The slab rotated, revealing a stout makeshift hinge arrangement of slots and pins. A set of rubble stairs, quite rough in the upper portion, dropped into darkness. Carefully, Maia lifted one leg and stepped over the sill, lowering herself gingerly below the forest roots.
My torch is already half used up. Better make this quick, girl.
The steps ended about five meters down, followed by a low tunnel under primitive archworks. Maia had to duck as flames licked the ceiling, igniting cobwebs in fleeting, sparkling pyres. Finally, the coarse passage spilled into an underground room.
Dust and stone chips covered every surface, save a wooden table and chair, surrounded by scrape marks and foot tracks. In one corner lay a trash midden, the freshest layer consisting of still aromatic orange peels and chicfruit rinds. Someone's been eating better than the rest of us, she thought, wryly. A wooden box revealed a bag of stale sesame crackers and one orange, on its last legs. No wonder it's so urgent to launch the raft soon. You were running out of goodies, Inanna.
A blanket hung tacked over the sole exit. Maia tore it down. A few meters beyond, fresh stairs plunged anew. She proceeded to rip the blanket into strips, wrapping half of them around the torch, just below the burning part. One strip lit early and she dropped it, dancing away and cursing in whispers. Maia jammed the remainder under her belt, along with the knife, and set forth.
The dusty sense of age only increased as she descended, spiraling down the cylindrical shaft. These stairs were original equipment, finely carved and worn down several centimeters in the middle, by countless footsteps. Each one was shaped as the sector of a circle, resting one radial edge atop the one below it. In the middle, disklike projections from each wedge lay stacked, one above the next, all the way down, forming a round, vertical banister that she used to steady herself while dropping lower and lower, round and around.
After perhaps ten meters, Maia paused where a door and landing gave into dark rooms. Torchlight revealed arched ceilings, some collapsed, trailing off toward utter blackness. There were no sounds. Undisturbed dust showed that no one had walked these quarters in years. Feeling eerily chilled, she continued downward, passing a second landing . . . and a third . . . and yet another, until at last she sensed distinct sound rising up the shaft. Faint, as yet indistinct, its source lay below.
Oh, for a dumbwaiter, Maia recalled sardonically, contemplating climbing all this on the way back. Even the Lysodamned Lamai wine cellar wasn't like this. Hateful place, but at least they had a winch-lift. And a string of two-watt bulbs. It wasn't clear what she'd do if she was caught down here with the torch gone out. It should be simple, in theory, to get back. Just follow the stairs upward, then grope her way toward fresh air. In practice, it would probably be scary as hell. I wonder what kind of lamp Inanna's got.
Now the walls of the stairwell were cracked, as if tortured by some ancient blow or tremor. Worse, the steps themselves were splintered, chipped. Their undersides had given way, here and there, raining stone debris onto the stairs below. Some teetered in a fashion Maia found unnerving. There were gaps in places.
Maia was pretty sure, now. The huge, slag-rimmed crater wasn't volcanic, or natural at all, but an artifact of war. Some folk had once delved here, deeply, seeking protection. And someone else had come down after them, shaking the deepest levels. The scale of these ancient events frightened Maia, and right now the last thing she needed was more fear.
The sounds grew closer — distant, occasional plinkings. And a breeze. Fresh and decidedly cool.
Maia almost staggered when the stairs ran out. The tight spiral gave no warning, halting abruptly where a room opened ahead, featuring doors leading in three directions. At first she had to just walk the chamber's perimeter, trying to straighten the unconscious crouch she had assumed during the descent. Finally, Maia wet a finger to feel the breeze, watched the flickering of the dying torch, and peered for footprints.
That door.
Beyond lay a passage hewn from island rock, extending past room after dead-black room, as far as the dim pool of torchlight stretched. Maia extended the brand inside the first chamber, and found it stripped, save for one huge, polished stone bench that had a regular array of uniform holes drilled in its upper surface, as if someone had arranged it to hold dowel pegs for some strange game. Yet, Maia felt instinctively that "games" were never played in this cryptlike place. It gave her chills.
The plinking grew louder as she resumed walking. A low susurration also waxed and waned rhythmically. The torch began to sputter. It was time to decide whether to wind on more strips or let the thing go out. It took all her courage to make the logical choice.
