D. MacHale - The Rivers of Zadaa

“This is impossible,” I said. “They can’t abandon an entire city!”

“What do your eyes tell you?” Loor asked. I glanced around, listened, and said, “Okay, maybe they can.”

We continued to walk, still cautious. There were about eight million places for somebody to be hiding, waiting for the first arrival of the Batu. We stayed close to the walls on one side of the street, just in case.

“Where is everybody?” I asked. “Obviously they’re not all here getting ready to ambush the Batu.”

“I believe when we find that answer, we will have the truth that Bokka spoke of,” Loor said.

“He said that the truth was on the far side of the city, to the center,” I said.

“He also said that it was a nightmare,” Loor added.

“Yeah, swell,” I said. “Let’s keep moving. Can’t wait to see the nightmare.”

As we walked I couldn’t help but wonder, again, what the Rokador were all about. They were definitely advanced technologically. Still, they not only chose to live underground, they carved primitive buildings out of stone that were barely more advanced than caves. It was a weird balance. They had no glass in their windows, yet they had streetlights on every level of the city. They built incredible machines that could drill through rock, but you had to climb old fashioned stairs to get from one level to the next. They figured out how to generate power, but didn’t use it to create any kind of modern convenience beyond what was absolutely necessary. It seemed like they could have so much more, but chose not to. What a weird, freakin’ bunch.

I tried to put myself in Saint Dane’s place. What could I tempt these people with? What could I tell them they would gain by fighting the Batu? Bokka said their population was growing and they were running out of space. You sure couldn’t prove that by what we had seen on our journey, because we saw nobody. No-body. The more I learned about the Rokador, the more of a mystery they became. Nothing was more mysterious than this complex, deserted city.

Loor and I kept sharp, watching everything, expecting an attack. The only sound we heard besides our own footsteps was the haunting, groaning sound that grew louder as we moved through the city. It was beginning to feel as if the place were haunted. The moaning sound grew louder by the second. We were approaching what looked like a dead end. We had been walking for ten minutes, so I’d say the city was about a half mile across. Looking ahead, all I saw was rock. It seemed as if the main street of Kidik was going to end at a blank wall that stretched up to the vast ceiling above.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The roadway rose slightly. When we reached the crest of the hill and looked down the other side, we saw that there was definitely a wall at the end of the street. Now that we were looking down on it, we could see that at the base there was an entrance to a wide tunnel. As we got closer we saw this opening was at the top of a flight of stone stairs that led down. Both the opening and the stairs were wide-I’d say about fifty yards across. The moaning sound was pretty loud now. Whatever was making it was at the bottom of those stairs.

“We’ve got to keep going,” I said.

We started down. The stairs were steep and long. Looking to either side, I saw that every thirty feet or so a flat ramp was carved into the stairs that was about ten feet wide. I figured this is where the dygos went up and down so they wouldn’t chew up the stairs.

“What is that sound?” I asked. “It’s making me crazy.”

Loor shrugged. She didn’t have any more of a clue than I did. As we descended the steps it got cooler. Soon we were hit with a stiff breeze. Whatever was making this breeze had to be causing the howl, too. But what was it?

Loor saw it first. She was several steps farther down than I was, nearing the bottom of the stairs. The ceiling of the tunnel was dropping down on the same angle as the stairs, preventing us from seeing directly ahead until we were almost at the bottom. When Loor dropped below the ceiling, she was able to see what lay ahead. It was a large, empty cavern with a stone floor. Nothing all that out of the ordinary, at least for the underground world of the Rokador, anyway. She stepped down onto the stone floor, and looked to her right. What happened then was something that I never thought possible. On an adventure full of surprises, this one ranked right up there near the top.

Loor froze…and dropped her stave.

Uh-oh. Whatever she was looking at had shocked her so badly that she dropped her weapon. Let me write that again. Loor was so shocked, she dropped her weapon. Loor. I don’t have to tell you how wrong that was. I hesitated a second. If something out there was so incredible that it could make Loor drop her weapon in shock, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to see it. Of course, I had to. I grasped my stave tighter, in case I had the same reaction. Slowly I continued down. To be honest, I kind of squinted. I could still see, but somehow squinting made it easier to take, like I was in control. I used to do that in horror movies. I wouldn’t fully close my eyes, I’d just squint. That way, if something icky jumped out, I could close them quick.

But no amount of squinting helped prepare me for what I saw when I hit the bottom of the stairs and turned to my right. I discovered what was making the moaning sound. It was wind. The mystery was solved, though a much bigger mystery had taken its place. What we saw was impossible, yet real-as real as the desert sand on the surface, miles above. Stretched out before us, as far as could be seen, was an ocean. An honest-to-god, underground ocean. The moaning wind slashed across the surface, kicking up whitecaps. I could feel moist air hitting me in the face. The sight was so impossible and so wrong, I’m surprised I didn’t drop my weapon too.

I walked to Loor, and without taking my eyes off the water, I said, “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”

Loor couldn’t speak. It was like her brain wouldn’t accept it. But it was no illusion. A forty-yard-span of stone floor stretched between us and the water. I left the cavern at the base of the stairs, passed under an archway, and walked across the deck to the edge of the water. There was something I had to know. I got down on my belly, and scooped up a handful of water. Touching it to my lips, I instantly realized that somebody somewhere had some serious questions to answer. This was freshwater. It was drinkable. I had no idea how deep it was, but the surface was vast. I had no doubt that there was enough water here to feed the rivers of Zadaa and end the drought.

Loor walked up behind me. “Someone will pay for this,” she said while staring out over the water. “My people are starving and there is enough water here to…” She didn’t finish the sentence, that’s how ticked she was. She gazed from right to left and said, “There.” She was pointing to the right of us, where I saw that tied to the stone deck, bobbing in the water, was a small boat.

“Bokka said a vehicle was waiting to take us to the center,” I said. “Do you think-“

Loor’s answer was to walk quickly toward the boat. I followed. Without another word we boarded. It was about the size of a rowboat and made out of the same silver steel as the dygo. There was nothing sleek or modern about it, though. It looked to have been hammered out of sheet metal into a shape that was kind of like a Boston whaler with two bows. One end had a tiller, which made it the stern. Loor went right to work. There was a small control panel in the stern that reminded me of the instrument panel in the dygo. Loor toggled a switch, and I heard an engine start up with a low growl.

“Can you handle this thing?” I asked.