The Sunset Warrior by Eric van Lustbader

Author:Eric van Lustbader
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780345466785
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1995-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

They were at the landing. Around the turning, the Stairwell stretched darkly away. She started to say something but he cut her off. He strained his ears, thinking now not about the sound below them but He heard it again and he was sure. At first he thought that the soft scrabbling noise he had detected at the threshold of hearing was the movement of the small animals that lived in the walls, which everyone heard in the soft silences. But the sound had come again, closer, and he knew it for the patient pad of boots, how many he could not tell, on the stairs above them.

He grabbed K reen’s hand and they fled down into darkness.

Abruptly, the whimpering seemed nearer. Ronin thrust the torch before them and saw that the entire inner wall of the Stairwell had collapsed and, for many Levels, a dark pit yawned vertiginously.

They pressed themselves against the secure outside wall, and saw a figure below them. Disheveled and filthy, long hair falling lankly down its back, dressed in rags without color, it huddled pitifully in a corner away from the pit.

He stepped closer, could now discern a wan face covered with muck and sweat. Haunted, frightened eyes stared back at him, the shivering flame from his torch reflecting in the enormous pupils. The figure shrank from him.

He bent slowly, touched it gently. “Who are you?” And then, “We will not harm you.”

He heard the bootsteps on the stairs, nearer, and he stood, turning toward them, ears straining again to gather more information. K’reen had crouched down, close to the figure, trying to talk to it. And he heard her choked gasp.

“Ronin! “

He turned back, lofted the torch, saw that the figure’s right arm was a stump, torn and clotted with dried blood and newly forming skin, so it was not as recent as he had at first thought. Shadows danced madly around them, the central pillar of the flame.

Then. In the hollow of the creature’s neck a glint of metal. Slowly, carefully, so as not to alarm it, Ronin reached for it: a crusted square on a grimy chain. He rubbed his thumb across the surface and brought it into the light.

“‘Korabb; Neer; NinetyNine,”’ he read.

K’reen said, “This is a Neer? But how If she was assigned to the ninety-ninth Level, what is she doing this far Upshaft?”

“And with an arm recently taken off.” He thought of the Neer in Stahlig’s quarters. “The largest and most complex Machines are on that Level “

“It’s the lowest Level, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and only the best Neers work Down there “

Boots echoed more urgently along the walls, stopped at the landing above them. Ronin thought he could hear the low murmuring of voices.

“Ronin, who ?”

He put his finger to his lips, turned to the Neer, whispered, “Korabb. can you understand me?” The figure looked from him to K’reen and back again. It nodded, and at that moment he became aware that the Neer was a female.

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