“I just hope this stuff doesn’t wear out too soon.”
We came into sight of the next intersection. “Aw, shit.”
The free ride had evidently come to a halt. Probably the next area belonged to their ruling class. Whatever the reason, this one had a door on it, and the door was guarded by three Lisharithada, who were being given a wide berth by the others. Even if the direction they were going would make it sensible to cut close by the doors, the others—civilians, I supposed—would detour quite a distance around instead.
“Can you see how to open the damn thing?”
Jodi and I studied the area for a few minutes. Then she pointed; after a moment, I nodded. Like their less warlike brethren, the Lisharithada tried to use natural approaches even to technological problems. There were, barely visible from where we stood, a pair of channels in the stone floor where water could run down and into holes in the wall. The channels actually connected with each other, but there was a stone that sat—perfectly fitted—in the connection area, preventing water from the one channel from reaching the other. Just moving that stone would divert the water from the first channel to the second, presumably causing something to fill with water and lever the door aside.
There was no way we could avoid causing some kind of stir here, but maybe we could still avoid combat. Moving carefully around the guards, I positioned myself near the door, while Jodi walked over and considered the fitted stone. I saw her shrug, then stick the claw end of her crowbar in and lever the stone out. To my surprise, she then picked the stone up and carried it over, joining me by the door. Jodi’s a big woman, and because of her very active lifestyle she’s a lot stronger than her slender build would lead you to think. Still, I wouldn’t have thought she could handle that large a stone so readily.
I didn’t give it much thought, however, because I was watching to see how the Lisharithada would react. As far as I could tell, we weren’t so much invisible as just effectively a blind spot in their field of vision. Humans have a blind spot in each eye, but we virtually never notice them. Our brains cover up their existence, filling in the area with appropriately non-distracting “stuff” so we perceive our field of view as being complete and uninterrupted even though there’s a significant hole in it. Apparently the same phenomenon applied here. They simply weren’t aware that anything was happening where we were.
“Why didn’t you just move it to the ‘open’ position?”
“Because I could just see the comedy routine if I did! They can’t see me, right? So they see the water going, come over to check it out, I back away so they don’t go blind and realize what’s up, they push it back in place, door doesn’t finish opening, I schlep back over and push the rock: lather, rinse, repeat.”
By now the guards had noticed the water flow had shifted and were gathering around the valve area. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tones were so very familiar I could almost interpret it anyway.
What the heck’s going on? Hey, where’s the damn rock? Who’s the joker? Dammit, that’s going to stick the door open!
And open was exactly what the door was doing, rising up smoothly on its unseen lever arm which was now weighted down by the water pouring into some hidden bucket. I had to concede Jodi had done the right thing. Given how ponderously slow these doors opened, we’d never have gotten it open wide enough to get through without Jodi’s tactic, at least not without ending up having to lay the guards out. “Good call, Jodi.”
Jodi looked smug. She does “smug” awfully well, too; it’s probably her worst major character flaw.
The new tunnel branched out to left and right; we took the right-hand branch, which was narrower than the tunnels we’d been in earlier. Jodi stowed away the crowbar and got the longer, straighter rod of steel that she’d made up for a weapon—like a blunt sword with a wooden and leather-wrapped handle. There weren’t quite as many Lisharithada in this corridor as there had been in the other, but it was enough smaller that neither of us had much hope we could continue undetected for very long. We were getting close to the ritual area, though. Just maybe we’d get away with it.