Often The Space Necessary For Supplies, Ammunition, And Incendiary Materials In Case Of Defeat Is Overlooked
Odibink Sharazilk and Gabdirn Haubentlag, the Heweker one, had both been putting their thoughts through an obstacle course in their efforts to find ways around the ideas of Mr. Taomenk, whose frequent objections to their theories they did not appreciate and whose own unpredictable, unprovable, and unsupported theories they despised. The cause of the hurdles was that regrettably they agreed with him about the day's business.
Accepting that, Mr. Gabdirn abandoned the project and instead appended a suggestion. “The Ertithans did the trap with a guest. I do not know how, but they must have if Cowsick Point has a fake parting made over it.”
“Oh, but, is that something which helps us if it is true?” Mr. Odibink interrupted without Mr. Atkosol's permission. He escaped censure on the basis that everyone expected that sort of behavior from him, another example of how the settled good is subjected to constant judgment while the wandering bad ranges where it will. “It may. They would have had, is it not so, some special chamber for this meeting of victim and guest. Or did they set the trap to trigger automatically? Can that be done with a magical trap?”
The closest Mr. Atkosol was able to find to experts in that field were Ritualists, who all agreed that such a thing could be done with rituals provided that the intended victim stepped on the design. From what they understood of the story as related by Wiuyo, the Ertithans had no way to determine the direction of Zatdil's approach; furthermore, the trap activated miles from the city according to one couplet's explicit declaration. A complete defense therefore would have required a ring of, at a rapid calculation, approximately thirty-five thousand ritual designs, give or take fifteen thousand. The Ritualists doubted even the Ertithans dared such an undertaking as that, but the task was not impossible. They were willing to conduct the experiment themselves if Mr. Atkosol committed himself to paying them a reasonable salary for the next three or four years. Possibly five.
“A pointed, if facetious, suggestion,” Atkosol responded.
“There was nothing minutely facetious about it on my side,” one of the Ritualists objected.
“To return to the possibility of a special chamber,” Atkosol continued, more interested in the Ertith angle than the job prospects for Ritualists in the present economy. Ertith ruins often included rooms which had no obvious practical purpose such as the local Statue Garden and its mysterious tremors, and if one could be proved to exist as a component of an elaborate scheme to imprison a foe too powerful to confront, perhaps an equivalently exotic function might be found for the others. Perhaps the statues did in fact depict beings other than human.
The assembly overall embraced the romance of searching for a secret magic trap chamber, though some took on the burden of proposing alternative programs to ensure the people understood their options. The most popular of those was to view the sudden emergence of accessible iron deposits with complacency. Selling tickets followed with two supporters. Every other suggestion, from building a temple nearby in the hope that would make it the gods' problem to severing Cowsick Point from the state of Enpasatosalkir and giving it to Chtrebliseu to handle, won not a single endorsement, that of the proposers included.
Perceiving a consensus, Atkosol called for details of practical implementation. Taomenk addressed that too. “I can start by following those pipes that start in the Statue Garden and end wherever they end. I want to find out where. I admit only the occasional segment is left, but it's enough to begin. You're right if you think digging straight through will take too long, and so I will hop ahead in the fairy world, check the caverns, back and forth, iterate, semi-tunnels.”
The attendees derived two conclusions from his speech, first that they did not understand precisely what he meant and second that he sounded sincerely or even inspiringly confident, as expected of a man who went about with that much facial hair in contravention of contemporary fashion advice. The three next speakers concurred in the opinion that Mr. Taomenk deserved the chance to fail, whereupon Mr. Atkosol called for an immediate vote which passed the proposal with an overwhelming majority.
Atkosol prepared to dismiss the meeting. “It falls to me to make a final address. It is for each of us to determine what is best, whether to stay amid uncertain danger or depart in search of employment, also uncertain. That is for those among you on my payroll. As for those not so situated, the choice is likely similar.”
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The assembled might have wished for a more inspiring speech from a former politician. Something about the courage of their ancestors would have been seemly if formulaic, and a declaration of brotherhood with all who remained to risk the uncanniest peril seen in a generation would have matched the general sentiment. What truly rankled was knowing Atkosol would benefit not at all from any such rhetorical flourish. Regardless of anything he said, the regular tourists would leave, the thrill-seekers would stay for a time, and the greater part of the assembly could not look upon Mr. Atkosol as he brought his hand down without thinking, “I do need the salary,” with the occasional substitution for the last word of “respect of the academic community.”
After the dissolution of the informal congress, thrill-seeker Millim Takki Atsa consulted the salaried Dirant Rikelta on the weighty subjects recently exposed to public discussion. “Do Adabans hold meetings like this often? Is that how they usually proceed?”
“The form was recognizable although much of the formal procedure has been elided. As dull a topic as it is, I propose to offer tutoring sessions for established GE practices, since a violation may not meet with the indulgence naturally extended to foreigners now that your Adaban proficiency is so far advanced.”
“Ressi, I'm sorry I was too embarrassed to admit I've been worried about that myself.”
“It is shameful for me to be so remiss as to allow you the slightest suspicion of not being welcome among us.”
Such was the mood of the participants as they departed, not at all despairing now that someone widely approved was setting himself to the problem. In Ividottlof, the inhabitants trusted Mr. Taomenk less, but as few could afford to desert their homes and businesses for an indeterminate time, they assumed an attitude of resigned courage.
Taomenk, supported by steadfast Adabans, eager fairies, and Survyais supervised by Doltandon Yurvitas whose fairy riches had indeed faded along with the lake district but whose cupidity and employment contract had not, made progress some described as unfortunately rapid. He found stretches of underground passages. That was the rapid part. The “unfortunate” modifier attached when he discovered a great many such stretches branching off the main line he followed from the Statue Garden, none of them markedly promising, like subsidiary businesses of a firm made overconfident by recent growth. Confidence in a swift resolution fell.
The profusion of passages did not dishearten the industrious engineer, who had expected too little rather than too much and far preferred the former. The discoveries simultaneously spurred bold experiments in the field of cartography. Lommad Okliten reformed a portion of Fairy City into a scale model of the ruined underground large enough for people interested in walking the same route as some Ertithan janitor once did to stroll along without hitting their heads but sufficiently small that someone could, and often did, survey the entire layout from a nearby observation tower and try to extrapolate the rest of it.
The complex became a regular hiking trail for tourists who often suffered, during tours of the genuine caverns, a natural fear concerning the tons of material overhead which had not been approved by an architect. Moreover, time spent in fairyland was time away from the Ividottlof region where a change of name to “guestland” could be justified. Not only was the affected area increasing in size, but visitors who could not resist staring at their problems rather than solving or escaping them began to report something dismissed initially as an invention of minds desperate to justify their long trips: Strange figures drifting through the purpled landscape, vague in their appearance like stones at the bottom of a pool during the rain and evanescent like the rain itself.
Gabdirn (the Heweker one) confirmed the figures to be silhouettes of guests, from a distance, using a telescope. Anyone who questioned his courage encountered the defense, standard because incontrovertibly true, that he alone among Symbol Knights dared to approach as close as that, to say nothing of the time he defeated a fairy king in single combat. He himself did say nothing about it, for all that well-wishers tried to persuade him to include the event in the preface of his future books. “It has no relation to the contents,” he insisted. His argument later failed to convince his publisher, naturally.
The new phenomenon decided many to reassess the value of their jobs, their homes, and their more stubborn relatives. After all, what was a cousin really, they asked as they packed their belongings. The flight might have become general but for one occurrence, much as when the expected rise in price of a deceased artist's works fails to occur for the simple reason that rarity does not in every case compensate for poor quality.
“I have found something,” Mr. Taomenk declared upon returning to camp one day. The announcement replaced his usual update of “It goes, it goes,” and people noticed. “What it is, ask an Ertithan, but it is most certainly something. Are Mr. Gabdirn and Mr. Dirant available to give their opinions, or?”
He directed the question at no particular person. Since Atkosol Tellanstal happened to be passing by and was accustomed to responsibility, he took up the burden of a response. “I will send people after Mr. Gabdirn. Mr. Dirant, is he not a Ritualist? I can prevail upon Mr. Patklenk to put in extra hours.”
“I won't object for Mr. Dirant to have assistance. Perhaps Mr. Odibink and Mr. Hwohyesu should come too, and the other Mr. Gabdirn. I suppose it's everyone but the reporters who might have something worth saying.”
