A few moments later he turned. “I believe it can be done.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “No offense, sir, but you gotta remember that we’re surface people, and makin’ our way through underground passages takes time. Hell, that’s something like a hundred miles from here. Even topside I’m not sure we could cover that distance on foot, an’ that’s straight-line distance, which ain’t what you’re dealin’ with underground.”
He made a weird sound I interpreted as laughter. “True and more than true, Clinton Slade; and yet it can be done, I think, though it shall be far from easy.” He turned to Jodi, who was testing connections on her latest improvisation. “Are you ready, Jodi Goldman?”
“Try it, Rokhaset. If you can duplicate the transmission pattern, we should be set.”
Given the manner in which Rokhaset and the makatdireskovi communicated, and the fact that the makatdireskovi received and interpreted TV and radio broadcasts, Jodi had wondered if it could, through Rokhaset, replicate the transmission in the other direction. After some consulting with the semisentient geobiomystical device and his advisors, Rokhaset had announced that it should in fact be possible; if so, he would have an ideal way of communicating the chosen route to us.
For a moment, the TV in the room just showed wavering patterns of static. Then, so suddenly we jumped, a test pattern and sound appeared, just like on any standard broadcast station. Except, of course, this was on one of the channels that shouldn’t show anything but dead air.
I swore I could almost see Rokhaset grin. “Ah, so it works. Excellent. Then I can show you and you can record this into your portable computers.”
We hooked our laptops up through the RF modulator and checked to make sure the signal was being recorded. “Let ‘er rip, Rokhaset.”
A map of Kentucky appeared, with purple highlighting the Slade homestead and bright green marking Mammoth Caves. The highlighting was shaped like an octagon instead of a circle, the way we usually do it, but aside from that and Rokhaset’s apparent preference for using our colors in painful ways, it looked just like one we would produce.
A bright red dot came into view, looking to be somewhere in Muhlenberg County. “The Lisharithada are based here, very nearly halfway between the great cavern complex you call Mammoth Caves and our own homes. You must disrupt their operations here in order to prevent the ritual from being carried out.
“Now, I fully realize the distances involved, and if you indeed had to travel in the normal fashion through ordinary caverns, there would be no way for this to work. However, one of the reasons both we and the Lisharithada have remained in this area for so many ages is simply that more remnants of the Old Ways have survived here than in nearly any other part of the world. One of these remnants is a portion of Nowëmosdet.”
I remembered the word from earlier, but I’d presumed it was just a term for cavern. “What’s that?”
“You might call it ‘Nowë ‘s Road,’ I suppose. In the old days there were many interconnected tunnels, like cities, and passage between them was made easier by a sort of network of canals invested with Nowë ‘s power—the Nowëmosdet. Two long segments of it still exist in this area. One connects our area with that of the Lisharithada, and this is of course what they have closed off to make it difficult to traverse. The other section was traditionally used only by the Lisharithada as it goes in the other direction. It is ironic, in a way.”
Jodi and I looked at each other. “What do you mean?”
“One could say that it is the Nowëmosdet that is responsible for our current emergency. You will recall that I did not question you as to what ‘Mammoth Cave’ was; this is because I am all too familiar with that system of caverns, at least in general. While the Lisharithada are, as I have described, now very hostile towards your people, the thing that finally pushed them into action is that your people’s exploration of the great cave system is fast approaching the point where you might discover Nowëmosdet, which would be potentially disastrous even though you could not normally use it as we would. No matter how natural looking, your people would become curious about a straight-line cavern so long and even in design, and would quickly arrive at the Lisharithada’s domain. Thus, despite the fact that parts of what you call Mammoth Cave are of historic significance to us, the Lisharithada have determined that they will destroy it all to prevent your continued intrusions.”