Submerged Page 15

  “Some of these might work. I think the gardening clothes may fit best. The wind blows cold here.” He paused.

  Ardith pulled out a pair of pants and a long shirt, embroidery upon the sleeves still bright, and stockings and leather shoes, darting into his study to change.

  “Touch nothing in there! That’s my work!”

  Before he had the trunk shoved away, she put her head outside the curtain. “Thank you.”

  He could hear fussing about. Her curiosity had obviously taken advantage of his permission, as he also heard the shuffle of papers. “There are a lot of words here. You must have found many wonderful things!”

  “Once,” he answered.

  Ardith came out, pant legs rolled and stockings pulled up to secure the cuffs. The buttoned shirtsleeves ballooned on her thin arms like great sails, and shoes in hand, she looked immensely happy. He began to smile back.

  She helped clean up, although her help consisted mainly of wandering about, sweeping a corner here and standing over his writing table there, stirring his papers gently with that same finger she’d upheld to halt his questions. She bounded out when he growled again to leave his things alone. When he swung a pot of stew over the banked fire to simmer, he washed his hands and called her over to wash hers.

  She had a smudge of dust on her nose. He wiped it off with the ball of his thumb. Her features were finely boned and definitely not of the peoples of Windlost, or the vast continent the island hugged. Searching her expression, he sought to define the treasure that might be buried within her.

  He would have to decide what to do.

  * * *

  The paper arrived the next morning, along with cheese and fresh bread, the shepherd boy dropping his delivery on the doorstep with an unexpected thump. Only a faint noise of the herd being driven to the leeward side of the mountain greeted Bevan as opened the door. He realized that his regular delivery had come a day late. Bartoff would be anxious for his translation work, yet the boy hadn’t stopped to inquire.

  Unsettled, paper tucked under his arm, he found his strikers and lit the stove before sitting down. Ardith still slept, and so he set breakfast for himself.

  He ate, rustling the paper in his hands between bites. He folded the paper over and one headline caught him like a blow to the stomach.

  PLAGUE PROTOCOLS IN PLACE.

  FORBIDDEN CITY LOOTED.

  HISTORIANS CONDEMNED FOR FOOLHARDY EXPEDITION,

  TREASURE ORDERED BURNED.

  Torched. All those coffins. And how many of the bodies, the children, had merely been asleep? How many burned alive? No historian could be that foolish to risk contagion and plague. Someone on the continent knew what they had financed and wanted the artifacts regardless. Why disturb tombs?

  A drawing of one of the coffin crates, sigils plain now, stared at him.

  Bevan’s hands shook. Now that he could read it plainly, he knew those symbols. The city of lost Briatha, hidden for centuries. Dead or alive, she had value. What had he done? His breakfast grew bitter at the back of his throat. Under pressure, someone was bound to remember the barge shifting wildly over Windlost. When someone realized she’d gone missing, there would be a hunt.

  Ardith appeared like the delicate, light-footed child she was. “Breakfast?”

  Bevan stood hastily, shoving the paper aside and making room for her. He watched her eat, thinking of the many questions he still had. He tried to ask a few of them but she merely shook her head, and concentrated on her meal.

  A heavy fist rattled the door. He turned on heel to point. “Hide. Now. Back in the study! Under the desk, and quiet. And don’t touch anything!”

  She dove for shelter as he opened the door to not one but a handful. He knew them: Bartoff the impatient blacksmith, Canmore the baker, Saliat the mayor, and Grifan the Meditation leader. All of them, like himself, wore the characteristics of other countries on their brows and in their manners. He bowed at them. “Bartoff! Wanting that manual? I have just finished it up. I’ll fetch it. What brings the rest of you?”

  The Meditation leader tapped a bony finger on his temple. “Ill news on the wind. You must have seen the airship a few days past?”

  “Aye, I did my dance and cursed them royally to no good. They are sky, after all, and I am earth. I read the paper and was glad they passed me by.”

  Saliat, his forked beard newly oiled and curled, bobbed his head. “They struck a plague flag.”

  “Now that I did not see.”

  His visitors nodded among themselves. “We asked ourselves why excavate disaster. The paper reads that the continent is now in a panic. Why transport such danger and misery? You were a digger once. Why?”

  Bevan lifted a shoulder. “I did it for the knowing of things, but backers want profit. Metals. Gems. Machines. It’s always for money.”

  Bartoff brandished a great, knuckled hand. “They’ll bring us death.”

  “After so long? It must have been centuries, from descriptions of the ruins.” He shook his head. “Stone doesn’t hold sickness. Water might, but time would have cleansed it. It’s not likely to touch us, at any rate, so far off. ” Bevan forced a neutral expression and gazed upon the Meditator. “Grifan, I feel certain that you will ably discern any problems. You’re in tune with the vibrations of Windlost and beyond.”

  It worried him that they’d all accompanied Bartoff. They had come, not only for his wisdom but to gauge his reaction to the news, if he had been aware of the development, as if they thought him linked to the happenings. As if strange, harmful things might erupt here, and he still the foreigner.

  He backed to his office and retrieved the translation. He could hear her muffled breathing under his desk, panicky and fitful. He returned to give the blacksmith the valise of work. “Staying to help me cut wood?”

  Bartoff laughed and shrugged.

  Behind his audience, he could see puffs of dirt below the ridge. These men hadn’t come alone. A dog’s thin howl, barely audible, reached his hearing.

  She could no longer stay here.

  He slammed the door in their faces and shoved the heavy bar in place. Bartoff began pounding and shouting at the door.

  “What are you hiding! Open the door, Bevan! It’s an island—where can you hope to hide?”

  Ardith came out of his study, one arm wrapped about her ribcage, her face wet with tears.

  “Run,” he told her. “Out the back window. Can you do that?”

  He fetched his stove strikers from the kitchen. Grabbing the delivery sack full of cheese and bread, he burst into the study and grabbed his knapsack, stuffing papers into it right and left. She sprinted for the back room, wrestling the window open and clambering through.

  He slid out and joined her with a thump, strikers in his free hand, alight and burning. He’d left two glowing in his office. All those old books. Research. They would explode in flame. Throwing the last of his strikers back through the window, he grabbed her up and ran.

  He could hear the shouts at the barred front door, followed by the thud of boots and then an axe. Cries as the fire exploded.

  He did not slow until the forest had gobbled them up and his side ached so that he could hardly breathe, and then he let her slide down. He no longer heard the baying hounds, but over his labored breathing, he could be mistaken.

  Ardith looked up at him, her eyes shadowed. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. One of them was a Seeker. I felt his touch.” She trembled.

  “You…did nothing. A moment, and we’ll run some more.”

  “Where?”

  “I have a place.”

  He put his hand on her head, her braid wispy against his palm. “Can you keep up with me?”

  She gave a slow nod.

  “Then we are off again.”

  She scampered after him as though she were part goat.

  When the sun slanted lower and the forest grew even thicker, he slowed to a walk. He could hear the dogs again, far behind, but he had no help for it.

 
“We’re almost there.”

  She tilted her head. “Where?”

  “I have a…place. Stareye Lake. It’s hard to find, and the trees hug it close. The water level has dropped so that if you were a bird in the sky, you might see it winking deep in the stone.”

  She scurried after, leaping fallen logs as she held onto his hand, and giggling as they both fell over a log neither of them could clear. Her laughter rang out, fresh and clean. Historians, he thought, stayed too dusty. He rolled to his feet and put his hand out to Ardith. “Not far now.”

  When she finally staggered to a stop, exhausted, he picked her up again.

  By late afternoon they came to the rim of a great gash in the earth, cut deep into roots and stone, as though a massive arrow from the sky had struck and buried itself straight down, splitting the world open. He lowered her and bent to breathe deeply. The dogs grew louder, and he turned a plan over in his head.

  He walked them around the rim until the sunlight touched their destination brightly. He shifted his knapsack on his shoulders and tied their rations to his belt. Pointing downward, he said: “Now we climb.”

  Ardith went to her stomach to hang her head over. Surprised, she said, “Someone has cut a path and built ladders where it’s too steep to walk. Does it go all the way down to the water?”

  “That someone would be me, and yes.” It had taken a while and he had the calluses to show for it. He looked down now and saw that it had endured, despite the seasons passing since he’d last been there.

  “I’ll go down first, that way I can catch you if you slip. We’ll find light at the bottom.” He had torches and other items stockpiled against the day he might have to defend his find. He began to climb down, and she looked over at him, her face a pale moon. Her hesitance touched him. He pulled a stern expression. “Don’t watch me! Climb!”

  She took to the ladder unsteadily. He realized that the spacing had been meant for an adult and that she hung for a moment from one rung to the next, taking it on a leap of faith that her feet would find purchase. He waited, so that if she missed, he could catch her.

  They inched downward inside the pit, walking when they could, and back to the ladders when they couldn’t. She slipped once, and he caught her up immediately.

  “I have you,” he told her, although she knew that.

  She nodded, her braid rubbing against the underside of his chin. “Ready.”

  And they began again until they reached the bottom.

  The lake spread in front of them, vaster than he remembered, light turquoise at the shore and deepening to rings of blue. The surface caught a faint sparkle and Ardith answered the call, running to the edge.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  She teetered on the shore, looking back at him.

  “The water is different. It burns.”

  Her brows knotted. “How can it do that?”

  He drew her forward. “Trust me. There are brooks that feed the lake. We can drink from those.”

  He led her away to the rail track he’d put down to line the small tunnel. Buckets lay about, their ropes dangling, part of a hoist and relay system he’d used to get tools and supplies to the pit floor.

  Wind overhead carried the belling of hounds. “They’re close.” Bevan retrieved a torch and lit it after several tries. He beckoned. She followed.

  “Mind the rails.”

  She did with a little hop.

  “I didn’t bring us here to be cornered, though I doubt anyone will follow us down. But we can’t stay indefinitely.” He talked as much to himself as to her. “Years ago, I followed a map to Windlost. It spoke of a queen, storm-driven, off course on a desperate quest, a mission, for her kingdom. Her vessel crashed and few survived. She did, and so did the mapmaker she sent out for aid. It led me to here.”

  “Did you buy it from the maker? Did you save her?”

  “No, no. All are long gone to dust. Remember, I’m a historian.”

  “Oh.” Her voice, quiet and small, in the chamber behind him.

  “The vessel eventually plowed to a stop—here. The crash created this pit and cavern.” Putting his torch in a sconce, he leaned down to the great wheel he’d built and began to crank it about. It wheezed and squealed, but it turned, drawing in the heavy chain lying along the tunnel floor. As the chain grew taut, it dragged its burden out of the lake, water cascading off it, until it reached the rails. He put his weight on the turnstile arm to ferry it and she joined to help, straining at the wooden bar.

  Ardith gasped.

  The conveyance, battered though it was, sat on the cavern floor like a chariot that had lost its horses, an airship too sleek and light to compare to modern monsters. It glittered golden in the torchlight, although he knew it could not have been made from that metal. It called to him now, as it had the very first day he’d made it to the bottom of the gash following his map, and like a fallen star, it had shone from under the lake. He’d paced back and forth for days, figuring out how to bring it up, building a hoist and crank and then laying the rails. When he’d first raised it, he puttered, making sketches, and then, compelled to try and right it, to fix and repair it. It consumed him until it was clear that such a working lay beyond his skills. It had eaten at him night and day, and he’d paid little heed to anything outside this pit, Rozany included, gaining little and losing much.

  “Battered, but sealed, like an eggshell, carrying its secrets.”

  “Secrets?”

  “Many! Who built it? Who piloted it? What knocked it out of the sky, where had it come from, and where was it headed? What metal is this? What wood? What purpose did it have, important enough that they sent out a map in hope help might arrive in time, though it did not. And what of the queen it carried? And who dragged it offshore to bury it in the lake?” His voice rose as he spoke and the old excitement began to rise in his chest.

  Ardith crept forward and put her palm to its side. “You tried to fix it?”

  “And failed.”

  “It knows you tried. It doesn’t blame you.”

  A chill swept across Bevan. “You hear it?”

  Ardith walked about the prow, nodding slowly. “You’re afraid of it.”

  “It’s a lock for which I can find no key.”

  “Did you find her body?”

  He dropped his hand on her shoulder. “Gone, as we all go.”

  “I should find her.”

  Bevan dropped to one knee beside her. “Let it go, Ardith. Don’t listen.” He pulled back on her gently, removing her hand from the side of the vessel.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand very well.”

  Ardith shook her head. “No, you don’t.” She twisted away from him and backed up, standing against it.

  “Ardith, I know how it gets in your head, in your blood, until you can’t think of anything else until you’ve accomplished what it drives you to do. But you can’t repair it. I couldn’t. What it is now, is ransom. We’re going to pay for our lives with it if I have to take it apart piece by piece.” His gut clenched at the thought, ruining whatever historic value it had, the clues it hid. He’d sketched it but that would not replace it. He’d given up on translations, finding nothing he could decipher. It had worth to many beyond him though, a tangible worth he could trade upon. He feared what they planned for Ardith. No, he would have to buy them time.

  She ducked away, darting off, and he pursued. He found her inside, tracing the etchings on the bridge dashboard that he’d straightened after a fashion, half of it splintered. “Wings of Hope,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “It says ‘Wings of Hope.’”

  He stood in shock. “You can read that?”

  “It spoke to me, if you call that reading.” She walked about the cabin, touching more, here and there.

  She put her fingers upon a cupboard, a wooden plank of rich burls and sheen despite its age, and it creaked in answer, opening enough for her to slide her hand into it and pull a
lever out all the way. A cubicle opened up, with a desk sitting center, a clever bit of carpentry. Bevan thought immediately that he would salvage that from the cabin if he could, coveting it, not wanting it to be pulled out and sold piecemeal by Saliat or Bartoff or anyone else. Papers littered the desk, like his writing table, as if someone had just been interrupted and walked away for a moment. He caught her shoulder again, turning her away from the chair in the corner, soaked with old blood stains.

  “She was a…” She hesitated. “She made potions. She turned…” Ardith looked to him for help.

  “Alchemist?”

  “Yes!”

  “Show me. I’ve been trying to read the engravings on the outer shell. Explain a few of the symbols, and I’ll see if I can catch on.”

  She let out a peal of laughter and stabbed her finger at the desk. “But see the drawings.”

  He leaned over her shoulder and next to the flowing, graceful script there were neatly sketched diagrams and portraits of the works being done. An organized mind with attention to fine detail clearly delineated the herbs, liquids and elements being used, the only messiness about the various papers he shuffled through was the occasional, rust-colored stains. They belonged to the lost queen, for an official seal stamped a sheaf of papers every now and then. He leaned down to exam the waxy image.

  Bevan jerked back in surprise. He hovered close a second time, uncertain he’d seen it properly. He looked from the seal to Ardith, and she caught his actions. Narrowing her eyes, she moved in.

  “What is it?”

  “She looks like you.”

  Ardith traced the image. “She does?”

  “Very much so.” He gathered up the formulas carefully, worried about their brittle nature. These he would examine until he learned their secrets. He started to speak and she halted him with that imperious index finger pointing above, and he could see thoughts, like clouds, passing through her sea-glass eyes.

  She took a deep breath. Traced her face with that finger. “My people are the Eriadne. The only queen I knew we called Erianna and she pledged us a cure. This ship came from us. I’ve been lost as long as she has been and now we’re found.” She exhaled, watching him.