Lord tophet, p.8
Lord Tophet, page 8
part #2 of Shadowbridge Series
Lifting one of the baskets, she found it to be as heavy as if it were filled with wet sand. She heaved it into the opening and, using its weight as a fulcrum, hauled herself up and in beside it.
The area beneath the span receded into darkness. What light did play through the opening showed nearby containers and amphorae, baskets and crates all neatly stacked. It looked familiar: the cargo from the boat that had brought her here.
“Lea!” called Diverus, and she stuck her head out to show him that she was fine. He laughed in relief.
“I think this might go all the way across the span, Diverus,” she called up. “I’m going to follow it. Don’t wait for me here, go back to the theater. I’ll find my way out.”
“But I’m not sure where the theater is.”
“Just go to the far side of the span and walk down the sea-lane, same as we did before, past the Dragon Bowl. Just don’t walk out onto the beam.”
Disregarding her levity, he replied, “I’m not happy about this.”
“You could come down here with me.”
“No,” he said, “I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Well, I can’t come back up now that I’m here. So you have to go on top and me underneath.”
“You’re crazy, Leodora, do you know that?” He shook his head at her and then withdrew.
“All too well,” she said to herself.
When he didn’t reappear, she ducked back inside, but his final statement stayed with her. He was right, she had taken ridiculous risks, although she hadn’t seen them as such at the time. She hadn’t expected the hexagonal bowl to ignite, to do . . . whatever it had done to her. She glanced down at the pendant, fingering the edges of it. Whatever had been done, she could hardly reverse it now. She was who she was. Jumping down here, though, had been no risk at all, for someone used to scaling bridge towers. Diverus would just have to understand.
She turned her attention to the space ahead.
The underspan had a low ceiling, and while the floor was not a natural formation, it otherwise reminded her eerily of Fishkill Cavern where she’d first met the Coral Man. It was the sound of the place, she realized as she headed deeper in. It was the way her footsteps echoed as in a great cave.
Her eyes grew used to the dimness. There must have been hundreds of containers, perhaps thousands if they continued into the darkness. It was as though ships had been coming here since the beginning of time, their cargo hauled up but never passed along.
She soon came upon the first set of steps leading back to the surface, their zigzag shape like a fracture in the darkness.
She went up them bent low, her hands on the steps above, as if ready to fling herself off at the first sign of trouble from above. Nearing the top, she raised one hand and patted it against the shape of a trapdoor. Her fingers closed around a metal ring dangling from it. As the underspan reminded her of Fishkill Cavern, the trapdoor was all too unpleasantly reminiscent of her boathouse on Bouyan, and an irrational terror seized her that if she lifted that trap, she would be back there with her uncle looming over the opening, waiting for her. For a moment as she crouched in the darkness, she had the wild notion that she had never left the boathouse and that all the adventure between there and here had been an illusion, and now she must return to the cold horror, relive it all. This terror so pressed and compacted her that she flung open the trap in defiance of it.
It wasn’t the boathouse, of course. She was in someone’s kitchen—there was a wooden block, and on it knives, pots, and empty red-glass bottles. The place looked gray and disused, although that might have been a trick of the light coming through the smudged, distorting glass of the windows. Before anyone came into view, she lowered the trap and retreated down the steps, but then sat at the bottom of them until she could see in the darkness again.
The house above might have been one of those that had been blighted until yesterday. That would explain its sense of emptiness, of stillness. She didn’t know if people had continued to live in the blighted places. Orinda had continued living in the back of the theater, but did that constitute reliable evidence?
In the murk around her she now could make out jagged edges of more scattered stairways up to the surface.
She got up and continued walking. She passed a few small barrows and a larger cart. The cart, half unloaded, had lengths of rope dangling off it, conveying a sense that all work had simply stopped. That seemed to be what had happened. Perhaps it was because of the rejuvenation of the span, or maybe this was just a day of rest. She thought of the people lying about among the flowers above—a day with no obligations, no work to be done. It sounded terribly inviting if utterly alien to her.
She walked deeper into the space and shortly came upon another stairway to the surface. Beside this one stood one of the stone statues, like those she’d seen along the refurbished boulevard. Someone had opted not to carry this one to the surface, although it looked to her perfectly formed. It was the figure of a man. Even in the poor light she could see how well defined were the folds of his tunic, how the sculptor had dramatically captured every detail of him. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to leave it down here in the dark.
Off in the distance, someone laughed. She listened, and tried to determine where it had come from, but the sound bounced off a hundred surfaces, circling her. She guessed at an approximate direction and started walking, cautiously. She walked past a thick pillar, an unlit lantern hanging from it.
She realized that she was seeing a wan light in the deep distance, one that flickered from behind stacked crates and boxes. She passed by more statuary, figures in crouched poses, looking as if they were in the middle of lifting something, and another pillar hung with another unused lantern, and more small carts. The light from outside, where she’d entered, shrank and shrank until it was like the glow of a distant star. The reflected light ahead looked brighter. She felt her way past amphorae and woven baskets toward a murmur of voices.
Someone cried out, “I serve you with a writ!” and she stopped dead. Whatever she expected next, it wasn’t the groan of dismay that followed. A woman’s voice exclaimed, “That’s wonderful. Now I can sue for damages!” Hands clapped. Whoever it was sounded gleefully malicious, but no one else said a thing in reply. Instead there came a clicking sound and the words, “A nine!” and Leodora quite suddenly knew what was going on.
The remaining distance she walked with less concern, then around the stacked boxes that served as a wall enclosing the game. Indeed, it was definitely a game.
Five players—two women and three men—sat in a circle upon wicker chests and boxes. One sat on a leather drum. In the center they’d set up an equally makeshift playing surface—a large flat cloth that was covered in symbols, lines, squares, and two piles of cards. The light came from lanterns hung from the arms of two more statues placed on opposite sides of the game. The players all held cards, and when she appeared they turned as one to see her. At first they gaped, but then they smiled to her. “Fresh meat,” said one of the women. She stood. “Find her a seat.”
“You composing poetry now, Meg?” asked the skinny man across from her.
“Could if I wanted,” she answered, then to Leodora, “Come in, come in. We need another player, you’ve no idea—someone whose tricks we don’t know yet.”
“Hang on, now, my dear,” said another of the men. “She could be here for supplies. You here for supplies, girl?”
“No,” replied Leodora.
“Lost, then?”
“Not exactly. That is, I know how I got here.”
The second woman laughed, revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “If you know that, then you’re ahead of most of us. Come and sit.” She tugged at the wide wicker case she perched on, dragging it to the side to give Leodora a place to perch beside her. “Tight quarters but still room enough, heh?” Leodora circled them and sat on the end of the case. “I’m Garna,” said the woman. “That’s Meg, then Pelorie, Hamen, and Chork.”
“Leodora.”
“Now, there’s a name. Brave name,” said Chork.
“How would you know that?” asked Hamen. He had a flushed, dissolute face, but friendly. “You don’t even go up to the surface anymore.”
Chork was wall-eyed and she shifted her gaze from one eye to the other, trying to determine which to look at. He said meanwhile, “Never mind how—I just know it from the sound. So tell us, do you know how to play?”
She looked at the cloth, the four dice, the game pieces, which looked to be whatever had been lying about—a cork, two pebbles, a striated shell, and a heavy ring set with a green stone. “This is what I think it is?”
“It is if what you’re thinking is Lawyers’ Poker. We don’t have a judge. You need a minimum of six to play with a judge. So we been taking turns as needed. It’s not the same, though, is it?”
Leodora didn’t want to disappoint them. “I can try,” she said. She had never played the game and knew of it only as referenced in one of the stories of Meersh.
“Well, then, toss in your cards,” instructed Pelorie. “We’ll deal a new game.” He raked the cards into a heap and began to shuffle them.
Off in the distance someone called, “Coo-ee! Lignor Alley!”
“Damn,” said Hamen. He got up, groaning, stretching his stocky frame. “I’ll be right back then.” He lifted the lantern behind him from the statue’s arm and walked off. His voice echoed back: “What’s it want?”
“Lingonberry wine!” came the reply.
Chork scratched his ear. “I’m sure there’s some left that we haven’t drunk.” The others chuckled.
“Maybe one or two bottles were overlooked,” added Meg.
As if in response, Pelorie set down the cards, lifted a bottle, uncorked it, and drank. He passed it on to Garna, but placed the cork on the board. “This’ll serve as your piece, Leodora.”
She nodded.
He said, “So, what is it you’re doing down here, then? Nobody ever comes down here.”
“I saw it when we arrived. We came on a ship and they had mostly cargo, so when we climbed up I saw the goods hauled in.”
“That was us all right,” agreed Garna. She handed her the bottle. “But how’d you figure to come visiting? Lots of people go up them steps—or used to. They don’t usually come swinging in here on a rope.”
“I’m a storyteller. I thought—”
“Oh, what kinds of stories?” Meg asked.
“Shadowplays.”
“A puppeteer?”
She nodded.
“You’ll want to take that drink today,” urged Chork.
Leodora took a pull from the bottle. The liquor was sharp and sweet at the same time, and her eyes teared.
“Lemons,” said Meg, as if answering a question, and Leodora nodded vigorously. She passed the bottle to Chork, who leaned forward to take it.
“You came here to perform,” he said, “only to find out they’s banned all such here for years and years now. That’s a shame.”
“No. I’m performing. Tonight.”
“Naw! Where? Not on this span!”
“At the theater?” she offered.
“What theater would dare?”
She didn’t recall that anyone had named it in her presence. All she could say was, “Mr. Burbage’s?”
“The Terrestre. That old ruin? You can play there all you like, but all you’re going to have for an audience is a lot of rubble and some rats. And even so they’ll arrest you for it, see if they don’t.”
“He’s right,” Garna agreed. “The ban’s a very serious thing.”
“Not anymore, apparently,” called Hamen. He walked up with his lantern and handed a sheet of yellow parchment to Meg. “Proprietress at Lignor give me this just now. Someone’s passing ’em out up there.”
Leodora knew what it was without reading it.
“THE GIRL WHO SAVED COLEMAIGNE?” Meg recited. The group looked from her to Leodora, who tried to smile at the same time as she would happily have climbed inside the wicker container on which she sat.
“Oy, but this calls her Jax. THE REDOUBTABLE JAX. Not Leodora.”
She started to explain but Hamen replied first. “Stage name, like.” She met his amused gaze and bobbed her head.
“That’s fine and all, but how’d she save Colemaigne? Did it need saving? We didn’t hear anything about it.”
“We wouldn’t, now, would we?” Pelorie answered. “Anybody been up there so far today? I bet Hamen’s come the closest with that paper.”
“What day is it?”
“Who knows?”
“Celebration day, by the looks. So how did you save us, exactly?”
Leodora wrapped her arms about herself. “I don’t really know, exactly. All I did was walk out on the dragon beam.”
“What? That thing hasn’t fallen off yet?”
“Garna, hush,” Hamen said. “Go on.”
“That’s all—all I know. I seem to have gone to Edgeworld, but I’ve no memory of it. When I woke up, the span had been put right. The theater—”
“Terrestre.”
“—the Terrestre’s whole again, like it’s brand new. The blighted buildings, they’re fixed up. Repaired. I saw them on my way here. Children were licking them.”
“I used to do that,” said Chork, “when I was tiny.”
“Well, tie me to the gods’ gofe,” Pelorie said in wonder. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “Hang on, though. How come they didn’t change?”
The players eyed the statues suspiciously.
“Why didn’t you change them back?” Garna asked her.
“I didn’t—I don’t know what that means,” she said, and then all at once she did. “Those were people?”
“Once,” Pelorie replied.
Chork focused one eye on her. “When the blight swept through, they were standing in its path. Down here.”
“That one’s me dad,” Meg said, pointing to the one on which Hamen had hung his lantern.
“I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago, that. I’m used to him this way now.”
Garna asked again, “Why didn’t they change back? The buildings but not the people—what’s the point of that?”
“I don’t know.” She fingered the pendant nervously. “What is the point?”
The pendant opened its eyes. Meg gasped and Pelorie fell off his seat.
“The point,” said the pendant, “is that a building can go forward in an inert state but life cannot. Once stopped it stays stopped.”
“Time is that which ends,” Leodora recited.
The pendant said, “Ah-ha,” then closed its eyes and was silent again.
“What the mummichog was that?” Pelorie climbed back onto his seat.
“Orinda calls it a Brazen Head.”
“Who? The Orinda that lives in the Terrestre?”
Meg and Hamen exchanged glances. “I’m thinking we might want to go up on the surface tonight,” she said.
“Take in a play maybe, like?” Hamen looked at Leodora. “What do you think of that?”
“You live down here all the time?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s akin to being a miner. We have our shifts, live mostly in the dark. We go home, some of us do.”
Distantly someone called, “Coo-ee, Arbady Lane!”
Meg got up. “Hold my place,” she said, as though someone new might sweep in and take it. She walked off into the darkness.
“Does that happen all the time?” asked Leodora.
Pelorie replied, “Nah. Most like in the morning. Sometimes we’ll go a whole shift without a call. Not often, mind you, but it’s happened.” He took another drink from the circulating bottle, then asked, “So what are you doing down here, ‘redoubtable’? You only said that you weren’t lost.”
“I’m looking for stories.”
“The kind you can play out with your shadows?”
She nodded. “I like to hear how stories are told. Every span’s a little different. Your characters might have a different name than elsewhere, or the tale reach a different outcome. Maybe they don’t cut off their toes to make the magic slippers fit.”
“I know that story!” Chork proclaimed.
“Of course you do,” she went on, “and I like to hear how you learned it, what names everyone in it has, how it’s changed, how it’s become part of this span and not of any other. Then when I perform, I’ll get it right for here. I mean, I could tell them in a general way and everyone would be pleased, but I would really rather tell them in the way they belong here.”
“Never realized it was so complicated,” said Garna.
“I’d a’thought you just telled ’em,” Chork added, then loosely waved his hand. “Of course, it’s been so long since there was a story here, we can’t remember. But it’s what I’d do.”
“And that’s why you unload ships and she performs stories,” Garna told him.
“Well, thankee for nothing,” Chork replied.
“I don’t want to cause a squabble,” Leodora said.
“Oh, you’re not causing anything. He’s like that all the time.”
Pelorie added, “To everybody.”
Chork looked at the two of them and started to laugh.
“I know a story,” Pelorie offered. “Fella off a boat told me it last week. You want to hear?”
“All right.”
“But then you have to be our judge, just so we can play a real hand of Lawyers’ Poker. That’s my price.”
“That seems fair.”
“Well, good, then.” He leaned back against the statue behind him and closed his eyes.
Leodora quietly asked Garna, “What’s he doing?”
“Waiting for Meg.”
“Oh.”
“Meantime, I’ll show you the rules of the game so you’ll know how to play it.” Garna reached across the cloth and grabbed the deck of cards.
By the time Meg returned, they’d gone through half the deck, and Leodora had seen enough to understand and act her part. She urged them to play first and tell the story after, and that’s what they did.
