“How’s the boy?” he asked.
“He’s fine.” Leely was fine. She had no worries whatsoever about Leely. He had just wakened and now sat happily arranging bits of gravel while Leelson and Mitigan talked about getting out, and Lutha turned her attention to Saluez.
At some point in the wild journey, perhaps when they were dumped from the vortex, Saluez’s head had been injured. She had a large bruise above her left ear, and as Lutha felt gingerly around the edges of it, she opened her eyes.
“Have we come to heaven?” Saluez murmured.
For a moment Lutha couldn’t answer. Had they come to heaven! Hell, more likely, but she hesitated to say that, not knowing how badly Saluez was hurt.
“Dananana,” whispered Leely, laying his face against Saluez. “Dananana.” He pulled her veil aside and kissed her face moistly, repeatedly.
Lutha looked away. Just another of Leely’s little habits. She took a deep, painful breath and turned to meet Saluez’s terrified eyes. She’d had time to realize it wasn’t heaven, which saved Lutha from having to break the news.
“We’re not dead?” Saluez asked, sounding strangely disappointed.
“Not so far,” Lutha told her glumly. It would do no good to delay telling her the truth. “If the Kachis don’t come back, we may even survive for a while.”
“They went to heaven,” Saluez cried, her eyes wild with pain and confusion.
“They went out there to eat fish,” Lutha said as matter-of-factly as she could manage. “If the big creatures we saw are Ularians, then your beautiful people are baby Ularians. Or maybe Ularian larvae. Or nymphs.”
“Imagos,” corrected the ex-king from the opening.
“Whatever.” Lutha shrugged, gasping at the pain. Shrugging was not a good idea.
“Mother,” Saluez cried, her eyes wide. “Mother.”
Lutha leaned forward to take Saluez into her arms, and for a moment Saluez clung to her before slumping into unconsciousness once more. The men stopped their talk long enough to cast a sympathetic glance toward the women. Leely scrambled up to the cavern entrance, crawled into Jiacare Lostre’s lap, and stared out across the waves, waving his hands and saying over and over, “Dananana, Dananana,” at which the king looked rather more intrigued than Lutha thought appropriate.
After a time Mitigan took the king’s place in the cavern opening and carried on a shouted conversation with the person in the other cavern, who identified herself as Snark. By this time it was becoming obvious to all those in the cavern that they could not simply climb up or down from where they were. The cliff was sheer below and overhanging above. Snark tried to get a rope to Mitigan, who leaned widely from the entrance, gripping the stone with one hard fist while he flailed unsuccessfully at the windblown line. After a time Snark shouted that she would go up on top and try it from the other side, but by this time Leelson had made a rope of Leely’s harness, all the belts and sashes, plus some strips torn from the bottom of the robes, and had weighted the end with a stone.
Mitigan succeeded in tossing the stone over the tree that protruded from the cliff just above Snark’s hole and turned to the others with an expression of triumph. Then, inexplicably and simultaneously, they all gagged.
“Get in!” demanded Leelson.
Mitigan dodged back into the hole and lay flat.
“Ularians,” breathed Leelson, unnecessarily. Those who were conscious had already figured that out. They lay on their bellies, drooling onto the cave bottom, waiting for the taste to pass. Lutha was nearest the opening, and she actually saw one of them go by, like a hairy whale sailing out over the sea, long, tangled tentacles hanging like a tattered drapery beneath it. It should have seemed balloonlike, she thought. It should have seemed airy, but did not. Instead it breathed ominous cold, horrid intention, ghastly power. She felt the tears start and barely kept herself from moaning.
After a lengthy hiatus, the taste dissipated and they got shakily to their feet once more. When they looked out, Snark had already attached her rope to the makeshift line. Mitigan hauled it in. Snark made an amazingly acrobatic leap out from her cavern to the tree branch, squirmed up and onto it with the rope between her teeth. Shortly afterward she called, and Mitigan went up the line like an ape. Leelson went next, though with rather less agility, and the two of them raised the rest, one at a time. First Leely, then the unconscious Saluez, tied into a kind of rope sling, then Lutha, her head reeling from the height, the immensity of the sea, the nearness of the Ularians. The ex-king came last, looking around himself delightedly, his cheeks pink with excitement.