Context (49 page)

It
seemed strange that Madam Bronlah would use Draquelle as a courier.

‘She keeps an eye on Draquelle,
normally,’ Kraiv decided. ‘Maybe she wanted her safely away from the Bilyarck Gébeet.’

There had been no news, good or
bad, of the Bronlah Hong, or the realm in which it lay.

They
spent the next night, and the next, in a dead realm without a name, passing
through long deserted gallerias with broken alcoves and shattered pedestals,
where ceilings glowed strangely purple, and rustling ciliates disappeared at
their approach.

They slept wrapped up in their
cloaks, packs serving as pillows, but fitfully, in grey darkness, surrendering
to fatigue yet snapping into wakefulness for no good reason.

And then they were into natural
caverns where the going grew tougher, and they slipped on shale, negotiated
cracked and jagged slopes, rarely stopping to rest.

It puzzled Tom that Draquelle
coped so well. But on their third day inside the wilderness, as he took up the
rear in a low passageway where moisture dripped from bulbous stalactites into
small murky pools, he found a discarded drink-bulb, and knew where her good
cheer originated.

And then they were through a
militia-guarded checkpoint and back into populated tunnels, where Draquelle exclaimed
loudly that she was looking forward to a long cool aerogel-bath in the first
hostel they came to, relief and need adding a tremble to her voice.

Her
crisis came unexpectedly, after days of progress. It was only later that Tom
told himself he should have recognized the pattern of self-denial followed by
relapse.

For twelve more days they
travelled, and three of those days were easy ones, atop soft flat cargo-slugs,
sliding their steady way towards Kizhtigan Praz, a realm which Tom had thought existed
only in legend.

On the fourth day, when the
caravan’s route diverged from theirs, Tom and his companions dismounted, waved
their farewells to the hooded caravanserai, and continued on foot.

Draquelle was living cleanly.

At one point, she opened her belt
pouch, and handed all her cred-spindles, and her single cred-ring, to Kraiv.

‘I’d feel better,’ she said, ‘with
a warrior looking after them.’

Kraiv nodded solemnly. Tom looked
on, smiling at them both.

It was a tenday later that they
entered Verinadshi Demesne—on the ninth stratum, having descended two strata so
far -and decided that they needed recuperation. They checked in to a hostel,
left their baggage—security was provided by a tall lean M’gasai Lancer, his
fealty brand dark upon his left cheekbone, who nodded to Kraiv as though
recognizing a spiritual brother—and went to find a nice place for lunch.

Tom wondered, as they ate, where
Elva was now.

Eating lunch in an officers’ mess
somewhere?

She had been wearing a military
uniform in the Seer’s vision. But Tom had not recognized its cut or colours,
and the visual background provided no clues.

Next
morning, Tom walked by himself until he found a long twisted tunnel called
Bahreen naBringlódi, where dream-shops, love-poets’ booths, and crystal sellers
did quiet trade side by side. Passing beneath a flatscript holo which read
Chrystalli
Andromedae,
Tom found himself amid racks of crystals.

‘Any recommendations, Roj?’ he
heard a freedman ask.

The proprietor hooked his thumbs
into his patterned jerkin’s pockets, then rapidly listed titles. Tom listened
for a moment, then wandered among the racks, finally depositing a handful of
crystals on the counter.

‘This one’s good,’ said the
owner, picking through them. ‘But I wouldn’t waste my time with the Rihdal.
Yortin’s
Temptation
is the worst thing he wrote.’

‘But that doesn’t—’

‘Listen.’ And, inserting the
crystal in a slot, he read aloud:

‘ “The demon was slimy, its
purple tentacles covered with weeping pustules and more slime, its sharp-fanged
orifices pulsating, but the mighty-thewed Duke Yortin felt himself grow
strangely excited, sword hilt clammy in his—”‘

‘All right.’ Tom was laughing,
despite himself. ‘Tell me what’s good, that I probably haven’t heard of.’

‘OK, then. Pèdd?’ The proprietor
called to a tall man stacking racks. ‘Get these for me, would you.’

A short while later, Tom found
himself leaving the shop with three times as many crystals as he had intended
to buy, but pleased, certain each crystal would be good.

He
nearly returned straight to the hostel. But something made him continue
walking, and soon he was in a low rectilinear cavern of deep-blue polished
stone, with rows of shining pools on floor and ceiling. The slow
drip, drip
of
quicksilver droplets falling upwards, into the ceiling pools, was strangely
relaxing.

Then he passed through a series
of chambers where abstract shapes coalesced from floating ting-mist, and
scintillated.

It draws me, this place...

And then beyond, into a votive
tunnel where ornate shrines stood softly glowing, and ordinary lay folk came to
pray or meditate.

There
was an air of quiet anticipation: a gathering of onlookers including children
who nudged each other, whispering, and spontaneously erupted into energetic
running, chasing one another, then scampering back to their parents.

For all that, the tranquillity
was stronger here by the shrines.

So long since I’ve known peace.

If he ever truly had ...

Then a child cried out: ‘He’s
here!’

And, in the distance—far along
the tunnel’s vanishing perspective—an orange-clad figure came running this way,
fast.

The man’s cord-tied billowing
garment was neither robe nor jumpsuit, but something in between. He slowed to a
walk, and approached the shrine, his shaven head gleaming, his breathing deep
and easy.

Then he prostrated himself, sat
back on his heels, and slid into a meditation so profound that it brought a
sense of calm fulfilment to everyone who watched.

A matronly woman, head covered
with a white shawl, looked at Tom.

‘He’s very holy, this one.’

Tom whispered back: ‘How far does
he run?’

‘This year, he’ll run a hundred
klicks a day, one hundred days in succession.’

Sweet Fate.

If all the monks ran like this,
and their spiritual development in any way matched their physical discipline
...

‘The monastery,’ the woman added,
pointing along the dark clean tunnel, ‘lies ten klicks that way.’

Tom watched until the monk rose,
ran slowly at first—till the children who accompanied him dropped back,
laughing — then accelerated into a smooth, gliding motion Tom could never hope
to match.