Haydon, Elizabeth - Rhapsody 3 by Haydon Elizabeth

Author:Haydon, Elizabeth
Language: eng
Format: epub

IN THE TUNNELS OF THE HAND

The faint molder of underdwelling, the scent of spore and sex and urine, faint and carried in the wispy dust. Grunthor had finally overcome the fear of the tunnels, after the flame that had burned all the way to the House of Remembrance. He had been used to the sweep of desert and the ability to throw weight and weapon against enemy. In the tunnels he was rarely unaccompanied as he was now.

There was something fey about the earth in this place, the index finger of the hand that was a nexus of five old Cymrian tunnels. This part of the mountain was so deep, so far from where the reconstruction was occurring, that it would have been years before anyone would have come down here, had he not been hunting for whatever the Earthchild had warned Achmed about. The tunnels were, more than likely, merely water drains for the sewage system that still lay, in the majority of the deeper parts of the Cymrian labyrinth, in disrepair.

He had been stumbling, all but blind, for hours, seeking something, anything, but had come upon nothing, not even a trace that the tunnels had been traversed. Even the footprints that might have been seen in the dirt of the earthen floor had been carefully covered, if they had ever been there at all.

Finally, at the end of the tunnel that took the position of the index finger of the hand he passed a dry cistern, one of many he had passed in this place. His skin hummed slightly as he passed it; he unhooded his lantern and held it up before his amber eyes.

In the wall, amid the crumbling lichen, was the convex relief of a hand.

Grunthor grinned widely, exposing his flawlessly maintained tusks to the fetid air.

'Why, thank you, darlin'," he said.

He bent closer to the dry cistern. Its drawpipe was clogged, blocked irretrievably by years of vegetation and other obstacles shoved or hammered up the pipe. Grunthor set down the lantern and took hold of the crumbling stone of the cistern's cover, giving it a mighty heave. The top moved aside easily, so easily in fact that he stumbled and almost dropped the heavy disk. Beyond the cover of the cistern was another tunnel, dark and clear. The Sergeant snatched the handle of the lantern and climbed inside.

It was a tight pinch, but after his journey along the Root, he was accustomed to such difficulties.

Grunthor crawled out of the pipe, dragging the lantern ahead of him, and stepped out into a vast, cavernous room, doubtless once the cistern's main holding tank.

The lanternlight revealed a hoard of objects both priceless and banal, a trove of relics and refuse from Gwylliam's time. Mounds of coins struck in gold, silver, platinum, copper, and rysin, were swept into piles with almost the same care as fallen leaves, while displayed on makeshift stands were timepieces, hilts of broken swords, bedwarming bricks, rags of garments wrapped carefully, kept dry, the metal

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