Ship of Destiny

Reyn Khuprus had not returned. Before noon, he had left the diggers, refusing to wait until the corridors could be cleared and shored up. He had gone ahead of the work crews, wriggling off through a mostly collapsed tunnel and disappearing. Not long ago, the work crews had reached the end of the line he had left to mark his way. They had found several chalk marks, including the notation he had left on the door of the Satrap’s chamber. Hopeless, Reyn had marked. Thick muck oozed from under the blocked door; most likely the entire room had filled with it. Not far past that door, the corridor had collapsed completely. If Reyn had passed that way, he had either been crushed in the downfall, or was trapped beyond it.

Keffria started when she felt a touch on her arm. She turned to face a haggard Jani Khuprus. ‘Have you found anything?’ Keffria asked reflexively.

‘No.’ Jani spoke the terrible word softly. Her fear that her son was dead lived in her eyes. ‘The corridor is mucking in as fast as we try to clear it. We’ve decided to abandon it. The Elder ones did not build this city as we build ours, with houses standing apart from each other. The ancients built their city like one great hive. It is a labyrinth of intersecting corridors. We will try to come at that section of corridor from a different approach. The crews are already being shifted.’

Keffria looked at her laden barrow, then back down the excavated corridor. Work had stopped. The labourers were returning to the surface. As Keffria stared, a flow of dirty and tired men and women parted to go around her. Their faces were grey with dirt and discouragement, their footsteps dragged. The lanterns and torches they carried fluttered and smoked. Behind them, the excavation had gone dark. Had all of this work been useless, then? She took a breath. ‘Where shall we dig now?’ she asked quietly.

Jani gave her a haunted look. ‘It has been decided we should rest for a few hours. Hot food and a few hours of sleep will do us all good.’

Keffria looked at her incredulously. ‘Eat? Sleep? How can we do either when our children are missing still?’

The Rain Wild woman matter-of-factly took Keffria’s place between the barrow handles. She lifted it and began to push it forwards. Keffria trailed reluctantly after her. She did not answer Keffria’s question, except to say, ‘We sent birds out to some of the closer settlements. The foragers and harvesters of the Rain Wilds will send workers to aid us. They are on their way, but it will take some time for them to arrive. Fresh workers will shore up our spirits.’ Over her shoulder, she added, ‘We have had word from some of the other digging crews, also. They have had more luck. Fourteen people were rescued from an area we call the Tapestry Works, and three more were discovered in the Flame Jewel corridors. Their work has progressed more swiftly. We may be able to gain access to this area of the city from one of those locations. Bendir is already consulting with those who know the city best.’

‘I thought Reyn knew the old city better than anyone?’ Keffria asked cruelly.

‘He did. He does. That is why I cling to the hope that he may be alive.’ The Rain Wild Trader glanced at her Bingtown counterpart. ‘It is why I believe that if anyone could find Malta and Selden, it is Reyn. If he found them, he would not try to come back this way, but would make for the more stable parts of the city. With every breath I take, I pray that soon someone will come running to give us the tidings that they have emerged on their own.’

They had reached a large chamber that looked like an amphitheatre. The work crews had been dumping the tailings of their work here. Jani tipped the barrow and let the load of earth and rocks increase the untidy pile in the middle of the formerly grand room. Their wheelbarrow joined a row of others. Muddy shovels and picks had been tumbled in a heap nearby. Keffria suddenly smelled soup, coffee, and hot morning bread. The hunger she had been denying woke with a roar. The sudden clamouring of her body made her recall that she had eaten nothing all night. ‘Is it dawn?’ she asked Jani suddenly. How much time had passed?

‘Well past dawn, I fear,’ Jani replied. ‘Time always seems fleetest when I most long for it to move slowly.’

At the far end of the hall, trestle tables and benches had been set out. The very old and the very young worked there, ladling soup into dishes, tending small braziers under bubbling pots, setting out and clearing away plates and cups. The immense chamber swallowed the discouraged mutter of talk. A child of about eight hurried up with a basin of steaming water. A towel was slung over her arm. ‘Wash?’ she offered them.

‘Thank you.’ Jani indicated the basin to Keffria. She laved her hands and arms and splashed her face. The warmth made her realize how cold she was. The binding on her broken fingers was soaked and gritty. ‘That needs to be changed,’ Jani observed while Keffria used the towel. Jani washed, and again thanked the child, before guiding Keffria towards several tables where healers were plying their trade. Some were merely salving blistered hands or massaging aching backs, but there was also an area where broken limbs and bleeding injuries were being treated. The business of clearing the collapsed corridor was hazardous work. Jani settled Keffria at a table to await her turn. A healer was already at work re-bandaging her hand when Jani returned with morning bread, soup and coffee for both of them. The healer finished swiftly, abruptly told Keffria that she was off the work detail and moved on to his next patient.

‘Eat something,’ Jani urged her.

Keffria picked up the mug of coffee. The warmth of it between her palms was oddly comforting. She took a long drink from it. As she set it down, her eyes wandered over the amphitheatre. ‘It’s all so organized,’ she observed in confusion. ‘As if you expected this to happen, planned for it –’

‘We did,’ Jani said quietly. ‘The only thing that puts this collapse out of the ordinary is the scale of it. A good quake usually brings on some falls. Sometimes a corridor will collapse for no apparent reason. Both my uncles died in cave-ins. Almost every Rain Wild family who works the city loses a member or two of each generation down here. It is one of the reasons my husband Sterb has been so adamant in urging the Rain Wild Council to aid him in developing other sources of wealth for us. Some say he is only interested in establishing his own fortune. As a younger son of a Rain Wild Trader’s grandson, he has little claim to his own family’s wealth. But I truly believe it is not self-interest but altruism that makes him work so hard at developing the foragers’ and harvesters’ outposts. He insists the Rain Wild could supply all our needs if we but opened our eyes to the forest’s wealth.’ She folded her lips and shook her head. ‘Still. It does not make it any easier when he says, “I warned you all” when something like this happens. Most of us do not want to forsake the buried city for the bounty of the rainforest. The city is all we know, the excavating and exploration. Quakes like this are the danger we face, just as you families who trade upon the sea know that eventually you will lose someone to it.’

‘Inevitable,’ Keffria conceded. She picked up her spoon and began to eat. A few mouthfuls later, she set it down.

Across from her, Jani set down her coffee mug. ‘What is it?’ she asked quietly.

Keffria held herself very still. ‘If my children are dead, who am I?’ she asked. Cold calmness welled up in her as she spoke. ‘My husband and eldest son are gone, taken by pirates, perhaps already dead. My only sister has gone after them. My mother remained behind in Bingtown when I fled; I know not what has become of her. I only came here for the sake of my children. Now they are missing, and perhaps already dead. If I alone survive –’ She halted, unable to frame a thought to deal with that possibility. The immensity of it overwhelmed her.

Jani gave her a strange smile. ‘Keffria Vestrit. But the turning of a day ago, you were volunteering to leave your children in my care, and return to Bingtown, to spy on the New Traders for us. It seems to me that you then had a very good sense of who you were, independent of your role as mother or daughter.’

Keffria propped her elbows on the table and leaned her face into her hands. ‘And this now feels like a punishment for that. If Sa thought I undervalued my children, might he not take them from me?’

‘Perhaps. If Sa had but a male aspect. But recall the old, true worship of Sa. Male and female, bird, beast, and plant, earth, fire, air and water, all are honoured in Sa and Sa manifests in all of them. If the divine is also female, and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel.’

The old saying, once so comforting, now rang hollow in her ears. But Keffria’s thoughts did not linger on it long. A great commotion at the entrance to the hall turned both their heads. ‘Sit still and rest,’ Jani advised her. ‘I’ll see what it’s about.’

But Keffria could not obey her. How could she sit still and wonder if the disruption were caused by news of Reyn or Malta or Selden? She pushed back from the table and followed the Rain Wild Trader.

Weary and bedraggled diggers clustered around four youngsters who had just slung their buckets of fresh water to the floor. ‘A dragon! A great silver dragon, I tell you! It flew right over us.’ The tallest boy spoke the words as if challenging his listeners. Some of the labourers looked bemused, others disgusted by this wild tale.

‘He’s not lying! It did! It was real, so bright I could hardly look at it! But it was blue, a sparkly blue,’ amended a younger boy.

‘Silver-blue!’ a third boy chimed in. ‘And bigger than a ship!’ The lone girl in the group was silent, but her eyes shone with excitement.

Keffria glanced at Jani, expecting to meet her annoyed glance. How could these youngsters allow themselves to bring such a frivolous tale at a time when lives weighed in the balance? Instead, the Rain Wild woman’s face had gone pale. It made the fine scaling around her eyes and lips stand out against her face. ‘A dragon?’ she faltered. ‘You saw a dragon?’ Sensing a sympathetic ear, the tall boy pushed through the crowd towards Jani. ‘It was a dragon, such as some of the frescoes showed. I’m not making it up, Trader Khuprus. Something made me look up, and there it was. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It flew like a falcon! No, no, like a shooting star! It was so beautiful!’

‘A dragon,’ Jani repeated dazedly.

‘Mother!’ Bendir was so dirty that Keffria scarcely recognized him as he pushed through the crowd. He glanced at the boy standing before Jani, and then to his mother’s shocked face. ‘So you’ve heard. A woman who was tending the babies up above sent a boy running to tell us what she had seen. A blue dragon.’

‘Could it be?’ Jani asked him brokenly. ‘Could Reyn have been right all along? What does it mean?’

‘Two things,’ Bendir replied tersely. ‘I’ve sent searchers overland, to where I think the creature must have broken out of the city. From the description, it is too large to have moved through the tunnels. It must have burst out from the Crowned Rooster Chamber. We have an approximate idea of where that was. There may be some sign of Reyn there. At the least, there may be another way we can enter the city and search for survivors.’ A mutter of voices rose at his words. Some were expressing disbelief, others wonder. He raised his voice to be heard above them. ‘And the other thing is that we must remember that this beast may be our enemy.’ As the boy near him began to protest, Bendir cautioned him, ‘No matter how beautiful it may seem, it may bear us ill will. We know next to nothing of the true nature of dragons. Do nothing to anger it, but do not assume it is the benign creature we see in the frescoes and mosaics. Do not call its attention to you.’

A roar of conversation rose in the chamber. Keffria caught at Jani’s sleeve desperately. She spoke through the noise. ‘If you find Reyn there…do you think Malta may be with him?’

Jani met her eyes squarely. ‘It is what he feared,’ she said. ‘That Malta had gone to the Crowned Rooster Chamber. And to the dragon that slept there.’

‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Do you think she will come back?’ Weakness as well as awe made the boy whisper.

Reyn turned to regard him. Selden crouched on an island of rubble atop the mud. He stared up at the light above them, his face transfigured by what he had just witnessed. The newly released dragon was gone, already far beyond sight, but still the boy stared after her.

‘I don’t think we should count on her to return and save us. I think that is up to us,’ Reyn said pragmatically.

Selden shook his head. ‘Oh, I did not mean that. I would not expect her to notice us that much. I expect we’ll have to get ourselves out of here. But I should like to see her, just once more. Such a marvel she was. Such a joy.’ He lifted his eyes once more to the punctured ceiling. Despite the dirt and muck that streaked his face and burdened his clothes, the boy’s expression was luminous.

Sun spilled into the ruined chamber, bringing weak light but little additional warmth. Reyn could no longer recall what it felt like to be dry, let alone warm. Hunger and thirst tormented him. It was hard to force himself to move. But he smiled. Selden was right. A marvel. A joy.

The dome of the buried Crowned Rooster Chamber was cracked like the top of a soft-boiled egg. He stood atop some of the fallen debris and looked up at dangling tree roots and the small window of sky. The dragon had escaped that way, but he doubted that he and Selden would. The chamber was filling rapidly with muck as the swamp trickled in to claim the city that had defied it for so long. The flow of chill mud and water would engulf them both long before they could find a way to reach the egress above them.

Yet bleak as his situation was, he still marvelled at the memory of the dragon that had emerged from her centuries of waiting. The frescoes and mosaics that he had seen all his life had not prepared him for the reality of the dragon. The word ‘blue’ had gained a new meaning in the brilliance of her scales. He would never forget how her lax wings had taken on strength and colour as she pumped them. The snake-stench of her transformation still hung heavy in the moist air. He could see no remnants of the ‘wizardwood log’ that had encased her. She appeared to have absorbed it all as she metamorphosed into a mature dragon.

But now she was gone. And the problem of survival remained for Reyn and the boy. The earthquakes of the night before had finally breached the walls and ceilings of the sunken city. The swamps outside were bleeding into this chamber. The only means of escape was high overhead, a tantalizing window of blue sky.

Mud bubbled wetly at the edge of the piece of fallen dome Reyn stood on. Then it triumphed, swallowing the edges of the crystal and slipping towards his bare feet.

‘Reyn.’ Selden’s voice was hoarse with his thirst. Malta’s little brother perched atop a slowly-sinking island of debris. In the dragon’s scrabbling effort to escape, she had dislodged rubble, earth, and even a tree. It had fallen into the sunken chamber and some of it still floated on the rising tide of muck. The boy knit his brows as his natural pragmatism reasserted itself. ‘Maybe we could lift up that tree and prop it up against the wall. Then, if we climbed up it, we could –’

‘I’m not strong enough,’ Reyn broke into the boy’s optimistic plan. ‘Even if I were strong enough to lift the tree, the muck is too soft to support me. But we might be able to break off some of the smaller branches and make a sort of raft. If we can spread out our weight enough, we can stay on top of this stuff.’

Selden looked hopefully up at the hole where light seeped in. ‘Do you think the mud and water will fill up this room and lift us up there?’

‘Maybe,’ Reyn lied heartily. He surmised that the muck would stop far short of filling the chamber. They would probably suffocate when the rising tide swallowed them. If not, they would eventually starve here. The piece of dome under his feet was sinking rapidly. Time to abandon it. He jumped from it to a heap of fallen earth and moss, only to have it plunge away under him. The muck was softer than he had thought. He lunged towards the tree trunk, caught one of its branches, and dragged himself out and onto it. The rising mire was at least chest-deep now, and the consistency of porridge. If he sank into it, he would die in its cold clutch. His move had brought him much closer to Selden. He extended a hand towards the boy, who leaped from his sinking island, fell short, and then scrabbled over the soft mud to reach him. Reyn pulled him up onto the fallen evergreen’s trunk. The boy huddled shivering against him. His clothing was plastered to his body with the same mud that streaked his face and hair.

‘I wish I hadn’t lost my tools and supplies. But they’re long buried now. We’ll have to break these branches off as best we can and pile them up in a thick mat.’

‘I’m so tired.’ The boy stated it as a fact, not a complaint. He glanced up at Reyn, then stared at him. ‘You don’t look so bad, even up close. I always wondered what you looked like under that veil. In the tunnels, with only the candle, I couldn’t really see your face. Then, last night, when your eyes were glowing blue, it was scary at first. But after a while, it was like, well, it was good to see them and know you were still there.’

Reyn laughed easily. ‘Do my eyes glow? Usually that doesn’t happen until a Rain Wild man is much older. We just accept it as a sign of a man reaching full maturity.’