He managed to get his belt around the ladder. Then a final cautious thought made him slip the chain with the Sunstone over his head. For an instant it seemed certain he would drop it, before his shadowguard helped his trembling hand push it into the secret pocket inside his sleeve.
Then he passed out, only his broad Selski-hide belt looped through the ladder preventing him from falling.
Milla lasted a little longer. She made it to a landing thirty stretches above, but that was all. Collapsing onto it, she only just managed to draw her knife to face death armed before she passed out as well.
The shadowguard made sure Tal's belt was secure, then tried to climb farther up the ladder. But as it passed the landing where Milla lay, it grew thinner and more transparent. A few stretches farther, it was no more than a dark outline, without substance. Reluctantly, it drew back, till it once again seemed like Tal's natural shadow.
Nothing could help Tal now.
CHAPTER
NINE
"Kill them."
Tal heard the words as if they came from a long way off, carried on the wind. Somewhere, someone was talking about killing someone. Someone else was saying, "No. We don't know who they are."
"One looks like a Chosen. I say kill him at least."
"What's the point of dragging them up here, if we just kill them anyway? They haven't got Sunstones, they've both got normal shadows, and look at their clothes. They must be from somewhere else. Maybe they can help us."
The one who wanted to kill whoever it was laughed a bitter, mocking laugh.
"Help us do what? Hide in these tunnels better? Live more miserably than we do now?"
Tal managed to get one eye open a fraction and saw that the people talking were standing quite close to him. There were three of them. Two boys who couldn't be much older than he was, and another taller one who looked a bit older. He hadn't spoken.
The two younger ones carried short, broad-bladed spears. They were all wearing dirty rags that Tal thought might once have been white Underfolk robes. The older one had a cap with a long black feather in it.
There was an oil lamp sitting on the floor behind the three boys. Its light cast long shadows from all three. Natural shadows.
They were
Underfolk. Tal tried to order them to help him, but nothing came out. The effort needed to keep even one eyelid half open was immense.
"Kill them," said the first, blond boy.
"Talk to them," said the second boy.
Who were they talking about? Tal wanted to turn his head to see, but his neck wouldn't move, either. Maybe it was all a dream.
Both turned to the boy with the feather in his cap. Obviously he had to make the decision.
"Neither. We take them up to the top of the service levels and leave them there. They'll come round in an hour or so."
"Oh, Crow," complained the blond boy. "What'll that do?"
So the older boy with the feather was called Crow, thought Tal muzzily. The black feather had to be from a crow, then. But the only crows in the Castle were pets of very high Chosen. There was an old legend that when the last crow left the Castle, it would mean the end of the Chosen, and the seven Towers would fall.
"Unless I'm wrong, taking them up will deliver a problem to the Chosen," said Crow. "Gill, go and get Clovil and Ferek. We'll have to carry them."
Tal watched Gill, the second speaker, walk out of his field of vision. Gill was a girl's name, which was odd. Unless Gill was a girl. She might be, Tal thought, watching her disappear. His one half-open eye closed, and could not be reopened.
Things got even more dreamlike then. He felt himself floating up from the floor as weird noises echoed all around him. Possibly they were meant to be words, but Tal couldn't get a grip on them. They kept changing shape and slipping away. Words that some unconscious part of his brain knew were "up" and "heavy" and "you carry him, then" became "snurp" and "preefy" and "loll garly slimwen."
Nothing made sense. It was too hard. Tal fell back into total unconsciousness.
When he awoke the second time, he had a moment's perfect recall of his first waking. Then it was gone, replaced by a blinding headache that stabbed him right between the eyes.
He groaned and sat up, cradling his head in his hands. Then he remembered that he was tied to a ladder in the heating tunnels.
Tal snatched his hands away from his eyes and looked around.
He wasn't hanging off a ladder. He was lying on the floor of a hallway lit by a small Sunstone in the ceiling. There was another Sunstone about ten stretches on, and another ten stretches beyond that. They were plain, white Sunstones of very little power.
Something made a noise. Tal whipped around, and wished he hadn't as his headache struck even more savagely.
The noise was from Milla. She was sitting cross-legged behind him, slowly breathing in and out with great control. She had taken off her face mask and her skin had a nasty greenish tinge.
Tal pressed his thumbs into his temples and muttered, "What happened?"
Milla let out her breath very, very slowly.
"Bad air. Some people found us and carried us here. There was some talk of killing, but they didn't really want to. Lucky your shadow behaved itself. I think they would have killed you if it hadn't."
"Oh," said Tal, a vague memory coming back. "I thought that was a dream. Were you awake, then?"
Milla looked embarrassed. She started to take in a breath as if to ignore the question, then let it out suddenly and said, "I only recovered enough to hear. I couldn't move. You should take deep, slow breaths. It will clear the bad air out of your blood."
Tal nodded but didn't change his breathing. Those people had to be renegade Underfolk. And they'd talked about his Sunstone!
His hand flew to his neck. The chain with the old and the new Sunstone wasn't there! He had a moment of panic, before his shadowguard plucked at his sleeve, reminding him that the chain was in the secret pocket. He pulled it out and dropped it over his head with a sigh of relief.
"Thirteen sleeps, then it's mine," Milla said, watching him check the Sunstone. "We've just had one sleep."
Tal scowled at her. Slowly, he got up and walked a little way along the corridor. Every step sent stabs of pain through his head.
"Are we in your Castle now?" asked Milla. She pointed at the ceiling. "There are many Sunstones. Perhaps I should dig one out."
"They're too small," said Tal wearily. "They only last a few months before they have to be replaced. You can't do anything with them, either. They just give light."
Milla shrugged. "Light is a lot, in the dark."
Tal sighed. From the low level of light and the whitewashed walls of the corridor, they seemed to be on one of the Underfolk levels. There were lots of Underfolk levels, where the servants lived and worked and farmed. But Tal didn't think of these levels as part of the real
Castle.
When they left these levels, they would be entering the Castle proper. Tal was suddenly struck by the realization that he had actually gotten back. He'd never thought beyond that, and now he didn't know what to do. What could he do?
He couldn't just go home, because his enemies would find him. He couldn't go to any public places dressed the way he was. There'd be a panic, or a lot of trouble at the least.
And that was just Tal. He hadn't properly thought about bringing Milla into the Castle at all. He knew she was an Icecarl and what that meant. No one else would. There was no knowing how the Chosen would react. As far as they were concerned no one lived outside the Castle. No one could live outside the Castle. They would think she was some kind of creature that had crossed from Aenir without becoming a shadow. A free spirit. An uncontrolled spirit.
That would be about the most frightening thing a Chosen could imagine. There would be white-hot rays of light and destruction, with Chosen blasting them on first sight. That's what Tal would have done if he'd encountered Milla in the Castle, he knew. If she wasn't a Chosen and wasn't an Unde
rfolk, she had to be a monster. Why would any other Chosen think differently?
"Are we in your Castle now?" asked Milla again. She looked around at the bare, smooth walls. There were no trophies, no horned Merwin skulls or Selski flipper-toe bones, or the captured weapons of enemies. "It's not very impressive. Your guards should have found us by now, instead of those Outcasts."
"Those what?" asked Tal. He hadn't been listening.
He was consumed by a new fear. What if he had done the absolutely wrong thing in bringing Milla to the Castle?
"Outcasts," said Milla. "That's what the people who brought us here were, weren't they? People without a clan, who follow the ship and live on scraps and scrapings?"
Tal stared at Milla. He'd never seen her so talkative before. Maybe it was something to do with the bad air. Or perhaps she was simply relieved they'd made it through the searing heat of the tunnels.
"I don't know who they were," he replied. "Underfolk. Servants. But I think ones who have escaped. They must live somewhere down here."
"Servants who cannot choose to leave?" asked Milla as she got up and flexed her arms. "You mean thralls. Some clans have them, though the Crones do not like it. The Far Raiders will not trade with thrall-takers."
"What's a thrall?" asked Tal. He hadn't heard the word before.
"Servants who cannot leave," said Milla. Seeing that Tal still didn't understand, she added, "People who can be bought and sold."