Page 25 of Spelunking Through Hell

“I’m sort of in a hurry,” I said. “I’m sorry if that seems rude to you, but I reallyamjust passing through.”

If I remembered correctly, a jaghirdar was sort of like a princecrossed with a mayor. Someone who’d been born in charge and held near-absolute power over the land under their control, but wasn’t considered royalty, due to whatever justification the locals had come up with. Maybe they were ruled by an emperor or despot who didn’t like the idea of competing royals, or maybe they had reached the “no more kings” stage before they reached the “maybe feudalism isn’t such a good idea after all” stage. I’d need a lot more time and a lot of information about the local social structure to understand, and quite honestly, I didn’t want to take the time.

“I apologize,” said the speaker, with another shallow bow. “That was not intended to sound like a request. All visitors are required to see the jaghirdar before they can be allowed passage through our territories. You will come with us now.”

There was no please. I still made one last stab at getting out of this. “You said you would be honored if I agreed,” I protested.

“Yes, and we would have been,” said the speaker. “Sadly, that happy future has not come to pass, for any of us. You do us no honor, and we grant you no grace. Now we will take you to see our jaghirdar, and you will not fight, for it would go poorly for you.”

I could see six of them, and none had any visible weapons apart from their spears. A spear is a useful thing. It’s also a simple thing, and it’s easy enough to take a spear away from someone who you feel has forfeited spear privileges. I could take six of them. I’ve taken on worse and won.

And what then? There were six of them herenow, all summoned without any visible or audible alarm, and they could fly. I had to travel the better part of three miles before I could get out of here, or my entire trip would have been for nothing. Naga wasn’t necessarily going to give me another free batch of beads to get myself farther afield than my tattoos could carry me. I frowned, mouth set into a hard line.

I can be impulsive. I have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. But I’ve also survived for a long, long time in a universe that seems to actively want me dead, and I know when the odds are so against me that fighting isn’t the answer.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do this. Take me to your leader.”

They walked me through the streets in formation, three in front and three behind, and none of them talked to me, not once I’d agreed to go with them. I wasn’t formally their prisoner, but there really wasn’tany other term for what I was at this point. They hadn’t taken my weapons, but I wasn’t sure how much of what I had on me they would actually recognize as weapons. Worlds with stable societies without guns outnumber the ones with guns at least ten to one. Maybe they thought I just had weird taste in jewelry.

And maybe it didn’t matter, as we approached a low, imposing building that seemed to have been constructed on a different scale than all the buildings around it, roof held up by vast columns, topped with a series of slanted, irregular surfaces that broke with the general aesthetic of the rest. Then I blinked and saw the utility of it.

No one could land on that roof. Attackers coming from the air would have to go down to the ground before they could pose any sort of a challenge. And the low construction would also be a tactical advantage, reducing the amount of space they’d have to defend in case of a situation like that one. They would be prepared for a siege.

On Earth or Ithaca, I would have called this a courthouse, maybe a museum if I was feeling generous. Here, it was a palace. It was a fortress.

It was a prison.

My captors led me up the broad staircase and inside, into an echoing antechamber decorated with richly embroidered tapestries of animals I didn’t recognize, surrounded by the wide shapes of things I assumed were the local equivalent of flowers. Given all of creation to spread out and get weird, biology does some shit. But for a world to evolve bipedal life, again, it has to follow certain understandable rules. This one had clearly embraced symmetry to a degree that made sense to my Earth-born eyes and kept this whole thing from being too jarring.

There was no furniture anywhere inside the frankly massive room, no adornment apart from the tapestries. Our footsteps sounded like thunder in the cavernous space, and I glanced up, catching a glimpse of a domed ceiling with a skylight at the center, presumably to allow people to come and go from above.

Huh. So they were well fortified, but they still left some avenues open. That could mean that they were too cocky to worry about attackers. It could also mean they were anticipating the need for a swift escape.

Either way, I didn’t have a great feeling about this jaghirdar I was about to meet. My captors stopped abruptly in the middle of the room, and I did the same. The three in front turned to face me.

“Welcome, honored guest,” said the one who had done all thespeaking since this whole thing kicked off. “If you would wait here, we will collect the jaghirdar for you.”

Definitely not on the level of a prince, then, unless there was something in his throne room—or office, as the case might be—that they really didn’t want a stranger to see. Still, I shrugged and said, “No skin off my nose,” taking a small, petty comfort in their expressions of bewilderment at what must have been an unfamiliar idiom.

The three who had led the way turned, the speaker frowning, and walked the rest of the way across the room. There was no visible door. As I watched, they spread their wings, which were impossibly gauzy things that looked like they should never have been able to sustain the weight of their bodies, lifted off the floor, and soared through the center of the closest tapestry, vanishing into what I had assumed was an image of some sort of complicated plant.

Okay, third option: I was waiting here because I couldn’t use the doors that they used to get around the place. That was a new one on me. I turned to my three remaining escorts, trying not to look too impressed. It wasn’t that hard. I’d seen more elaborate architecture on a dozen different worlds, even if most of it had been built with a healthy respect for gravity.

“Any of you people understand me?” I asked. There was no flicker of comprehension in their eyes, which were, universally, matched to their skins, just a few shades darker. I nodded. “Didn’t think so. Cool.”

Since only one of them had spoken during our whole trip, I’d been assuming that was the one with the translator, and the rest of them were here to stab me if I tried to do something foolish, like run away from the flying weirdoes with the giant toothpicks. I folded my arms, resisting the urge to start studying my nails. When dealing with a completely unknown society, it’s best to avoid as many potentially misinterpreted gestures as possible, just to be sure you don’t accidentally insult them so profoundly that they decide the only solution is dumping you in a vat of the local acid equivalent. Instead, I turned to look at the spot where the other three had disappeared, waiting for their return.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long. One by one, they emerged from the center of the tapestry, trailed by four new figures with spears, then two unarmed people in longer, more elaborate robes, and finally a smaller figure in the most elaborate robe of all. The last figure was wearing a heavy crown made of what looked like gold mingled with bone, and if they’d been human, I would have put them at most at ten years old.

Having no idea of the local lifespan, I couldn’t guess at actual age, any more than I could guess at gender, but I’d have been willing to bet actual money that however old they were, it wasn’t adult. Their jaghirdar was a child. Maybe that explained how careful they were all being. When you’ve already changed who’s in charge recently enough to wind up with a kid running the show, you don’t want to risk anything else going wrong.

All ten of them landed a short distance away and walked toward where we were waiting, with two groups of three forming lines to either side of the jaghirdar, while the last guard and the two unarmed adults fell into place behind them. They bowed to me. I bowed back, as much out of reflex as intent, and then winced. If they took that as some sort of insult, I could have just made things worse for myself.

To my relief, their expression didn’t change as they straightened and approached, clasping their hands right around where the navel would have been on a human their size. “Greetings, traveler,” they said, the same translator the other speaker had used turning their voice into a bright, clear adolescent tenor. “You are welcome here.”

“That’s cool,” I said, glancing to my guards. “I was sort of on my way somewhere, though, so I’d appreciate it if you’d say it was cool for me to leave.”

“My adviser tells me you came from the direction of Atl,” said the jaghirdar. “We haven’t seen anyone from that way in many years.”

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