11.

AGAINST THE CURRENT.

ow I'd love a bath," sighed Nella Bye.

"Another one?" asked Irimus Rain with a smile.

A bath was what the escapees had experienced, though not the sort they had wanted, as they fought through the polluted waterfall, raft by raft, lifting shields to deflect as much of the foul torrent as they could. Each of the eleven rafts carried seven, eight, or nine passengers, and each was propelled by two oarsmen, although they were as likely to be steering with a spear or a branch as an oar.

In spite of the fact that he looked like an owl dipped in mud, Irimus Rain was surveying the rafts as if he were once again a king's advisor examining a royal procession. Dutifully he counted the eighty-nine passengers, and then he counted them again.

"You should be on the foremost float," said Nella Bye, reaching to read the ale boy's face with her hardened fingertips. "You've lived your whole life running through tunnels. We need your eyes and ears."

"I'm not a leader," he shyly replied.

Irimus laughed and knelt to take his hand. "With your ridiculous notions that we might escape, you kept us alive, boy. You held hope for us when we could hold none for ourselves."

Nella Bye nodded. "You and the beastman drew us back from death."

Ark-restor the baker, who had somehow remained corpulent through months of slavery, rose suddenly from half sleep, perched himself perilously on the edge of a plank, and tried to flap wings he didn't have.

"Some of you," said the ale boy, "I could only bring back partly."

Reluctant, he climbed to the first float and settled in among Bel Amicans. I'm so weary of the underground, he thought. I want the forest. Deep Lake. Trees. Birds. Gatherers.

It seemed all of them were daring to wish for things again. The Bel Amicans spoke in whispers like restless breezes, eager for food, clear water, and relief from the injuries caused by the countless days of grueling labor. Many wanted more particular cures; beastmen had made them drink Essence for strength, and Essence produced strange symptoms. Some scratched at blue patches of skin, while others sprouted hair in strange places. Some had grown distorted features, and one bled from flaring nostrils, while another bled from the gums where her teeth had grown larger. Limbs ached from unnatural growth; their skin cracked and blistered.

To distract himself from such strange company, the boy leaned over the front of the raft and lifted a white glowstone to study the tunnel walls. A wild variety of bizarre and crawling things flinched, fluttered, and scurried away from the light. He felt fitfully itchy and muffled the glowstone's shine, turning his eyes down to the water. "At least this river's more like soup and less like stew," he murmured.

Maybe Auralia is painting by the lake again, he thought. Maybe we'll pass right beneath her. Didn't she say there was water somewhere in those caves?

As the rafts progressed upstream and the passengers from Bel Amica and Abascar strained to see through the fog, the ale boy leaned into memory. The thought of seeing Auralia at the end of this journey would keep his courage burning. And yet, it made him long to slip away, find his way back to the surface, and search for her.

Auralia knows me, he thought. No one else does. When I keep my promise and bring these people to Cal-raven, I'll go and find her. We'll play by the lakeside with colors and flames ... if we remember how.

Mad Batey puffed through his grey mustache. "We're moving steadily north, I think."

"Northeast, I'd say," said Petch, the big-headed, sparsely bearded Bel Amican youth beside him. "But northeast to what?"

Batey flexed his jaw as he scratched another mark on his arm, a spidery map of their progress. "I don't care, so long as we don't see any Deathweed."

"We may be too deep for the feelers," said the ale boy.

"Where do you get that idea?" Petch sat so close beside Batey that he was almost sitting on him. "Where's your evidence?"

The ale boy was already weary of this man, a fount of perpetual chatter. If anyone offered a thoughtful idea, Petch would pounce as if he felt threatened. He reluctantly answered, "Feelers push up through the ground for prey. Haven't seen them dig down here. Not yet."

Petch scowled. "You almost sound like you want to stay down here."

Stunned, the ale boy groped for some idea of how he'd offended the big-headed Bel Amican. But Mad Batey pointed suddenly to the tunnel wall ahead.

Arrays of twigs and mud bloomed from pores in the wall above. "Cavebirds," said Petch, stroking his early beard.

He thinks the gesture makes him look wise, the boy thought.

"If cavebirds nest here," said Batey, "then Deathweed isn't troubling them." He frowned at Petch. "Evidence."

"I don't see any birds, do you?" said Petch. "Those nests are empty."

Batey stepped to the edge. "Worth a look. Might be eggs."

They drew the rafts to a stop. Batey couldn't reach the nests, so he called for Aronakt. A long-limbed Bel Amican known among slaves for his agility, Aronakt leapt across the rafts, his ragged overcoat fluttering like crow's wings. He calmly studied the pitted wall, then applied himself to climbing. "Too late." He dropped shards of shell back down to the water.

"Coulda been Deathweed," Petch said softly.

"Ready the arrows we brought from the Core," said Batey. "Anybody sights a cavebird, we'll shoot fast."

This tunnel is strangely familiar. The ale boy strained to remember. What happened after I fell? "I think this leads to better waters," he said.

"More unlikely claims," snapped Petch. "Has it occurred to you that at any moment this river might take a turn and steer us farther from Bel Amica?"

Trying to ignore Petch's challenges, the ale boy said, "This doesn't smell like the Core anymore. It's like ... like we're just outside somebody's garden."

"Birds like gardens," mused Batey.

"The breeze is blowing the other way," snapped Petch. "I don't smell anything." He spoke to Batey as if the scar-faced Bel Amican was the only one worthy of his respect.

I grew up underground, the ale boy wanted to shout. I know a thing or two about tunnels and currents. There's something green and growing ahead.

Batey sniffed the air. "Beastmen had us slaving in such thick clouds of stench, I think my smeller surrendered."

Petch changed the subject, steering attention away from the ale boy and rambling on like the river's flow, divulging every scrap he could summon from his tremendous head on boating, tunnels, and what might or might not lie in the darkness ahead.

To flaunt his expertise on underground materials, Petch lectured them on the varieties of dark and glittering stones he recognized in the walls' dense layers: kaystone, endelode, gormenpeake. He was certain that the rank and rotting weeds mucking up their progress were jenkan-tails and timmola hay. But when an Abascar man suggested that the air smelled of spicemoss, no, said Petch, it probably wasn't. Anything suggested by Abascars was bound to be worthless, it seemed.

"Hush," said Batey. "It's important that we listen just now. We need to hear the river's temperament."

"True, true," said Petch quickly, nodding too much. Then he spoke about how he'd learned about listening during slavery, how he'd come to know the footfall of differing beastmen so he could look busy when they passed.

Imagine what he'd do in Auralia's caves, thought the ale boy. His talk would wear the colors off the walls.

They rowed on until they reached a stronger current. The river ahead rushed through an archway shaped like a keyhole. The travelers pressed on through it, their rafts in single file, taking advantage of the close walls to drag themselves along with their makeshift oars. Up ahead, splashes echoed.

They glided into a vast, open space. The wide but shallow stretch of the river rippled beneath a high ceiling supported by porous pillars-some thick as Tilianpurth's tower, some thin as saplings. This covered country seemed to stretch on forever in all directions. The water was agitated, alive with tiny crimson frogs that flung themselves at the pillars and burrowed into the holes.

"If the boy hadn't held out his glowstone," said Petch, "we might have surprised them. Might have caught some and had us a meal."

Frogs from beneath the Cent Regus world? the ale boy wanted to ask. You were just complaining about the water they swim in. Help yourself. He sank into a sullen silence.

As the rafts grumbled against the shallows' bed, the Abascars laughed quietly at the frogs' frantic dance and marveled at the patchy colors of rust and red on the pillars.

On the raft behind the ale boy's, Em-emyt found humor in almost everything, croaking froglike deep in his own thick throat and casting jabs at Kar-balter. "Look at you," he chortled. "Lost your hair. Skin and bones. Anxious. You look more like a cavelizard every day."

"Look at you," Kar-balter barked back nervously. "A hole in your head from a beastman's arrow ... Half your wits spilled out."

"True," Em-emyt answered. "Then, I was missin' a few to begin with."

"I don't know about bringing Abascars with us, Batey," Petch was whispering at the front. "None of them're right in the head. They'll spoil our escape. The rafts would be lighter and faster without them. Wouldn't drag along the rocks."

"That boy helped us build these," Batey growled. "Brought us food. Show some gratitude."

"You don't think he was winning our favor for a time just such as this when he can't get anywhere without us?"

One of the Bel Amican raftsmen struck the water with his oar-stick and speared a dead frog carcass, lifting it into the air. He offered it to Batey, and Batey pointed to the ale boy. He refused it with a polite lift of his hand. Batey cocked an eyebrow.

"Water's still foul." The boy shrugged. "I'm waiting for something better."

"The Abascar boy would have us starve," laughed Petch.

"He didn't say that," said Batey, exasperated.

"You'd prefer poison to hunger?" the boy asked, then wished he hadn't, because it meant that Petch would go on talking.

"Why is it the Abascars aren't speaking of hunger? What're they hiding?"

"Patience," the boy barked back. "They're hiding barrels full of patience. For something better."

"You don't think Bel Amicans know good eating? What we call a daily marketplace you Abascars would call a royal feast. Who put you in charge?" That Petch's smile could expand to fill such a wide, fierce face was unsettling. "Saved a few Abascar slaves, and suddenly you think you're a king."

The boy waited. Surely someone would stand up and defy this blathering fool. Petch seemed incapable of saying anything that didn't create a confrontation.

When no one joined the argument, Petch smirked at Batey. "You're talking to this boy like an equal. But the best Abascar apple may yet be full of worms."

Exasperated, the ale boy climbed from the foremost float back through the train of floats that followed, past the Bel Amicans, over the cargo of shields, spears, and ragged blankets, past the Abascar people, until he arrived at the eleventh. There, he slumped down between Nella Bye and Irimus Rain. They could guess from his scowl what was wrong.

"Some monsters feed on argument," Nella Bye whispered. "Feed them silence."

"But everything Petch says is-"

"Never throw dirt at a Cragavar monkey," Irimus mused. "What?" Nella Bye laughed. "An old hunter's saying."

"Why shouldn't you throw dirt at a Cragavar monkey?" asked the boy.

"You'll get worse than dirt thrown back at you." Irimus smiled. "And it's the monkey's idea of fun."

"You were never a hunter, Irimus Rain," laughed Nella Bye. "Where did you hear that?"

"Folks muttered it behind my back in the Abascar council. I never introduced a new idea. I just picked at the ideas of others. Quite the bull-bottom I was. Back then."

The ale boy relaxed, glad to hear some of the old, familiar Abascar talk.

"Ever seen a bull-bottom bother a Cragavar monkey?" Nella Bye murmured to the ale boy.

They laughed as Kar-balter's oar thrust steadily against the riverbed.

As the oarsmen dragged the floats along through the shallow water, the ale boy lay back against Nella Bye, watching the copper and cream-colored pillars go by and listening to her softly sing an unfamiliar melody. Crystalline clusters of salt drew flocks of frantic yellowmoths who chewed hungrily at the deposits, and Irimus traced one of the moths' erratic paths as if trying to translate some foreign script.

Having returned from the dark, what will these people become when they walk in New Abascar?

"What's that song you're singing, Nella Bye?" asked Irimus.

"I've been hearing it since before the water awoke me," she answered. "It's in the mist. Above me somewhere. Like bells." She palmed her belly where the killing shot had gone in. "It's like I've broken open, and there's more pouring into me. More for me to feel."

"For all the glory of Abascar's palace, I've never seen anything quite so beautiful as this," mused Irimus. "We opened the earth and stuffed it with what we called treasure. Never thought to look around at what treasure might be there already. Who knew that there were worlds such as this beneath our feet?"

As the course narrowed and deepened again, the rafts took a different order, and the ale boy's raft became second in line. Those with oars knelt down for deeper strokes. As they dodged stone spikes that poked up through the water, there were quiet remarks about how they felt like giants boating through a mountain range at sea.

After hours of difficult work, they found themselves moving against a calmer, smoother current. The walls, pulsing with glowstones, fell away. The rowers, their arms and backs aching, began to grumble.

"Batey," shouted the ale boy. "Look!"

In the faint yellow glow, the passengers could see a scrap of dry and pebbled shore on the right and a bank of smooth, timeworn stone on the left.

Batey nodded, pleased. Petch, waking in haste to assess the situation, stood and crossed his arms, posing like a captain surveying his fleet.

"Do you see why this is good?" the ale boy asked Batey as the rafts drew together. "We could move upriver faster if we took to walking on the shore."

"We'll camp here," announced Petch, ignoring the boy.

"The rafts are light," said Batey, his eyes brightening. "If we share the load, we can carry them. Or some might walk in the shallows and tow the rafts along."

"We won't find a safer place," said Petch immediately. "How many want to camp here and look for food?"

The ale boy bit his tongue as Petch won a chorus of cheers. A crowd that thought with their stomachs would never know wisdom. And yet he knew that if he'd been the one to suggest they stop here, Petch would have mocked him.

"Never throw dirt at a Cragavar monkey," he muttered.

"Say again?" asked Petch.

Batey took a coin from his pocket and spun it on a fingertip as if plotting a bet. Bel Amicans were already rowing to the shore and climbing out.

"Hallowed halls of Har-baron! Is that daylight?" shouted Kar-balter.

Far ahead along the flow, narrow fissures in the distant ceiling lined the walls in gold. Excitement spread, the survivors' gazes burning as if to rend the ceiling open.