Maia's foot came down on something parched and crackly, whose plaint at being crushed seemed loud enough to wake Persephone, in Hades. She stopped dead still, trying to listen, but was hampered by the adrenaline pounding of her heart. After a long pause, at last Maia heard the soft sound of footsteps resume, moving off ahead of her. Something lit only by starlight briefly cut across a lattice of trees, disturbing their symmetry. She resumed the pursuit, wariness redoubled.
That was fortunate. As clouds thickened and darkness fell even deeper, it was a faint odor that stopped her short again. A change in the flow of air, of wind. Her quarry's footsteps took a sudden veer leftward, and Maia abruptly realized why.
Straight ahead, in the direction she had just been moving, a thick cluster of stars briefly emerged, casting a thousand gleaming reflections from a face of sheer concavity. The crater — far more intimidating than it had seemed by day. The glass-lined precipice yawned not meters away, like the jaws of some mighty, ancient thing, hungry for a midnight snack. Maia swallowed hard. She turned to the left and continued, watching the ground more closely than ever. Fortunately, the trail soon receded from the terrible pit. Some distance onward, there came a faint sound, like a scraping of stone against stone. Maia paused, heard it repeat. Then she waited some more.
Nothing. Silence. Just the wind and forest. Grimly, in case it was a trap, Maia extended her frozen stillness for another count of sixty. At last, she resumed her forward stalk, concentrating to keep a bearing toward that final, grating sound. A break in the cloud cover, near the horizon, showed a corner of the constellation Cyclist. She used it for reference while skirting trees and other obstacles, until finally concluding that something had to be wrong.
I must've gone too far. Or have I?
She could not see or hear anyone. The idea of an ambush was not to be dismissed.
Two more steps forward and her feet left loam. They seemed to scuff a flat, sandy surface, scored at regular intervals by fine grooves. Peering about, Maia realized she stood amid massive, blocky forms, in a clearing where not even saplings grew. She reached out to the nearest pile of weathered stone. Worked stone with eroded, right angles. It was one of many ruins peppering the island plateau. Few places were better suited for springing a trap.
Quietly, she felt her way along the wall till it ended. Passing to the other side, she verified that no one waited behind. Not there, at least. Maia knelt and laid her burdens on the ground. She closed one eye, to protect its dark-adaptation — a habit taught her long ago, during astronomy nights, by Old Coot Bennett — and raised the cup holding the ember. Shielding it with one hand, she blew until it glimmered in spots, then laid it down with the tinder-wrapped end of her stave on top. Maia took the chert knife in her left hand, and grabbed the stave's haft in her right. A smoldering rose.
Abruptly, the torch flared with an audible whoosh. Maia quickly stood, holding it above and behind her head to shine everywhere but in her eyes. Stark shadows fled the garish-bright stone walls and tree trunks. Hurrying to exploit surprise, she rushed to circumnavigate the ruins, peering in all corners while Inanna would be blinking away spots.
Nothing. Maia hurried through another circuit, this time checking places where someone might have hidden, even the lower branches. At any moment, if necessary, she was ready to use the flaming brand as a weapon.
Damn. Inanna must've been just far enough to duck out when I lit the torch. Too bad. Thought I'd finally figured out how to do something right. I guess people don't change.
Feeling deflated, disappointed, Maia sought the nearest flat area amid the rains and sat down.
The stone jiggled beneath her.
She stood up and turned around, holding the torch toward the slab. It looked like just another chiseled chunk of wall, atop a pile of others. Come on. You're jumping to conclusions.
A breeze caused the flames to flicker upward.
Upward? Maia held out her hand, and felt a thin stream of air. With her foot she gave the slab a tentative shove. Stone grated stone, a familiar sound. The slab moved much too easily.
"Well I'm an atyp bleeder." Maia blinked at a sudden mental vision of the glass-rimmed crater, as it had looked by daylight. She had briefly pictured a network of regular shapes behind the slag coating, then dismissed it as an artifact of her overactive pattern-recognition system. Now though, the mental conception loomed … of layers that she had rationalized as sedimentary, but which imagination shaped into rooms, corridors.
"Of course."
Someone had dug some sort of mine or tunnel system here. Perhaps they had delved for safety, to no avail against whatever had melted that awful hole.
Bending to examine the stone, Maia sought its secret. Tip it back? No, I see. Push to the left . . . then up!
