While most of the mosaic debris dissolved along with Earth, some scattered on the Alsantian side of the plateau, and while many vultures did not stir from their nests on a nearby, taller mesa—preening feathers; feeding hatchlings shreds of rabbit that begged for its life less than an hour before; squatting on twitching, flaking eggs hungry to hatch; and, a few cultured birds sitting in practiced human shapes, sharpening swords, casting runes, and reading tattered books—one wary eye spied them, and in lieu of pointing, dove shrieking toward the children.
"Meat!" it shrieked. "Praise the gate!" As it plunged, Oji picked up the unconscious Chiyo, dashed to the ledge, and sprang to the first hoodoo. Still unaccustomed to see their pet in human form, Lucien and Akachi stared speechless at this muscular feat.
"Run!" Aito yelled, then threw a stone, which whistled into the hurtling vulture and sent it dwindling in the pass between the mesas. "Go the way you came!"
As Akachi's jaw dropped taking in the hundreds of nests crammed in the niches of the plateau, and the thousand ugly heads poking out to echo the screech of 'meat!', Aito put his arm around Michel, ran to the ledge, and with one hand on her shoulder, pushed her onto the first fairy chimney.
"Not this again!" wailed Michel, teetering on its rim and clenching his fingers in her own.
"This one's wider," lied Aito. "So it will be easier. And I'm right behind you." While the truth was that they were a little pinched compared to the ones on Earth, they would have to leave Michel if she balked. "The first three steps are the narrowest ones, just like on Earth, and as soon as we clear them, we'll run the rest of the way. That's the hard part. Can you do it?"
"What choice do I have?" As if uplifted by the hot air of Aito's lies, Michel easily took the three precarious steps—dragging Aito behind her to lurch over the tiny toeholds with a numb gasp--and then led a blind dash down the hoodoo stairway until the boy hastened in front.
"Agghh!" came Lucien's shout. "Can we even do this? They're so small!"
"They're coming!" yelled Akachi.
"Run, Akachi!" screamed Michel.
Now squeezing Michel's hand and descending the hoodoo stairs in careful tandem, Aito could not risk a glance at his other friends or the onrushing vultures. "Keep going, Michel. We're almost there."
While most were content to circle, a few vultures swooped, bringing shrieks and retaliatory swats and thumps from Lucien and Akachi, and making Aito drag Michel down, so that a gliding bird struck the mesa and fell in a twitching heap.
Atop the bottom pillar of the hoodoo stairway, Aito paced the ten-foot wide overlook searching for handholds for the blind girl, and was stunned to see Chiyo face down in the desert until Oji reached up for Michel. After lowering her, Aito dropped down, and a few moments later, Lucien and Akachi followed.
Oji said, "they won't circle forever. They won't chase us inside."
"Inside?"
Oji gestured toward a cave mouth at the base of the mesa.
"That wasn't there before," Lucien said doubtfully.
"We've never been here, Lucien," said Aito. "I'll explain on the way."
"On the way? Where?"
"Not now. Just do as he says."
"As the cat says? I'm sorry, as the shapechanged cat says?"
"Yes," said Oji, "do what the shapechanged cat says, Lucien. We never had a problem before."
"You were just a cat!" shouted Lucien.
"I'm saving your life, you stupid Alsantian!"
"I'm not Alsantian! Alsantia is a made-up place invented by this cult!"
Aito clapped his hand to Lucien's shoulder. "If him being a shapechanged cat is a lot to take, Lucien, what about that cloud of vultures?"
After Lucien allowed himself to be led inside by Aito, the others followed.Though it was as dark as a well, Oji's lantern-bright eyes led them around corners and over crevices as they went deeper into the cave. The muscular boy carried Chiyo as if she weighed nothing, her brown hair streaming over his shoulder along with a dried trickle of blood.
"Where are we going, Aito?"
When Lucien's voice quavered, Aito remembered that his friend was scared of the dark. While it wasn't an overpowering phobia in Draden, where the Continental Finance Building's windows beamed on the shuttered Mansion, a pitch black tunnel in Alsantia was another story.
"I don't know, Lucien. I've never been to this part of Alsantia.'
Though Lucien strove to master his fear, his pent-up questions bubbled up through the sinister silence. "What parts of Alsantia have you been to, Aito?"
"Actually, I've seen just as much of Earth."
"How? You were in the Mansion. With me."
"I lived most of my life on Earth, and while our journey to the mesa wasn't my longest journey, we flew from Daiko to Alsantia by Zalgyne. "
"Though I know one of those three words, yesterday Alsantia was as good as Neverland."
"I know, Lucien. You never believed the Elderliches."
"I didn't. This is all new. What's a Zog Gun?"
"Zalgyne. It's like an airplane, but with flapping wings."
"That would never work!"
"Neither do shape-changing cats, but we have magic in Alsantia."
"And what's a Daiko?"
"It's not a thing, it's a place. Chiyo and I were born there. Actually, she's my twin."
Lucien stopped in his tracks. "Stop telling lies, Aito."
"That's where you draw the line?"
"You don't look like twins. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Like the rest of you, we were in hiding. Unlike you, we were in on the escape."
"Tell me about that."
"I can't, Lucien. Not now. Let me answer your other question instead."
"My other question?"
"You asked how the cave appeared on the mesa."
"I'm curious about that, but I'd really like to hear about the escape."
"Even if we had the time for that story, I was sworn to secrecy. You might have to hear that from someone else."
"Fine." After a few hundred paces, Lucien said, "aren't you going to tell me how the mesa changed?"
"It's not the same place. While it looks the same, it's only similar, a similarity that creates a zone of power we call a Zyzygy."
"I know what a syzygy is. We watched that documentary together. I thought you could only see them from space?"
"Not a syzygy, a Zyzygy. While a syzygy is an alignment of planets, a Zyzygy is a rare point of alignment between parallel worlds."
"You mean the mesa looks the same because Earth connects with Alsantia there?"
"Not connects--more like Earth is congruent to Alsantia there."
"Why are they rare? If they're parallel worlds, why aren't there billions of points of alignment?"
"Worlds exist not only in space, but in time, as near-infinite series of causes and effects. With billions of years in parallel sequence, a small difference here and there can mushroom into a huge variation over time. The eons on Alsantia and Earth passed very differently, not only because one focused on science, and the other on magic, but because long before humans existed on either world, our Pangaea stayed together, while yours expanded into the continents you know today."
"Pangaea? I've heard of this--you mean the way tectonic plates under the Earth's crust diverged, pulling apart the original supercontinent to form Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Europe and Asia."
"I know this!" Lucien said excitedly. "Pangaea was the original supercontinent. It was pulled apart when tectonic plates under Earth's crust diverged, forming Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe, and Asia."
"But not on Alsantia. Because the Alsantian supercontinent stayed together, there are very few points of geographical alignment between our worlds. This is one of those few."
"That's crazy, Aito. If there are no continents, then there is no Europe, Asia, Africa,or America. If there is no Asia on Alsantia, how can you look Japanese?"
"Again, parallel worlds. While there may have been less human diversity on another parallel world, and on another, human beings may never have evolved, here on Alsantia, our enormous supercontinent dwarfs the combined area of your separate continents, and there was plenty of room for differences to appear."
"Are there people here that look like me?"
"When I said escape, I thought you'd put two and two together. You're not paying attention. You're Alsantian, Lucien."
"That can't be right."
"It's the truth, Lucien. You're a true Alsantian, from Muida, the citadel of learning. When Alsantia was a more tolerant nation, Muida was its cultural center, and today it's still a cosmopolitan city of immigrants. Such as your great-grandparents, who came from Efremia."
"What's Efremia? Is it a good place? I've been terrified of everything since we came here. Tell me there's something good, Aito."
"Efremia was a noble land known for its rich customs, artistic nature, wise philosophy, tasty cuisine, and deep magical lore, that nonetheless fell to the low cunning of the Alsantians. Imagine if Africa and ancient Greece had become a huge melting pot of philosophy and science, then add magic, and you have an idea of Efremia."
"What's Alsantia like?"
"Take all the bad parts of the Roman Empire and medieval Europe and toss them into a salad, and that's Alsantia. Aside from the talking animals, not that they recognize our laws, borders or maps."
Perhaps because she was born to it, Michel walked better than Aito in the deep darkness, and when he caught himself leaning on her a little too much, he leaned the other way, grazing his fingers on the wall to satisfy that he was still in the world, if the underbelly of it. When the rough grain became smooth, mortared stone, and their shoes began not to scuff but clap, echoing on the walls and ceiling, Aito's heart sank, dragging his lungs and stomach with them, so that his breath felt far away and his stomach groaned like grinding pebbles.
"Oji!" At Aito's hiss, the cat-boy hesitated, then turned. "We can't be here!"
"Do we have a choice?" asked Oji. "What's your suggestion?"
"My idea is—leave the dwarf caves!"
"Alsantia is different now, Aito."
"One, how would you know? Two, I don't believe it! The dwarves have hated us for centuries."
"How can they hate us, Oji? We're trade partners."
"Who else will they trade with? They live underground!"
"And that's why we hate you," came the low grumble. When light streamed from a crackling wire sphere topping a black pole. Aito clapped his hand to his eyes, and his groan joined a chorus of moans from the others, whose eyes had just accustomed to the deep darkness when the beaming illumination flooded their eye sockets until their brains ached and their eyelids shook like tapped drums.
"While I can't say I'm sorry—as I like to see who I'm talking to—you deserve more than this rude welcome." Trilingual, and accustomed to the subtleties of not only English, but Daikonese and Alsantian, Aito heard the dwarf's ambiguity, which intended 'more' to mean worse, not better.
When the angry red blur submerged in his clearing vision, Aito first saw the dozen dwarves circling the speaker, for he could not focus on the searing light. These underdwellers were so pale that they seemed not born to their coloration but bleached, and their translucent eyes, swimming with gold, silver, and emerald flecks, suggested that these subterraneans had absorbed a rainbow before fading to sickly white--not the color of milk, but the color of underbellies found between dirt and a rock.
Accentuating this nauseating pallor, their resplendent clothing had such a metallic luster that it must be spun gold or a clever chainmail not welded from links but woven like wool, and their luxurious beards were shades more vibrant than any human hair, such as crimson red, golden blonde, and mahogany brown.
When the violence done to their vision had subsided, the streaming light now seemed less scintillating, a cold blue flicker that nonetheless illumined the stone room. The pearlescent blue seemed to collect in the creeping beard of their shadowed leader.
Despite their air of resplendent wealth, their beards and garments were tainted by traces of sooty grime, and over that a hazy silt.
"Why have you come, Prince Oji?"
"I have an appointment to keep."
"Only assassins take meetings with a boy prince."
"Indeed, assassins grew bold and assailed our refuge. My coronation has moved up."
"Beware the land when the king is a boy."
"Are you here to help, or not?"
"We've come to help ourselves, my prince. Keitin teenmo regrra noren." With that, the dwarves pounced, grabbed their wrists, and held them fast.
As Oji still carried Chiyo, he glowered, but had the good sense not to struggle, and allowed the traitors to take the moaning girl before he extended his wrists.
"Do not think us taken in by your human rags, my prince."
From the back of an adjoining hall, a dwarf stepped forward with a brass cage, placed it on the ground, then opened its door.
Oji said, "When I say you will regret this day, I make no threat. It is your allies who will disappoint you, even if they are victorious."
"Disappointment?" When his fellows hooted, the dwarf howled, then fell into a well-oiled patter, as if what was to follow was a rehearsed theatrical number. "Did you think dwarves live in a golden land? Where did you think the smoke of our forges goes? Even with the best ventilation vomiting it into your skies, a thick haze corrupts our gold and silver, and the magnificent legacy of dwarven architecture is now tarnished, smoked, and stressed by the constant heat, so that your Alsantian fables are now hogwash, from supplying your piggy wants and our swinish greed. No, this is a gray land. Get in the cage, prince."
Oji ebbed into cat form, hissed, then drew out the hiss as he pranced into the cage, turned himself about, and settled onto his haunches, when the hiss subsided, as if deflated by sitting; but when the cage-bearer latched it, Oji snarled, bowed his head, and squeezed his eyes shut, as if voiding the indignity of this mode of transportation.
"Come on, you," said the dwarf leader. "If any of you run, by playing a game of subtraction, we'll reduce you to a manageable number. Don't tempt us, as dwarves are cruel accountants."
Though cowed by this ominous and vague statement, Aito could not suppress his question. "Where are you taking us?"
"This way," the dwarf guffawed. But after a silent stretch down the passageway, the children's quiet submission seemed to mollify and relax the dwarven leader. "There's only one destination by this road."
"Murania."
"There's no safer place," the dwarf smiled cruelly, "from which to ransom princelings and princesses."
"That won't work," said Aito.
"You don't think so? You think your parents will come after so many years?"
"I'm no politician, but you should think on what Oji said."
"Queen Suvani will be happy to have the pretender."
"Queen Suvani?" said Aito.
"We didn't vote for her," he snickered. "We would have chosen the brother, Vemulus. He's a wart, but a doer that gets things done."
"Oji's a gift?" asked Aito.
The dwarves laughed. "No, but she'll find the terms favorable."
Their first sight of Murania was an enormous grotto, brimming with not only topheavy stone—crennelated towers, castles, cathedrals, warehouses, and shopping agoras--but roads cramming gatehouses, elevated bridges taking a skyline path, and all the doors in between connected by slithering, spanning stone.
Despite the evil glamour of their surroundings, their chains were such a grim insult that it seemed too dismal to admire, and they walked numbly through stone conduits around scrubby plants snapping like dogs, When their eyes widened grudgingly in the baleful light of illuminated posts, the snarling dwarf trees scrambled back to the dimmer blue, then leaned their orange-streaked fronds toward the lampposts.
They stepped over thousands of flagstones, each a resplendent work of art etched in gold whorls and rays repeating like the fractals Aito had once found by googling optical illusions. As for the buildings, each stone was carved with an exquisite image of dwarves at work, at study, or at war, then laid in a narrative sequence with the other stones, so that by running your eye zig-zag in the fashion of dwarven books, a pictographic story came to life, the moral of which was summed up when you took a step back for the big picture, for each stone also served as a tile in a gigantic mosaic. What seemed a great irony was that with three different ways of looking at a single wall, the bustling dwarves seemed oblivious to their wondrous civilzation;
In the throngs of dwarves, some clutched cubical briefcases, others gripped stone tablets with shifting runes, like magical iPads, but all of them didn't walk so much as barge at breakneck speed like helter-skelter golf carts. Along the wider concourses, horseless carriages belched steam in their huffing progress, so that despite the palpable heat radiating from an unknown location, condensation streaked the window panes.
"It's amazing," said Aito. "Your kingdom would be monumental simply for its massive size, but that everything is painstakingly decorated both in large and in miniature is astounding."
"This is the suburbs." The dwarf snorted. "You haven't seen the city. This is just a business hub with merchants' offices and a few embassies."
"Embassies?" said Aito with an anxious look.
"We'd head for the docks to ship your prince as freight if the Alsantians weren't so eager to take him off our hands."
"Can we not appeal to your king?"
"Sure, let me dig one up."
"Dig?"
"Our only kings are in tombs."
"You killed the royal family?"
"No, our entombed kings died long ago. We ousted the last living one ten years ago, exiled the royal family, then replaced them with a Council. Guess which way they voted on the Alsantian issue, my prince?" The dwarf leered at the caged calico cat, who squinted with veiled rage.
"Will they not hear our plea?" said Aito. "Is it not Oji's right as a visiting dignitary?"
"After that vote, they agreed to the Alsantian Accord, which says that only those peoples contributing soldiers to Queen Suvani's army are persons. Every other talking being, whether on two legs or four, will be assumed to mimic the power of speech, and, as animals, have no part in the Kingdom."
"So you gave her a contingent?"
"Of course we did. It seemed a whole generation of sweet-faced dwarven youth clad in rippling steel and bearing pikes and axes burnished fire bright. So many mothers weeping for their halfwit children, and so many womenfolk rushing in to bear the brunt of our collapsing work force."
"Why would you agree to this unjust accord?"
"It was required by the Alsantian Alliance, which we cared not a whit for except as a prerequisite to joining the Alsantian Trade Consortium."
"Sounds like an ultimatum to me."
"You'll get accustomed to them, boy...if Queen Suvani has a place for you."
They were escorted up the steps, across a wide stone span leading to an intersection of eleven bridges, at the center of which was a circular promenade with back to back shops both around its perimeter and inside the ring. Passing through this wheel of shops, cafes, and other amusements, the dwarves took them down a spiral staircase to a vast concourse milling not only with dwarves in formal robes and gowns, but uniformed workmen tinkerinng with the undercarriage of the bridge, and a scampering crew of talking wolves and jackals, who sniffed the passing children, then shared greasy chuckles as they ascended to the promenade.
When Chiyo's wounded face was sniffed, she moaned and thrashed, causing the dwarf carrying her to stagger and nearly drop the girl. When the other children numbly submitted to the snorting hounds, Aito realized they hadn't spoken since the Skringas' aerie.
Though Aito had jumped worlds only twice since they were placed on Earth, he could only imagine how it was for the other children. Not only had they escaped a wrecked bus, trekked the deserts of two worlds, and seen Berangere disintegrate and Chiyo savaged by a vulure—now they were chained, breathing cave air, and listening to their friend speak Dwarven, a horrific, guttural language like a Klingon/Dalek shouting match.
At the base of the staircase, they turned into a milling crowd and headed to a long gray building, from which gleaming metal coaches glided down iron tracks laid in grooves in the floor. Though the tracks meshed subtly with the concourse, and no barriers stopped the flowing crowds from crossing the tracks, the pedestrians skirted this transit line as if they knew its habits better than their own.
When the dwarven leader hailed a departing coach, its gliding came to an abrupt stop, and a side door was swung wide by a uniformed attendant. After the dwarves prodded their prisoners aboard, the door screeched shut, and the vehicle shuttled rapidly toward its unknown destination, threading through a tubular tunnel with three tracks along the bottom, and two rails embedded in the ceiling from which dangling trolleys zipped faster than the ground cars.
It must have been a high traffic hour, for all five routes were rattling with cars, and a trolley undercarriage seemed like it might scrape their roof on every howling turn.
"Aito," said Lucien.
"Yes?"
"Do they know our language?"
"It's possible. Alsantians travel to Earth more often than vice versa. But I doubt it. And English isn't your native language, Lucien."
"It's the only one I know."
"While you were three when they brought you over, you may be surprised by what you remember. Don't you remember some words?"
"I don't care if I remember anything, Aito. Let's assume they don't understand us."
"And?"
"We won't let them ship us to this Queen, will we?"
"No, Suvani is definitely a bad guy name."
"Then what do we do?"
"Right now—nothing. There's more of them than us, and then there's the manacles."
"Nothing? Don't you know any spells?"
Aito sighed. "Why would I know spells?"
"You're from here."
"So are you. Do you know magic?"
"You would know. You know more about me than I do."
"There's no reason to be bitter, Lucien. You've got less responsibility than any of us. While the rest of us will have duties, your fate is a happy one."
"No responsibilties or duties? You sound a lot more important than me."
"Though no one will bow to you or flatter you until you're sick, you'll have the freedom to do anything you can imagine—and the power not only to realize those wishes, but to attempt the impossible. You're the only child of The Architects."
When they neared a luminous exit humming from a distant and indistinct murmur, they were waved through the bright gate by such indolent and potbellied guards that had one not distinguished himself by the wave, Aito might have thought them not dwarves, but potato sacks. The instant they stepped into the tunnel, the obscure whispers were amplified into enormous urban echoes that blasted all thought of conversation into insensibility until they emerged into a hollow so enormous that the ceiling blurred into a vague gray, the counterpart of the surface world's wispy blue skies.
Beneath this monotonous slate, a network of stone structures interconnected by footpaths and bridges—not unlike the business district bubble, but on a vaster scale—stretched to a stone horizon so distant that the dwarven city and its enveloping grotto seemed another world oppressed by a gray, alienating sky.
When the vehicle stopped in front of a long four-story building, the dwarves issued from its side door shouting, "bill the Crimson Trust!"
On steps ascending to towering double doors, a brightly bearded human of middle height, whose cloak furled high above his head like a cobra's hood, headed for the dwarven leader. "I'll take the prisoner." The bald newcomer had plucked eyebrows, and his crimson beard and mustache grew not in the natural way, but were painted in a garish peacock pattern flaring from his chin to his cheekbones.
"Which one? They're all bad."
"I'm here for this pretender," the man sneered, then snatched the cage from the dwarf's grasp with such rude speed that Oji toppled against the bars, scampered hissing to his feet, then rocked against the flow of the swaying cage in an attempt to keep his footing.
"Who are you?" barked the dwarven leader, only to have his next yap muffled by the finely writ paper sealed with embossed red wax and shoved within an inch of his face. The dwarf snapped the paper away from the simpering varicolored Alsantian, read it, then rolled it tight in his clenched fist. "Take him then. Good riddance to all Alsantians, old and new."
"Noted, Caxur."
"How do you know me?" scowled the dwarf.
"We love our dwarven neighbors, and think it wise to keep a record of dwarves of note."
"Note away, then, but don't think you'll know me. I'm no pedant, but a patriot."
"The rightful heir of Alsantia appreciates your love," the man tittered. "By which I mean not this upstart but Queen Suvani."
"Those who take dwarf stone for granted," growled Caxur, "will likely get masoned in. If you're in my face with that foul-smelling beast one moment more, I'll make its cage your earring."
When the painted man sidestepped, then darted down two steps at a time, hapless Oji scrabbled inside the careening cage,and Akachi's sniffles were taken up by Michel and Lucien with a freer flow of tears. Though Aito struggled to keep his face placid, frustration cracked his resolve, and angry tears dripped down his nose.
The dwarves resumed their climb, barging through the two-way current of robed dwarves to stand in a commodious foyer, where they braced themselves against a volumnous crowd, which they jostled, shoved, and throttled when the children were seized, one by one, and dragged in the current of milling dwarves, all except Chiyo, whose carrier had darted aside a moment before, to precede their new captors back down to the concourse.
After the children were rushed downstairs to the concourse, the hold on their chains was released. One of their new captors, a gray-haired but robust lady dwarf with glittering spectacles, said, "now you must run on your own. Follow if you want to be free."
Though she turned, ran, and seemed to leave this decision entirely in their hands, Chiyo's carrier made up their minds by dashing after the lady dwarf. As their friend receded into a strange land, never to be seen again, they hastened after her as fast as they were able. Though their legs were not encumbered, their dangling, weighty manacles thwacked their knees or had to be held to their chest, which spared them knee bruises but ached their arms until they burned.
When the dwarves sprinted to an entrance barely visible in the surface of the concourse wall, they followed down a narrow, slanting hallway so impossibly long that it was like a demon took the length they walked to nail down in front of them from here to infinity. While the hall went on and on and on, it was too cramped to permit full-throttle sprinting, and in jogging the narrow passage they were soon so winded that their aching arms hung limp from the drag of the rattling manacles, which they could only suffer to slap their kneecaps and thighs.
When the hallway emptied into a sloping tunnel, they descended, then wound their way through the rough, slithering stone, at times stooping when the ceiling bent towards the floor, until after an hour of meandering the stone maze, they climbed up a hollow into a cavernous chamber.
In the ancient accomodations, scruffy dwarven vagabonds dozed on beds coarsely chiseled from ledges, foul pits were hacked into the floor, and some pitiful wretches had a fire going in the relic fireplace.
"What is this place?" Aito sat on an unoccupied ledge, his heart still pumping, his feet still shaking from nonstop running, his arms ablaze with exhaustion, and his eyesight feeling flimsy, as if nauseous from his passage through the miles of tunnels, which, in the end, had dissolved into an unending serpent of stone that just vomited him out--"where have you taken us?"
"It's still a serviceable road," said the dwarven woman. "Though today it's more of a rural route. Before dwarves developed the art of carving hallways and buildings, natural tunnels like the Old Byway were both our major thoroughfares and our living spaces. Today the routes and furnishings are in tolerable repair, and used by those seeking privacy or refuge."
"Did you take us to...a homeless shelter?" asked Akachi.
"Not by intention," said the dwarven woman. "Aside from a bare minimum of maintainance, Murania pretends this place ceased to exist. Much as they pretend these unfortunates fell through the crevices of our society." Her face looked abstracted by its kindness, as if each kind glance sliced away a portion of her self, leaving her sparer and more ghostlike.
When her burly follower laid Chiyo on a ledge, another rescuer—for Aito no longer doubted that these dwarves meant well—knelt at her side, pulled a lamp from his pack, laid it beside the girl, and turned the key.
When the cold light immersed them in its harsh, unforgiving glow, Aito turned from the horrific sight.
"Be quick, Rathscuro," said the dwarven woman. "We aren't safe."
As the doctor examined Chiyo's wound, the children turned towards the fire pit, except for Michel, who by feeling along the wall, sat down on the ledge next to Chiyo.
"Can you help her, doctor?"
Aito turned at Michel's voice. Feeling guilty, he stepped back towards the bloody impromptu operating theater, and made himself stand behind the doctor.
"Am I crowding you, doctor?"
"You're fine." Rathscuro turned his head toward Michel. "If you mean, 'can I heal her,' you'll be disappointed; but if you truly want me to help her, then yes, that's my aim. That's the goal"—here he pointed towards the bloody eye socket—"and this is the ball." What he held reflected the lamp like a prism, diffusing red, orange, yellow, and blue into the ancient shadows of the cave. The iridescent eyeball appeared sculpted from a glassy stone.
"I'm sorry," said Michel. "I can't see."
"Lean forward." When she appeared reluctant, the eye-mechanic inched closer, gazed into her blind eyes, and understood her meaning. "My apologies. I didn't know."
"It's OK. Isn't everyone in the same boat in this cave?"
"If it wasn't for my lamp, that might be true."
"Get on with it," said the dwarven woman with a note of impatience.
"If we were spotted, they would already be here," said Rathscuro. "So long as we stay here, we'll be fine, Thorra."
With a very grumpy grunt, Thorra sat on a neighboring ledge.
Rathscuro continued, both with the surgery and his commentary, as if he hadn't been interrupted. "What I'm holding is a magical eye. Once I've laid it in and sealed the wound with a spell, Princess Chiyo will see through it, and it will even mimic the motions of her other eye. "
"Then you can heal her!" Michel said with such an excited inhalation that she peeped like a teakettle.
"For fear of becoming too proud in my work, I don't use that word for this procedure. To be honest, her eye is beyond healing."
"But you're fixing her vision!" said Aito.
"Another troublesome word, my prince. She isn't a doll in need of repairs. I would be circumspect of such terms around your friend, as if she resents this new fixture, she will take issue with "fix" or "heal." Let's leave it as help."
"While I can understand that," said Michel, "and like to think of myself as whole, not broken, if you restored my sight, I should be grateful for your help."
"Short of injury, Marchioness, I regret that I cannot," sighed Rathscuro. "Not only do you like to think that you are whole, but your mother, the Marquess, not only wants you in one piece, but as you were born."
"My mother? I have a mother?"
"You wouldn't be here without one," he snorted with excessive hilarity, "but yes, you can expect to see her before too—forgive me, my lady. It's a figure of speech."
"What is she like?"
"We haven't met," cut in Thorra brusquely. "Rathscuro, get to it." Thorra then turned to the brawny dwarf who had carried Chiyo. "See to their chains."
When Rathscuro moved the lamp nearer Chiyo's face, then leaned in with the crystalline orb, Aito turned to the fire pit. Rathscuro said, "I've heard she's quite beautiful, my lady. And if you forgive me for saying so, you might be taking after her."
"I'm sure you don't know what you're talking about," Michel said abruptly.
Having struck free Akachi's chains with a steel hammer, the muscular dwarf pulled Aito toward a ledge, laid his links on the stone, then smacked them off as well.
"No doubt you're right. Dwarves see things differently." Rathscuro groaned. "Sorry. To make a long story short--"
"Too late," snapped Thorra. "And should you be talking at all during such a procedure?"
"--rumor has it the Marquessa is such a legendary beauty, only slightly diminished by middle age, that the lords of nine kingdoms vie for the pleasure of the betrothal."
"Not another word," snarled Thorra.
"Betrothal?" said Michel. "Isn't she married?"
"A widow," said Rathscuro. There were squelchy snipping noises. Aito nearly vomited. "And she's well over the age of betrothal in Alsantia. You wouldn't know, of course, having lived on Earth."
As Michel sat stunned, the squishy cropping sounds continued, followed by Chiyo's low moan. "You mean ME?" When Rathscuro did not deny it, but simply bent to his task, she blurted, "why fight over me? They've never seen what I look like."
"Well, the apple's said not to fall far from the tree in such matters, and your mother's a great beauty. And love conquers all, they say. While you'll never know what your future husband looks like, that won't bar love."
When Akachi marched back to the operation, she averted her eyes from the bloody ledge, but as she could not so easily divert her surging anger, her nostrils flared, her cheeks were red hot, and her mouth was distorted into a snarl.
"Shut up!"
"Excuse me!"
"Shut up! My friend is not an apple, and she's definitely not a love apple! And your patient--you know, the one moaning during your yammering--is also my friend!"
"I meant to reassure her..."
"With what, horrors?"
Thorra said, with an evener tone than before, "do as her ladyship suggests."
Rathscuro sighed. Though his grin was fawning, there was a disgruntled squint in his eyes. When the eye mechanic peered into Chiyo's face, and inched the glassy eye forward...Aito realized he was nearly sucked in by the gory spectacle, and turned his head before he had the misfortune to comprehend what he glimpsed. Rathscuro whispered arcane syllables, which resonated off the cave rock and made Aito's neck hairs stand straight up.
"It's done," muttered the dwarf.
"You assured me she could be carried."
"Yes, though I wish it wasn't necessary. Since she's not a dwarf, she must rest as much as humanly possible."
"Kachek, pick her up and follow me."
The tall, burly dwarf said, "as I can't go back now, what choice do I have?" The dwarf not only seemed less than willing to accompany them, but to be in his current position. "You said you wouldn't put me in that situation."
"Why do you care? They don't know your real name, and you're being paid for your contribution."
"Pfaugh," Kachek spat, but picked up Chiyo with surprising gentleness that belied his angry, uncouth manner.
"Rathscuro, stay here."
"To what end?" The doctor had a quizzical look on his face.
"If they do track us here, misdirect our pursuers."
"Why would they believe me?"
"Tell them you came to treat the down on their luck. Better yet, why not see to these vagabonds, and learn their names and skills?"
"I might do this, if it was safe. "
"There's safe, and there's right. I don't have time to appeal to your self-interest, Rathscuro. Just do it, and you'll be compensated." When the doctor grudgingly nodded, Thorra led them to the cave's far end, where another winding tunnel led them down a steep, pebbly slope, over a trickling underground stream, and towards a brilliant swath of light.
"Don't think I'm ungrateful," said Aito. "While I'm happy to leave the chains behind, what about these manacles?"
"We didn't have the tools. There's a forge where we're going."
While the brilliance was only a curving S-shaped tunnel a smidgen brighter than what lay behind them, with each meandering kink, the brightness increased. Now accustomed to the darkness of the dwarf caves, they soon noticed each stretch was different, from pocked, porous tubes that looked like they might fall apart at a breath but proved hard as rocks and rough as charcoal, to smooth and burnished gigantic geodes.
They wandered until their legs grew weak, their bruised knees ached, their wrists were chaffed by the manacles, and their sweat-logged, soiled vestments felt less like cloth and wool than staples and tacks.
Before long, they were so woozy that the darkness whirled and sparkled, and the dull cave stone began to look as soft and inviting as pillowed mattresses. Aito was so topheavy with exhaustion that he swayed, and might have toppled to the floor had they not entered another geodic structure not unlike an enormous crystal donut, illuminated by a cave mouth in the distant ceiling which, like a natural skylight, flooded the crystal interior with the brightness of several suns. They had found the source of the magnified light which leaked into surrounding tunnels.
Stepping into this sun-scorched chamber was so like an oven that Aito felt himself baked brown, though the other children seemed to whiten to near-invisibility in the intense glare.
"Over here." Thorra led them to a crystal staircase chiseled from the inner wall, which Aito could not have distinguished from the glassy interior without a guide.
When they climbed up the staircase, Akachi's sandles tore at the same time, as if both obeyed an expiration date; the material was so shredded by walking, running, jumping from fairy chimneys, and now spelunking, that her footwear hopelessly disintigrated. As there were at least a hundred more stairs, all hotter than beach sand, Thorra grunted, allowe Akachi to clamber on her back, then trudged up the translucent staircase.
Although Aito was unafraid of heights, it was unnerving to walk up see-through stairs,
in which their reflections quivered like jelly, and the white circle of the central floor shone hot.
As the stairwell ascended, and the cave tapered, its transparency and shininess decreased, until the craggy pit-mouth only glinted with stray veins of crystal. When they passed through the hole into the searing light of day, they shielded their eyes, but continued on the stairs, which now descended down the slope of the foothills running with the shadow of the mountain looming at their backs. The grey steps contrasted with the earthier tones of the mountain. As the sun beat on these steps too, Thorra only grunted, bore down under her laborious climb, and took care not to spill Akachi.
At the base of the mountain was a twisting road inlaid with intricate paving stones like those of the dwarven city, on which camped three coaches, one enclosed wagon with barred windows, and a dozen horsemen, whose mighty steeds cast shadows longer than the vehicles.
Kachek muttered, "that's a great many escorts for one Marchioness."
"Is that my mother?" asked Michel with an excited squeal.
A glum flicker passed over Akachi's face before she summoned an unconvincing smile, which she passed on to the blind girl by hopping down from her perch on the dwarf, and clapping a hand to her shoulder. "I hope so, Michel..."Then she turned to Aito a pensive look. "Is this true, Aito?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"You're from this place."
"I'm sworn to secrecy."
Akachi leaned forward to whisper. "It's not for me, Aito. It's for Michel. Tell me we can trust this evil world's gold rush of mothers and fathers."
"If it wasn't the Marquessa," said Aito. "Anyone but the Marquessa."
"But she's Michel's mother, right?"
"What's that you're saying?" grunted Thorra from under Akachi. The elderly dwarf had taken their downward climb at a glacial pace, and when they reached bottom, knelt with such a sluggish, creaking grace that she seemed to fear exploding into a million splinters before depositing her shoeless burden on the roadside grass.
As one, several horsemen dismounted to escort the children towards the carriages, and the drivers dismounted to open the carriage doors, drop the steps, and escort their dignified passengers to the light. From the hindmost coach in advance of the barred wagon stepped a small boy whose glee wriggled in his face. "Is that my sister, Mama?"
The occupant of the first coach also occupied a dazzling green dress puffed up by hoops and lace, and resplendent blonde curls cascaded down her shoulders, neck, and back, so that it seemed a beauteous green sphinx, with a feline expression of satisfaction, leaned towards Michel. Upon scrutinizing the blind girl's eyes, then her soiled vestments, she nodded, and a sneer instantly corrupted her smile of pleasure. Michel felt the contemptuous breath of this beautiful monster for only a moment, for she stepped back and turned so briskly to dash back in the coach that Aito felt the breeze coming off of her skirt. "Board her with Merrick," she bade from the muffling confines of the coach. "Board the rest in the wagon."
The thin, well-groomed dweller of the middle coach was more than several years her junior, and sleeved in purple velvet bedecked with shining buttons that stretched to just above his black boots clasped with silver. Mincing down the carriage steps and bowing his head with a frosty and charitable glance upon the bedraggled children, this middleman haughtily relayed the order. "You heard the Marquessa. Toss them in and bring me the key."
Thorra sputtered, "why lock them in? That's unnecessary!"
"You are?" said the Marquessa's supercilious consort, inflecting the question mark with such subtle ambiguity that one might have thought he insinuated that it was Thorra who was superfluous.
"Thorra Minirata. Archivist. Without my help, this escape would not have been possible."
"You think I should listen to you, scholar?"
"Are we not following the same orders?"
"Yes," said the man, "but good actors emend faulty lines to their own advantage." Turning to the horsemen, he said, "why do you wait?"
"What about the dwarves?" one grunted.
"If she interferes, kill her. If she does nothing, thank her for her service." He flipped a golden coin to the horseman. "Either way, make sure that she gets that."
Thorra shook with silent rage as one took Chiyo not too gently from Kachek, and the others tossed the children into the wagon.
No sooner had Lucien landed in the wagon bed than he rolled to his feet and lunged back out the gate, causing two horsemen to stumble over each other in their simultaneous scramble for his vestment. When a third grabbed his hood, Lucien's arms flew behind him and the robe slipped off, for he had surreptitiously untied his robe when they threatened Thorra.
"Catch him!" shouted the well-dressed middleman. "You three, bring him back or ride him down before he reaches the woods!" While the others lifted, barred, and locked the wagon gate, the three horsemen mounted, flicked their reins, and galloped after Lucien, but the frightened boy, fleeing in nothing but his undervestment, was halfway to the treeline by that time, and the sound of hooves inspired such an explosive burst of speed that, reaching the forest fringe, he collided with one trunk, brushed it off, and kept running, none the worse for wear except for a trickle of nose-blood joining the sweat spraying behind him in his ragged run.
When the forest's tangled edge proved impassable to the gargantuan warhorses, and the horsemen wheeled back with hesitant expressions that were also wooden and snarled, the Marquessa's consort screeched such a bloodcurdling shriek that they sheepishly dismounted and trudged into the woods.
"Hey!" Aito grasped the bars and kicked the door. "Aren't you going to feed us?" While worry for Lucien tainted any hunger with an undercurrent of nausea, his only weapon now was the power of the complaint. By being loud and obnoxious, he might divert their full attention from Lucien. Aito was unprepared for the contemptuous silence that answered this desperate strategy.
One eye squinted through the bars, while the horseman's other eye seemed to roam drunkenly and independently, as if the horseman had one eye in the next world. He snorted, vaulted into his saddle, then spat on the ground. Only after he flicked the reins did he bark, "cargo wants fed!"
To the refrain of barbarous laughter, the clatter of hooves, and loudest of all, hunger pangs, the children collapsed on the wagon benches, and slid into unconsciousness.