Rabam groaned in pain. The coins pressed hard against his back, puncturing his skin with spots of pain. His left leg sent searing waves up his body. He couldn't even see the damage, because the light all around him was so intense that even with his eyes closed and a makeshift blindfold wrapped around his head all he could see was a wall of golden brightness.
He focused on the goals he had established with Suimer’s council before his departure, seeking a bit of strength in the memory of so many people putting their faith in him. He needed to make sure it was the coins that kept the viss anchored to the mountain and there wasn’t anything else. Take some viss with him so that Aili could study it properly. Look for a way in that wasn't the hole inside the monks' village, or at least an idea on how that secondary entryway could be created.
He groaned again, then pushed himself up to a sitting position. There were two directions he could take: up to the top of the coin pile, or down toward the walls. Since he'd have to climb anyways if he wanted to leave that place, he decided to explore the rest of the chamber first. Maybe he could even leave the light behind and actually see something.
He tried to stand, but his left leg refused to hold his weight. The irregular terrain, the incline, and the thought that the coins might not be as solidly attached to each other as they seemed convinced him to sit back down and push himself forward with his arms.
He was forced to stop after barely three pushes and turn the other way, so that his injured leg was being dragged instead of pushed. It still hurt, but at least it didn't get caught in the protruding coins nearly as much.
For a long time, he couldn't feel anything but metal edges scraping against his chest, abdomen and legs. It occurred to him that it could take him hours to get to the bottom of the pile, while Aili had promised him a half-hour at best. He started counting the seconds under his breath. He didn't care about dying nearly as much as before jumping down the crater, but the thought of all that pain being useless was intolerable.
He had almost reached nine-hundred seconds, when the consistency of the coins under his fingers changed into something soft and granular, like sand made of wool. The surprise made him stop. He noticed that the light had dimmed, even if a quick attempt at glancing under his blindfold revealed that it was still too bright for his eyes.
He scooped a bit of the substance into his fingers and brought it to his nose. Dust, he thought, but it was too solid. He immersed his hand in it and kept going until it touched the coins underneath.
He looked up as if he could see the hole, and realized: it was ash. The accumulated remains of all the monks who had ever existed, sprinkled with their viss. He retracted his hand, overwhelmed by a sense of awe and disgust. If the ash was there, there were also the bodies and severed heads of the criminals who had been executed. He'd have joined them, in one way or another, should the mission fail. A maimed corpse drowned in a sea of ash.
He rolled over, straining against the pain, until he was resting with his back against the coins and head one finger away from the ash. He couldn't go on. The substance was probably deep enough that he couldn't keep his head out even if by some divine intervention he managed to stand.
He sighed. Aili had been right: the whole plan was folly, beginning to end. He had found out what was hidden inside the mountain, but he couldn't bring the information out. Not that it would be useful to Suimer's people in any way.
A sinking feeling took hold of his chest, squeezed his throat. It was familiar, something he’d felt many times in the past. Defeat, helplessness. Loss.
So far, he'd only managed to push through because there was someone helping him, his grandma above all. It was easy to imagine her in that golden flow, telling him to get up and climb the mountain, that his friend was wasting energy for him outside, trying to keep the abbot and monks distracted, while he was lying on a pile of coins.
He rolled on his stomach, moving the injured leg with his hands when it refused to comply. The pain almost made him pass out. He waited for it to subside, trying not to think of the terrible process of turning around and starting the climb.
Aili would have told him that she'd been right, as expected. He'd always known her as a voice inside his head, so it was easy to imagine her words.
“I didn't come up the mountain to save your sorry ass just to find out you were already dead.”
It was so unlike her he let out a breathless laugh, then used the momentum to pull himself up and away from the ash. He was sure she'd have still found a way to include him in her experiments, broken leg or not.
"Wake up, I have a new theory to test." Or: "I already guessed there were coins inside the mountain. It was all pointless." Or, again: “Sure it's weird how the ash is all at the bottom of the pile even if it gets poured on top of it?”
He stopped and turned his head, as if he could see the lake of ash behind his shoulders. It was weird, especially considering that the coins on the upper part of the pile were completely clean.
He thought about it hard enough to forget the leg pain at least for a few heartbeats, but he still didn't come up with an answer. Maybe it was an insignificant detail, maybe not. Only Aili was smart enough to figure it out, but he needed to bring her that information first.
He started climbing with purpose. He tried to pry the coins away a couple of times, but they didn’t move. He moved on until he heard a metallic rustling behind him. He slid back, excitement overriding pain, but if some coins had detached, he couldn't find them. He'd lost count of the seconds, so he pushed through, deciding to ignore all the sounds he heard. He suspected they were a trick of his exhausted body to make him stop and rest.
The slope became gentler, but it was only once the ground started to descend that he realized he had reached the top of the pile. He stopped and took out the blindfold, taking care to only look upwards. The golden glow above him wasn't as blinding as the light of the coins, but he still couldn't see anything past it. He raised his right arm and activated the pattern.
The tug was so weak it might as well have been a twitch of his exhausted muscles. It occurred to him he might not have enough viss to cross the space that divided the pile of coins from the trapdoor.
While he gathered his strength and courage both, a clinching came from somewhere behind him, so loud that he couldn't ignore it. It sounded like coins tumbling over each other.
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He let out a sigh and turned around once more, somewhat relieved that the moment of truth was being postponed. He patted the coins in front of himself, not really expecting them to move but knowing he needed to try.
Something slipped from his grasp. He frantically extended his hand, fingers closing on one, two, three coins. He held them close to his chest and used his other hand to look for more.
Something grabbed his fingers. It was cold and hard, snapping shut like a snare, unrelenting against Rabam’s tugs. He cursed at the absurdity of finding a trap down there, of all places. But the more he fought, the more the five points of the trap pressed down on his skin without hope for release. He felt a rush of panic at the thought of remaining stuck there, so close to fulfilling his purpose. He raised his right arm, the three coins stacked in his closed fist, and activated the pattern in his sleeve. The pull was so weak at first that he feared it wouldn't be enough to lift him. He poured more of his viss into the pattern, using his panic as fuel.
The trap snapped closed when his hand slipped away from it, the tips scratching his skin. Nothing compared to the pain in his dangling leg as he ascended upwards, out of the golden gloom. He pushed the blindfold up, expecting to see the hole.
A far-away structure started to emerge in front of his eyes. The chamber’s gloom didn't allow him to distinguish the shapes, nor the material they were made of, except for a greenish sheen. A cylinder protruded from the center, just above the tip of the coin pile. Rabam realized he was looking at the extraction system.
It was difficult to tear his eyes away, even as his body was being pulled toward the ceiling at an increasingly alarming speed. He didn't dare slow down, not yet, since his viss might finish at any moment. He finally saw the hole, so small he wondered how he could fit through it. He saw the sword he'd stuck in the opening and raised the other arm to protect his face.
He struck the rock ceiling with his chest, while the blade cut the fabric of the tunic at his side. He flayed with his right arm until he had a grip on the pole next to the entrance. His muscles were burning from the climb and the constant pulling they had to sustain, but letting go meant death, so he wiggled his way into the room, heaving himself with his elbows. The sword became unstuck in the process. It slipped past his body and into the chamber below.
Rabam finally sat on the floor, legs spread in front of him. He let out a smile and a cough while he wrapped the cut in his side with his blindfold, the sweaty fabric providing a bit of refreshment to the burning pain.
He couldn't believe he was still alive, but he couldn't bring himself to celebrate. He still needed to get out of the village, and he was in an enormous amount of pain. He still made himself stand, propping the weight of his body against the pole. He wobbled next to the open trapdoor, but the thought of pushing it closed made his arms ache. He forced himself to focus only on the few steps that led to the nearest wall. Then he'd have waited for Aili to act, a matter of a few seconds. He tried not to think about the stairs.
He hadn't yet found the courage to make a single step, when a key turned in the lock and the door started to open. He sighed, remembering the otherwordly softness of the sea of ash against his fingertips. Headless corpse it was, after all.
Daira stepped through and closed the door. Rabam was so relieved to see a familiar face and not a group of sentinels that he smiled. She didn't reciprocate, holding a sword in front of her body instead. Her grip and posture betrayed the fact she wasn’t trained to use one, but she didn’t need to.
"Come on," Rabam said, his words coming out as a weak whisper.
"You have done nothing,” Daira began, “But betraying us again and again. This will stop now.”
Rabam looked around the room for something to defend himself with. There were just two unconscious sentinels, only one of them still armed but well out of his reach.
He swallowed.
“How did you know?” he asked.
She didn't answer immediately, eyes staring at him with murderous intensity, so he spoke again out of fear: “I deserve to at least know this.”
“A trinket like that could fool a young scholar, but not me,” she said, and made a step forward. "I only needed one glance to know it was a trick. But the abbot didn't believe me when I told him that the pattern couldn't be used for anything. None of my colleagues dared to say I was right, because they still think of me as a traitor. They'd rather study a piece of useless garbage for hours than risk being associated with me. And it was all because I helped you once, in good faith.”
She pointed the sword at him, the arm trembling from the weight.
"You betrayed my trust and killed a prior. A mentor. I swear I'll kill you if I must, to set it right and gain my place back.”
Rabam couldn't go anywhere. He knew he was only alive because something was holding her back. He read it in her pained expression, under all that anger.
“You're a good person,” he said. “Killing me will destroy you. Believe me, I know.”
“I can just wait," she said, "And make sure you don't escape until the others figure out what's going on. I don't have to do anything. But I will, if you try to escape."
Rabam looked down at his injured leg. He was in pain, depleted of viss and unbelievably tired. He lowered himself with puffs and grunts, his face a grimace, until he was sitting on the floor.
“Is my family doing well?”
Daira looked at him for a long time, clearly deciding whether to keep that information to herself.
“For now they are. They'll only be truly safe once you're dealt with.”
Rabam nodded. He opened his sweaty hand, revealing the content: he was almost surprised to see that he was actually holding coins. The center was a gray stone that reminded him of the gods’ statues before they were used as a receptacle for a sphere. In place of the incision shaped like a mountain, they were crisscrossed by thin curving lines. The borders were encased in an iron ring.
“What do you have there?” Daira said, raising the sword.
Rabam showed her. She frowned.
"How did you take the coins without using the magnet?”
“I don't know. I was lucky, I guess.”
He used the cut in the side of his tunic to tear a piece away, making sure it was clean of blood. He wrapped the coins and tied the corners together.
“You don't like the abbot and the direction your village is taking, right?" he asked while he worked. “You’d like Aili's side. The people of Suimer have a council that represents them. Aili listens to them, even when she doesn't like their decisions.”
"You are traitors."
Rabam tested the knot with a tug.
"So are you. The only reason why you're still hoping to become a prior is that you don't want to side with me, right? Because I went too far for your liking."
“There are many reasons."
Rabam raised his eyebrows.
“Like?”
Daira shook her head. Rabam would never know what she was about to say, because the earth started trembling. Her eyes widened in terror as she stepped back, searching for the wall with her free hand.
“Aili needs you,” Rabam yelled, both to be heard over the rumbling and to make Daira focus on his words, and not on the fact that only a wobbling floor of stone divided them from an endless chasm, "She's scared and alone. If you want to make an impact, to change the mountain for the best, bring her this.”
He tossed her the bundle of coins. Daira watched it fall to the ground. It took a few seconds for her to kneel down and reach out to it, using the sword as a prop against the violent shakes.
"She'll also need cloud water," Rabam continued. "You're a scholar of viss, so I'm sure you can figure that out. But you need to be quick, she can only distract the abbot for a few minutes."
Daira mumbled something along the lines of not wanting to do any of that, even if her voice was too low to be heard over the earthquake.
“Someone has to, because I can't," Rabam said. "You won't have to deal with me anymore, I can promise you that. But you need to run, now.”
She started walking toward the door, still too hesitant, but at least she'd abandoned her resolution to kill him and was taking the coins with her. He relaxed, content with watching her go. Whatever came next for him, he had done his part.
She looked back one last time, standing on the doorway. Rabam mustered one last, hopefully encouraging smile. It became a grimace when something yanked his tunic from behind. He watched in horror as the room flew past him and became a hole, smaller and smaller while he fell down toward the pile of coins.