Laldasa (57 page)

His eyes were grave and very direct. “I had already forgotten,” he said, and led her into the room.

It was not empty. In the smoky, red-gold light, several devotees sat in a group, poring over a scroll. They all started at the disturbance, looking like a startled flock of birds—beaks open, eyes wide. There was a flurry of whispers, then one of them hiked his robes and fled for the outer corridor.

Rakesh Bithal watched him leave with sanguine eye. “We'd best be quick about our next move. Nadim-sa?”

Ana was already studying the room, searching for a point of egress. There were two and both felt of Vedda's presence. She moved to one, then the other. Through the first was a well-lit corridor that seemed to be flanked by a series of small cells. The warm scent of incense wafted here—familiar incense. Sounds also carried from the cells—whispers, guttural chanting, the rhythmic play of music, trills of pleasure. Through the second doorway, a dark, narrow corridor made a sharp descent. From this dim hole came only the whisper of water.

“Both of these are marked,” Ana said, hovering near the darker passage, glancing down it.

“But you believe he has gone this way,” Bithal observed.

“He used both doorways. I have no way of knowing in what order.”

The Balin grunted and made a quick decision. He sent two of his remaining Balin into the cells and led the remainder of the group down toward the sound of rushing water.

They drew their weapons now: Bithal, Jaya, and Ravi. Ana, unarmed, brought up the rear. When it seemed that the rocky corridor had gone on forever, the path was suddenly blocked. They stopped in consternation for a moment before the obstruction, watching the fire eddies perform an oily dance across its immense, polished flank. Jaya stepped forward for a closer look. He turned back, the obvious relief on his face beckoning the others forward.

“It's wide enough to pass on both sides. There's a chamber beyond. A large one, I think. There's mist or steam coming up from it.”

Bithal nodded, then signaled them to divide, two to a side, and continue on around the obstruction.

Treading softly behind Jaya, Ana moved cautiously along the wall and into the cavern beyond. The temperature rose and mist kissed her face. She spread her senses outward, feeling of the slick, carved surfaces that flung away above, below, on all sides.

The chamber was a natural one, but bore the traces of men's prying. And it was large—large and sloping and filled with the mysterious hulks of a myriad stalagmites. If she blinked, they would become creatures of myth—squat, cowering, menacing. Some had formed columns with stalactites from above; in the flicker of torchlight, they suggested to Ana trapped souls, frozen in the act of fleeing the bowels of the Mountain. The pale stone was so close to the color of her own flesh, she could understand the legends that had arisen around the genesis of her race.

She followed the line of one such column to the vaulted ceiling. It was laced with the wriggling lines of torchlight reflected in water, for this was a chamber of pools. Hot pools, judging from the billows of warm mist that hung in the air. Some of the pools were in use.

Rakesh Bithal and his Balin weapon quickly and effectively convinced the bathers to forego their ablutions and depart. The baths were empty in a matter of moments.

Meters away, at the bottom of the chamber, was the largest pool of all. At its center sat a huge altar carved from the native stone. Its pale flanks were streaked with a darker color that hinted at green and glistened with water. Behind the altar was the most monstrous formation of all. It had once been a natural shape, like the others, but the workings of men had transformed it into the twin, hermaphrodite deity of the Bogar Orders. Feral and triumphant, it was joined to itself forever in the embrace of primal passion. It had no name that could be spoken, for it was said to exist only in the inarticulate sounds of passion's highest fever. The sound, the Bogar would say, of surata. Water poured over it from someplace above the deity's head, adorning it in a perpetual glistening sweat.

Ana freed her eyes from the carving and swept them to either side of it. To the right of the idol, she could just make out the entrance of another passage. There was as yet no sign of any of their other parties. Ana suspected those paths did not come this way and wondered how long it would take them to find their missing companions when this was over.

She glanced to her left and saw Ravi and Bithal making their way down the opposite wall of the chamber. At Jaya's urging, she moved toward the altar. The play of water drowned out all other sound; their torches were mute and their footfalls, silent. The play of light and darkness brought demons to life; the surreptitious movement of their small figures were lost in the phantasm. So, Ana discovered, was her awareness of anything beyond the sensual roil.

The two groups met before the altar.

“He's not here,” Jaya said. Even in the crawling light, Ana could see the tension on his face, the blackness in his eyes.

“Then he must be in there,” said Bithal, nodding toward the lower passage.

“Unless he is hiding in the cells,” suggested Ravi. “Perhaps one of us should return to the room above and see what has become of the searchers there.”

“Ah, no need,” said Bithal. He looked up toward the top of the chamber and beckoned.

Ana turned to see the two Balin he had dispatched to the other corridor making their way swiftly downwards, their heads swiveling this way and that, taking in the awesome chamber.

“Well, what did you find?” he asked when the men reached them.

“It was,” reported one of the Balin, looking distinctly uncomfortable, “a place where the devotees ... practice their lessons. The cells were small, separate. There were no other passages leading out.”

“Ah,” said Bithal. “I hope you did not disturb these devotees. We were warned.”

“I don't think,” said the second Balin, “they even noticed us.”

Rakesh Bithal proceeded to take command of the situation. “Nadim-sa, have you any intimation of where our man has gone?”

She shook her head. “This is ... too chaotic. I can't sense anything here.”

“Well, then—we have one corridor to search,” he noted. “There is no telling how many divisions it suffers before it reaches its end. Therefore, we shall proceed thusly: I will take two men with me into the corridor. You will allow me the use of your man, Nathu Rai?” He nodded at Ravi. “I should like to leave one of my men here with you in the event that we flush Vedda-sama out and he is forced to flee through here.”

“I do not consider Ravi to be my property, Bithal-sama. You may direct either of us as you need.”

“Could he be hiding in here somewhere?” Jaya murmured when the Balin commander had led his group into the gloomy passage. He glanced from the altar to the amphitheater with its misshapen stone audience.

“No,” said Ana. “I think I'd feel him—even through the noise.”

Jaya shook his head—a sharp, spasmodic gesture, as if someone had just poured cold water down his back. His eyes asked her if she would always feel him, a leering haunt. She had no answer.

“I suggest,” said the Balin, whose name was Datta, “that we hide ourselves within sight of this passage.”

He suited action to word and found for himself a lump of molten-looking stone to hide behind. It gave him a clear view of both the upper and lower passages.

Their back-trail thus covered, Jaya positioned himself to the right of the corridor's mouth. Ana tucked out of sight above it, and to the left—just beneath the Bogar deity at the rim of its reflecting pool. From the upper entrance, she was screened by the altar itself, from the lower passage the bulk of the idol's natural pedestal obscured her.

She squatted there disciplining herself to calm. She contemplated the water that poured from above, eternally filling the pool below. Eternally filling and emptying again.

Emptying to where?

Ana turned her head to stare into the gloom between the idol's feet. The water of the pool flowed into darkness there. She put a hand into the pool. The current pulled strongly enough for her to feel it.

Silently, she turned on her haunches and began a slow, cautious descent into the shadow of the Bogar god. Between the legs, she saw it—a triangular slot barely a man's height. Water cascading down the wall behind the idol created a translucent curtain there, as if the god wore a watery cloak. A glimmer of light wavered behind the curtain.

Ana glanced down. The rock she squatted on was worn; many feet had taken this path. She edged forward. Reaching the mouth of the passage, she paused, hunkered down beside it, heart beating a prayer tattoo in her chest, mouth dry. She took a deep breath, steadied her thoughts and slipped beneath the filmy water fall.

She was soaked with warm water when she came out on the other side; it cooled quickly, the breeze flowing back from the orifice chilling her where she crouched, up to her ankles in a stream. She rose slowly, cautiously.

The passage before her was half-lit by amber and red glowdiscs making it seem as if she stood at the gate of Niraya hell. There was a narrow path along the right hand wall, slick with water. She moved up onto it and edged forward, still in a half-crouch. She had gone perhaps three meters when she saw the great yawning darkness at the end, unlit by torch or glow-disc. She hesitated, then moved forward again to the edge of darkness.

It was a chamber, smaller than the one behind her, closer and shallower. As she rose to her full height, Ana sensed the presence in the chamber and felt the hot wave of exultation sweep over her from much too close at hand.

“Be assured, Sri Ana,” said the Mystic's sweet, soft voice almost in her ear, “that the joy of my soul knows no bounds to know you have sought me.”

He moved to stand at her shoulder, coming into the watery light that floated from the passageway, and she saw his face. Not for the first time, she realized, for she had seen him at the Mesha Fest among the celebrants. Somehow, they had not been introduced, a thing that had worked distinctly to his advantage. His eyes were dark with passion and triumph, his teeth showed in an incongruously sweet smile. There was a dagger in his hand. He laid the long, cold blade against her neck.

“I only seek you to see that you are punished for what you've done,” she told him, “to Jaya's family, to me.”

“Revenge? A delusion, Anala. You will learn, very soon, that you have really sought me for an entirely different reason.”

He was insane—she knew that. Perhaps her best defense lay in playing to his madness. She lowered her eyes, watched the stream disappear into the darkness before them. She took a deep breath, shuddered.

“Perhaps ... perhaps you're right. After all, I did come in here alone, knowing you were here. I could have—should have brought someone with me.”

The knife blade lowered. “Jaya—you could have brought Jaya with you. But you did not. You left him behind.”

She chewed her lip. That much was true. “If, as you believe, you and I have a destiny, what will you do when you have the Jadu? How will you use it?”

“Perhaps I will use it on behalf of what you hold dear.”

“How? You don't control the Consortium.”

“I could. I could first control Ranjan Vrksa, and he would recommend me for a position on the Kasi-Nawhar Board. That is how it might begin, at any rate. But all this can be of no interest to you. I give you a promise, Lalasa, that I shall find a middle way to protect the interests of both the KNC and AGIM. You see, Bhrasta failed because he lacked, among other things, balance. He wanted but one thing, single-mindedly. Power was not to him, a means to an end, but an end to itself. And so ... ”

“And so he died.”

“Yes. He lacked vision, a sense of the common good. That is not true of me.”

She turned to face him. “You must assure me of this, Vedda-sama. For I am called upon to judge you.”

She had surprised him. “Judge me?”

“Your motives must be pure, sama, or the Jadu cannot be yours.” She glanced up and about the dark chamber. “We are in the place of my Father-Mother. The god of Darkness. I was born here. This is my sacred chamber. It's fitting that we meet our destiny here, isn't it?”

He licked his lips, his eyes fevered. “My name is Namun. Speak it.”

She looked him squarely in those eyes, shuddering inwardly. “Namun.”

He smiled, shivered as if in anticipation. “I must finish my preparations. Come, sit.”

He urged her ahead of him into the chamber, laying out glow-discs as he went. The room's features began to emerge from the darkness. In the moment that she took her attention from Vedda to plumb the red-gold gloom, he slipped manacles around her wrists and clasped them.

Fear, complete and sudden, ripped through her. She shot him a glance she hoped was imperious, not terrified. “Why do you restrain me? I won't resist you.”

He sighed. “It seems we still do not trust each other, beloved. After, there will be trust. For now, the other end of this—” he lifted the manacle's chain, “fastens there.”