The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [60]
“The extra clothes are wet? What about the coats?”
“Drier than what we’re wearing, pathikh.”
“It’ll have to do. When Zemlé can walk, we’ll move on. Moving will warm us.”
“Stephen,” Zemlé said. “A small question. Tiny, really.”
“Yes?”
“There is another way back, yes?”
Stephen glanced at the waterfall. “Right. I guess we can’t swim back up that.”
“Stephen—”
“Virgenya Dare made it out.”
“But you don’t know how?”
“She neglected to write about that, I’m afraid. But there must be a way out.”
“And we only need find it before we run out of food or freeze to death.”
“Don’t be a pessimist,” Stephen said, his elation starting to fade. “We’ll be fine.”
“How much farther to the start of the faneway?”
“I’m not sure. Virgenya wasn’t sure; it’s hard to measure time and distance underground. She reckoned it at several bells but admitted it could have been days.”
“What if we get lost?”
“Not much chance of that right now,” he said. “We’ve only one direction to go. Anyway, I can feel the faneway. It’s close.” He gripped her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“A little dizzy, but I can walk.”
Adhrekh had dug out the coats from their packs, sturdy elkhide paiden with fur lining. They were hardly wet at all, and once clothed in one, Stephen felt a great deal better even though he was still wet.
Once everything was gathered again, they started out.
The passage bent and turned like the bed of any river and its roof went higher and lower, but it stayed simple in terms of choices. More streams joined it, but they came from above, from fissures too small to accommodate a person. The floor dropped roughly down in places, forcing them to use rope to descend, but was never as dramatic or dangerous as what they already had been through. Not, that is, until they reached the place Virgenya Dare called simply “the valley.” Stephen knew they were approaching it because the close echoes of the tunnel began opening up, becoming vastly more hollow, along with the sound of rushing water.
They came to the lip where the river churned and fell far from sight, and a vast black space yawned before them.
“And now?” Zemlé asked.
“There should be stairs here,” Stephen said, searching along the ledge. The river must have flooded at times and eaten at the sides of the mouth, creating a shallow, low-roofed cave that went off to the left of the opening. After a moment he found what the Born Queen must have been talking about, and he groaned in dismay.
“What’s wrong?” Zemlé asked, trying to see around him.
“Two thousand years,” Stephen sighed.
There were indeed stairs cut into the stone of the wall, but the first four yards of them were gone, doubtless eroded by the floods he had just been considering. After that, the steps that remained looked glassy and worn. To reach them meant leaping three yards and falling two and then avoiding slipping upon landing. Or breaking a leg. And once there, he had no assurance there wasn’t a similar gap farther on.
Behind him, he heard Adhrekh in a hushed conversation.
“Any ideas?” Stephen asked.
He heard the quick thump of footsteps and air brushed at his locks. Then he saw one of the Aitivar hurl himself into space toward the eroded stairs.
“Saints!” Stephen gasped. He didn’t have time to say anything else before the fellow hit the stair, flailed for balance, teetered—and fell. Then he could only stare.
“Who—who was that?” he finally managed.
“Unvhel,” Adhrekh said.
“Why—” But then another one was running past him.
“Wait—”
But of course it was too late. The jumper hit the step, and his foot slipped, so that he fell like a tomfool at a traveling show, landing on his prat and sliding. Stephen held his breath, sure the Aitivar would go over, but he somehow caught himself and managed to slip down the water-worn steps to stable footing.
Stephen turned to Adhrekh. “What is wrong with you people?” he asked, trying