They had landed just outside the Bridgers House of Bottommost. It was a small house, not as well kept as the one at Topbridge, but with a guest wing, nonetheless, though one barely large enough for all five of them.
After a quick wash, they went along to the House dining hall, Mercald resplendent in his robes and hat—the only garb he had to wear while his others were being washed. As for the rest of them, they were only cleaner, not otherwise changed except that Mavin was once more playing her silent role of birdwoman. The food was quickly provided and almost as quickly eaten before Roges and Beedie were taken aside into a smaller room where the eldest Bridger of Bottommost awaited them, wringing his hands and compressing his lips in an expression of concern.
“The Messenger came yesterday, Bridger. We did not expect you for many days still, and yet here you are! I thank the Boundless you have come, for it was only two days ago we first saw the thing. I have sent word to the head of chasm council, but we cannot expect a response from old Quickaxe—or from his junior, Rootweaver—for some days.”
“By thing” said Beedie, “I suppose you mean the gray monster with the oozing hide.” At his expressions of awed dismay, she went on, “We encountered it on the downward stair. Eating the stair, I should say. Just the other side of Nextdown.”
“Is it true what my Bridgers say?” the old man asked, hoping, Beedie knew, that she would say it was all an exaggeration.
“It is a thing some six or seven man heights long, as big around as this room, Elder. A ... man who is with us says he believes it is sick. He believes it has been poisoned, perhaps purposely, by ... Roges, what can I say? By what?”
“By people, Beedie. The ... ah, the messenger of the Boundless who is with us says that there may be ... people in the depths. That is, if it was not done by people from this town, Elder.”
Beedie sighed. “Elder, have you made any attempt to kill this thing? Or have you had any word of any intelligent creatures living below you in the depths?”
“Never.” He wriggled the thought around in his mouth for a time, trying it between various pairs of teeth, finally spat it back at them. “No, never. As for killing the thing, I would not know where to begin. As for the other, my Bridgers go down the roots as Bridgers do, and up, and out across the root wall. We see the usual things. Crawly-claws. Slow-girules. Wireworm nests, sometimes. Leaves fell from above, and sometimes the nets of Topbridge or Nextdown miss them so we catch them. It is true that the Fishers bring up strange things from time to time, oddities which we cannot explain. But intelligence below ... well, I’ve never heard any allegation of it.”
“The lost bridge?” prompted Beedie. “That would be below you, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, but my dear Bridger. What is the lost bridge? Sometimes I wonder if it ever existed! And if it did, is it not surely gone? No one has seen or heard of the lost bridge for what?—hundreds of years.”
She shook her head. “When there was a lost bridge, before it was lost, Elder, how did people get to it? Was there a stair?”
He made a face at her, age grimacing at the silly ideas of youth. “There is said to have been a stair. Yes. At the morning-light side. We even have some books with adventure tales for children concerning the stairs and the lost bridge and all the rest of it. Would you like to see them?”
Beedie started to say no, indignantly, then caught sight of Roges’ face, intent upon the old man’s words. “I would, yes, Elder. If you would be so kind.”
4 ’I will have them sent to the guest rooms. Have you any other word for me, Bridger? We are very much afraid of these creatures ...”
“They are afraid of fire,” said Beedie firmly. “It is thought t hey might be afraid of light.”
“Not of our lanterns, I’m afraid. The one we saw two days ago was on the stair trail which leads to the mines below Miner’s bridge. It is a little used way built for the convenience of the Miners, to bring loads of some materials across to us for processing. It was lit by fish lanterns, and the thing had eaten great pieces of the stair, lanterns and all, when first we saw it. Fire—that’s a different thing. Torches. We do not use torches. It is damp this far down in the chasm. Except during the wind, smoke lies heavy upon Bottommost. Still, if fire will drive the monsters away, we must somehow learn to use fire once more ...” And the old man turned away, weary and fearful, yet somehow resolute.
They walked back toward the guest rooms, Beedie’s hand finding Roges’ as they went, silent, dismayed not a little. They slipped into the room Mavin shared with Beedie and told her what had transpired.
“So the Thinker was right,” said Mavin. “The things have only recently been seen so far up in the chasm. Well, they must somehow be made to go back where they have been. We will stay here in Bottommost today, perhaps tonight. Read the books when they are brought, sausage girl.” Then, seeing her annoyed expression, “Read them to her, Roges, if you will. I will return after dark. If anyone asks, the messenger of the Boundless is asleep,” and she slipped out of the room, disappearing down the corridor.
“Do you want to sleep, too?” asked Roges. “Our rest last night was interrupted.”
“Later perhaps. Not now. Now I want to see Bottommost, the mysterious bridgetown I have heard of since I was a child! Aunt Six says it is all rebels and anarchists here, that there is no custom worthy of the name, that bad children gravitate to Bottommost as slow-girules to root mice. We are here and I must see if she lied to me.”
They left Mercald curled up on a clean bed, quietly asleep. They left the Thinker sitting in a window, staring at nothing, a small muscle in his left cheek twitching from time to time. Beedie had had the generous intent of asking him if he wanted to go with them. One sight of him changed her mind. The two of them went out together, out of Bridgers House onto the main avenue of Bottommost.
“It’s narrow!” she exclaimed. “It’s little.” Compared to Topbridge, it was narrow and confined, the lines of lanterns which marked the mainroots only two hundred paces apart, beads of light s oftly glowing in two arcs that met at the far wall. “And it’s like night-time!” Far above them the light of the chasm could be seen as a wide line of green, slightly shifting, as though they looked upward into a flowing stream, but the light upon the bridge came more from the ubiquitous fish lanterns than from the sky. Every corner carried at least one of the scaled globes; every market stall was lined with them, blue orbs and green, with an occasional amber one here and there. Those which were amber, Beedie noticed, bore horns and warts and protuberances of various shapes and kinds as well as a discouraging set of fangs. “I would not like to be the Fisher who caught one of those,” she remarked to Roges.
Bottommost was quieter then Topbridge. It buzzed with a muted sound, as though it did not wish to attract attention to itself. The cries of the hawkers were melodious and soft, a kind of repetitive song. “They don’t look like rebels and anarchists,” said Roges. “They look rather sad.”
“It’s because there’s so little light. It’s an evening sadness, a perpetual dusk. If I lived here, I would cry all the time.” The colours of the place were strange to her high chasm eyes. Soft greens and grays and blues. No white or red, no yellow. “Look how narrow their nets are.” The nets on either side of the railing were mere handkerchiefs, of no extent.
“Look up and you’ll see why,” murmured Roges. High against the light were the twin bars of Topbridge and Nextdown, bracketing Bottommost on each side. “If the nets were any wider, they’d be catching all the fell-down from up there. Not very pleasant for the net cleaners.”
“Well, there’s got to be something good about the place. Let’s try a teashop.” And in the teashop they began to appreciate the true flavor of Bottommost as the calls of the hawkers, the bells in the Birder House, and the soft light blended into music. If there were rebels in Bottommost, they were rebels of an odd sort, rebels of silence, of shadow, of gentle movement. “I haven’t seen any Banders,” she said. “None in the House.”
&nb
sp; “There are some here,” he replied. “I asked the Maintainer who brought us blankets whether there had been any unrest on Bottommost concerning the messenger of the Boundless. She said yes, rumor and story telling, a small attempt to whip up frenzy, resulting in nothing much. Still, there are some of them here, e nough to do us harm if we are not careful.”
“Enough to carry the word back to old Slysaw?”
“I should judge so.” He did not sound as though he cared greatly about it, about anything. He had been sitting, sipping, smiling at her for hours. She blushed. She, too, had been sipping, smiling. Resolutely, she got to her feet. “Roges. We promised Mavin we would read the books about the lost bridge.” She took his hand, dragged him upright.
They went out onto the avenue, still hand in hand, lost in the gentle music of Bottommost, to remember it always as magical and wonderful, more wonderful than any of the truly wonderful things which were to follow.
Chapter Seven
Lantern-eyed, fluff-winged she flew along the root wall, soft as down, observant as any owl in the dusk, peering at this, that, the other thing. There were many small creepies, many larger ones as well—claws gently waving, and things that came to the claws thinking they were something else; shelves of fungus in colours of amber and rose, washed into grays by the green light; other fungoid growths hanging upon the roots themselves in pendant fronds, projecting horns and antlers and mushroomy domes, pale as flesh, moist as frogs.
There was a chorus of smells, rich and fecund stenches, rot and mildew and earthy green slime. There were greens innumerable, bronzy green and amber green and the blue-green of far seas not remembered by the people in the chasm. The air was wet, wetter the lower she went, full of mist wraiths which seemed in any instant almost to have coherent shape. Her wings were wet and heavy, and she changed the structure of her feathers to shed the damp, bringing a clear set of membranes across her eyes at the same time.
Those who might have known her in the white bird shape would not have known her in her present form, and she took pleasure in this, in this renewed feeling of anonymity, of remoteness. Beedie was a good girl; Roges a treasure; the theoretician an interesting find; Mercald a necessary burden—and not good enough to be a partner for Handbright as she had been, though perhaps better than one could have expected for Handbright as she was now—but there was much to be said for solitude. There was time for contemplation, time for feeling the fabric of the place, time for memory.
There had been another place, not unlike the chasm in its watery light, a pool-laced forest, green under leaves, full shadowed in summer warmth and breathless with flowers. Mavin had come there in the guise of a sweet, swift beast, four-legged and lean, graceful a s the bending grass. It had been a shape designed for the place, needful for the place, and her body had responded to that need without thinking. So she had, unaware she was observed, wandered, unaware until she came one dawn to the shivering silver pool and saw her own image standing there, head regally high, crowned with a single spiraled horn like her own, male as she was female, unquestionably correct for that place, that time, without any requirement for explanation.
And there had been a summer then, without speech or thought or plan for the morrow; a summer which spun itself beneath the leaves and over the welcoming grass, sparkling with sun shards and bathed in dew. Morning had gone into evening, day into day, as feet raced upon the pleasant pastures and across the mysterious hills. And then a day, a day with him gone.
She had never named him in her mind, except to believe that whoever he was, he was Shifter like herself, for there was no such supernally graceful beast in the reality of this world, had never been, probably now would never be again. And when a certain number of days had gone without his return, she had shifted herself and left the place behind her, sorrowing that she would not know him again if she met him in a street of any town or upon the road to anywhere at all. Outside of that place, that stream-netted garden of gold-green light, what they had been together would have no reality.
It was the sight of Roges’ face that had made her think of this, Roges’ face as he brooded over Beedie who, though she was beside him, did not see the way he looked at her. In that silken passionate look which reverberated like soft thunder was what she had felt in the summer garden. And it made her think of something more, of that same expression seen fifteen years before on the face of the Wizard Himaggery. Twenty years, he had said. Return to him in twenty years. Over three-quarters of that time was gone. Well, she could not think of that now, not with Handbright’s child soon to be delivered, and Mavin soon to take it away to be safely reared as a Shifter’s child should be reared—not with the chasm to be explored—and all these lands beyond the sea.
She moved out into the chasm, away from the root wall, attracted by a hard-edged shape which spiraled down toward her. It was one of the rigid frameworks webbed with flopperskin which the Messengers used to fly between bridgetowns, gliding on the warm, u prising air to carry messages from Topbridge to Harvester’s. She flew close, wondering what brought a Messenger to these depths.
It was no Messenger. The kite held a young man’s body, shrouded in white upon the gliding frame, staring with unseeing eyes into the misty air. There were embroidered shoes upon his feet, a feathered cap upon his head, and his hands were tied together before him with a silken scarf. Someone had decked the beloved dead for this last flight. Someone had set dreams aside, love aside, to grieve over this youth, and in that grieving, had realized there would be no more time in which to dream.
She flew aside, eyes fixed upon those dead eyes, as though she might read something there, accompanying the body down as it fell, turn on wide turn into the narrowing depths. At last she let it go, watching as it twirled into the chasm, softly as a leaf fells, the bright feather upon the cap catching at her vision until it vanished in mist.
No more time in which to dream. Twenty years. The bird body could not hold the pain which struck at her then, a shiver of grief so great that she cried out, the sound echoing from root wall to root wall, over and over again, in a falling agony of sound. She did not often think of herself as mortal.
“I will return,” she promised herself. “I will return.”
And was Himaggery still alive in that world across the sea? Must be, her mind told her sternly. Must be. I would have known if anything had happened to him. I could not have failed to know.
There, in the chasm mists, the Mavin-bird sang its determination and decision, even while it sought for mystery in the chasm with wide eyes.
Back in the guest rooms of Bridgers House, Roges lay with his head in Beedie’s lap and read to her.
“ ‘In the time of the great builders, the outcaste Mirtylon (he whose name came from the ancient times above the chasm) took captive the maiden daughter of the designer of Firstbridge, the Great Engineer, she whom he called Lovewings after the love he bore her mother who had died. For the Great Engineer had forbidden his daughter to marry Mirtylon, though he had sought her in honor and in love, for the Great Engineer feared to lose her from his house.
“ ‘And Mirtylon fled from the wrath of the Great Engineer, into the bottomless depths of the chasm, root to root, with his f ollowers, losing themselves in the shadowy lands beneath the reach of the sun. Then it was the Great Engineer wept and foamed in his fury, for taken from him was what he held most dear in all his life, for Lovewings had gone with them. And he fell into despair. And in his despair he failed to set the watch upon the bridge, and in the night the great pombis came, lair upon lair of them out of the darkness, driving the people of Firstbridge down into the chasm to the half-built city of Secondbridge, called by some Nextdown. And though many came there for refuge, the Great Engineer was slain together with the Maintainers of his house.
“ ‘But unknowing of this was the outcaste Mirtylon and unknowing of this was Lovewings—who would have been greatly grieved, for she loved her father—so she married Mirtylon of her own will and lived with him in a cave at
great depth upon the root wall while those who followed him drew great mainroots together for the establishment of the town of Watertight. In those depths the light was that found deep in river pools of their former lands, mysterious and shadowy. And in time the bridgetown of Watertight was built, and Bridgers were sent from it to build a stair along the morning-light wall which should reach from Watertight upward to the run of the chasm. And in time the Bridgers so sent met the Bridgers of Nextdown upon the root wall, and the news of the death of the Great Engineer, her father, came to Lovewings.
“ ‘Then did she feel great guilt and great despair, accounting herself responsible for what had occurred, for she well knew with what value her father had held her. And she went to Mirtylon and told him she would go away for a time, to expiate her guilt in loneliness after the manner of her religion, but he would not let her go.
“And by this time the stair which Mirtylon had ordered to be built stretched upward from the depths into the very midst of the chasm, to the new-built bridge of Bottommost. Forbidden to expiate her guilt Lovewings took herself to the highest point which had yet been built and threw herself into the depths so that none saw her more. This is the story told of her, for none knew the truth of it save that she had climbed the stair and came no more to Watertight.
“ ‘And Mirtylon despaired, ordering that the stair be shattered, that none might walk that way again. So it was broken, and all connection between Watertight and the other cities of the chasm was cut off.
“ ‘Still the Messengers flew between the bridges, and there was trade of a kind between them, with much gathering of gems and diamonds from the Bottom lands by those of Watertight, and much trading of this treasure for the foodstuffs which grew high above. And though people of the bridgetowns were curious as to the source of the treasure, the secret was well kept by the people of Watertight who would say only that the treasure was gathered at great danger to themselves from that which dwelt in the Bottomlands below.