Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [130]
While Rhodry made his way round, studying each panel in turn, the citizens of Lin Serr came and went, hurrying across from tunnel to tunnel on their own affairs. Most ignored him, a few honored him with gruff nods not so much of greeting but acknowledgment that he existed. Mostly for something to do, Rhodry spent hours watching them and came across a puzzle that he mentioned to Garin and Mic that night at dinner.
“I don’t mean to be insulting,” Rhodry said. “Or pry unwanted into your ways or suchlike, but I’ve got to ask. Where are your womenfolk? I’ve not seen a one since we’ve been here.”
“No offense taken,” Garin said. “It’s a natural enough question.”
“Truly,” Mic joined in. “I can see why you’d wonder, now that I’ve been to your country. Why, you see women all over the place, walking round right in the sunlight.”
Rhodry waited for some minutes, but neither said a thing more. Apparently he could ask, but he wasn’t going to be answered.
The next morning Rhodry walked out to the old gates. He stayed close to the cliffs and kept a good watch, as well, but whether it was the presence of Lin Serr’s iron, or whether she was off on some other evil errand, Alshandra never appeared. For a while he sat in the grass in front of the gateway and studied both towers—the freestanding spire, the half-carved column still joined to the cliffs along one tall side.
This second tower sported two smaller round structures, in shape much like a Deverry broch, at its base—the old guardrooms, or so Garin had told him. When Rhodry explored them, he found them crammed with stored weapons, iron single-bitted axes, spearheads on old and splitting wooden shafts, knives of various shapes. They’d all been thickly greased to keep the rust off, and the smell of ancient lard in hot rooms drove him out in a short while. Before he left, though, he found some iron knives of the same crude form and primitive construction as the bronze knife he carried at his belt. He could guess that someone in Evandar’s country had seen dwarven workmanship, but of an era very long gone.
Out on the freestanding spire, a ramp ran some thirty feet up the side to an open doorway. Rhodry paused there to catch his breath and look back at the lacy cliffs of the city, then went inside. He found a tiny chamber, little more than a landing round a stone spiral staircase, sculpted out of living rock. For a moment he simply marveled at it, then started climbing, round and round in one long rise inside the spire. Even though it was cool in the shadows, damp with the smell of ancient rock, still he was sweating by the time he finally gained the top.
The stairs led him out into one last chamber, some twenty feet on a square side, where huge windows dominated each wall, cut thick out of the rock and ledged some five feet wide, Rhodry walked round from one to the next, forcing himself to look down at the various views: the long rolling plateau south and west, the river and distant hills to the east, the white mountains at the northern horizon beyond the city itself. As long as he was looking at the horizon, he felt perfectly composed, but a sharp look down brought his dizziness and the cold sweat. He felt that he was taking up a battle that he should have fought long ago and forced himself to look down for as long as he could endure it. When he finally turned away his shirt was stuck to his back and chest both.
After that first visit Rhodry took to spending long hours alone up in the old tower. Since Garin and Mic could only spare him odd moments, except for their meals together, and Otho of course was under guard at the law courts, he’d often puff up the long ramp to the guard post in the spire, where he could sit and look past Lin Sen — to the white mountains, just visible over the tops of the artificial cliffs. At times, when the warm