It had also been the loneliest four days of Stefan’s life. Seita claimed their kiss had been a mistake. Still, they shared a horse daily, her clinging to his back as they rode. He cherished the feel of her body pressed to his atop the mare. And he lived for those chance touches of her hand on his chest as they lay next to each other at night. It was naught but slow torture. But friendship was all she now offered. He knew she sensed his pain. It was written on his face at every moment.
“If memory serves, the bottom is only about fifty feet down.” Culpa pulled on the rope still, testing its strength against the horse’s neck. “We’ve still a long journey underground before we find Afflicted Fire.” He held the rope out for Stefan. “You first. Then Seita. I’ll go last.”
The rope trailed from the neck of the horse through the knight’s calloused hand and down into the stark blackness of the hole. Stefan had clambered up the ratlines of the Lady Kindly enough times, he didn’t fear the rope. He had the skill. He just didn’t know what awaited him in the hole below. Any thought of going underground again sent his heart to jumping. Oghuls live in the deep and dark places of the north! The stress of traveling through the Roahm Mines above Gallows Haven followed by the trauma they’d suffered in the mines above Sky Lochs settled over him like a dense fog.
“I’ll be right behind you.” Seita placed her hand on his, as if she knew what he was thinking. “Culpa’s right. We needn’t linger up here. Best just get it over with.”
Stefan adjusted his cloak and armor and made sure his own bow was secure. Seita helped him cinch the quiver of arrows tight around his back, along with one of the torches. He’d counted the arrows earlier. He had only ten left.
“What of the horses?” he asked.
“They’ll stay here until we return, I imagine,” Culpa answered.
Stefan stepped over the bone fence and seized the rope, testing its balance against the bulk of Culpa’s draught mare. He slowly backed toward the hole, lowering himself down into it with caution, Seita helping guide the rope, her fine white hair flowing in the howling breeze.
† † † † †
It was cold, musty, and bitter. Stefan stood in a small, jagged cavern about thirty feet wide and a hundred long, a dark tunnel at the far end. Seita and Culpa stood with him, rope dangling overhead, a thin line stretching toward the pinprick of light above, still tied to the draught mare.
Culpa replaced the torch on Stefan’s back with a coil of rope. “You carry the rope. I’ll carry the torch.” He sparked the flame to light with a flint and stone. “Guard your mind against the wraiths. I can’t warn you enough, these mines are a living and breathing place, an evil dungeon liable to play tricks with your mind if you are not watchful.”
Culpa took a drink from one of his water skins, then handed it to Stefan. As he lifted his head to drink, Stefan thought he could feel the ground shift beneath his feet. And when he looked up at the dot of sunlight fifty feet above, he thought he saw something briefly cover the hole in the ceiling. He squinted. The point of sunlight returned. Just one of the horses . . .
“We’ve a long journey ahead of us.” Culpa took back the water skin and led the way toward the distant tunnel, torchlight flickering off the rough, cracked walls ahead. Seita followed the Dayknight. Stefan brought up the rear. When they reached the tunnel, the rough passageway sloped down and slightly to the left. Chunks of fallen rock and various lengths of lumber littered their path.
As they traveled, Stefan couldn’t stop thinking of oghuls and poison darts and silver streams. The narrow mine shaft soon became a twisting and turning maze. In some places the ceiling was low, the tunnel so narrow, and they had to duck and squeeze their way through. In places there were shadows disappearing into black pits in the floor or shadows climbing up into holes and cracks in the ceiling. It was all so eerily similar to the mines above Gallows Haven and Sky Lochs. Every once in a while, from the corner of Stefan’s eyes, the quartz in the walls would flicker red in the torchlight and pulse like tiny streams of blood, and with each step he took, it seemed the floor moved under him, moved to the deep rumble of something far below.
Stefan’s panic and paranoia turned to nausea and a splitting headache, the nausea hovering in the deeper parts of his gut like an iron anvil pressing against his vitals, the pain in his head whispering evil words, things not quite discernable, yet disturbing in tone, voices wicked in vibration, like a steady thrum, thrum, thrum encircling his skull.
He thought of the wraiths in The Way and Truth of Laijon, wondering if he had finally succumbed to their dread call.
To regain his sense, he focused on Seita’s dark silhouette ahead of him, reached out, and tapped her on the shoulder. “What?” She turned.
“You doin’ okay?”
“A bit nervous.”
“Me too.”
Together they stopped, black corridor stretching before and aft. Culpa kept walking ahead. Stefan took a chance and wrapped Seita in his arms, if only for his own reassurance. She held him tight in return, her touch warming, despite his chest-plate armor between them. She clung to him, as if she, too, had been longing for the assurance that she wasn’t alone here in the dark. He had comforted Gisela in much the same way in the mines above Gallows Haven, and holding the Vallè girl now reminded him of so much lost love.
“Do not fall too far behind!” they heard Culpa yell, his torchlight dim in the distance. They broke their embrace and hurried down the tunnel.
They found Culpa standing in a four-way intersection, black corridors stretching off to the left and to the right and also straight ahead.
“I’m not sure which one to take,” Culpa said, moving slowly down the tunnel to the right about ten paces, torch held out before him.
“Many things have weighed heavy on my mind these last few days,” Seita whispered to Stefan, leaning into him again. The strain in her normally confident voice was real. “It’s my visions. We need to reach Amadon soon, Stefan. Can you not feel the urgency? We need to get out of these mines. Something dangerous lives down here. Not just oghuls, but something evil. An evil like none of us has ever imagined. I can feel it in the walls, in the floor under my feet.”
“I feel it too.” A murmur of breath touched the back of his neck. He shuddered.
“What are you two going on about?” Culpa glared back at them. “Your conversation echoes off everything. I told you this place would fool with your mind. This is not the Sky Loch mines. Guard yourselves. Don’t feed off of each other’s paranoia. You’ll only go crazy with that kind of talk.”
Stefan’s skin tingled as if something was closing in, some nightmare. By the look in Seita’s eyes, she felt it too. Danger blistered his every nerve ending with venomous intent. He could feel it, some thing or things sneaking up behind them. He felt the ground move underfoot again. He felt the air bristle and quake, as if stirred by many swift-flung arrows, arrows whose murderous points sought his heart.
He grabbed Seita’s arm, eyes darting about. Something was breathing heavily down the length of the passageway toward him, sucking up great gulps of precious air, aiming straight for him, seeking to devour him. Indeed, this place was not like Sky Lochs. There was a sickness here. A foul, musty dark. A poisonous fume. The air shimmered. Culpa’s torch flickered. Stefan felt sweat bead up on his forehead.
Seita was naught but a dark shadow against the diminishing light. “What’s happening?” she hissed.
The tunnel rumbled and shook—hot air whooshed by. Slivers of rock and dust rained from the ceiling. The walls creaked and groaned, and the cave shook. There was a Booming! Booming! Booming! from deep underneath them, as if massive slabs of rock were grinding together. Culpa Barra was trying to make his way back toward them now, shouting something onto the din, his torch a wobbly, hazy light in the distance.
Stefan’s heart froze as runnels of soft red light seeped from the walls, glowing, pulsating to the deepening sounds, like the veins along a monstrous scaly arm. The co
lor pulsed in, out, in, out. It felt like the tunnel was slowly twisting over on itself, throwing his balance off. Seita lost her footing too, stumbled down the passage toward Culpa, and fell to the floor. “It’s hot!” she yelled, and pushed herself up.
Symbols were emblazoned like pockets of fire along the walls—squares, circles within circles, crosses, crescent moons, all twinkled like shooting stars. The tunnel kept spinning with spiraling rivers of fire and glowing symbols. The glittering veins intensified, fiery red blooming and running like streams of molten iron.
Then the mine shuddered violently. Dust sparkled from the ceiling in waves and ripples as the gleaming ribbons of fire wrapped around the walls faded to a dull red—then dwindled—and washed away to nothing.
“We all need to remain calm!” Culpa’s voice echoed in the dark, his torch aglow with dancing fire, illuminating his own terrified face. “This place is only playing tricks with our mind. Nothing is happening.”
Seita’s round eyes roamed the corridor in fear—a fear Stefan had never before seen in the Vallè. His own heavy breaths of fear filled the tunnel. Culpa stepped forward, boots scuffing against the floor, the sound sharp and echoing.
The walls rumbled again, freezing the Dayknight in his tracks.
“What is it?” Seita hissed. “What’s happening?”
“Shhhh!” Culpa hissed right back at her.
A billow of hot air rushed by. Stefan felt the tunnel twist under his feet again. A new rumbling sound was pulsating deep, deep, deep, from beneath. The walls ran with red lightning, violently red, shimmering to the drum of the growing roar, louder and louder, Booming! Booming! Booming! This was no illusion. Stefan was certain of that. No trick of the mines. No trick of the wraiths.
The thin quartz veins in the rock burst yellow like flame, peppering everyone with their sting. Seita clung to Stefan as another foul blast of hot air whooshed up the passageway. The tunnel was a spinning, twisting clamor of rushing air and color, blinking symbols along the walls, red, yellow, orange, yellow, orange, red, then deep blue . . . purple . . .
Then the ground tilted and dropped out from under him, sending Seita stumbling away toward Culpa Barra, Stefan staggering uncontrollably in the opposite direction . . .
. . . and the roof fell on top of him.
† † † † †
One moment Stefan was curled up, covered in oblivion. The next he was choking in lungfuls of dirt. Something hot was tearing at his left ankle. He kicked. But his legs could scarcely move. The rest of his body was paralyzed in darkness, arms pinned to his sides, head seemingly fixed in solid mortar.
The ground shook, and something under him shifted. He slid down, down, down, shards of rock scraping his chest-plate armor, his heavy gray cloak riding up around his neck, trying to strangle him. He spat out clumps of dirt, wiped at his eyes with frantic hands. He was blinded by darkness. His eyes were open, but all that greeted him was a midnight-colored blackness so impenetrable, it was sobering.
“Seita!” he shouted. “Culpa!” Only heavy silence answered.
The ground moved again. A rumbling veil of rock and dirt showered his legs. He scrambled away, picked himself up off the floor. His ankle hurt.
He limped two steps and sat down. “Seita!” he screamed again. “Culpa!” Nothing.
Are they crushed under all that debris? Dead?
“Seita!” he shouted in a panic. “Seita!”
She was lost. Like Gisela. Dead. Culpa, too. Blackest Heart and the angel stone the Dayknight carried. Gone! All of it buried under the rubble behind Stefan. His mind was naught but a numb void as it slowly sank in: he was the lone survivor of the Company of Nine who had set out from Lord’s Point. All their travel and adventure was for nothing. Everyone was gone. Nail, Roguemoore, and Val-Draekin lost in the glacier. Godwyn, Liz Hen, and Dokie also likely dead. And now Culpa and Seita.
Stefan sat in the darkness and silence, alone, blackness his only companion. He knew he had to move on. But where do I go? He did a quick inventory of all his gear. His bow was still on his back. The quiver, too, only it was full of debris. Just two of the original ten arrows remained. Eight arrows lost in the rubble. Has nothing gone right? The coil of rope was still slung over his shoulder. He brushed it free of dirt. He had no torch, and that was a problem. Plus his ankle continued its throbbing dance of pain. He examined his foot by touch, his searching fingers finding no broken bones or blood.
The stifling blackness pressed in around him, a suffocating dark that stole his very breath and quickened his heart. I will die here. Desperately wanting to keep busy before total despair set in, he searched the ground for lost arrows, feeling along the ground with both hands. Nothing. What I wouldn’t give for one of Roguemoore’s D’Nahk lè timestones now.
He secured his gear and scooted cautiously forward, crawling on his stomach, too terrified to stand. “Seita!” he called out again. Nothing. Tears were forming in his eyes. Tears that no other person would ever see. Tears that flowed lonely in the dark. He crawled, desperate to escape this harsh place of pain and crushing loneliness. Desperate to find some light.
He hadn’t gone far when his left hand slipped over an edge and his chin smacked the rock floor painfully. Angry. Scared. He scrambled back from the ledge, gathered his thoughts. A staircase leading down? A bottomless pit? It could be anything. It could be nothing. The way back was blocked by rubble.
He tossed a small rock over the rim, heard it clatter to a stone floor somewhere far below. He tossed another rock, listening for it to strike bottom, trying to gauge the distance. Twenty feet? Fifty? A hundred? How could he even tell?
He felt the dusty cool reassurance of the coil of rope on his shoulder. He crawled back to the wall of debris, found a boulder heavy enough to hold his weight, tied one end of the rope around it, and cinched it tight. He crawled back to the edge and dropped the other end of the rope over. He checked his bow and quiver one last time, making sure they were secure. Gripping the rope, testing its strength, he slid his body over the edge, lowering himself slowly. Hand over hand, down he went, sure of his grip, feet levered against the wall before him. With his injured ankle, it was hard going, and he was quickly gasping down lungfuls of musty air that dried his throat. Suddenly the wall supporting his feet disappeared, and he found himself dangling in the dark nothingness.
He wrapped his legs around the rope, hand over hand, descending until his feet reached the end of the rope. He kept lowering himself until he was dangling from the last foot of rope by one hand, toes stretching to find solid ground he hoped was somewhere just below, hand straining from the effort of holding tight to the last foot of rope. But his toes felt nothing. No ground. No safety. He reached up and secured both hands around the rope. Pulled himself up just far enough to loop the rope around his right hand twice.
Then he dangled in the darkness, the rope cinching down on his flesh with each passing moment, cutting off the circulation in his fingers. How far away is the bottom still? Kick your boot off, idiot. Let it fall. Judge the distance. . . .
With his left foot, he started working the boot off his right foot, wiggling and pushing against the stiff leather. The pain in his injured ankle was almost unbearable, and the strength in his hands nearly gave out with the effort; his fingers grew numb. His body swayed under the rope as he struggled and swung, boot about to drop . . .
. . . and then he saw the light.
Seita! Culpa!
Below him and to the left came a faint flicker of yellow, a pinprick in the black distance. It stabbed at his eyes as it grew in brightness. There was clanking of metal on stone and the unmistakable guttural voices of approaching oghuls. Yellow torchlight blossomed under him, revealing the jagged, shadow-filled cavern.
Hundreds of stalactites of every size stretched at varying lengths toward the floor. Stalagmites rose up into the air all around. A small, well-worn path wound through the jagged landscape and disappeared in the distance to his left and right. And
Stefan was dangling between two narrow stalactites right in the middle of it, twenty feet above the path, right in the line of the approaching oghuls, boot about to slip from his foot.
Five burly beasts, all bearing torches and jabbering oghul nonsense, rounded a huge stalagmite and marched directly under him. They all wore rusted armor and spiked helms, wicked-looking axes strapped to their broad backs. They clattered down the trail directly under Stefan’s swaying feet and carried on, not one of them even looking up, their torchlight soon disappearing into the distant dark.
Stefan had only one choice, and that was to follow their light. He let himself drop the twenty feet to the floor, landing hard, pain shooting up his injured ankle as he fell backward onto his butt. The two arrows bounced out of his quiver, clattering to the floor. Standing gingerly, he checked his bow. It was undamaged. He snatched the arrows up and dumped them back into his quiver. He mourned the loss of the rope hanging above, but had to move quickly or lose the oghul’s torchlight. He pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head and hobbled toward the receding glow as fast as his injured foot would allow, the pain almost too much to bear.
Desperate, he plodded on, limping, hunger pangs stabbing at his stomach, unbearable thirst clutching at his dry tongue, chasing the torchlight of monsters. Each fork in the road the oghuls took led him ever downward, every tunnel more twisting and turning than the last. And the deeper the beasts descended, the heavier the air felt. From floor to ceiling, veins of some sparkly liquid substance streaked the walls of every passageway like tiny strings of lightning. Once in a while, from the corner of his eye, when the distant torchlight hit the walls just so, Stefan saw the streams flicker red and pulse like tiny rivers of blood. Fissures and cracks started appearing in the walls and floor with more frequency, and the air emanating from them was stifling and rank. He kept his eyes on the floor in front of him as best he could, the torchlight ahead dull or bright depending on the length of the tunnel, the location of the five oghuls, and how far behind he dared drift. Keeping his movements silent, and the oghuls just out of sight, it was all he could do to hobble along as best he could. The constant yellow glow of the oghuls’ torches bouncing off the narrow walls was his only comfort.
The Blackest Heart Page 64