43—A Journey Toward Dosha
As Questioner set out on her search for her vanished entourage, she swept the hallways with all her senses, hoping that all the servants were abed or about some other business, for she did not want to explain where she was going. She did not want her ship or the Council of Worlds to be involved in this. Though she knew she was probably being watched from every side by unseen eyes, they did not trouble her, for they were not the eyes of mankind.
When she had discovered the wallways in the small salon, she had closed each one behind her, but when she, Mouche, and Ornery entered the room, one of them had been reopened. The wideflung panel disclosed the same narrow tunnel she had identified as the route taken by Ellin and Bao. A lit candle sat on the floor inside the opening as though to say, This way.
“You, boy?” Questioner asked. “Name?”
“Mouche, Madam.”
“You will lead.”
Mouche looked at the opening with a feeling of dawning delight. He forgot his pain. This sneakway was familiar to him, totally familiar, so like those wallways in House Genevois that it was obviously made by the same creatures and obviously … oh, obviously leading to the same kind of place. He shut his eyes for only a moment, calling upon his Hagion to let him become an intrepid explorer whose delight was entering dark, unknown territory in search of heaven knew what.
Questioner’s eyelids rose, an expression of surprise that she used seldom and felt almost never. The boy had accomplished a very pretty somatic maneuver there, in very short time. She had been monitoring his internal pressures and tensions, as well as smelling certain secretions in body and brain. All had responded to whatever invocation he had made. He was now exactly the person she would have selected to assist her in this journey. Not foolhardy, but daring and quite ecstatic about the venture!
Well, it must be conditioning. No doubt sexual consorts would need a good deal of conditioning. She would make time before she left the planet to speak to the head of his school or academy or whatever it was. If she survived to leave the planet.
“You next. What’s your name, sailor?”
“Ornery, Ma’am.”
“Well you then, seaman Ornery.” She winked at Ornery, much confusing her. “And, I bring up the rear. I am massive enough to keep almost anything off your back. If I say back in a loud, imperative voice, both of you come back close to me. I have certain defenses to help us all survive.”
Mouche oozed into the opening in the wall, turned briefly to catch the freshest airs—assuring himself that outside must lie in that direction—and advanced into the wind. The sneakway sloped slightly downward, and since the small salon was on the second level of the Mantelby Mansion, it stood to reason they would have to go down to get away from the house.
After shutting the opening behind them, Questioner emitted a cone of light wide enough to contain herself and Ornery as they wound slowly along the passage. The slope soon steepened into a ramp, the ramp gave way to steps leading into blackness. They slowed, taking more time to light each step, each corner, each twist and turn of the way.
The stairs and ramps, some of which creaked ominously under Questioner’s weight, were interrupted by horizontal stretches with frequent peekholes. Mouche glanced at a few of these with practiced ease, which Questioner noted before turning her own attention to the spyholes. She judged they were winding through a part of the house devoted to the servants, for there was much scurrying and late-night tidying going on.
At one point a stench came through some few holes like that from a fresh dunghill, and Questioner turned down her receptors. Her senses were connected to her mind, just as people’s were, and she found the smell atrocious.
They dropped farther. The smell did not depart, though it abated, and a certain deadened quality in the sound of their feet told them they were now on soil or stone rather than wooden floors, though the peekholes were still aboveground. The sneakways had obviously been designed to give maximum access without regard for the distance between points, and they had walked quite a long winding way to drop only these few meters. They continued to go downward, losing the peekholes on one side, and soon heard a sound, a rhythmic and inexorable ratcheting that grew louder as they progressed.