Orphans - Kevin Killiany [29]
The next part of the process terrified her; she had to will herself to make each movement. It might have been easier if she were certain this giant’s ladder led to safety, but she didn’t have that assurance. She only knew that after possibly days of tracing tunnel walls in the dark, this ladder going up was the only thing that held any hope of being a way out.
She released her hold on the upright, and holding the straps slightly apart with two hands, she eased a foot off the rung and onto the bottom curve of the loop. She took a deep breath and, trying not to imagine the buckle slipping, pulled herself up to a standing position.
She swung for a moment, vaguely surprised she was not plunging down into darkness, then felt above her head for the next rung. Once she had pulled herself up, she sat catching her breath and repeating the ritual check of her vision.
To her left in the darkness was something hot. She was reasonably sure it was a cluster of pipes, each as big around as she was tall, that she had felt rising out of the floor near the ladder’s base. At first they had merely been warm, but the heat of whatever they carried had been increasing. There was no way to tell whether the entire column was heating up or if the contents were simply hotter toward the top.
She wished her tricorder had survived the blast. It would have been good to know what was in the dark with her.
Or where she was going.
With a sigh she pulled herself to a standing position and flung the buckle end of her homemade climbing rope into the darkness above her.
CHAPTER
16
Terant sat, wrapped in a warm sleeping robe, taking care to appear at ease. Nights had not been good for his wife since the death of their children, but there was no reason for any outside his household to know that.
Vissint entered the outer parlor of the baron’s private quarters in evident haste, though he acknowledged the servant who held the door before the latter withdrew. A man who understood the reciprocal nature of loyalty.
The Chancellor of State wore the formal robes of office, but with a rumpled and distracted air. Terant deduced he was at the end of a long and difficult day.
“What news?” asked the baron. He did not offer his chancellor a chair or tea from the service at his elbow.
“The gnomes have been seen on the dawnward road,” Vissint said simply.
“Ah.”
Their messenger to the Tetrarchy with the news of the birth blight had returned days before with word of these gnomes. They had, during the time of her visit, lost the ability to speak the language of the People. She had gleaned that the Tetrarch’s Doctors were divided on the significance of this.
News that they were coming through the Wilderness toward Atwaan was interesting, but hardly warranted the chancellor’s late visit.
“And?”
“And they bear letters from Nazent of the Second House.” Vissint paused, ensuring that the Baron grasped the import of his next words. “The letters request that all who meet the gnomes assist them in seeking access.”
Terant’s breath whistled sharply through his nostrils. The flesh across his back and shoulders tightened in alarm. He slowly took a sip of tea with a steady hand.
It had been fortune of the Journey that the Giants had emerged from the hollow by his grandfather’s paddock. Their arrival had driven him to deep explorations of the hollows. His miners had discovered a refined metal too heavy and dense to be worked into anything more complex than ax or arrowheads. And of course the highly prized oddments of the Builders—the luxury trade that provided so much for the Barony.
But these treasures had not been what the warden had sought. Unknown to any but his son and now his grandson and their closest advisers, the Giants in all their babbling had spoken of control. Somewhere within the hollows, very near to Terant’s holding, was a secret that would give its possessor the ability to control the destiny of the world.
If one could only gain access.
The Giants had died without describing