It was vast and gray, covered with scabby plaques of hardened ichor or flaking skin, oozing between the plaques thin dribbles of greenish goo which stank. It had an upper end, but no head that they could see. Still, from beneath the upper end came the sound of chewing, gnawing, the rasp, rasp, rasp of hardness biting into the stair root. The thing moved up, up, not seeing them, not looking for them, merely chewing blindly as it came. Then the chewing stopped. The thing quivered obscenely. Its top end began to rise up, sway, a horrible tower of jiggling jelly ending in a circular mouth which sucked, chewed, sucked—and somehow sensed them. The terrible head moved in their direction, cantilevered out from the root stair toward the water-belly, toward the place they crouched, staring, unable to breathe.
Then something flew at the creature’s head, something bearing flame, beating at it, burning it. The monster screamed a hissing agonized sigh like a kettle boiling dry. It lashed itself upward, striking blindly, without a target. The torch darted upward, back, down once more, striking at the mouth, again and again. With a last, horrible scream, the mass began to withdraw down the stair faster than it had come, folding in upon itself, sliding on its own slimy juices, a trail it had laid as it climbed up, going now away and down and out of sight.
Beedie shuddered and then embarrassed herself by beginning to cry. Roges held her tightly, and she could not tell if the wetness on his face was from her or from them both. Mercald was beneath them, his face hidden at the bottom of the water-belly, half suffocated, and she could not imagine how he had come there. The Thinker had withdrawn a pad from among his rags and was making notes, murmuring to himself as he did so.
“Lignivorous. Purulent dermatitis. Unlikely to be a survival trait, therefore pathological. Recently invaded areas would indicate a newly arrived natural enemy perhaps? Or, possibly, use of a toxic substance ...”
“What do I understand you to say, Thinker?” demanded Mavin, arriving at the opening in the water-belly, panting, holding the torch high so that she could see them. She wore her own shape, or one Beedie thought of as hers.
“The thing is sick,” said Thinker, putting his pad away. “If not dying, at least not at all well. That skin condition is not normal to the species. So much is evident.”
“It wasn’t evident to me,” muttered Beedie with some hostility. “Does he know everything?”
“Within certain limits, yes,” replied the Thinker. “Your attitude of irrelevant hostility is one I have encountered before.” He sniffed.
“It’s not sick enough that it wouldn’t have eaten us, is it?”
The theoretician cocked his head, ruminated over this for a little time, then pronounced; “No. It was eating voraciously. I imagine it will eat almost anything it can get at, though my guess would be it prefers flesh, moist roots and whatever small creatures live upon them.”
“There are places not far from where I grew up where they domesticate things like that,” said Mavin thoughtfully. “Not exactly like that, of course. Not so big. Rock eaters. There are said to be smaller ones that eat plants further north. I’ve never seen them....”
“Quite possibly the same genus,” said the Thinker.
“What did you think made the thing sick?”
“A natural enemy, or some accidental ingestion of a naturally toxic substance, or some purposeful contamination by a toxic substance. In other words, something is eating it, it ate something which disagreed with it, or someone is trying very hard to kill it.”
“Whoever it is, I’m for them,” said Beedie. “I don’t blame them a bit.”
“Whoever?” asked Mercald, slightly dazed. He had burrowed his way up from the bottom of the water-belly and was now one of them once more, though slightly slimy in aspect. “We would have heard! Where? Even on Bottommost, we would have heard! If anyone had seen one of these things, we would have been notified!”
“Something was destroying the roots, the verticals, Mercald. Rootweaver told us. It’s just—no one supposed anything like this.” Beedie fell silent, suddenly aware of the implications. “You mean ... someone is trying to kill those things ... besides the people on the bridgetowns? Thinker? You mean someone else?”
“My dear person, I have no idea. The who is unimportant. I merely recited the possibilities. If you want me to extrapolate probabilities, it will take me a few moments.”
“I don’t think we need to belabor our ignorance,” Mavin said, heaving Beedie out of the water-belly. “One reason that we came upon this journey was to find this thing—these things. So. We’ve found it. One. Perhaps there are more. But to find the cause of peril was not the main reason for coming; the main reason is to put an end to that peril, and we are a very long way from knowing how to do that. That we are not alone in the attempt changes nothing, really.
“A thing I do know, however, is that the creature didn’t climb all the way up here in one night. That means it didn’t go all the way back down, either. I think I saw it ooze itself into a hole some distance below. It’s probably been working its way up, night after night, for a long time. It’s likely no other of them, if there are more of them, has worked up this high until now, which would explain why they have not been seen or smelled before.”
“But now that we have seen, we must send word,” said Roges. “The Bridgers must be told.”
“Yes, we must send word,” agreed Mavin. “We can leave a note nailed to the stair. The first group up from Potter’s bridge this morning will find it—and word will be sent. The chewed stairs alone would probably be enough, but we’ll describe the creature for them.”
“Tell them it fears fire,” said Roges. “They’ll need to know that.” He fell silent, thinking in horror of a bridgetown invaded by such a monster, or monsters, the crushing of little houses, the shrieking of children, the steady rasp, rasp, rasp of its teeth, the stink.
“Light,” said the theoretician. “The thing avoids light. It shrank not only from the heat of the torch, but also from the light of it. At least, so I think.”
“We will say fire, certainly, and light, possibly,” agreed Mavin. “Now. It is written. Do you have a spare piton, Beedie? So. Nailed fast. No one could possibly miss it. I see light above, green light through the leaves. It’s time for us to move on before the Banders arrive. Like it or not, we’re going to cross the root wall.”
“Madam,” said the Thinker, “Is it your desire to reach Bottommost?” At her nod he continued, “Bottommost is almost exactly beneath us now.”
“Down,” said Beedie indignantly. “Three days climb down. Past that thing. Maybe dozens of them. And I’m the only one of us with spurs.”
“Down,” agreed the Thinker. “With warm updrafts and otherwise calm air, and Bottommost precisely below. I suggest we float.”
The others in the group turned to Mavin, exasperated, annoyed, yet despite their annoyance sure that the weird creature had thought of something. “Mavin ...” Beedie pleaded. “I don’t know how to talk to theo-theor-whats-its. Will you talk to him? He makes me tired.”
Mavin sighed. “Well, Thinker. Explain yourself. In short and sensible words.”
“Well, in layman’s terms, there are flattree leaves lying in the Nextdown nets, which are slightly above us. Climbable, I should think. By the young woman with spurs. Or even reachable from the stairs, for that matter. There are half a dozen of them there, at least, very large, tissuey things, soft, pliable, almost like fabric. It has occurred to me that they might be used to manufacturer a kind of hyperbolic air compression device ... let me see, ‘wind catchers.’ Then, we leap off, one by one, and after an interesting float, we arrive at Bottommost.”
“Splashed into a puddle on the commons, no doubt,” said Beedie. “Going about a million man heights every heart beat.”
“Dropping at about one man height per heart beat,” said t he Thinker, annoyed. “Please do not dispute scientific fact with me. It is annoying enough when qualified people do it.”
“Would it work?” Beedie pleaded
to Mavin. “We could always work along the root wall to the stairs to Midwall. If we take it carefully ...”
“If we take it carefully, it would take us five days,” sighed Mavin, muttering almost inaudibly. She knew that she could solve the problem in a number of ways, all of which required that she gain bulk and shift into something large, crawly or winged, which would involve her in endless explanations. She preferred to remain only a messenger from the Boundless, bird or woman, nothing more than that. It would be safer for Handbright if her sister was not thought to be a devil of some kind even by this friendly group. “Look, I’ll test the Thinker’s idea. I can always become a bird, so there’s no danger. If it works for me, then the rest of you can try it.”
“Become a bird?” asked the theoretician. “Is that metaphorical?”
“Never mind,” said Beedie, irritated. “Just explain to Mavin what this ‘wind catcher’ thing is!”
By the time she had climbed to the net, folded and extricated five of the flattree leaves and returned them to the stair, light was shining clearly through the flattrees high above. Rigging the wind catchers seemed to take forever, and Beedie kept reminding herself how long a traverse of the root wall would have taken. Mavin had more or less figured out what the Thinker had in mind and had drawn a little diagram of the way the cords should be strung, from the edges of the leaves to a central girdle. When the first one was done, Mavin fastened the cord girdle around herself then spread the folded leaf along the railing as she climbed over.
“This should be very interesting. It would probably help to jump out as far as possible.” The Thinker had observed all this rigging with great interest but without offering to help. “It should unfold nicely, if it doesn’t catch on the railing.”
“If it doesn’t tear, if the ropes hold, if the leaf doesn’t rip in the air, if Bottommost is really straight down,” muttered Beedie. “Mavin, are you sure you want to do this?”
“It’s all right, sausage girl. Besides, I think you can rely on the white bird to help out if anything goes wrong. Now, if it works well for me, rig the others in the same way. You come last. That way you can help the rest of them.” And with that she leaped out into t he chasm, the faded green of the flattree leaf trailing away behind her. The leaf was small as flattree leaves went, only large enough to carpet a large room, and it caught the air, cupped it, turned into a gently rounded dome that seemed to hang almost motionless in the air as it dwindled slowly, slowly downward.
“Lovely,” came Mavin’s voice. “Toss Mercald over.”
They had already decided that Mercald would have to be tossed. He had turned up his eyes and gone limp at the thought of being dropped into the chasm and was now completely immobile. It was Roges who heaved him over, out into the chasm like a lumpy spear, and they all held their breaths until the leaf opened above him.
“I thought that would work,” said the Thinker, tying himself to the girdle. He waited with no evidence of impatience while Mavin spread the leaf behind him, then stepped far into the chasm.
“All right, Roges,” she said, knowing without looking that he was sweating again. “Don’t look down.”
“Beedie.” He reached out to touch her shoulder. “You’re very pretty, did you know that? Ever since you were little, when you first came to Bridgers House on Topbridge. Even then, you were pretty.”
She stared at him, disconcerted again. “I always had skinned knees,” she said. “And Aunt Six said my face was never clean from the time I was born.”
“Maybe,” he replied, trying to smile. “But pretty in spite of it.”
“Is this like the hair business?” she asked, growing angry. “You think you’re going to get badly hurt or die, so you want to tell me now? Well let me tell you, Roges, I don’t go throwing my friends over railings if I think they’re going to die. Mavin says she’ll catch any of us who have trouble, so if there is trouble just yell and keep yelling. Get up there over that railing and let me spread this thing out.” She pushed at him, getting behind him so that he couldn’t see the tears on her face. All she seemed to do lately was cry! When he was poised to go, however, shaking so uncontrollably that she could not fail to see it, she could not let him go without a word.
“Roges. When we’re down. When we’re finished with all this. When we’ve got the proof that the Banders are murderers and Mavin figures out how to kill those things, tell me then that I’m pretty, will you?” And she pushed him. He fell silently, without a sound, and she found her nails cutting small, bloody holes in her p alms until the leaf billowed behind him, cupping air, and he floated after the others.
She spread her own leaf carefully, being sure it would not snag on the railing, then leaped outward—into terror. Her heart thrust upward into her mouth, clogging her breathing. She gasped, sickened, eyes wide with fear, horrified at the weightless, plunging feel of felling, she who had never been afraid of heights before. “You n ever fell before,” she screamed at herself. “Oh, I’m going to die.”
Then the leaf opened above her. Warm air rose around her, and the root wall drifted past.
Silence. It was the first thing she noticed. Stairs drummed and clamored beneath feet. Bridgetowns were full of chatter and whine. On the root there was always the noise of the spurs digging in, the chafe of the straps, the blows of hammers or hatchets. But here, here was silence, only the drum of one’s blood in one’s ears, only the far, falling cry of a bird. Below her, slightly to one side, she could see a movement in the root wall as small creatures burrowed there, then a bare spot where a strange rock ... a scabrous, oozing rock—the creature. There it was, piled into a cave in the wall, only part of its horrid hide exposed. It heaved, breathed, lived, and she dropped below it. The peace of the drop had been destroyed and her stomach heaved in sick revulsion.
She heard Roges calling, twisted herself around to find him. The mound of his leaf was below her, and she called down to him. “Just above you, Roges. Can you see Mercald?”
“Under ... me ...” came the call. “Hear ... town ...”
She listened, hearing it at last, the far, rattling clamor of a town. What was the word Mavin used? “Gamelords!” More and more lately it seemed like a game, some strange, silly game in which no one knew the rules. Would old Slysaw come down after them? Likely he would, if the stairs were passable. She considered for the first time that the creature, whatever it was, might have cut the stair root, eaten the stairs themselves. In which case, Slysaw couldn’t follow, and where would their proof be then? And Mercald might be permanently out of his head, in which case they didn’t have a judge. So, so, “Gamelords,” she swore fervently.
The sounds from below grew louder, even as the light around her grew dimmer, more watery. Now it was dusky, shadowy, an e vening light. She searched the darkness below her for lights, lanterns, torches, seeing nothing. She looked up at the wall once more, watching it float past, thinking.
She had to think about Roges. Roges, by the Boundless. A Maintainer. Though she knew some Bridgers who were married to Maintainers. Several of them. Quite happily. Rootweaver herself had been married to a Maintainer, so it was said. He had been killed during a storm, a great storm of rain which had almost drowned Topbridge and all who lived there, but he had saved Rootweaver’s life, so it was said. She recalled what Roges had said. “We are more than servants, much more.” That was true. It wasn’t always remembered, but it was true.
“Beeeedieeee,” came a call from below. Roges’ voice again. She looked down, seeing the lights now, glowing fish lanterns making green balls of light, yellow and blue balls of light all along the bridgetown mainroots, two glowing necklaces of lights in the depths. She was not quite above the town, and for a moment she felt panic, believing she would fall on past, but then there was a brush of wings and a voice, “Well, sausage girl. You and Mercald are the only ones I’ve had to fish in. Roges and the whatsit fell straight as a line. Hold on, now, I’ll tow you a little. ...” Her straight line of fall turned into a long,
diagonal drop that brought her over the open avenue of Bottommost.
“I’ll not appear like this,” Mavin called in a whisper from above. “Join you later ...”
The bridge grew larger, larger, more light, more sound, wondering faces looking up, a great tangled pile of flattree leaves below with Roges reaching up from the middle of it, reaching up, to grab her—then they stood together as the leaf fell over them, closing them in a green fragrant tent, away from the world. He was holding her tightly. She was not trying to get away. Neither of them were saying anything, though there was much chatter from outside.
Mercald was saying, “Get them out from under there before they suffocate,” and Beedie was thinking quietly that she would like to suffocate Mercald and to have done it yesterday. Then the leaf was pulled away amid much shouting, and Roges untied the lines from her waist.
“I’ll save the cord,” he said in a strangely breathless voice. “We’ll need it later, I don’t doubt.”
She needed to say something personal to him, something real. “The fall—I was scared. When I jumped, all of a sudden, I was really frightened.”
He looked at her with a kind of joyousness in his eyes that she didn’t understand at all. “Were you really, Bridger? So was I.” Then Mavin in her persona of birdwoman came calmly through the crowds and the moment’s understanding was behind them.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Though I must pretend to be the birdwoman once more, I have serious need of breakfast, and tea, and a wash. And poor Mercald needs a change of clothing. Unfortunately for him, his unconscious state did not last until he landed. And then we all need to revise some plans, or make some. It seems things are worse then we knew.”