Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

Retyo shook me, hard, and then Carlmin came into my arms, sniffling. “Perhaps you should carry your son for a while,” the sailor told me, without rebuke, as he stooped to gather the spare torches that I had dropped. Ahead of us in the dark, the rest of our party was shadows in shadow, with a red smear for our torch. I had just stopped in my tracks. If Retyo had not noted my absence, I wonder what would have happened to me. Even after we spoke, I felt as if I were two people.

“Thank you,” I told him ashamedly.

“It’s all right. Just stay close,” he told me.

We went on. The punishing weight of Carlmin in my arms kept me focused. After a time, I set him down and make him walk beside me, but I think that was better for him. Having once been snared by the ghosts, I resolved to be more wary. Even so, odd bits of dreams, fancies, and voices talking in the distance drifted through my mind as I walked, eyes open, through the dark. We trudged on endlessly. Hunger and thirst made themselves known to us. The seeping runnels of water tasted bitter, but we drank sparingly from them anyway.

“I hate this city,” I said to Carlmin. His little hand in mine was becoming chill as the buried city stole our body warmth from us. “It’s full of traps and snares. Rooms full of mud waiting to crush us, and ghosts trying to steal our minds.”

I had been speaking as much to myself as him. I didn’t expect a response. But then he said slowly, “It wasn’t built to be dark and empty.”

“Perhaps not, but that is how it is now. And the ghosts of those who built it try to steal our minds from us.”

I heard more than saw his scowl. “Ghosts? Not ghosts. Not thieves.”

“What are they, then?” I asked him, mostly to keep him talking.

He was silent for a time. I listened to our footsteps and breathing. Then he said, “It’s not anyone. It’s their art.”

Art seemed a far and useless thing to me now. Once I had used it to justify my existence. Now it seemed an idleness and a ploy, something I did to conceal the insignificance of my daily life. The word almost shamed me.

“Art,” he repeated. He did not sound like a little boy as he went on, “Art is how we define and explain ourselves to ourselves. In this city, we decided that the daily life of the people was the art of the city. From year to year, the shaking of the earth increased, and the storms of dust and ash. We hid from it, closing our cities in and burrowing under the earth. And yet we knew that a time would come when we could not prevail against the earth itself. Some wished to leave, and we let them. No one was forced to stay. Our cities that had burgeoned with life faded to a trickle of souls. For a time, the earth calmed, with only a shiver now and then to remind us that our lives were daily granted to us and could be taken in a moment. But many of us decided that this was where we had lived, for generations. So this would be where we perished. Our individual lives, long as they were, would end here. But not our cities. No. Our cities would live on and recall us. Recall us—would call us home again, whenever anyone woke the echoes of us that we stored here. We’re all here, all our richness and complexity, all our joys and sorrows . . .” His voice drifted away in contemplation once more.

I felt chilled. “A magic that calls the ghosts back.”

“Not magic. Art.” He sounded annoyed.

Suddenly Retyo said unsteadily, “I keep hearing voices. Someone, talk to me.”

I put my hand on his arm. “I hear them, too. But they sound Jamaillian.”

With pounding hearts our little party hastened toward them. At the next juncture of corridors, we turned right and the voices came clearer. We shouted, and they shouted a reply. Through the dark, we heard their hurrying feet. They blessed our smoky red torch; theirs had burned out. Four young men and two women from our company hastened toward our light. Frightened as they were, they still clutched armloads of plunder. We were overjoyed to find them, until they dashed our relief into despair. The tale they told us was a grim one. The passage to the outside world was blocked. They had been in the dragon-and-woman chamber when they heard heavy pounding from the rooms above. A great crash was followed by the slow groan of timbers giving way. As a grinding noise grew in volume, the lights in the big chamber flickered and watery mud began to trickle down the grand staircase. They had immediately tried to escape, only to find the stairway blocked by collapsed masonry oozing mud.

Perhaps fifty other scavengers had gathered in the dragon-and-woman chamber, drawn back there by the ominous sound. As the lights dimmed and then went out, all had fled, some going one way and some another, seeking for escape. Even facing the danger of being trapped below the earth, their suspicion of one another as thieves had prevented them from joining forces. Their tale filled me with despair. Lost in the dark, and still these six clutched treasure and greed to their hearts. I was disgusted with them and said as much. To my surprise, they sheepishly agreed. Then, for a time, we stood uselessly in the dark, listening to our torch burn away and wondering what to do.

When no one else spoke, I asked, “Do you know the way back to the dragon chamber?” I fought to speak steadily.

One man said he did.

“Then we must go back there. And gather all the people we can, and pool what we know of this maze. It is our only hope of finding a way out before our torches are gone. Otherwise, we may wander until we die.”

Grim silence was their assent. The young man led us back the way they had come. As we passed plundered rooms, we gathered anything that might burn. Soon the six who had joined us must abandon their plunder to carry more wood. I thought they would part from us before surrendering their treasure, but they decided to leave it in one of the rooms. They marked their claim upon the door, with chalked threats against any thieves. I thought this foolishness, for I would have traded every jewel in the city simply to see honest daylight again. Then we went on.

We reached at last the dragon-woman chamber. We knew it more by its echoes than by the view that our failing torch offered. A weight of earth had collapsed on the grand staircase. A small fire still smoldered in the center of the room near the dragon’s feet, with a few hapless folk gathered around it. We added fuel to wake it to flames. It drew others to join us, and we then raised a shout to summon any who might hear us. Soon our little bonfire lit a circle of some thirty muddy and weary people. The flames showed me frightened white faces like masks. Many of them still clutched bundles of plunder and eyed one another suspiciously. That was almost more frightening than the slow creep of thick mud spreading down from the staircase. Heavy and thick, it trickled inexorably down, and I knew that our gathering place would not long be a refuge from it.

We were a pitiful company. Some of these folk had been lords and ladies, and others pickpockets and whores, but in that place, we finally became equals and recognized one another for what we were: desperate people, dependent on each other. We had convened at the foot of the dragon statue. Now Retyo stepped up onto the dragon’s tail and commanded us, “Hush! Listen!”

Voices ebbed away. We heard the crackling of our fire, and then the distant groans of wood and stone, and the drip and trickle of watery muck. They were terrifying sounds, and I wondered why he had made us listen to them. When he spoke, his human voice was welcome as it drowned out the threats of the straining walls.

“We have no time to waste in worrying about treasure or theft. Our lives are the only things we can hope to carry out of here, and only if we pool what we know, so we don’t waste time exploring corridors that lead nowhere. Are we together on that?”