The Place
Nocturne Caverns is a vast cavern city lit only by pale lichens, a place that has no day and has stopped asking for one, and the not-asking is the echo. The cavern runs seven kilometers under the black hills, and the seven kilometers is the city, and the city is the dark. The ceiling is lost in the dark, a dark that is not the color of night but the color of the cavern itself, and the dark is the day, and the day is the echo. The floor is a soft black, a packed earth that gives and does not give back, and the giving is the first installment. The walls are lit by pale lichens in slow rings, the lichens a white-green that is the cavern's only light, and the white-green is the color of the day. The air is cool and carries the echo, which is the heartbeat of the city, and every bat-man knows the hour by the echo. The water runs in a channel on the floor of the deepest hall, a black thread that the echo-readers tend the way you tend a secret, because the channel is the map and the map is the day. It smells of cold stone and old air, a smell that is the cavern and is also the warning, and the one sound is the echo, a soft pull in the dark that is the cavern's only word, and the word is the echo. There is no landmark the way a cavern has a landmark, but there is one: the First Roost, a layer of folded wing in the middle of the cavern, the oldest roost and the first echo, and the roost is the door, and the door is the dark. What makes Nocturne itself is the read: the echo is read, and the reading is the map, and the map is the direction, and the direction is the silence.
How They Live
The Bat Men keep this place in the read, building their roosts in the layers, chambers of folded wing and fur, lined with moss and bone, their entrances low, and a roost is set one layer at a time, because a layer is the season and a layer is the calendar. Light comes from the lichen, pale and cold and faint, and the white-green is the color of the day. Food is the dark: the insects, the fish, the small game, and the echo that keeps the map honest, and the honest is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is the channel in the deepest hall, and the channel is cold enough to keep the dark honest, and the bat-men drink the cold before they drink the silence. Heat does not exist here, and the absence of heat is the kept, and the kept is the cold, and the cold is the law. The defense is the dark itself: a visitor who steps into the cavern has given away the most valuable thing they have, which is the position of their sound, and the position is the alarm, and the alarm is the sentence. The day is not measured, because there is no day, and the roost moves, and the roost rests, and the dark is the only clock. Every bat-man that is born must read the echo once in the First Roost before the cavern will call it one of its own, and the reading is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the dark ever gives back.
People
Home of the Bat Men, whose roosts are counted by layer. Nine layers are set at last count, and the count is kept in the echo, which is to say the count is as fixed as the dark, which is to say it does not lie. The echo-readers lead, and rank is decided by the reading, because a reader who can read an echo the cavern has never heard is the reader the dark trusts. Nothing that cannot keep a sound down is welcome, and the sound is not needed, because the cavern has a roost, and the roost has an echo, and the echo has a ledger. A surface traveler who once stood in the First Roost, the last one to be let in, called it the only place where the air makes you hold your breath before you take a sound, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the echo paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where the echo is the only honest voice, and the voice is the map, and the map is the direction, and the direction is the silence. The Forgotten have not been to the caverns, but Uaellaen has read the echo once, at a distance, and the echo read him back, and the reading was the first thing he has ever paid for that he could not buy back.