Damn you, Tarrant. Damn you to hell.
“All right,” he whispered. Hoarsely, as though the words hurt his throat. “Let’s do it.”
You’d better be worth it, you bastard.
Forty-one
Caverns. Not like the tunnels of the Lost Ones, which had been carved and plastered and buttressed and adorned for rakhene convenience; these were empty spaces, utterly lifeless, whose silence was broken only by the slow drip of water as it wended its way down from the surface, chamber by chamber. Tunnels that were comfortably six feet in height would shrink to a mere crawlspace yards later. Room-sized chambers that accommodated four people would be reduced to mere crevices at their farther end, requiring a painstaking divestment of all supply packs before the party could pass through. Steep inclines dead-ended against blank walls and pits dropped down into seeming nothingness, while shallow lakes, mirror-surfaced, made it all but impossible to guess at the hazards that lay underneath.
Under the best of circumstances, progress would have been slow. With what they had to deal with—inadequate lighting, lack of proper tools, and an enemy who might turn their own Workings against them—it was maddeningly frustrating. Though they knew that they were only a short distance from their objective, it was impossible to travel a straight line in the torturous underground system. Sometimes the most promising route would double back on itself, returning them to a point they had passed by hours ago. The pierced one was doing what he could to guide them, but even his rakhene sense of direction could do them little good in such a place. They could only fight their way forward step by step, chamber by chamber, and hope that ground gained exceeded ground lost in the long run.
What kept them going was the knowledge that there was, for them, no other way. Unless they were ready to break into the citadel itself, this was the only known entrance to the labyrinth beneath it. And so they fought on, and kept their weapons tightly in hand as they wended their way through the underearth—ever aware that if the demons attacked them, it would be without light, without warning, and without mercy.
At last, wary of the weakness that exhaustion would conjure, they found themselves a chamber more defensible than most and slept. Briefly. Having no knowledge of how many hours had passed since they had first entered the random tunnels, or whether sunlight or darkness reigned in the world above. They stood guard in teams, as they had above ground, but silently Damien questioned the efficacy of such an arrangement. If the demons they sought could shed their human form, then there was no truly defensible place; the earth was too full of mysterious cracks and crevices, and dark pits that extended to other levels of the labyrinth. So he made sure that his sword was close at hand and napped in a sitting position, springbolt braced against his knees.
How much time did they have to search? He wished he knew. Even if Tarrant’s Working had succeeded in buying them cover it would only work for as long as the party’s doppelgangers were alive. The minute those poor doomed souls reached Sansha Crater and the ambush took them, the deception was ended forever. And in that moment their enemy, who very likely knew the party’s purpose—or at least guessed at it—would begin to search his domain with a fine-toothed comb, searching for them.
He hoped that the simulacra would take longer than expected to reach their goal. And hated himself for doing so. He hated himself for wanting the deception to work at all; for being grateful that five innocents had been doomed to a grisly death, instead of his own party. But worst of all were those rare instants when he was honest enough to admit that he was grateful to Tarrant for making that move without asking him. Without giving him the chance to stop it. That gratitude was like a cancer on his soul, a growing uncleanliness which he lacked the knowledge—or perhaps the will—to eradicate.
It’s what he said he would do to me, he thought darkly. Exactly what he described. The thought of going in to rescue the man was doubly abhorrent because of it. But the longer they traveled, the closer their destination loomed in his mind, the more Damien was forced to admit that they needed him. Plain and simple. As for the ramifactions of that . . . he would deal with them later.
When he slept he dreamed of fire, and it burned in his brain with such an intensity that his skin was actually flushed with fever when he awakened, as though the fire burned within him. From the place where Ciani lay curled up, asleep, he heard soft moans of anguish, and he knew without needing to ask that the same dream had her in thrall. Neither Hesseth nor the pierced one seemed troubled by such visions, but who could say whether the mechanism of their sleep bore any similarity to a human standard? There was no way to judge whether something was in the currents that only humans might respond to, or—a far more alarming possibility—whether Tarrant himself was the source of those visions, using his links with Damien and Ciani to communicate in symbols what he lacked the ability to send in words. But fire? From the Hunter? He considered many possible causes for that, in the hours they traveled, and all of them were chilling.
It wasn’t until long after their sleep break—when they were taking a brief rest in a large, dry chamber—that he thought to mention it to his rakhene companions. To his surprise the pierced one responded immediately.
“It is the fire of the earth,” Hesseth translated. Suggesting by her hesitation a far more complex phrase, with connotations that had no parallel in her own dialect. “It lives in this place.”
Damien heard Ciani’s sudden indrawn breath, felt excitement stir within him. “Fire of the earth? What is that? Ask him?”
She did so. And listened to the answer at length, and questioned him about it, before turning again to her human listeners. “I’m not sure of this,” she warned them. “His language is very unclear. Highly symbolic. But what I make of it is that here, somewhere in these caverns, is a fire which the earth itself supplies with fuel. He says it burned when his people first came here, and kept burning in all the time they occupied this region. Before the falling-threat finally drove them away. It has some kind of . . . spiritual significance, I think.”
“The word is religious,” Damien said quietly. “Go on.”
“That’s all he knows. They don’t have the kind of oral tradition we do; all he remembers are snatches of stories, that were retold because of their dramatic value.” She smiled slightly. “I gather the young of his kind are threatened with being thrown into this fire if they misbehave too often.”
“A fire of the earth,” Ciani whispered.
And he nodded. Not in response to what she said, but to what she was thinking. Because there was no question about it: the fire of the earth was Tarrant’s fire, the same yellow flame that haunted their dreams and their thoughts, which seemed to guard the secret of their dark companion’s disappearance. As soon as he even considered that connection he knew it for the truth. It was as though some some vital circuit in his brain had finally closed—or as though the channel between Tarrant and himself allowed that much knowledge to flow, before distance and distaste could occlude it. And he knew, without asking Ciani, that her experience was the same.
“Tarrant’s fire,” he muttered. “Fed by the earth? I’d guess fossil fuel, in some form. Probably solid, or a shifting of the earth would have cut the supply channel at some point.”
“Except that the earth hasn’t moved here,” Ciani reminded him.
“It’s moved some. Maybe not enough to shake the ground hard—maybe so little that no one’s ever aware of it—but it moves. It has to.” He turned to Hesseth. “Ask him if he knows where it is. Ask him if he can tell us anything of how to find it.”
She talked to the pierced one again, and this time it was clear he was the one having difficulty. After a time he answered her, haltingly, and she told the humans, “Deep down. Very deep down. I’m not sure whether he means the lowest caverns in this system, or the lowest caverns not underwater. Or even the lowest caverns not rakh-made; there might be tunnels that were dug below that level, later.”
“Good enough,” Damien muttered.
“Damien?” Ciani put a hand on his arm; he noted that she was trembling slightly. “What are you thinking?”
“That it may be a safe way in,” he told her. He put his own hand over hers, and squeezed it tightly in reassurance. “We can’t Know the caverns, because then our enemy would See exactly where we are. We can’t Locate Tarrant, because the minute we tried we’d be opening up a channel that our enemy could use to strike at us. But a fire? A simple fire? A straightforward Working, fixed on that . . . it would be doubly safe, because he’d never anticipate it. How could he know that we’d even heard of the fire of the earth? How could he anticipate that we would understand its significance? It just might work, Cee. Safely. We just might get away with it.”
In a voice very still, very fragile, she asked, “You’ll go after him?”
For a moment there was only the darkness around them, and the chill silence of the underworld. Then, choosing his words very carefully, he told her, “I said I’d take the best way in, didn’t I? I said if it turned out the best thing to do, I’d go with it.” You have no idea what it’s going to cost me to save that man, he thought grimly. Or of what it will cost our world, to have him free in it. But Hesseth was right. If his strength and his knowledge can help end this plague, then I have no real choice, do I? We use the tools we must. “If nothing else, it gives us a clear road in. And God knows, we need that.”
Then he took her hand in both of his, warmed it between his palm. “The relationship you had with him means that you know him better than I can,” he said softly. Trying to keep his voice utterly neutral, trying not to let his tone and manner betray how appalling he found that fact. “He knows how abhorrent I found him. He knows how much I despised him, for everything he represented. Tell me this, if you can . . . if he were in trouble—captured, let’s say, and in pain, incapable of helping himself—does he think that I would come after him?” When she hesitated, he added, “Or that I would let our party come to help him? Or does he think I would leave him to die—perhaps even be grateful to our enemy for arranging it?”
For a long time she stared at him, as if by doing so she could read what was in his mind. But he was careful to keep his expression neutral, and at last she answered, “There’s not any real question about that, is there?
“He believes it.”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“He believes it utterly.”
This time the nod came faster.
“What is it?” Hesseth asked. “What does that mean?”
“If our enemy were rakhene, nothing. But it has to do with the way human sorcery works—with the way that our enemy would naturally use Gerald Tarrant as a focus for any Working that concerned us.”
“He would take the knowledge of our plans from his mind?”
“Either that, or use it as a . . . say, a filter of sorts, for a more general Knowing. But either way. . . .” His hands tightened about Ciani’s. A familiar excitement was beginning to course through his veins, driving out all memory of fatigue and frustration. This was the approach they needed, at last; it felt right, in a way that years of experience had taught him to trust. “He wouldn’t see us coming,” he whispered fiercely. “If Tarrant thinks what you say he does, if he’s that certain of it . . . why would the enemy assume him wrong? It means that way would would be only lightly guarded, if at all. And probably not Worked against us. But most important . . . it means we have a way to find our way through this damned labyrinth without being caught at it. Praise God,” he breathed. “Now, let’s just hope that when we get that bastard back. . . .”
He released Ciani and lifted his springbolt. And tested the draw, to make sure it was tightly cocked.
“Let’s just say he’d better earn his keep,” he warned her.
Caverns. So deep within the earth that the earth-fae itself faded to a whisper: a mere hint of power with no sense of motion about it. A shallow pool of unWorked potential, utterly unlike the swift-flowing currents that coursed on the planet’s surface. But for what Damien intended, it was enough. He cast his will out upon the mirror stillness of its surface and shaped it slowly, carefully, to serve his intentions. After a moment, there was a ripple—more felt than seen, like a shadow of thought that flitted through the mind without taking form—and then the fae began to flow. Slowly. Not as it would have done on the surface of the planet, where the power born of seismic disruption was constantly pouring into it, stirring it to life. But moving nonetheless, with clear direction. It was enough.
“Toward the fire,” Damien whispered. And they Worked their sight—with effort—and followed it. Wading downcurrent, following the whispery power as it clung to the edges of water-carved stone, marking a path that they might tread. The pierced one was silent now, his jangling ornaments bound up with bits of cloth so that they might not betray the party. Nor did he speak, but climbed through the caverns lost in the web of his own thoughts. Communing with his gods, perhaps, or contemplating his masculine bravado. Whatever it was, it served their purpose well enough; Damien encouraged it.
And then they came to a place where the last chamber narrowed, until all that led from it was a low-ceilinged crawlspace, barely wide enough to accommodate a man. Small formations edged its upper surface like teeth, and two stalagmites the thickness of a man’s wrist rose from its mud-covered floor. Damien looked at it dubiously, was about to speak—and then heard a gasp behind him that caused him to whip about with his weapon at the ready.
It was Ciani. Pale as a ghost, shivering as though she had just seen—or heard—something utterly terrifying. She had her hands up before her face as if trying to ward off some terrible danger—but when Damien turned back in response to that gesture, to seek out the cause of her terror, he saw nothing more than he had previously. Only empty stone corridors, weakly coursing fae, and glistening of moisture on slender calcite branches.
“The smell,” she whispered. “Gods, I remember. . . .”
He came to her then, handed his weapon to Hesseth—who understood, and was ready to take it—and took the ex-adept into his arms. And held her tightly, making his body into a shield that might protect her from all dangers.
“I smell it,” she whispered. “Can’t you? I remember running. . . . Gods, I must have come this way. There were places . . . I thought . . . but I had so little light, then, and so little strength . . . and these caves all look the same, don’t they? But I thought . . . oh gods, don’t you see, I’ve been here. . . .”
Then she lowered her head to his chest and sobbed softly there; he stroked her hair gently and wished he could will some of his own strength into her. It had been bound to happen, this outburst, and he’d been expecting it . . . but he knew that there was even worse to come, and so he just held her, gently, and let her have her tears. God knows, she’d been holding them in long enough.
Soon she’ll remember all of it. All of it! Her capture, her captivity, whatever torture she endured at the hands of these creatures . . . it’ll all return to her in an instant. A single blow. What will that be like? So much terror pouring back into her, all those years of suffering relived in an instant . . . this is nothing, compared to it. Her hardest moment will be the one in which we restore her to what she was.
When he thought she was capable of listening to him, he said to her gently, “You couldn’t have come this way, Cee. Think about it. You’d have had to come through that tunnel, and you’d have had t: break the formations to do it. Right? They’re still there.”
“It’s the smell,” she whispered. Her whole body was shaking. She clung to him desperately “It’s like that all through their tunnels. Can’t you smell it? I couldn’t escape it. I ran and ran, and I couldn’t get away from it. . . .”
He tested the air, caught a faint whiff of sourness coming from the tunnel. Too faint, or else too unfamiliar, for him to identify; he looked to Hesseth and saw her nod grimly.
“Carrion,” she hissed softly. And the pierced one concurred. “Rotting carrio
n,” she translated for him.
The region of no, he thought. The place of dying.
“All right,” he muttered. “We’re going through. The fae’ll guide us to the fire all right, so if we see anything move we shoot—or swing, or whatever—and worry about what it was later. Agreed?”
Ciani nodded, as did Hesseth. When the khrast woman translated for their pierced companion, he bared his teeth and hissed aggressively, his naked tail curling at the tip. I’ll take that for a yes, Damien thought.
He approached the narrow passageway and studied it. Had it been clear of mud and monuments it might have been wide enough for him—barely—but as it was, there was no clear way through.
“How strong are those things?” he asked the pierced one, pointing to one of the slender stalagmites.
It took the Lost One a moment to realize what he was driving at. Then he answered, “When small, very brittle. When that large,”— and he pointed to the two stalagmites rising from the mud-covered floor—“they will still crack, if much force is applied.”
“Good enough,” he muttered. He opened the buckles on his sword’s harness and lowered the sheathed weapon from his back. “Hand this through as soon as I’m out,” he said, giving it to Ciani. Tarrant’s sword had been affixed to the same harness, but he unfastened it so that it would come through separately. All he needed in a moment of trouble was to grab the wrong one. Even through its multiple layers of wrapping the cold sword throbbed with malevolence, and Damien thought he perceived a certain . . . call it hunger. Was that because it sensed it was close to its master/creator? Or because it knew that soon it might be going into battle, with all the mayhem that implied?
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