Could they hear her blubbering? Tess’s heart leaped, but then she realized she wasn’t the loudest thing down here. Something was scraping, like rocks down a rough incline.
The ground shook again. Chunks of ceiling fell around her; she skittered down the incline as fast as her ribs allowed, into a deeper part of the cave where the floor was solid and the ceiling wasn’t shedding chunks of rock. The light from the distant hole barely illuminated the cavern around her, but her eyes were growing used to dimness.
Something moved. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing: one wall of the chamber shifted—and was it glowing, or was that her imagination? It was more regularly shingled than any pile of detritus should be.
Her breath caught as the “wall” slid past, tapered to a dull point, and then disappeared around a curve in the tunnel, leaving nothing but darkness behind.
Anathuthia. That had been the mere tip of her tail.
Above Tess, voices became audible again, though it was harder at this distance to distinguish words. She caught snatches of a debate on whether to risk sending someone down on a rope, or whether they should wait to be sure the aftershocks were over.
Tess felt like she’d died indeed, and was hearing all this from a terrific distance, dispassionately detached. A curious pity stirred her heart. They were going to miss her.
Her thnik chirped. Tess scrabbled for it and switched it on. “Pathka?” she rasped breathlessly. Heaven’s dustbin, it hurt to talk.
“I saw you fall in,” said Pathka tinnily. “I’ll be right there.”
He was up and about. That was good news, at least. Tess inventoried her pack while she waited. She’d acquired flint and steel while on the work crew, and a small lantern. The lantern was slippery with oil, but she managed to light it without catching herself on fire. She muscled herself to standing, clutching her throbbing side, and looked ahead, after the serpent. The tunnel seemed to extend forever.
Shouts rang, and then a shape hurtled down the hole and rolled down the pile of broken rocks. It was Pathka, none the worse for his tumble. He frolicked around her, making grotesque shadows in the lamplight.
“The crew is trying to make a harness Felix can’t fall out of,” Pathka reported, “but I suspect he has untapped talents. They’re going to waste a lot of time looking for you, you know.”
Tess looked up regretfully but had no illusions about wasted time. Boss Gen would give them a day to search, and then they’d be back on track, sending word to the engineers that there was another bridge to be built, saying farewell to her imagined corpse if not her memory.
They still talked about Daniele; they’d be discussing her eccentricities for a long time.
The last thing she heard before staggering up the passage after Pathka was Felix shouting into the chasm: “Hang on, friend, whoever you are! We’re going to find you. Don’t be frightened.” His voice broke a little. “I hope you’ve never been frightened of us.”
“Never,” Tess whispered, her heart unexpectedly full.
Then she turned and followed Pathka along another road.
They followed the cavern around the bend and down a steep grade, toward the center of the earth. Small side passages branched off at irregular intervals, and Tess noticed Pathka pausing to sniff these, even though the serpent could never have squeezed into them.
“Is Kikiu down here?” asked Tess, guessing what he was sniffing for.
“Not anymore,” said Pathka, although he took one last, lingering sniff. “I hope you see that I tried to reach out, Teth. I made a good-faith effort and was nearly killed for it.”
Tess’s cracked rib made it hurt to talk, so she merely nodded.
“Kikiu is broken,” Pathka pronounced as he reached the ceiling above Tess’s head. “Ko is becoming more unnatural, deliberately. You saw those metal teeth. Now ko has made iron horns. If ko chooses to be monstrous, I don’t see what else I can do. I tried.”
Tess found it hard to catch her breath, as if she were tightly corseted, but she couldn’t let that pass without comment: “Not at…the right time, Pathka—not back when…she needed you.”
Pathka’s tail gave a sharp, serpentine twitch of rebuke; he flounced ahead, across the ceiling, without another word.
* * *
Tess’s lantern ran out of oil after another hour, and then they traveled by the wavering light of Pathka’s tongue. Tess’s ribs throbbed and constricted her air; she required frequent rest. Pathka waited with her, though every angle of his spines betrayed irritation and impatience. He could have navigated the caverns without any light.
Two hours later they found more scales, similar to the ones in her pack but many times larger. Big enough to use for a sledge in wintertime. Tess, who’d grown too sore and exhausted to go on, curled up and slept in one. Pathka kept watch.
When she awoke, however, Pathka wasn’t there.
She hoped he’d simply decided to scout ahead. Surely he’d be back. She sat up carefully in the pitch darkness and called softly, “Pathka?” Her voice echoed, an acoustical map she couldn’t interpret. She whistled, listening to the vastness, and experienced an unexpected frisson, a goose-bumpy thrill.
Not fear. Excitement.
She felt for the smooth edge of the scale she’d been sleeping in, moving calmly, trying to orient herself. She sat with her legs dangling off, breathing (painfully) and reasoning. She didn’t have to worry about hitting her head on the arching ceiling. Assuming she hadn’t rotated in her sleep—and in fact, she wasn’t prone to flopping about—she would have arrived from her right.
Forward, toward the serpent, must be to her left.
In her satchel she found raisins and her water skin, nearly empty—the limits of her survival. She sipped and nibbled, put everything back, and got to her feet. Walk or crawl? Her rib cage made the choice for her, objecting vehemently to any weight on her arms. She stood cautiously and began to walk like a dancer in a promenade, patting the ground with her toe before committing to each step.
Fear still hadn’t found her, but then this wasn’t so different from how she’d been living since she ran away from home. If she couldn’t see where she was going in this cave, well, she couldn’t see the end of the Road, either. In fact, this was part of the Road, she decided. The Serpent’s Road. The most useful virtues, for one who walked on, were flexibility and a willingness to improvise.
She’d just thought this—just decided she liked it—when the darkness ahead began to change. She paused and stared, her eyes ecstatically informing her that there was light ahead, the faintest glow. She could discern the shape of the passage. Maybe. Unless she was imagining it.
Another hundred yards along, it became unmistakable. Black was transitioning slowly to dark gray, like the moment before sunrise when the sky begins thinking about day, when the outlines of trees become visible, black upon somewhat-less-black. Tess could make out the silhouette of her hand. She quickened her pace. Anathuthia had glowed; she hadn’t imagined it. Pathka must have reached her, which was why he wasn’t back yet.
The ground quaked. Tess dropped and braced herself against a boulder. Sand rained into her hair, and there was a sound so low she didn’t hear it so much as feel it in her chest. Her heart and lungs vibrated in concert. Her ribs, a delicate barometer of agony, left her gasping, her forehead beaded with sweat.
When the earth stilled, she walked clutching her side, breathing raggedly. Anathuthia must be ahead. Surely nothing else could sound like that, not even the earth itself.
The passage wound left and right, the eerie glow strengthening with each turn. Light prefers straight lines, so only half-light made it around the curves, the memory of illumination, a daydream of daytime. The tunnel finally opened into a chamber so vast she couldn’t see the far side. In fact, she couldn’t see much besides the light.