sorrow.
It was more, he thought, than the struggle to face her father's mortal
ity. Perhaps he should talk to Maati about it. He was older and had
greater experience with women. Cehmai shook his head and forced himself
to concentrate. It was half a hand before he saw a path through the
stone that would yield a fair return and not collapse the works.
Stone-Made-Soft neither approved nor dissented. It never did.
The overseer took a pose of gratitude and approval, then folded tip the
maps. The engineer sucked his teeth, craning his neck as the diagrams
and notes vanished into the overseer's satchel, as if hoping to see one
last objection, but then he too took an approving pose. They lit the
lanterns and turned to the wide, black wound in the mountain's side.
The tunnels were cool, and darker than night. The smell of rock dust
made the air thick. As he'd guessed, there were few men working, and the
sounds of their songs and the barking of their dogs only made the
darkness seem more isolating. They talked very little as they wound
their way through the maze. Usually Cehmai made a practice of keeping a
mental map, tracking their progress through the dark passages. After the
second unexpected intersection, he gave up and was content to let the
overseer lead them.
Unlike the mines on the plain, even the deepest tunnels here were dry.
When they reached the point Cehmai had chosen, they took out the maps
one last time, consulting them in the narrow section of the passageway
that the lanterns lit. Above them, the mountain felt bigger than the sky.
"Don't make it too soft," the engineer said.
"It doesn't bear any load," the overseer said. "Gods! Who's been telling
you ghost stories? You're nervous as a puppy first time down the hole."
Cehmai ignored them, looked up, considering the stone above him as if he
could see through it. He wanted a path wide as two men walking with
their arms outstretched. And it would need to go forward from here and
then tilt to the left and then up. Cehmai pictured the distances as if
he would walk them. It was about as far from where he was now to the
turning point as from the rose pavilion to the library. And then, the
shorter leg would be no longer than the walk from the library to Maati's
apartments. He turned his mind to it, pressed the whirlwind, applied it
to the stone before him, slowly, carefully loosening the stone in the
path he had imagined. Stone-Made-Soft resisted-not in the body that
scowled now looking at the tunnel's blank side, but in their shared
mind. The andat shifted and writhed and pushed, though not so badly as
it might have. Cehmai reached the turning point, shifted his attention
and began the shorter, upward movement.
The storm's energy turned and leapt ahead, spreading like spilled water,
pushing its influence out of the channel Cehmai's intention had
prepared. Cehmai gritted his teeth with the effort of pulling it back in
before the structure above them weakened and failed. The andat pressed
again, trying to pull the mountain down on top of them. Cehmai felt a
rivulet of sweat run down past his ear. The overseer and the engineer
were speaking someplace a long way off, but he couldn't be bothered by
them. They were idiots to distract him. He paused and gathered the