with them after fleeing. Since they had left the city she hadn't been able to escape the thought of what would have happened if she hadn't slipped away from them in the night. She would never have gone to Mayra's, and they could have got out of the city much earlier. Vaelra would never have been taken. And Mayra — She looked away and drew a deep breath. She swallowed hard, several times, as though to force the thoughts down.

When Elis made a small sound of pain her thoughts finally scattered a little and she looked at her again. Vaelra was holding the hand of the woman who was hurting but holding it in, and they kept walking. If I helped her, Kaelin thought to herself — but this time the pain might leave her unable to move. The thought had crossed her mind every time she looked at her, and was pulled back each time by remembering Darian's words about how the pain stayed. But this time, looking at the woman, the men chasing them came into her head. They had killed a whole camp just to lay a trap for her. She had begun to realise that from now on she would always have trouble at her back, and that the people who wanted to harm her would never stop coming. The hardest thing to accept was that, because of her, more people would suffer. She couldn't go on like this.

Finally pulling herself out of her thoughts, Kaelin slowed as she walked. When Veylith caught up to her she fell in beside her. Veylith glanced at her sideways but didn't say anything.

"Can I — ask you something?" Kaelin said at last, leaning toward her almost in a whisper. Veylith shifted the lamp between them into her other hand and stepped closer. Taking that as a yes, Kaelin stayed quiet for a few more seconds and then asked: "Will you train me to fight?"

"Finally," Veylith whispered back.

"What?"

"You finally asked. I've been waiting for you to ask ever since we left Marialis."

"If it was that obvious, why didn't you say anything?"

"I couldn't do anything until you asked for it. You had to want it yourself. That's the first step."

"So, are you going to — ?"

"It would be an honour. But I have to warn you, I can be too serious and too hard in training."

"So the usual joking, cheerful you isn't going to be the one teaching."

Veylith threw her a sideways look at that, severe. "If you don't want to — "

"Hey! I was only joking," Kaelin shot in, leaning even closer to her. But when she saw the seriousness on her face she straightened up at once. "Which has absolutely no place in training."

"Are you really sure about this?"

"Yes, master," Kaelin said with mock gravity, bowing her head. Veylith laughed out, short, and shook her head from side to side, looking at her as if she were a lost cause. Then they walked on without speaking. Instead of taking her place back in front of her, Kaelin kept walking beside her.

The passage they were following began to narrow further, and the lamps lit the walls as well now. But then Ravah, at the front, stepped suddenly, as though through a doorway, into a much larger space. She stopped where she stood and looked around. Veylith and Kaelin, behind, noticed everyone had stopped, and that the light was stronger than usual. When the two of them stepped together into the wide open space at last, they looked up at the ceiling as the others had, equally taken by it.

The chamber was perhaps thirty paces across, and what made it remarkable was the ceiling, two men's height above them, was covered in a low, moss-like growth that had small flowers giving off a steady, mild light. At the brightest point in the centre the light was a green so pale it was almost white; toward the edges, the green grew stronger. It wasn't a bright light, but in this pitch dark it was the best you could ask for. There was a soft, shadowless glow like the kind moonlight throws over a snowy evening. The plant that gave off this gentle light looked moist or even wet in most places. It seemed to be fed by the snowmelt seeping down through the mountains; you could see beads of water sliding down the walls. Even so, most of the floor looked flat and dry.

"This might be the most incredible thing I've ever seen," Kaelin said, her mouth open as she looked up. Because she had said aloud what almost all of them were thinking, no one said anything after that.

While the others were still looking at the moss, Veylith had already started examining the walls. "The chamber narrows back into a tunnel up ahead. From the air movement and the fact that this plant can live here, there's another opening in the ceiling. So we can build a fire — but not a large one."

"Why?" Tivver answered, disappointed.

"Because we share this air with the plant, and a big fire will suffocate all of us," Veylith said. Tivver muttered something to himself but knew there was nothing to be done about it.

"Then we can start making camp," Vaelra said, the tiredness clear in her voice. "We need to rest."

At that they piled their things in the middle of the chamber and tied the horses to a large rock to one side. Vaelra got Elis down from the horse first and sat her by the gear. As she made to move toward the horse again, Ravah caught her and took the reins from her hand. She looked at her without saying anything, and Vaelra smiled and nodded, accepting the gesture. As she crouched down beside Elis, Ravah led the horse over to the others.

Tivver wrapped a few sticks of kindling they had been carrying in old clothes and poured lamp oil over them. Then he carefully lit it and started arranging stones around it. Veylith was helping him. As Kaelin was setting out places around the fire to lie down, her eye fell on Elis, who was looking around with a stranger's eyes.

"She's been through too much," Darian said, breaking into her thoughts; he was holding empty water-skins. "She still looks like she's in shock. She doesn't know what to do."

"It's not an easy thing," Kaelin answered. They were both looking at her now.

"Maybe it would help her to talk to someone who's been through something similar," Darian said, and walked off with the skins in his hand. Kaelin had not, perhaps, suffered the kind of violence Elis had, but she knew how frightening the things she had been through and seen lately could be. Especially when you felt like a stranger.

"Are you feeling any better?" Kaelin asked, sitting down slowly beside Elis. Vaelra had sat down on the other side of her and was rooting through the bags for something to eat.

"Yes," Elis answered, shyly. "Thank you."

"You don't need to thank me," Kaelin said, as she looked carefully at her wounds. Vaelra was hearing all of this, of course, and a faint smile had appeared on her face.

While Kaelin checked her bandages she quietly began, in small increments, to dull her pain. She knew what the cost would be, but in the end she couldn't stop herself. To take the woman's mind off it she asked her where they had been going, meaning the camp.

"They were traders going east along the mountain roads," Elis said. "They hunted along the way and sold the furs in the towns. I was just travelling with them on the road."

"And where are you going?"

Elis hesitated a little this time. "Nirali."

When Kaelin heard that she paused for a moment, but kept binding a cut on the woman's leg. "Why Nirali?" Elis had hesitated at the question and started to grow a little more reticent. Kaelin said, "You can tell me," and she relaxed a little.

"About a year ago I lost my husband. He was a dockworker. He was crushed under the keel of a ship in an accident." Kaelin, listening to her against her will, thought of Mayra. "We didn't have children, and I was suddenly left on my own. I had married late already."

"I can imagine how hard that must have been."

"The hardest part was that my family wanted to marry me off again as soon as possible and send me off to another household. A woman at this age, if she isn't married, is either useless or a whore, they told me once." Beside them, Vaelra, who was still trying to sort the food in the bags, squeezed what was in her hands in anger. Kaelin could see it. She didn't know her yet, but Elis could only have been three or four years older than herself.

"So you left everything and ran," Kaelin finished for her.

"I couldn't stay with them any longer. And marrying again wasn't a choice for me."

"Why?"

"I don't want to put myself under a man's protection again and give up my own life. He was a good man, but he was a man all the same. On his bad days I was always the easiest target." Kaelin had finished changing the bandages and had lifted some of the pain from her. She thought about doing the same for her sadness, but pulled herself back. She didn't know what that would do to her.

"So, why Nirali?" she asked, to clear the air a little and because she was curious.

Elis looked away and answered shyly. "I'd heard they take in people who need help. They give you a place to stay, and put you up; sometimes they even arrange work. You can even work as a courtesan at the Red Lantern."

When Kaelin heard that she felt strange. For a moment she had almost seen herself in her. Then, without meaning to, a kind of protectiveness rose in her. "Are you sure about that?" she said in a more serious tone. "It's not something everyone can do. And it doesn't really give you the kind of freedom you're thinking of."

"I don't know, but — " Elis answered. "How do you know about this?"

"I spent the last four years working at the Red Lantern," Kaelin said, without hesitation. "And in that place there were as many people who saw it as freedom as there were people who saw it as another kind of fight to stay alive."

"I — I didn't know," Elis stammered. "And — you?" she asked, shyly.

"All of it, at different times. But my work didn't require me to sleep with men every day."

Elis looked down for a few seconds and thought about it. "But you didn't feel like someone's slave. And you didn't have to worry about your safety in your own home."

To this Kaelin could say neither yes nor no. She had felt like a slave at times, but not to the place or the people — to the situation she was in. As for safety, that had never really been guaranteed. But that was true of almost any woman, married or working, no difference. Even so, she had a home to live in, and she didn't have to account for herself to anyone.

Elis looked at her thoughtful face and went on. "Maybe I just need to find a solution that fits me. Accept that nothing will be perfect, and find the path that doesn't tear me to pieces."

"Maybe," Kaelin said, smiling. She had realised she wasn't in a position to give anyone advice, and she accepted that this woman would have to find her own way. Just as she herself had entrusted her life to people she had just met and thrown herself into an adventure with no way of knowing where it would end.

"Here," Vaelra cut in, while the two of them were looking at each other in silence. She held out a piece of dried meat each from what they'd taken from Crestwick, and small loaves of questionable freshness. Kaelin and Elis took what she offered and started eating quietly by the fire, which was warming the room at least a little. Tivver and Veylith, having finished arranging the stones, had begun eating on the other side of the fire. Veylith glanced at them for a moment, then turned her eyes to the fire.

"I found it!" Darian shouted, all at once, from a far corner of the cave. "I knew there had to be somewhere all this water that feeds the plant was either flowing through or collecting. The water seeping out of the wall here is forming a little pool, and then flowing out through another crack."

"Is it even drinkable?" Tivver called, chewing.

"It's snowmelt. You won't find cleaner water than that," Darian answered.

"Then let's fill all the water-skins," Ravah said, getting up from where she had been sitting. She gathered all the skins and went over to Darian.

…

In the dim light, after they had eaten and drunk from the spring, they wrapped themselves in everything they had and tried to warm up by the small fire. The fire went on burning for a few more hours and finally went out, leaving behind only the warmth in the stones around it. Veylith and Ravah were taking turns on watch, but there was no sound in the caves except theirs. Tivver and Darian were lying curled up against Ravah for warmth, with Vaelra and Kaelin lying alongside with Elis between them. Veylith, closing the circle, lay half-asleep, half-awake, keeping an eye on all of them. Most of the time her senses had dimmed, but she knew they would have to get up soon and move on. Still, she would let them sleep until the warmth of the stones gave out.

Then, from the dark ahead of them, a sound echoed. They all woke at once and sat up where they were.

"What the fuck was that?" Tivver said, in a tense voice.

Veylith, who was already awake, didn't move much, just kept her eyes on the dark ahead and answered: "A whistle."