Heretics of Dune

Chapter Nineteen

She recoiled.
He stared into her eyes. "I am not some damned stud for the witches!"
"Is that what you think we want of you?"
"Nobody has said what you want of me but your actions are obvious!"
He stood poised on the balls of his feet. The unawakened thing within him stirred and sent his pulse racing.
Lucilla studied him carefully. Damn that Miles Teg! She had not expected resistance to take this form. There was no doubting Duncan's sincerity. Words by themselves no longer would serve. He was immune to Voice.
Truth.
It was the only weapon left to her.
"Duncan, I do not know precisely what it is Taraza expects you to do on Rakis. I can guess but my guess may be wrong."
"Guess, then."
"There is a young girl on Rakis, barely into her teens. Her name is Sheeana. The worms of Rakis obey her. Somehow, the Sisterhood must gather this talent into its own store of abilities."
"What could I possibly...
"If I knew, I certainly would tell you now."
He heard her sincerity unmasked by her desperation.
"What does your talent have to do with this?" he demanded.
"Only Taraza and her councillors know."
"They want some hold on me, something from which I cannot escape!"
Lucilla already had arrived at this deduction but she had not expected him to see it that quickly. Duncan's youthful face concealed a mind that worked in ways she had not yet fathomed. Lucilla's thoughts raced.
"Control the worms and you could revive the old religion." It was Teg's voice from the doorway behind Lucilla.
I did not hear him arrive!
She whirled. Teg stood there with one of the antique Harkonnen lasguns held casually across his left arm, its muzzle directed at her.
"This is to insure that you listen to me," he said.
"How long have you been there listening?"
Her angry glare did not change his expression.
"From the moment you admitted you don't know what Taraza expects of Duncan," Teg said. "Nor do I. But I can make a few Mentat projections - nothing firm yet but all of them suggestive. Tell me if I am wrong."
"About what?"
He glanced at Duncan. "One of the things you were told to do was to make him irresistible to most women."
Lucilla tried to conceal her dismay. Taraza had warned her to conceal this from Teg as long as possible. She saw that concealment no longer was possible. Teg had read her reaction with those damnable abilities imparted to him by his damnable mother!
"A great deal of energy is being gathered and aimed at Rakis," Teg said. He looked steadily at Duncan. "No matter what the Tleilaxu have buried in him, he has the stamp of ancient humankind in his genes. Is that what the Breeding Mistresses need?"
"A damned Bene Gesserit stud!" Duncan said.
"What do you intend to do with that weapon?" Lucilla asked. She nodded at the antique lasgun in Teg's hands.
"This? I didn't even put a charge cartridge in it." He lowered the lasgun and leaned it into a corner beside him.
"Miles Teg, you will be punished!" Lucilla grated.
"That will have to wait," he said. "It's almost night outside. I've been out there under the life-shield. Burzmali has been here. He has left his sign to tell me he read the message I scratched with those animal marks on the trees."
A glittering alertness came into Duncan's eyes.
"What will you do?" Lucilla asked.
"I have left new marks arranging a rendezvous. Right now, we are all going up to the library. We are going to study the maps. We will commit them to memory. At the very least, we should know where we are when we run."
She gave him the benefit of a curt nod.
Duncan noted her movement with only part of his awareness. His mind already had leaped ahead to the ancient equipment in the Harkonnen library. He had been the one to show both Lucilla and Teg how to use it correctly, calling up an ancient map of Giedi Prime dating from the time when the no-globe had been built.
With Duncan's pre-ghola memory as guide and his own more modern knowledge of the planet, Teg had tried to bring the map up to date.
"Forest Guard Station" became "Bene Gesserit Keep."
"Part of it was a Harkonnen hunting lodge," Duncan had said. "They hunted human game raised and conditioned specifically for that purpose."
Towns vanished under Teg's updating. Some cities remained but received new labels. "Ysai," the nearest metropolis, had been marked "Barony" on the original map.
Duncan's eyes went hard in memory. "That's where they tortured me."
When Teg exhausted his memory of the planet, much was marked unknown but there were frequent curly-ended Bene Gesserit symbols to identify the places where Taraza's people had told Teg he might find temporary sanctuary.
Those were the places Teg wanted committed to memory.
As he turned to lead them up to the library, Teg said: "I will erase the map when we have learned it. There's no telling who might find this place and study it."
Lucilla swept past him. "It's on your head, Miles!" she said.
Teg called after her retreating back: "A Mentat tells you that I did what was required of me."
She spoke without turning: "How logical!"
This room reconstructs a bit of the desert of Dune. The sandcrawler directly in front of you dates from the Atreides times. Grouped around it, moving clockwise from your left, are a small harvester, a carryall, a primitive spice factory and the other support equipment. All are explained at each station. Note the illuminated quotation above the display: "FOR THEY SHALL SUCK OF THE ABUNDANCE OF THE SEAS AND OF THE TREASURE IN THE SAND." This ancient religious quotation was oft repeated by the famous Gurney Halleck.
- Guide Announcement, Museum of Dar-es-Balat
The worm did not slow its relentless progress until just before dusk.. By then, Odrade had played out her questions and still had no answers. How did Sheeana control the worms? Sheeana said she was not steering her Shaitan in this direction. What was this hidden language to which the desert monster responded? Odrade knew that her Sister-guardians up there in the 'thopters that paced them would be exhausting the same questions plus one more.
Why did Odrade let this ride continue?
They might even hazard a few guesses: She does not call us in because that might disturb the beast. She does not trust us to pluck her party from its back.
The truth was far simpler: curiosity.
The hissing passage of the worm could have been a surging vessel breasting seas. The dry flinty odors of overheated sand, swept across them by a following wind, said otherwise. Only open desert stretched around them now, kilometer after kilometer of whaleback dunes as regular in their spacing as ocean waves.
Waff had been silent for a long period. He crouched in a miniature reproduction of Odrade's position, his attention directed ahead, a blank expression on his face. His most recent statement:
"God guard the faithful in the hour of our trial!"
Odrade thought of him as living proof that a strong enough fanaticism could endure for ages. Zensunni and the old Sufi survived in the Tleilaxu. It was like a deadly microbe that had lain dormant all of those millennia, waiting for the right host to feed its virulence.
What will happen to the thing I planted in the Rakian priesthood? she wondered. Saint Sheeana was a certainty.
Sheeana sat on a ring of her Shaitan, her robe pulled up to expose her thin shanks. She gripped the ring with both hands between her legs.
She had said that her first worm ride went directly to the city of Keen. Why there? Had the worm simply been taking her to her own kind?
This one beneath them now certainly had a different goal. Sheeana no longer questioned but then Odrade had ordered her to remain silent and practice the low trance. That, at least, would assure that every last detail of this experience could be recalled easily from her memory. If there were a hidden language between Sheeana and worm, they would find it later.
Odrade peered at the horizon. The remnant base of the ancient wall around the Sareer was only a few kilometers ahead. Long shadows from it lay across the dunes, telling Odrade that the remnant was higher than she had originally suspected. It was a shattered and broken outline now, with great boulders strewn along its base. The notch where the Tyrant had tumbled from his bridge into the Idaho River lay well to their right, at least three kilometers off their path. No river flowed there now.
Waff stirred beside her. "I heed Thy call, God," he said. "It is Waff of the Entio who prays in Thy Holy Place."
Odrade swiveled her gaze toward him without moving her head. Entio? Her Other Memories knew an Entio, a tribal leader in the great Zensunni Wandering, long before Dune. What was this? What ancient memories did these Tleilaxu keep alive?
Sheeana broke her silence. "Shaitan is slowing."
The remains of the ancient wall blocked their way. It loomed at least fifty meters over the highest dunes. The worm turned slightly to the right and moved between two giant boulders that towered above them. It came to a stop. The long ridged back lay parallel to a mostly intact section of the wall's base.
Sheeana stood and looked at the barrier.
"What is this place?" Waff asked. He raised his voice above the sound of the 'thopters circling overhead.
Odrade released her tiring grip and flexed her fingers. She continued to kneel while she studied their surroundings. Shadows from the tumbled boulders drew hard lines on sand spills and smaller rocks. Seen close up, not twenty meters away, the wall revealed cracks and fissures, dark openings into the ancient foundation.
Waff stood and massaged his hands.
"Why have we been brought here?" he asked. His voice was faintly plaintive.
The worm twitched.
"Shaitan wants us to get off," Sheeana said.
How does she know? Odrade wondered. The worm's movement had not been enough to make any of them stumble. It could have been some private reflex after the long journey.
But Sheeana faced the ancient wall's foundation, sat down on the curve of the worm and slid off. She dropped in a crouch on soft sand.
Odrade and Waff moved forward and watched with fascination as Sheeana slogged through the sand to the front of the creature. There, Sheeana placed both hands on her hips and faced the gaping mouth. Hidden flames played orange light across the young face.
"Shaitan, why are we here?" Sheeana demanded.
Again, the worm twitched.
"He wants all of you off him," Sheeana called.
Waff looked at Odrade. "If God wishes thee to die, He causes thy steps to lead thee to the place of thy death."
Odrade gave him back a paraphrase from the cant of the Shariat: "Obey God's messenger in all things."
Waff sighed. Doubt was plain on his face. But he turned and was first off the worm, dropping just ahead of Odrade. They followed Sheeana's example, moving to the front of the creature. Odrade, every sense alert, fixed her gaze on Sheeana.
It was much hotter in front of the gaping mouth. The familiar bite of melange filled the air around them.
"We are here, God," Waff said.
Odrade, getting more than a little tired of his religious awe, spared a glance for their surroundings - the shattered rocks, the eroded barrier reaching into the dusky sky, sand sloping against the time-scarred stones, and the slow scorching huff-huff of the worm's internal fires.
But where is here? Odrade wondered. What is special about this place to make it the worm's destination?
Four of the watching 'thopters passed in line overhead. The sound of their wing fans and the hissing jets momentarily drowned out the worm's background rumblings.
Shall I call them down? Odrade wondered. It would take only a hand signal. Instead, she lifted two hands in the signal for the watchers to remain aloft.
Evening's chill was on the sand now. Odrade shivered and adjusted her metabolism to the new demands. She felt confident that the worm would not engulf them with Sheeana beside them.
Sheeana turned her back on the worm. "He wants us to be here," she said.
As though her words were a command, the worm twisted its head away from them and slid off through the tall scattering of giant boulders. They could hear it speeding away back into the desert.
Odrade faced the base of the ancient wall. Darkness would be upon them soon but enough light remained in the high desert's long dusk that they might yet see some explanation of why the creature had brought them here. A tall fissure in the rock wall to her right seemed as good a place to investigate as any. Keeping part of her attention on the sounds from Waff, Odrade climbed a sandy incline toward the dark opening. Sheeana kept pace with her.
"Why are we here, Mother?"
Odrade shook her head. She heard Waff following.
The fissure directly in front of her was a shadowy hole into darkness. Odrade stopped and held Sheeana beside her. She judged the opening to be about a meter wide and some four times that in height. The rocky sides were curiously smooth, as though polished by human hands. Sand had drifted into the opening. Light from the setting sun reflected off the sand to bathe one side of the opening in a wash of gold.
Waff spoke from behind them: "What is this place?"
"There are many old caves," Sheeana said. "Fremen hid their spice in caves." She inhaled deeply through her nose. "Do you smell it, Mother?"
There was a definite melange odor to the place, Odrade agreed.
Waff moved past Odrade and into the fissure. He turned there, looking up at the walls where they met in a sharp angle above him. Facing Odrade and Sheeana, he backed farther into the opening, his attention on the walls. Odrade and Sheeana stepped closer to him. With an abrupt hissing of spilled sand, Waff vanished from their sight. In the same instant, the sand all around Odrade and Sheeana slipped forward into the fissure, dragging both of them with it. Odrade grabbed Sheeana's hand.
"Mother!" Sheeana cried.
The sound echoed from invisible rock walls as they slid down a long slope of spilling sand into concealing darkness. The sand drifted them to a stop in a final wash of gentle movement. Odrade, in sand up to her knees, extricated herself and pulled Sheeana with her onto a hard surface.
Sheeana started to speak but Odrade said: "Hush! Listen!"
There was a grating disturbance off to the left.
"Waff?"
"I'm in it up to my waist." There was terror in his voice.
Odrade spoke dryly. "God must want it that way. Pull yourself out gently. It feels like rock under our feet. Gently now! We don't need another avalanche."
As her eyes adjusted, Odrade looked up the sand slope down which they had tumbled. The opening where they had entered this place was a distant slit of dusky gold far away above them.
"Mother," Sheeana whispered. "I'm scared."
"Say the Litany Against Fear," Odrade ordered. "And be still. Our friends know we are here. They will help us get out."
"God has brought us to this place," Waff said.
Odrade did not respond. In the silence, she pursed her lips and gave a high-pitched whistle, listening for the echoes. Her ears told her they were in a large space with some sort of low obstruction behind them. She turned her back on the narrow fissure and gave another whistle.
The low barrier lay about a hundred meters away.
Odrade freed her hand from Sheeana's. "Stay right here, please. Waff?"
"I hear the 'thopters," he said.
"We all hear them," Odrade said. "They are landing. We will have help presently. Meanwhile, please stay where you are and remain silent. I need the silence."
Whistling and listening for the echoes, placing each foot carefully, Odrade worked her way deeper into the darkness. An outstretched hand encountered a rough rock surface. She felt along it. Only about waist high. She could feel nothing beyond it. The echoes of her whistles said it was a smaller space there and partly enclosed.
A voice called from high behind her. "Reverend Mother! Are you there?"
Odrade turned, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Stay back! We've been spilled into a deep cave. Bring a light and a long rope."
A tiny dark figure moved back out of the distant opening. The light up there was growing dimmer. She lowered her cupped hands and spoke into the darkness.
"Sheeana? Waff? Come toward me about ten paces and wait there."
"Where are we, Mother?" Sheeana asked.
"Patience, child."
A low, muttering sound came from Waff. Odrade recognized the ancient words of the Islamiyat. He was praying. Waff had dropped all attempts to conceal his origins from her. Good. The believer was a receptacle for her to feed with the sweets of the Missionaria Protectiva.
Meanwhile, the possibilities of this place where the worm had brought them excited Odrade. Guided by one hand on the rock barrier, she explored along it to her left. The top was quite smooth in places. All of it sloped inward away from her. Other Memories offered a sudden projection:
Catchbasin!
This was a Fremen water storage basin. Odrade inhaled deeply, testing for moisture. The air was flint dry.
A bright light from the fissure stabbed downward, driving away the darkness. A voice called from the opening and Odrade recognized it as one of her Sisters.
"We can see you!"
Odrade stepped back from the low barrier and turned, peering all around. Waff and Sheeana stood about sixty meters away staring at their surroundings. The chamber was roughly circular, some two hundred meters in diameter. A rock dome arched high overhead. She examined the low barrier beside her: yes, a Fremen catchbasin. She could discern the small rock island in its center where a captive worm could be kept ready to spill into the water. Other Memories replayed that agonized, twisting death which produced the spice poison to ignite a Fremen orgy.
A low arch framed more darkness on the far side of the basin. She could see the spillway there where water had been brought down from a windtrap. There would be more catchbasins back there, an entire complex of them designed to hold a wealth of moisture for an ancient tribe. She knew the name of this place now.
"Sietch Tabr," Odrade whispered.
The words ignited a flood of useful memories. This had been Stilgar's place in the time of Muad'dib. Why did that worm bring us to Sietch Tabr?
A worm took Sheeana to the City of Keen. That others might know of her? Then what was there to know here? Were there people back there in that darkness? Odrade sensed no indications of life in that direction.
Her Sister at the opening interrupted these thoughts. "We've had to ask for the rope to be brought from Dar-es-Balat! The people at the museum say this is probably Sietch Tabr! They thought it had been destroyed!"
"Send down a light so I can explore it," Odrade called.
"The priests ask that we leave it undisturbed!"
"Send me a light!" Odrade insisted.
Presently, a dark object tumbled down the sandslope in a small spill of sand. Odrade sent Sheeana scampering for it. A touch on the switch and a bright beam went lancing at the dark archway beyond the catchbasin. Yes, more basins there. And beside this basin, a narrow stairway cut into the rock. The steps led upward, turning and removing themselves from her view.
Odrade bent and whispered in Sheeana's ear. "Watch Waff carefully. If he moves after us, call out."
"Yes, Mother. Where are we going?"
"I must look at this place. I am the one who has been brought here for a purpose." She raised her voice and addressed Waff: "Waff, please wait there for the rope."
"What have you been whispering?" he demanded. "Why must I wait? What are you doing?"
"I have been praying," Odrade said. "Now, I must continue this pilgrimage alone."
"Why alone?"
In the old language of the Islamiyat, she said: "It is written."
That stopped him!
Odrade led the way at a fast walk toward the rock stairs.
Sheeana, hurrying along beside Odrade, said: "We must tell people about this place. The old Fremen caves are safe from Shaitan."
"Be still, child," Odrade said. She aimed the light up into the stairway. It curved through the rock, angling sharply to the right up there. Odrade hesitated. The warning sense of danger she had felt at the beginning of this venture came back intensified. It was an almost palpable thing within her.
What is up there?
"Wait here, Sheeana," Odrade said. "Don't let Waff follow me."
"How can I stop him?" Sheeana glanced fearfully back across the chamber where Waff stood.
"Tell him it is God's will that he remain. Say it this way...
Odrade bent close to Sheeana and repeated the words in Waff's ancient language, then: "Say nothing else. Stand in his way and repeat it if he tries to pass."
Sheeana mouthed the new words quietly. She had them, Odrade saw. The girl was quick.
"He's afraid of you," Odrade said. "He won't try to harm you."
"Yes, Mother." Sheeana turned, folded her arms across her breast and looked across the chamber at Waff.
Aiming the light ahead of her, Odrade went up the rock stairs. Sietch Tabr! What surprise have you left for us here, old worm?
In a long low hallway at the top of the stairs, Odrade came on the first desert-mummified bodies. There were five of them, two men and three women, no identifying marks or clothing on them. They had been completely stripped and left for the desert's dryness to preserve. Dehydration had pulled skin and flesh tightly around the bones. The bodies were propped in a row, their feet extended across the passage. Odrade was forced to step over each of these macabre obstructions.
She passed her handlight across each body as she went. They had been stabbed almost identically. A slashing blade had been thrust upward just below the arch of the sternum.
Ritual killings?
Dryly puckered flesh had been withdrawn from the wounds, leaving a dark spot to mark them. These bodies were not from Fremen times, Odrade knew. Fremen death stills made ashes of all flesh to recover a body's water.
Odrade probed ahead with her light and paused to consider her position. Discovery of the bodies intensified her sense of peril. I should have brought a weapon. But that would have aroused Waff's suspicions.
The persistence of that inner warning could not be evaded. This relic of Sietch Tabr was perilous.
The beam of her light revealed another stairway at the end of this hall. Cautiously, Odrade moved forward. At the first step, she sent the beam of her light probing upward. Shallow steps. Only a little way up, more rock - a wider space up there. Odrade turned and sent the light stabbing around this hallway. Chips and burn marks scarred the rock walls. Once more, she looked up the stairway.
What is up there?
The sense of danger was intense.
One slow step at a time, pausing often, Odrade climbed. She emerged into a larger passage hewn through the native rock. More bodies greeted her. These had been abandoned in the disarray of their final moments. Again, she saw only mummified flesh stripped of clothing. They lay scattered along this wider passage - twenty of them. She wove her way around them. Some had been stabbed in the same way as the five on the lower level. Some had been slashed and hacked and burned by lasgun beams. One had been beheaded and the skin-masked skull lay against a wall of the passage like a ball abandoned from some terrible game.
This new passage led straight ahead past openings into small chambers on both sides. She saw nothing of value in the small chambers where she sent her probing light: a few scattered strands of spice fiber, small spills of melted rock, melt bubbles occasionally on floors, walls, and ceilings.
What violence was this?
Suggestive stains could be seen on some of the chamber floors. Spilled blood? One chamber had a tiny mound of brown cloth in a corner. Scraps of torn fabric scattered under Odrade's foot.
There was dust. Dust everywhere. Her feet stirred it up in passing.
The passage ended at an archway that gave onto a deep ledge. She sent her light beyond the ledge: an enormous chamber, far larger than the one down below. Its curved ceiling went so high she knew it must extend into the rock base of the great wall. Wide, shallow steps led down from the ledge onto the chamber floor. Hesitantly, Odrade went down the steps and out onto the floor. She sent her light sweeping all around. Other passages led out of the great chamber. Some, she saw, had been blocked by stone and the stones torn away to be left scattered on the ledge and on this great floor.
Odrade sniffed the air. Carried on the dust stirred up by her feet there was a definite smell of melange. The smell wove through her sense of peril. She wanted to leave, hurry back to the others. But the danger was a beacon. She had to learn where that beacon led.
She knew where she was now, though. This was the great gathering chamber of Sietch Tabr, site of countless Fremen spice orgies and tribal convocations. Here, the Naib Stilgar had presided. Gurney Halleck had been here. The Lady Jessica. Paul Muad'dib. Chani, mother of Ghanima. Here, Muad'dib trained his fighters. The original Duncan Idaho was here... and the first Idaho ghola!
Why have we been brought here? What is the danger?
It was here, right here! She could feel it. In this place, the Tyrant had concealed a spice hoard. Bene Gesserit records said the hoard had filled this entire chamber to the ceiling and into many of the surrounding passages as well.
Odrade pivoted, her gaze following the path of her light. Over there was the ledge of the Naibs. And there, the deeper Royal Ledge Muad'dib had commissioned.
And there is the archway where I entered.
She sent her light along the floor, noting places where searchers had chipped and burned the rock seeking more of the Tyrant's fabulous hoard. Fish Speakers had taken most of that melange, its hiding place revealed by the Idaho ghola who had been consort of the famed Siona. The records said subsequent searchers had found more caches hidden behind false walls and floors. There were many authenticated accounts and the verifications of Other Memories. The Famine Times had seen violence here when desperate searchers won through to this place. That might explain the bodies. Many had fought just for the chance to search Sietch Tabr.
As she had been taught, Odrade tried to use her sense of danger as a guide. Did the miasma of past violence cling to these stones after all of those millennia? That was not her warning. Her warning was something immediate. Odrade's left foot encountered an uneven place on the floor. Her light picked out a dark line in the dust. She scattered the dust with a foot, revealing a letter and then an entire word burned in a flowing script.
Odrade read the word silently and then aloud.
"Arafel."
She knew this word. Reverend Mothers of the Tyrant's time had impressed it into the Bene Gesserit consciousness, tracing its roots out to the most ancient sources.
"Arafel: the cloud darkness at the end of the universe."
Odrade felt the gasping accumulation of her warning sense. It focused on that single word.
"The Tyrant's holy judgment," the priests called that word. "The cloud darkness of holy judgment!"
She moved out along the word, staring down at it, noting the curling at the end that trailed off into a small arrow. She looked where the arrow pointed. Someone else had seen the arrow and had cut into the ledge where it pointed. Odrade crossed to where the searcher's burner had left a darker pool of melted rock on the chamber floor. Streams of melted stone ran out in fingers away from the ledge, each finger trailing from a deep hole burned into the rock of the ledge.
Bending, Odrade peered into each hole with her light: Nothing. She sensed the treasure hunter's excitement riding on her warning-fear. The extent of the wealth this chamber had once held staggered imagination. In the worst of the old times, a hand-carried luggage case could hold enough spice to buy a planet. And the Fish Speakers had squandered this hoard, losing it in squabbles and shattering misjudgments and ordinary foolishness too picayune for history to record. They had been glad to accept Ixian alliance when the Tleilaxu broke the melange monopoly.
Did the searchers find it all? The Tyrant was superbly clever.
Arafel.
At the end of the universe.
Had he sent a message down the eons to the Bene Gesserit of today?
She cast the beam of her light once more around the chamber and then upward.
The ceiling described an almost perfect half globe overhead. It had been intended, she knew, as a model of the night sky seen from the entrance to Sietch Tabr. But even by the time of Liet Kynes, the first planetologist here, the original stars painted on that ceiling had been gone, lost in the tiny rock chippings of small quakes and the everyday abrasions of life.
Odrade's breath quickened. The sense of peril had never been greater. The danger beacon shone within her! Quickly, she trotted directly across to the steps where she had descended to this floor. Turning there, she cast backward in her mind for Other Memories to limn this place. They came slowly, forcing past that heart-pounding sense of doom. Pointing the beam of her light upward and peering along it, Odrade placed those ancient memories over the scene in front of her.
Bits of reflected brilliance! '
Other Memories positioned them: indicators of the stars in a long-gone sky and right there! The silvery-yellow half circle of the Arrakeen sun. She knew it for a sunset sign.
The Fremen day starts at night.
Arafel!
Keeping her light on that sunset marker, she mounted the steps backward and went around the chamber on the ledge to the exact position she had seen in Other Memories.
Nothing remained of that ancient sun arc.
Searchers had chipped at the wall where it had been. Stone bubbles glistened where a burner had been passed along the wall. No breaks entered the original rock.
By the tightness in her chest, Odrade knew she teetered on the edge of a dangerous discovery. The beacon had led her here!
Arafel... at the edge of the universe. Beyond the setting sun!
She swept her light right and left. Another passage entrance opened on her left. Stones that had blocked it lay scattered on the ledge. Her heart pounding, Odrade slipped through the opening and found a short hall plugged with melted stone at the end. On her right, directly behind where the sunset marker had been, she found a small room thick with the smell of melange. Odrade entered the room and saw more signs of chipping and burning on walls and ceiling. The danger sense was oppressive here. She chanted the Litany Against Fear silently while she swept the beam of her light over the room. The place was almost square, about two meters on a side. The ceiling was less than half a meter above her head. Cinnamon pulsed in her nostrils. She sneezed and, blinking, saw a tiny discoloration on the floor beside the threshold.
More marks of that ancient search?