Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,96

said Clef.

said Clef. There was a pause.

Clef coughed.

She noticed Orso glaring at her impatiently.

There was another pause…and then the voices flooded back into her head, an avalanche of words and desires and anxious fears.

Except some of the voices grew louder or softer, rapidly, one after another. It was as if Clef were sorting through a stack of papers, looking at each one before passing on to the next—except it was happening inside her brain. The sensation was profoundly disorienting.

Then one voice arose from the chaos: <…I am a reed in the wind, dancing with my partner, my mate, my love…I dance as they dance, I move as they move, I trace our dance within the clay…>

said Clef.

said Clef.

“I’ve got it, I think,” said Sancia.

“Then lead the way,” said Gregor.

Listening to the whispering device, Sancia wandered through workshops filled with half-built devices, rows of cold furnaces, wall after wall of bookshelves. Clef led her down the stairs, across the mezzanine, and then to a side hall, which then led to another stairway. Then he led her down flight after flight of stairs, to the basement, which seemed to double as a library. Orso, Berenice, and Gregor followed, bearing small, scrived lights, not speaking—but Sancia’s head was filled up with words.

She was still getting used to this. For so long she’d been accustomed to scrivings being nothing more than murmurings in the back of her head. To have Clef clarify them was like having someone wipe away a layer of sand to reveal words written on the path before you.

But if I’m hearing this from him, wondered Sancia, what else am I picking up? And what’s he picking up from me? She wondered if she would start to think like Clef, to act like him, and never even notice it.

They entered the basement. And then, abruptly, the trail ended before a blank wall.

asked Sancia.

Another pause, and then she heard it, mumbling behind the walls: <…still no dance…still no sounds. Silence. Nothing to dance to, no steps and twirls to scrawl in the clay…>

said Sancia. She stepped back and looked at the wall. She sighed, and said, “Anyone know what’s behind this wall?”

“More wall, I would assume,” said Orso.

“It’s not. The thing’s back there.”

“You found the rig?” Gregor asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Now we just have to figure out how they access it.” She grimaced, then pulled off her gloves. “Hold on a second.” She took a breath, focused, shut her eyes, and placed her palms against the wall.

Instantly, the wall bloomed inside her mind, all those old, pale stones and layers of plaster leaping into her thoughts. The wall told her of age and pressure, decades spent bearing all the weight of the building above and transferring it to the foundation below. Except…

In one place, the foundation wasn’t there.

A passageway, she thought.

Keeping her eyes shut, she walked along the wall, bare palm pressed to its surface. Finally she came to it—the gap in the foundation was just below her. She opened her eyes, knelt, and pressed her palms to the floor.

The floorboards crackled to life inside of her, creaking and groaning, telling her of thousands of footfalls, leather soles and wooden soles and, sometimes, bare