Rift in the Sky

“Yes. She did.” Naryn’s eyes met Aryl’s. For a heartbeat, there was such aching loss in their depths Aryl instinctively reached for the other, only to be rebuffed by impenetrable shields. Then it was gone. A lifted eyebrow. “I’ll tell Council questions can wait.”

“We go up?” Enris countered Haxel’s quelling scowl with his boldest grin. Aryl shook her head. The First Scout might as well surrender.

Coming to the same conclusion, Haxel curved her lips in what wasn’t necessarily a smile.

“We go up.”

Aryl ran curious fingers over the dusty stone, freed a chunk of lighter crumbly stuff to toss thoughtfully into a corner. This jagged tear in one wall wasn’t the entrance intended by the long-dead builders of the Buried Theater, but Naryn remembered nothing else. They’d seen no sign of another passage.

There were, however, abundant and troubling signs this one was in regular use, putting Syb and Haxel in the lead, despite Naryn’s knowledge. She came next, with Enris, while Aryl and Veca followed behind.

Veca wasn’t happy. “No side corridors.”

“None yet,” Aryl replied, feeling the same. No way to avoid a confrontation—or slip aside and strike from behind.

Though why she’d thought of that strategy . . . Aryl shook her head.

Bright enough. Naryn had pressed a sequence of numbers into a box jammed between two stones, activating a series of small lights, themselves stuck in cracks or hanging from wires. The passage itself was hard packed dirt, with dirt and stone walls, and a ceiling that, though propped up by supports, showered dirt and dust at random.

Not the way to build things, Aryl decided, glad when Haxel picked up the pace.

They hadn’t gone far when the passage made a sharp turn. Beyond were none of the small lights, but after a moment, Aryl’s eyes adjusted and she could make out a rectangular glow ahead. They eased forward until they stood under what was the outline of a door.

In the ceiling.

Anyone bring a ladder?

Syb chuckled at Enris’ plaintive sending. We brought you.

Sending instead of speech. Aryl approved. A closed door could hide any number of surprises, most likely unpleasant ones.

But this, Naryn remembered. “It’s a lift,” she informed them calmly. Silhouetted against the lights from the first portion of the passage, she slipped her hand inside the wall—Aryl rubbed her eyes—then grimaced as she felt around. “Substandard piece of—” Naryn muttered confusingly, then stood back with an exclamation of pleasure. “There.”

The outlined section of ceiling lowered itself, spilling light and dust everywhere, and came to rest at their feet.

Haxel, who’d leaped aside, muttered something of her own as she returned to squint upward. “Good place for an ambush. Veca, wait here. Now, how do—” She fell silent as Naryn walked onto the piece of ceiling and gestured they should do the same.

Enris stepped on, grinning happily. One of them, Aryl thought grimly, should put sense ahead of adventure, but she followed her Chosen. Haxel and Syb drew their longknives as they did the same.

“Up,” Naryn said.

And the section of ceiling rose into the air, carrying five M’hiray—one large—without effort. Aryl glanced down at Ve ca’s dimly lit face, disappearing below, then resolutely faced where they were going.

The ceiling became floor, leaving them standing somewhere so different from the passage below, from anywhere she could imagine, that Aryl could hardly believe her eyes.

If not for the ceiling above, they might have stood out in the open, so vast was the space. The floor stretched, smooth and flat, away from the wall behind them. Wall? It was more like the slanted side of a huge buttress root, but what could be above to need such support?

Root?

Aryl shook away the confusing image.

More isolated sections of slanted wall connected the floor and ceiling as far as she could see. Between, everywhere, immense pipes writhed like growths. White ones. Red ones. Black. Some narrow, some oval. Some looped up to a distant ceiling. Others flopped along the floor and headed in either direction as far as the eye could see.

They could see, Aryl realized, because one kind of pipe glowed. She stepped closer. The pipe was clear-sided; what produced the changeable bluish light was inside. And moving. Aryl averted her eyes quickly. What flowed within was more disturbing than this place.

“Maintenance Layer,” Naryn informed them, and pointed left. “The next lift is over there.”

“This one’s the only access below?”

“To the theater, yes.”

Haxel looked to have as many questions as she did, Aryl thought, but merely nodded. “Aryl. Call Karne, Galen, Bula, Josel, and Imi.”

She nodded. An instant’s concentration to send those names into the M’hir, less to find the five, and their groups, standing beside them. They looked around in awe, then focused on Haxel. “We’re going that way,” she pointed. “The rest of you fan out, look for a way to the next level. Naryn?”