Chapter 113: Mushroom Bell

Six reed frames slammed into the tier above.

The crash came through the shut slab as a rapid wooden battering. Water slapped stone behind the iron. A sleeper coughed once, failed to draw enough air for another, and knocked a heel against a floating mattress.

Ada pressed close to the inspection grille. Her next breath went in through her nose and came back sharp.

"The wall-side bed has one pinned under the second tier. Their mouth is clear by a finger. That’s all."

Warm damp air wheezed across Dane’s sound rail. It carried wax, stale sweat, wet reeds, and thirty adults using the same trapped breath. The grille had stopped dripping in separate beads. Moisture ran from every bar.

Orsa scraped her broken sounding pole over the stone above it. The remaining tine caught behind a lip hidden under fungus. She pulled. Mortar pattered across Dane’s Wagon bed, and a wooden catch groaned open.

"There’s a bell loft above us," she said. "It used to carry sleep-chamber air to the upper cracks. If any throat is still alive, we can give them somewhere to breathe."

The main flood struck the other face of the slab.

Iron bowed. Both chain loops kicked their rests hard enough to spit grit across the dry ledge. The slab came back and held.

"Get Buk beyond the chain swing," Brant said. Pain roughened the bottom of his voice, but neither injured arm moved. "Voss, keep the forward cord off his litter poles. We may need your hook above."

Flat Hands and Lye Scar dragged the litter along the dry wall. Voss hauled himself after it on his elbows until his hook found a rail eye. The coffer followed with a jumble of wooden feet.

Orsa lifted the catch. A narrow ramp curled upward behind the slab housing. Her right boot found the first rise. Her left struck too soon, and the reopened knee scraped stone.

Ada caught the back of her belt. "Tear that knee deeper and you lose the leg for this climb. Give it one step at a time."

"Then keep hold of me. They don’t have a long climb in them."

Dane rolled in behind her. Stone closed around his wounded quarter at the first bend. He put his intact rear wheel against the inner wall, waited for the late axle to knock into line, and edged the dead front-left rail through. The right-quarter split grazed grit without taking weight. Rod one stayed seated.

At the top, his next wheel turn crossed from hard stone onto springing root.

Heat rose through holes under him. It throbbed against his underside with the trapped cavern’s weak, uneven breaths. The air above held more room, yet every draw through the floor came back thick with mushroom starch.

Orsa stopped him with the butt of her pole against his sound rail.

"Caps from the floor to the crown," she said. "Cream-gray, amber through the ribs. Some are wider than shields. Three chimney necks above them: wet stone to the left, old felt in the middle, one narrow crack to the right. Mind every stem until we know what it carries."

Voss’s hook rasped up the ramp. The forward cord dragged over a root and flexed something small near Dane’s wheel.

A woman’s exhausted voice spoke from the floor.

"Who left the shovel there?"

Voss jerked the hook clear. Buk answered from below, his voice muffled by the litter cloth.

"If the shovel answers her, Buk is leaving both of them here."

The small cap sagged wetly around its stem.

"It has spent the last hard sound made beneath it," Orsa said. "Bend a stem and you hear what it kept. Nobody touch the larger ones."

The root floor punched Dane’s wheels upward.

A note rolled through the loft below the range of speech. It found the iron in Voss’s hook, the litter rings, the chalk in Vera’s pouch, and every tooth in the ramp. Buk swore. Splinted wood rattled against stone. The vibration reached Dane through his two wheels at different times and twisted his Wagon bed between them.

His dead rail hammered empty air. Rod one began to creep along the right-quarter split.

"The middle felt is shedding!" Vera called.

Cloth snapped open below him. Flat Hands and Lye Scar caught the first dry rush of spores before it could pour down the ramp. Their boots slid together under the weight.

"Cover eyes and mouths," Ada said. Her fingers found rod one through the split while the rest of Dane rang around them. "Yours is moving toward the break. Bring the sound side down slowly. I’ll tell you when it seats."

Dane lowered his intact edge. The late wheel arrived with a jolt that drove the rod against Ada’s fingertips.

"Hold. You’re back in the old groove."

Stone cracked above the next hum.

Orsa shoved her pole into the springing roots at Dane’s front. "The big bell’s collar is pulling vent stones out of the floor. If the collar tears free, the sleepers get spores and rubble for air."

The central root band descended across Dane’s path. He rolled beneath it and spread one Door-derived plane along his sound side. The living weight crushed down. His rear wheel sank into loam; the late wheel stopped higher and tried to cant his split into the stone.

Voss looped the forward cord through Dane’s sound-rail eye and set his hook against it. Two coffer feet punched into the root mat beside him. The other four battered the back of his splints, desperate to retreat.

"Forward, you miserable box," Voss growled. "Hit me again and I use you for the wedge."

One planted foot skidded. The other stamped deeper and took the line before Dane’s rear wheel could slide.

"That cord arrests the slide," Brant called from the bend. "It won’t carry the root. Dane, keep your sound side under the collar. Everyone else gives him room to fail without taking Buk with him."

The pinned sleeper scratched weakly at the tier behind the grille. No cough followed.

Vera climbed past Dane’s dead side. Chalk scraped stone at the crown while Orsa tore a strip from a loose reed and held it into the rising heat.

"Left neck beads water," Orsa said. "Its fibers are stuck to the rock. The middle won’t stir at all. The right is pulling the top strands into that crack."

"I’m giving all three marks the same small push," Vera said. "Call any change before the bell hits us again."

The first pulse of mana touched the wet neck. Dane heard it answer through the stone as a quick bright hum returning to Vera’s chalk.

"Left threw it back," Orsa said.

Vera moved to the middle. The chalk tone spread wide, dulled under the packed felt, and remained there. Loose soot stayed against the blockage.

The floor swelled.

"Middle is holding everything," Orsa said. "The right still has two currents."

Vera reached the final mark as the central bell contracted.

The root band drove Dane halfway into his own hollow. His right-quarter split spread around rod one. The late wheel struck down, pitched his whole bed toward the collar, and sent the note shrieking through his lure rings.

Voss’s cord snapped taut. His hook struck the rail eye. Behind him, the coffer’s retreating feet found the ramp edge and kicked nothing.

"One more step back and we all go down," he snarled. Wood thumped as he drove an elbow into the coffer’s frame. The two anchored feet dug in.

The third mark answered with a higher hum that weakened above Dane.

"The right took it upward. Nothing came back through the chalk." Vera scored a longer line through the calcified lip. "Kril, stay below this mark. Orsa, tell him where the live fibers pull."

Kril climbed onto a dry root shelf. He kept one blade sheathed and drove the spine of the other beneath the marked crust. The fungus gave with a sound like wet bone separating at a joint.

Cold touched the tip of Orsa’s reed, then vanished when the lip settled again.

"You found it," she said. "The draft is above your blade. I need the crust lifted before I can turn it."

"Get your pole under my spine," Kril said. His breath rasped behind the cloth over his mouth. "Use your hips. That knee won’t survive a straight shove."

Orsa set her useful leg high. The broken pole grated beneath his blade.

Another resonance gathered inside the central cap. Dane felt it before it reached the floor: a deep tightening in the root across his body, followed by pressure searching every hollow he owned. His lure hardware wanted to scatter the sound through rings and latches. The broad Door plane under the root wanted to return it as one flat blow.

He changed that plane by a grain.

The bell’s note crossed him and came out rougher, rounded at the top, a single chosen overtone riding the violence. It held until his late wheel sank another finger into loam. Then the pitch tore apart and left his sound rail quivering.

Vera’s chalk stopped for one breath.

"You bent that note," she said.

Her boot shifted back toward the crown. Chalk bit stone again.

"Kril, the crack is climbing. Two fingers left, and keep the blade flat."

The bell crushed down.

Dane’s rear wheel buried to the rim. The root squeezed his Door plane against the warmer hollow beneath it. Rod one scraped the split without slipping. His intact rail groaned so loudly he almost missed Orsa’s answering shout.

She hauled the pole across her hips. Kril leaned into the blade spine. Calcified fungus ripped along Vera’s line, and cold air knifed through the opening across their hands.

The root tried to seal it.

Voss’s hook rang. Both anchored coffer feet lurched toward the drop, found root again, and held. Its four useless feet beat the ramp in a panicked roll that shook grit into Buk’s blanket.

Flat Hands and Lye Scar raised their catch cloth under the crown. A slab of brown felt came down hard enough to fold both men’s wrists toward their faces. They staggered, kept it from the floor holes, and carried its weight toward the ramp.

Buk coughed beneath the edge of his own cloth. Ada ripped it away from his mouth, then returned one hand to Dane’s rod.

"Still seated," she called. "Finish it before his frame gives."

Kril sawed through the last soft root crossing Vera’s mark. Orsa twisted the pole.

The blocked lip peeled inward.

Air burst past it with enough force to whip the reed from Orsa’s hand. Warm fibers streamed up through the new gap. Their loose ends snapped back into the loft on a cold return current.

The pressure beneath Dane changed. The central root lifted from his Door plane a finger at a time. Its collar settled around the perforated stones with a series of damp knocks. One cracked vent remained in place.

Voss eased the line. The two coffer feet released separately, and its other four found stone before they could drag him backward.

Cool air poured over Dane’s warm grain and down through the floor holes.

The loft drew air through the open neck. Below, reed frames rubbed without striking. The trapped heat thinned enough that Dane could separate wet stone from human breath again.

The sleeper at the wall coughed.

This one began with a full chest. The cough cracked twice through the grille, followed by a greedy inhale.

Ada kept her fingers against the bars. "Again," she whispered.

The adult breathed.

"And again. All six beds are still floating. I have breathing on all five tiers, all thirty. The pinned one’s mouth is clear."

Orsa wedged her broken pole beneath the opened lip. The cool current held. The iron slab took another blow from the main flood and stayed in its rests.

The new draft reached the crown.

Somewhere beside the opened neck, broad fungal ribs drew tight with a papery creak. A stem flexed once.

A man’s voice came out of the cap.

"Leave lower mouths shut."

Orsa’s pole struck stone.

"Torven."

The ribs collapsed with a soft clap. Cool air passed through them, and they made no second sound.