Page 359

‘I know. I will.’ Her own voice sounded thin and odd to her.

She got to her feet and limped back to the panel.

The crank handle was mounted on a spoked wheel the size of a carriage wheel.

It was made of metal. Damp earth was packed solidly around it.

For an eternity, she dug at it. The soil was cold and wet and abrasive.

It packed under her nails and sanded her skin.

‘Just try it.’

Obediently, she set both hands to the handle on the wheel. Her memory told her that two men should be on this crank and two on its partner. They would all have worked in synchronization to turn them.

But she was the only one here. She put her weight on it and dragged down.

Miraculously, it turned, but not far. Far up the wall, something shifted.

She left this crank and walked back to the other one.

At least this one was not packed with earth.

She seized the handle and turned it. It moved more smoothly than its partner, but not much farther.

She walked back to the first crank. It turned a notch.

She went back to the other crank, and turned it.

As she turned it, she could hear something moving in the wall.

There was a tiny shifting. The door itself moved fractionally.

She leaned on the crank and it moved again.

Odd sounds whispered through the wall and door.

Ancient chains moved on pulleys, her memories whispered.

Counter-weights began their descent. That was how she had designed it, remember?

Remember. Remember how it was designed. Remember how the whole dome was designed.

She suddenly saw the whole wall and door and their mechanisms differently.

The memory of how it should have been contrasted too strongly with what her hands told her.

She felt the dirt and wet earth with her hands, shutting her eyes to block out the memory of how it had been.

She groped her way across the door, feeling the bulges in its structure, the cracks that crossed it.

She spun suddenly. ‘This whole side of the structure will give way if the door is moved. Only chance has kept it intact this long.’

‘It will give way, the earth will fall away from it, and the light will shine in,’ the dragon predicted. ‘Continue.’

‘If you are wrong, you will be buried here, and I along with you.’

‘I prefer that than to continue as I am. Turn the cranks, Malta. You promised.’

So potent a thing is a name. She snapped back to herself, a young woman in muddy clothes in the darkness. The proud young builder was gone, not even a memory, as dreams wisp away when the awakened one clutches at them. She took the crank in her hand and turned it another notch.

It was the last motion either crank would make. From one to the other she went, back and forth, tugging and cursing. It was as far as the ancient mechanism would move. The wall muttered uneasily to itself, but the door would not move.

‘It’s jammed. I can’t do it. I tried. I’m sorry.’

For a long instant, the dragon was silent. Then she commanded, ‘Get help. Your brother…I see him. You dominate him easily. Fetch him, and two rods to use as levers. Go now. Now.’

There were good and sound reasons to resist this command, but Malta could not recall what they were.

She could barely recall this brother the dragon spoke of.

The door and the means to open it were all she clearly knew.

The rods were a good idea. Shoved through the spokes of the wheel, she could use them as levers to force the cranks to turn.

She walked in light remembered from another time.

She dragged her weary steps up the broad stairs and out the north door.

As she walked, her fingers found the jidzin strip and trailed along it.

The corridor illuminated itself to guide her.

A blink of her tired eyes, and it thronged with life.

Nobles swept past her, their gangly pages in attendance on them.

A seamstress and her two young apprentices backed out of a door, bowing, rich fabrics draped over their arms. A nursemaid with a chubby-kneed child wailing in her arms hastened towards her and then through her.

The nurse called a cheery greeting to a young man in a beribboned cap, and he whistled in reply.

Malta was the unseen ghost here; not they. The city was theirs.

She stumbled suddenly on fallen stone. She lost her touch on the wall and was plunged once more into darkness.

This was her time, her life, and it was dark and dank and riddled with collapsed corridors and jammed doors.

This fall of earth, her groping hands told her, completely blocked the corridor. She could not go that way.

She touched the wall to get her bearings and instantly knew a better route that led to a closer exit.

She turned her steps that way and hurried along.

She no longer listened to the exhausted complaints of her body.

She lived now in a thousand different moments; why focus on the one where she was in pain?

She trotted along, her bedraggled skirts alternately slapping or clinging to her legs.

She slammed to the floor. ‘A quake,’ she said dully after it had passed.

She lay still on the stone for a time afterwards, waiting for the echo-shake that often followed.

Nothing happened. There were sounds, shifting and grating sounds.

None of them seemed to come from nearby.

Cautiously she came to her feet. She touched the jidzin strip.

Light flickered along it, but dimly. Malta had to reach for memories of how the corridor should be before she went on.

There were screams in the distance. She ignored them as she ignored the chatter of strolling couples and the barking of a small dog that brushed past her unfelt.

Ghosts and memories. She had a door to open.

She turned down a side corridor that would lead her out.

The screaming was close here. A woman’s voice cried out, ‘Please, please, the door is stuck. Get us out of here. Get us out before we die!’ As Malta’s hands trailed past the door, she felt the vibration of the woman’s pounding.

More in curiosity than in answer to the plea, she set her shoulder to the door.

‘Pull!’ she shouted as she pushed on it.

The jammed door suddenly flew open. A woman rushed out of it as soon as it did.

She collided with Malta, sending them both to the floor.

A pale man stood behind her. Real yellow lantern light spilled out of the room behind them, near blinding Malta.

The woman trampled Malta as she scrambled to her feet.

‘Get up!’ she shrieked at her. ‘Take us out of here. The wall has cracked and mud is leaking in!’

Malta sat up and looked past her into a well-appointed chamber.

The carpeted floor was being engulfed by a slow wave of mud.

A crack in the wall was the source of it.

Even as Malta stared at it, a little water suddenly bubbled through.

The mud began to flow faster, thinned by the water.

Its passage ate at the wall. ‘The whole wall will give way soon,’ she observed with certainty.

The pale young man glanced at it over his shoulder.

‘You are probably right.’ He looked down on her.

‘Your masters assured us we would be safe here. That no one and nothing could find me here. What is the good of my hiding from assassins, only to be drowned in stinking mud?’ Malta blinked.

The Elder phantasms faded, leaving the Satrap of Jamaillia scowling down at her.

‘Well, don’t just lie there. Get up and take us to your masters. They will feel my wrath.’

Companion Kekki had gone back into the chamber to snatch up a lantern. ‘She is useless,’ she declared to the Satrap. ‘Follow me. I think I know the way.’

Malta lay on the floor, watching them go.

This was very significant, she told herself dazedly.

The Satrap of Jamaillia had been brought to Trehaug, for his own safety.

She had not known that. Someone should have told her about it.

Didn’t Reyn trust her? She closed her eyes to try to think about it more clearly. She thought of going to sleep.

The floor bucked under her, slapping her cheek.

Down the hall from where she sprawled, Kekki and the Satrap screamed.

The shrill sound did not scare Malta half so much as the deep rumbling from the chamber they had vacated.

She scrabbled to her feet as the floor was still trembling.

She seized the door and dragged it shut.

Could a door hold back a collapsing hillside?

She clutched at her head suddenly. Take control. She chose the moment and brought it to life around her. Chaos swirled past her. It might save them.

She turned and ran. Ahead of her, she saw the jouncing lantern the Companion carried.

She caught up with the Satrap and his woman.

‘You’re going the wrong way,’ she informed them tersely.

‘Follow me.’ She snatched the lantern from Kekki’s hand.

‘This way,’ she ordered them, and set off.

They followed on her heels. Around them, phantoms shrieked thinly as they fled.

Malta followed the flight of the Elderlings.

If they had escaped their final cataclysm, perhaps she would as well.