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“The night is wasting.”
Rainfall never seemed to need sleep, though his face was less animated at night than at other times.
They walked into Tumbledown. A dog barked in the distance, and they stood close to a wall, but they met no further challenge. Soon they were at the triple broken arches that marked the way down to the rats’ underground realm.
“I smell bats,” Rainfall said. “I should hate to get bitten—they carry sickness.”
Rainfall opened his satchel. He fiddled with a brass bowl that smelled of oil. Then he poured some powder that smelled faintly of rotten eggs into a rough stone channel, and drew a piece of wood all splintered at one end across it. The powder and the wood burst into flame. He touched it to the closed top of the bowl, and a flame glowed.
“All that effort for a bit of fire?” Wistala asked. “You should have just asked me.”
“I couldn’t impose on your great gift for something so mundane as a little light,” Rainfall said. “Doesn’t a wise dragon keep her fire bladder ready?”
“I don’t see a battle breaking out between your construction gang and the sheepherders. There’d be plenty left to torch some rats if they swarm.”
“Show me the way, my shining friend.”
“Fair warning: you’ll get dirty.”
She led him down. When they reached the passage that had the glow bulb, Wistala showed it to him.
“It is a lumik,” Rainfall said, rubbing it so it glowed. “This alone will pay for feasts all the way back to Mossbell, and buy Stog besides.” He pried it loose and worked it with a bit of cloth until it shone like a slice of moon brought underground.
The underground still smelled of bits of worms and rats. Rainfall just squeezed down the dug passage to the sewer. It was drier than Wistala remembered. Rats yeeked at them from the corners as they fled the light.
Had she really been here? Fought a channel-back? The sewers felt like some mind-picture from a distant ancestor.
Rainfall followed, scratching marks onto the walls here and there with a piece of soft stone that left white traces. “I don’t have your tunnel sense, my dear.”
She led him into the room where she and Yari-Tab had fought the rats and spoken to the old milk-eyed specimen. Rainfall didn’t mind the smell or the filth thick on his sandals. He spoke of false walls fallen away as his eyes wandered ever upward, to old writings and chipped drawings running the edge of the chamber’s ceiling. He stepped over to an old doorway, rusting hinges still projected out into a space where the wood had long since rotted away. He reached up and marked the lintel with an X.
“It’s down these stairs,” Wistala said, standing at the gap to a circular passage. Rat eyes glinted in the shadows.
“There’s a high crypt this way—No, I shan’t disturb any bodies.”
Wistala wouldn’t have cared if he wanted to juggle the skulls of kings. But Rainfall continued: “Sets of edicts can sometimes be found with a thane’s remains, or biographies. Both are fascinating reading.”
She caught a whiff of precious metals on the stairs. “I don’t dare go any farther.”
Rainfall’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “Ho! Is there danger?”
“Only from me. A dragon’s heart can grow fierce at the sight of gold. The last time I came down these steps—it could have ended badly for my friend.”
He raised the crystal, and sharp shadows sprang up on the stairs. As he went down, the shadows retreated and advanced as though terrified of the light. His footsteps were so light, she could only just hear them.>“Someone like you should be thane, then. An elf is better than any man.”
“Oh, that racial rubbish. Have you been listening to the soldiery? There was a time when Hypatian citizenship was what counted, not the shape of your legs and angle of your shoulders.”
Wistala took a last mouthful of fried entrail. “So you’re content to let those blighters in Galahall rut about your granddaughter, and not see her again?”
“What’s that? Rut?”
“That tower. There were babies in it. Well, a baby.”
Her host’s face writhed. “How young? Perhaps he’s warded a child. . . .”
“I’m not sure. Still suckling at his youngish mother, anyway.”
Rainfall passed his hand through his hair, dropping a long, thin willowlike leaf or two. “He wouldn’t. Not wards of the thane! Oh, if only I’d been more provident with my gold plate, I could sell it or melt it.”
