The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Where are the free ones? Why are you in a trap?”

“Come.” Pewter-skin beckoned.

He followed through the garden of corpses and bones and into a tunnel streaked with discolorations that glittered as he passed. By the glow of his armband he picked out veins and crystals grown into the rock. Sparkling grains slipped under his feet. Tunnels branched out to either side and crossed over and under where shafts pierced down or up until their path bewildered him and he knew himself lost. Pewter-skin led the way unerringly, and after an interminable time that might have lasted the length of a hymn or a hundred years they squeezed between twin pillars and he stared up in wonder. The ceiling and walls of this wide cavern shone where the light reflected off it, although the walls faded to darkness not so many steps away. The floor was unusually level. Here the skrolin had used scoured bones to build a strange architecture: a pyramid of skulls; an archway woven of thighbones cunningly trimmed and threaded together; a wharf constructed of linked rib cages; shoulder blades and pelvic bones arranged in a crude miniature temple or governor’s palace.

“This is the tale of the city,” said Pewter-skin. “We try to remember.”

“Why can’t you remember?” he asked.

“The tale is told from one to another through many lives, but we forget if it is true, or if it is false.”

“The trap you speak of? Is that a true tale, or a false one?”

“Ah!” The sound cut, edged with rage, resignation, and sorrow. “Come. Come.”

A trail bifurcated the bone city, leading them past the eerie structures to the far side where ceiling met floor. There, at the joining, a narrow passage ramped down.

“This is the trap.”

He smelled water. He got down on hands and knees and crawled forward into a tunnel far too low for him to stand upright. He hadn’t gone more than a body’s length when his hands met moisture. He touched liquid to tongue, spat it out, and wormed back out.

“It tastes like sea water.”

“Such water is poison to us. Through that tunnel many watches ago we come, thirty of us, seeking luiadh. The earth shivers. The feet of the wise ones far to the north shift and tremble. The waters rush in to trap us here where the tunnels run in a circle. We cannot get out.”

He had to sort through this speech. “These tunnels you live in now are a dead end. The tunnel you came in through filled with water because of an earthquake. Now you are all trapped here.”

“Yes. Fourteen of us have emptied, but we the rest endure with the clavas.”

“So you trade silver to the miners in exchange for the corpses, which are the soil on which your food grows.”

“Yes.”

“It is this tunnel that leads back to your home?”

“Yes. Through this one we came. This tunnel is the path to the home, where the tribe roams the long caverns.”

“Is there no other path?”

“None. Many watches we have looked. Many watches we have dug. We wait in a trap.”

“Can you not climb to the surface? Find another entrance into the depths?”

“The Blinding burns us. The water poisons us. We cannot reach them. We are in a trap.”

“Can you not dig your way back? You are miners, are you not?”

“We dig in the earth. We dig, but slowly. We who came to be trapped here scout only when first we come here. We left the strong tools behind. Also, we are too few to dig so far within the span of our life. We will die here, waiting. One by one.”

He nodded. “I’ll go. I’ll swim as far as I can and see if I can get to the other side.”

“The water does not poison you?”

“No. I can’t drink it, but it does not poison me as long as I do not drink it.”

“Why.”

“I don’t know why. The salt is too strong. That’s why we can’t drink it.”