Beyond the Pool of Stars Read online

“I think there is something strong in the waters that keeps them out.”

  “Something strong?” Ivrian repeated.

  “Something that’s liable to find all of us tasty,” Mirian said.

  Jekka cocked his head and let out that strange coughing noise she’d learned to recognize as lizardfolk laughter.

  She waited for him to recover. “But if they’re frightened of it, why return?”

  “The boggards worship strength,” Jekka answered.

  She nodded. “Any idea what it could be?”

  “Anything that likes the water and is large,” Jekka answered. “I think it will have sharp teeth.”

  “That doesn’t really narrow it down,” Ivrian objected.

  “It gets to the essentials,” Mirian countered. “There’s something in there that’s dangerous enough to keep out an entire tribe of boggards, and impressive enough that they come to pay their respects. If that’s not a warning sign, I don’t know what is. We’ll have to be on our guard.”

  “Always,” Jekka said.

  15

  The Tower in the Night

  Ivrian

  We had come at last to the deserted outpost of the lizardfolk: a vast, broken field of towers, haunted by forgotten glories and the ghosts of the scaled people who’d shaped that city from the jungle impossible centuries before. As night fell, we took shelter at the height of one of the towers, though Mirian remained troubled that stairs led deep into tunnels beneath the earth.

  We could never have guessed what tragedies lay before us. For doom clutched at our expedition with skeletal hands, and some of us would feel its grasp.

  —From The Daughter of the Mist

  Ivrian didn’t care much for the tower, not once they’d scaled its height and explored its depths. The crumbling stairs led down through dark chambers and into long corridors lined with that luminous green lichen. Heltan remained so eager to explore that he asked twice more if they might at least venture into the opening halls, but Mirian and Jekka vetoed the idea at the same moment.

  The salvagers and the lizardfolk cleared the tower of some undesirables—centipedes as long as a man’s arm, and a few spiders as wide as pineapples—then declared the upper rooms safe for sleeping. Three rounds of sentries were assigned at both the entrance to the underground and the tower’s height, and Ivrian wasn’t sure if he should be pleased or irritated he wasn’t posted to either. Neither was Gombe, for the salvager was still a little weak from his snakebite.

  Mirian advised against a cooked meal, saying there was no point attracting attention with smoke.

  “The odds are good that if the boggards who made that trail live anywhere close, they already know we’re here,” she said. “But there’s a chance they’ve missed us.”

  Jekka voiced agreement for the second time that evening. Ivrian wouldn’t have said that the lizard man’s attitude had become warm, precisely, but a change seemed to have occurred. It had been a day or two since he’d complained about human habits or customs, and more and more Ivrian was seeing him in consultation with Mirian.

  Still, the others remained more kindly disposed. Heltan seemed to have struck up an honest friendship with Ivrian’s mother, and Kalina chattered happily with any and all. Even the wary Tokello would talk with her.

  After another dinner of dried rations, Ivrian copied the habit of the salvagers and laid his hammock upon the tower’s third floor, one level below its height and two above that yawning door into darkness. The rough fabric was little enough mattress to pad him from the cold stone, but he made do like the others and sat hunched over his writing desk, making notes.

  He was roughing out a description of his first view of the city when Kalina trotted up the stairs and crouched at his side, peering at what he did.

  Without comment, she suddenly swung her axe about, blade at the ready. Ivrian’s breath caught in his throat. Had he broken some taboo? Were they under attack?

  Then he saw the lizard woman draw out a whetstone and set it against the blade with precise, rapid motions. The scraping, whining noise was a bit of an irritant until he realized this, too, was worth noting, and so he stopped trying to conjure metaphors for the ruins and watched Kalina work.

  “I’ve never seen an axe like that before.”

  “It is a laumahk,” she told him. “A weapon crafted by the elders and handed down to the finest hunter of each generation.” Her lips parted, and she produced a soft hooting noise. It was a mournful sound. “I am by default the best, for I am the last.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he was. He leaned in closer. There was a curious gray sheen to the long blade. “What kind of metal is that?”

  “Starmetal,” she said. “I do not know what you humans name it. It was forged from the metal found in the crater of the Pool of Stars. Like the blades of Jekka’s staff.”

  “It must be a very old weapon,” Ivrian speculated.

  “I do not know how to say the count of years in human words.”

  “Centuries are hundreds of years,” he said, then added, “A hundred is ten tens.”

  “Then my laumahk is many centuries old. You see that it does not rust.” She stopped her sharpening, and with a deft turn of the knob on the weapon’s pommel she suddenly extended the haft. “It can be wielded two-handed, if I wish.”

  Ivrian was more interested than ever. “May I hold it?”

  Kalina cocked her head to one side and showed the tip of her forked tongue. “May I see your writing desk?”

  “Certainly. Everything I’ve written so far is just notes, though. It will sound much better once I tinker with it a bit.”

  “I cannot read your language,” Kalina admitted. “But I want to see your writing and what lies within the compartments.”

  They traded places. Odd to think she wanted to see what he did even though she’d understand nothing of it.

  While the lizard woman opened and closed the little panels and drawers, examining the pens and pen blades, inkbottles and paper, he gingerly touched the axe—laumahk, he corrected. He kept his fingers away from the razor-sharp blade and instead studied the carved shapes of jungle animals along the haft, and the means Kalina had used to lengthen the weapon. The haft telescoped out nearly two additional feet.

  “There used to be a point at the far end, for jabbing,” Kalina told him, “but it broke off against a k’rang. I do not know what you humans call them. A lizard my height, with sharp claws. They hunt in packs.”

  “I’m not sure what we call those either,” Ivrian said. “But I’m glad I haven’t met one.”

  “Yes. They are very hungry. Show me the symbols where you write of me.”

  Smiling, Ivrian set the deadly weapon aside and searched his parchments until he found the first paragraph he’d written about Kalina. He explained to her which words said she was brave and which said she was Ivrian’s friend, pointing to them as he read aloud.

  The lizard woman hissed in what he hoped was contentment. She tilted her head and stared at the wall of the tower directly across from them. Mirian sat there, a notebook propped on her knees, working quickly with a pencil while staring at them.

  “What does she do?” Kalina asked. Before Ivrian could speculate, she rose and moved quickly to Mirian’s side.

  The lizard woman’s frill ruffled and her scales brightened to a lighter green. She let out a soft cooing noise and knelt for a closer look.

  As Ivrian walked over, Mirian tilted the paper so Kalina might see what she did.

  He leaned in beside the lizard woman, curious that he should feel comfortable enough to do so. He might have expected her to smell of swamp and weeds, but she was almost free of any scent. Certainly she smelled far better than Rendak and Gombe after a long day hiking.

  He marveled, for Mirian’s long, calloused fingers had sketched both of them, though she’d put far more detail into Kalina’s portrait than his own.

  “You’re very good,” he told her. His artist friends had always told him that hands
were hard to draw, but Mirian had great facility with them, including Kalina’s dexterous fingers as her image held the ink bottle for examination.

  “Heltan!” Kalina called, “Jekka! Attend!”

  Soon both of the male Karshnaar crowded, one to either side.

  Jekka asked a question of Kalina in his own language, and she answered in the same. Then she said, “Do you see? She is a crafter.”

  “Do you fashion this for gold?” Jekka asked Mirian.

  She shook her head. “No. I draw pictures of the places where I journey so my friends can see what I’ve seen.”

  Jekka blinked at this information.

  There was no mistaking the eagerness in Kalina’s voice. “Do you have other pictures?”

  Mirian handed over the sketchbook, demonstrating how to move the pages. “Be careful turning them,” she said. “Some are quite fragile.”

  All three of the lizardfolk then gathered about the book, making it hard for Ivrian to see much. He glimpsed a ruined wall carved with Mwangi faces, a trio of unfamiliar natives at work clearing foliage. This was followed by a study of an odd-looking bird with a long beak perched on a low branch.

  Heltan and Kalina talked rapidly in their own language as they turned the pages. Jekka remained silent.

  “I had no idea you were so talented,” Ivrian said. “At artwork, I mean.”

  Mirian shrugged, but she couldn’t completely disguise a glow of pride.

  “Do you know what?” he said. “We might combine forces.”

  Her eyes transfixed his own, and he felt himself withering, for there was little warmth in her expression. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to bring up the matter. “I’ve been keeping a record of our journey,” he said. “I am thinking about writing a record of our expedition—”

  “I don’t think so,” Mirian said.

  “Hear me out. I think there’d be a real market for this sort of thing.”

  “No,” Mirian said. “These drawings are private.”

  That was a head-scratcher. “You shouldn’t hide talent like that.”

  “I’m not hiding it, Ivrian. It’s just not for sale.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it. Now, the hour’s late. Tomorrow may be the most dangerous day we’ve yet spent, so you’ll want a good night’s sleep. I suggest you get to it.”

  Confused, he nodded. As Mirian retrieved her notebook, he reflected that it was curious he’d won the friendship of a creature not of his own species far more easily than he’d gained that of their expedition leader.

  16

  The Sunken City

  Mirian

  They began at dawn, only to learn that the passage below the tower was blocked by a cave-in a hundred paces farther in. That disappointed Mirian more than it did Heltan.

  “It is better to go in through the central pool, anyway,” the lizard man said blithely. He reached out to touch a huge clod of black dirt that lay before them. “The central route through was told to me, as it was told to my ancestors. If we had gone in this way it might have taken days to orient ourselves.”

  Mirian grunted her disapproval. She liked the idea of a safe spot to which they could retreat, especially since she needed to leave a few members of the expedition aboveground. Tokello and the Galanors were no divers.

  The tower had been an ideal base camp, but she didn’t want them stationed far from where they were going in, so they’d have to find a new one.

  She made the best of the situation. There was another tower, one a little less sturdy, only a hundred yards from the pool Heltan declared to be the city’s central entrance. She and Rendak climbed up to explore, Jekka trailing.

  If this second tower opened onto the tunnels, there was no longer any evidence, for its bottom floor had collapsed into its lower level, making further exploration impossible. Still, the upper floors were defensible once she and Rendak and Jekka had divested them of a small snake nest and cleared out enough vines and leaves to determine no other dangerous creatures laired inside.

  They climbed down and she surveyed the team. The sun was visible over the tree line, which disappointed her. She had hoped to start their exploration at dawn. The longer they delayed, the more chance boggards would turn up in force. “All right, Tokello.” She pointed up to the tower. “You’ve got the roof and a half level beneath.”

  The healer sighed.

  “Gombe, I want you to stay with her.”

  “But Miss Raas,” the salvager protested, “I’m feeling fine now.”

  “No ‘buts.’” He still looked a little pale. And then there was the other matter. “I’m not leaving Tokello out here by herself. Which reminds me. Lady Galanor, Ivrian—”

  “We’re coming with you,” Alderra said, a hint of steel in her tone.

  “I thought you’d say that. I leave it to you. But let me remind you that I’ve no idea what lies below. It’s something that keeps the boggards away. It’s my recommendation you leave this to Rendak and the Karshnaar and me.”

  “I’m up for any challenge with you,” the older woman said confidently.

  “I’m sure you are. But you’re not a trained diver.”

  “I’m a quick study, Mirian. And so’s my son.”

  She nodded politely. “Ivrian’s held up nicely, but he’s not nearly as well seasoned as yourself. I think he should sit this one out.”

  The lady brushed back her mane of graying hair, an action somehow vain and strangely endearing at the same time. “If there is something under there, won’t you need more swords?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If there’s one thing I’m good at,” Ivrian said, “it’s bladework.”

  Mirian had to nod. She supposed Alderra had a point. And Ivrian had followed instructions to the letter. She studied him and wished again it was Kellic standing there, so filled with enthusiasm to prove himself he was practically ready to burst. She sighed. “If we have to fight underwater, you two stay well clear. Do you understand? If you try to help, you’re liable to blunder in and trip us up.”

  “You can count on us,” Ivrian said with a smile.

  Definitely one of the most upbeat young men Mirian had ever met. It wasn’t all naivete, either—more just curiosity.

  Like a Pathfinder, she realized. She wondered if that was what her venture-captain had thought of her the first time they’ve met, when she and some Bas’o hunters had helped the Society track an artifact thief through Devil’s Cradle.

  “All right, gear up.” She pointed at the Galanors. “Remember: you two follow our lead. And I mean you listen to our guides, too. If this were an army, you’d be the privates.”

  “Any army would be lucky to have a general so accomplished.” Alderra quirked a smile and offered a salute.

  Mirian had Rendak go over the use of an air bottle with Lady Galanor again while Mirian pulled Ivrian aside and explained once more how best to use the water-breathing ring. He nodded and asked no questions, which didn’t reassure her. She then motioned Gombe forward and had him pass over two of the short spears he’d carved. Alderra handled hers with familiarity, and Ivrian imitated his mother.

  “If you must fight underwater,” Mirian said, “you’ll have much more success with a spear than a sword. Jab, don’t swing. Unless you’re me.” She’d already explained that her second ring let her move more easily underwater. “Don’t try to do what you see me doing. It’s not possible without magic.”

  Heltan led the way in, his brother at his side. The more scholarly of the lizard men carried a spear himself, and Jekka flipped out the spear blade of his staff. Mirian and Rendak followed them.

  The water was cool and clear and tasted rich with healthy plant life. She floated a moment to let her lungs adjust.

  The lizardfolk were already moving into the circular maw of a large tube that opened into the cenote, their tails and feet granting them extraordinary momentum.

  Mirian would have liked to have examined the drop site in more d
etail, or waited to ensure the Galanors got in safely, but she had to keep the Karshnaar in sight, so she kicked after. She heard the dull sound of a splash as one or both of the Galanors plunged in behind. As prearranged, Rendak lingered to swim with them.

  The lizardfolk moved on, sleek and graceful. It was odd to see Heltan without his robe. He looked much more the warrior, now, focused solely on what lay before him.

  In contrast, Jekka sometimes glanced back, just like Mirian. Rendak, shirtless and barefoot, swam just behind the Galanors, who were side by side in tight-fitting short pants and blue shirts. Kalina brought up the rear. Her laumahk was strapped to her back, a spear in one green hand.

  Mirian had thought they might have to rely on glow stones, but the phosphorescent fungus shone in long green lines among the fitted stones. The light source appeared to have been set up to grow in slotted channels on either side of the tunnel, but it had overflowed and eaten into the mortar.

  Two hundred feet on they came to a point where two tunnels crossed. The lizardfolk surfaced in a small vaulted chamber to catch their breath. Mirian, troubled by a flash of white below them, dived.

  She found another tunnel mouth running diagonal to the upper one. At the floor below the intersection, she spied a pile of bones.

  Many were animal skeletons. Others were the froglike skulls of boggards. But there was no missing the distinctive look of human jaws mixed among them.

  Troubled, she kicked up to join the lizardfolk, breathing out the water so she could gasp in cool, stale air and converse with them.

  “Are you ready to move on?” Heltan asked, clearly excited.

  “There are bones down there,” she said. “A lot of them. Boggards. Lizardfolk too, I think. And humans.”

  Rendak surfaced beside her, then Ivrian, who didn’t remember to breathe out the water before he tried to breathe in air and had to steady himself against the limestone roof as he heaved up the water in his lungs. She winced in sympathy. That was a mistake he probably wouldn’t make again.

  Jekka eyed her. “That makes no sense. No one who lives here would dirty the waters. I don’t think even the Vanizhar would do that.”