Gherrit heaved back while his hands went to pull the choking fingers away. Before him arms and shoulders and a furious face followed the grab at his neck, rising from the stone as an entangling peril rises from the waters. His efforts were futile then, as his vision darkened, he remembered the trick of it, shot his clasped hands up between the arms and levered them apart. The hold loosened, he fell backwards, scattering pouches and gear as his belt flew off, and scooted on his back over the smooth floor. The woman pulled herself free and to her feet and pounced on the Saore’s knife. With this in hand she stalked towards him.
“I surrender! Don’t kill me!” croaked Gherrit through his abused throat, then repeated the plea in Haghakin “I give up! Not hurt!”
The woman paused and her expression moderated slightly. “Move not. Stay down.” Her free hand checked a pouch at her belt, her expression relaxed and she turned her attention to the scatter on the floor. She used a foot to nudge Gherrit’s possessions into the light, all the while keeping one eye on him and his (now hers) knife ready.
“Your name is Fremin?” asked Gherrit, suppressing the rasp and with as pacific a smile as he could manage.
“Quiet,” she told him, and prodded the pouch of money. The chink of coins produced a satisfied cluck of the tongue. The glass tablet had fallen free, lying glittering on the floor face-up.
“Dzai? Are you a magician? Sthirothh? What kind of word is that? What does this do?”
“Don’t ask!”
“Why not?” Fremin demanded, then “Gaah!” as Sthirothh’s fluting voice came from behind her. She whirled, slashed and the ibis head ducked neatly under the blow.
“It is my name. The tablet compels me to manifest at its location when I am called,” Sthirothh said, ignoring the attack.
“That last question was for me, not you,” Gherrit interjected, desperate to forestall a third question.
“Why does that matter?” asked Fremin.
“Because I now ask you three questions,” replied Sthirothh before Gherrit could claim this question for himself.
Gherrit added, aggrieved, “I told you not to ask. You answer wrongly, he bites you.”
“Hedgehog’s arse he does!” retorted Fremin, backing away with the knife at guard.
“What is your name?” inquired Sthirothh.
“ Fremin Dtaie tel Jhaugusis,” responded Fremin.
“Where were you born?”
“Jharue Manor,” Fremin told him. She gave Gherrit a look. “This is easy, so what’s your problem?”
“In what year of the Dravish reckoning were the Saka High Councils established?”
“Shit, shit … I know this, the, the 11th year of the 3rd Thoracic, Second Cycle.”
Sthirothh accepted this with a bob of the head. Fremin watched the demon warily for a few moments, then turned her attention back to Gherrit.
“My name is Gherrit. No questions unless my name,” he told her, daring to sit up.
“Your Haghakin is terrible,” she observed.
“Fremin, do you speak Pallo, or Merllan?”
“My Merllan is good,” she told him, and they went on in that language. Her Merllan was comprehensible but slightly archaic and Gherrit had to pause to explain modern idioms.
For the next while they exchanged information. Gherrit went first, telling his tale from Daruz Alman through his abduction by Saore, journey down the coast and venture into this delving. Fremin was careful to direct her questions to Gherrit after a a lapse led to Sthirothh gravely informing her of Gherrit’s rather sparse love-life. She took a swig of water but said that she was not hungry, as she had eaten just before being entombed.
Fremin’s account was straightforward – she had been exploring a mild-mannered part of the Haness Wild with a few friends after completing her studies in modern history. The group had entered a small cave complex which was known for interesting wall art. Red and black figures on the rock moved when a light was shone on them, often enacting scenes from the past, mostly of ordinary life but sometimes of historical significance. Fremin had wandered into a side passage, traced a mark on a surface and been drawn into the rock. There she had dreamed away until Gherrit had woken her. Gherrit felt the account was a little glib but did not push. For one thing she still had the knife. For now she was neither choking or stabbing him nor taking his money (not that the latter mattered much for now). He was happy to let things go on that way. One detail puzzled him.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Fremin,” he began as always, thinking this was too much like the children’s game Samo Says, “you said you were in the Haness Wild. Where is that?”
“On the east coast, south of Dtlag. You now where Dtlag is, of course.”
“Uh, it’s now the Hansippif Wild, and known as the worst Wild this side of the Green Sea. Nobody goes into it and comes out alive and unharmed. It’s where we are now.”
“How can that be?” and she hastily added “Gherrit.”
“Fremin, what year was it when you went into the cave?”
“The 13th year of the Blue Speakership.”
“Fremin, what year is that in, oh, Years of the Revelation, or Merllan Years of Unity?”
“What are – Gherrit, yes, Gherrit, what are ‘Years of the Revelation? And the Merllan reckon by the Syndic List, which I never bothered to memorise. I had a book with all the names against Dravish, Haghakin and Saka Years, but I left it in my room. I wonder if it’s still there.”
Gherrit was familiar with a few dating systems since they figured on commercial documents. He had never bothered with the Dravish count, which involved cycles and bones and prime numbers. The Saka had no ports on the Gulf of Reghen and anyway were not a seagoing people, so their reckoning was also out of his ken. He dug around in his memory for a possible common point of reference and failed to find one. History had never been his strong suit.
“Fremin, you will have to help me. Can you think of some event where everyone knows when it happened?”
“Oh, lots. The death of Fenghir the Idiot, the building of the Blue Light at Dnangh, the fall of Harz Hai, the founding fuck in Tsitiev …”
“eh, Fremin, don’t you mean the foundation of Tsitiev?
“No I don’t. Lady Geranium took her three lovers out into the middle of the lake and and had thirty-seven orgasms over three days. She shared them with the land, which liked it so much it let her build a city. Even made some islands for her. They have an orgy every week to keep the land happy.”
This was not history as Gherrit had been taught it in school. He passed over this in favour of asking when this was and was informed that it happened three hundred and three years prior. Gherrit remembered being told in school that Tsitiev was far younger than Daruz Alman, at a mere six centuries. He passed this on, and Fremin sucked on her teeth, then muttered something about her books. The news that she was a couple of hundred years behind the times had a dampening effect which Gherrit exploited to suggest they move on now, as their food and water were limited.
* * * *
“But first,” Fremin said, “I want to look at those tombs. They may give me a clue.” She had him lead the way back to the crypt, Sthirothh padding behind with claws clicking on the stone, and shine the light on the inscribed slabs. Apart from a ‘hmm’ she made no comment, but produced a stylus and paper from her pouch and made exact copies of five tablets, together with notes on their placement and the kinds of stone used. Her writing was small and neat, the sketches quick. Gherrit was admonished to hold the light steady. Sthirothh watched in silence as always, bobbing its long neck up and down.
Now the first murderous impression had faded Gherrit could take better stock of his new – what? Companion? Rescuee? He would sort that later. Fremin had the olive complexion and sharp features common along this coast, dark hair braided in tight rows with a single tail dangling at her left cheek, was as tall as he was, a little pudgy about the middle, had a writer’s callouses on her fingers and strong forearms. Her manner was assured, her clothes rather better than his own, if torn here and there and dirty. The leather of her short jerkin was elaborately tooled, the weave of the shirt underneath heavy and soft, striped in green and white with embroidery at cuffs and collar. Her breeches were plain heavy cotton dyed a deep black, held up by a belt of good leather. On the streets of Daruz Alman he would place her in some middling rank – journey-woman perhaps, or senior clerk, although the state of the clothes suggested a recent brawl.
When she was satisfied with her drawing Fremin put her things away and motioned him to lead on. Back they went through the arch, across a smooth floor where all trace of Fremin’s centuries of rest had vanished, on further to where the chamber had a single exit. This was an opening to a long tunnel where the walls rippled like the surface of a disturbed pond (Gherrit did not trail his hand along them). After a hundred paces the tunnel debouched on to a small platform hanging above a still black lake. A narrow rising crack in the rock let them edge through a space more like to a natural fissure than anything man-made to a similar platform on the other side, from which another passage led off.
“The architecture here makes no sense,” Gherrit told Fremin. She grunted, then said “Delvings don’t. They are not planned but grow, or maybe make themselves according to some logic beyond our current knowledge. Also they change over time, perhaps in response to events within them. It is – was – an area of considerable research interest.”
“How do you know this?” asked Gherrit.
“Because I’m an Archivist. Or, well, was. An Archivist in training, that is. I had not been formally inducted into the order.”
Her reply came so quickly that Sthirothh could only clack its beak. Gherrit knew of the Archivists, for the librarian at his temple was retired from that order. She was obsessive about keeping the collection properly shelved and swift to apply a headlock to anyone caught treating books roughly. Gherrit did not quite believe the rumours about the fate of those who kept borrowings past the due date but had never dared to test them after that red-headed novice (what was her name?) had come out of the library pale and trembling. Then if Fremin was an Archivist she had been trained in high craft. He put the question tentatively.
“Fremin, if you have high craft, is there anything you can do that will help us get out of here?”
“Well, I am only a novice, and have not yet been given full access to craft,” Fremin replied after a little. She went on slowly, ticking her abilities off on her fingers, “I can keep myself from hunger on but one small meal a day, shine a light from my finger, disregard heat or cold, sense active etheric forces, sharpen my intuition about our choices, strengthen my recall and know the cataloguing index of a book just by touching it. That’s about it.”
They were not the powers Gherrit had been hoping for. No friendly guide to lead them through this maze, no access to the Powers. Staving off hunger would keep them – or at least her – alive longer, but to what end? Gherrit was too tired to puzzle over a dubious future so let it lapse, instead proposing they take a rest. Fremin said she was quite rested enough after two hundred years of sleep, then took in his drawn face and drooping form and told him to go ahead; she would keep watch. When the passage widened to an area lit by a single upthrusting red crystal he curled up on the floor and dropped into a dreamless void.
* * * *
When Gherrit woke he was as warm and comfortable as if in his own bed. Rather more so, for the bed in his room in Daruz Alman had been narrow, hard and lumpy. Still, he was hungry and bursting for a piss. Gherrit eased himself up and found the stone shifting under him. Where it had been smooth, flat and cold it was now shaped to his body and warm. As he lifted himself to his feet the floor returned to its former state. Fremin was sitting cross-legged nearby, hands twined and face still in meditation. Now she smiled slightly.
“I think the delving likes you.”
“If that means it wants to keep me as a pet I would rather it did not,” Gherrit said grumpily, then asked if Fremin had found somewhere to relieve herself. She had – a side-tunnel off the leftmost passage led to a small room that had all the necessities, including Green Powder. What made the delving provide these amenities? An aversion to waste in its corridors and chambers? No matter. There was also a source of drinking water a little further on, just before the passage ended in a knot of writhing stone tentacles. Gherrit went off to use this, wash his face and refill his water bottle. When he came back Fremin was doing stretching exercises while Sthirothh stood quietly against a wall.
The red crystal was a jagged spear rising out of the floor, half again as high as Gherrit. The top part glowed softly, casting shadows across the chamber. Gherrit popped an All-Day Sucker into his cheek, the second of his three. They were nourishing but not filling and Gherrit longed for a bowl of vegetable soup. Together he and Fremin considered their choices. The chamber had six openings including the one they had entered by. The leftmost one led nowhere, the second was up near the ceiling, the third a hole at floor level large enough to admit them but uninviting even if it had not emitted a thin screech when approached, the fourth and fifth were regular passages, although the floor of the rightmost one undulated as if laid over a sea where the swells were those of a lazy summer day. They chose the fourth as the least uninviting.