by Martha Wells
Giliead frowned. “Maybe. I thought cutting off the water to the vats would take care of anything he had down there.” He swore under his breath. “I wonder what else I missed.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ilias said, though he knew Giliead wouldn’t believe him. “Besides, most of them should have eaten each other by now. Maybe it came from somewhere else.” The idea that it wasn’t dangerous wasn’t worth suggesting.
Giliead watched the last glimpse of the thing disappear in the cavern’s shadow, his mouth twisted ruefully. “We’re going to have to do something about this.”
“All right.” Ilias nodded. “How?” he asked, just to hear what Giliead would say.
“We’ll think of something.” Giliead turned back, picking up the fallen climbing hook and setting it in a solid chink of rock. Ilias leaned on it to keep it anchored and Giliead tested it cautiously with his weight, then swung over the side and started down. “We killed that leviathan, didn’t we? It was . .. almost as big.”
Watching him climb down the sloping wall into the dark abyss, Ilias whispered after him, “That was mostly an accident and you know it.” It was crazy, but this new thing made Ilias think of a flying whale. It had moved like a whale too, sliding smoothly through the air. Except it was far bigger than any whale he had seen around the outer islands or washed up dead on the beach. The leviathan that had gotten confused in the spray and unintentionally murdered itself on the spar of the Dare, and not done the ship a lot of good either, hadn’t been half so big.
Ilias waited until Giliead reached the shaft about forty paces below, then went over the edge after him. It was a quick, scrambling climb, requiring you to place your feet carefully to keep from sending loose fragments of rock skittering down the wall. He reached the wide square-cut mouth of the shaft where Giliead was anchoring the bottom end of the rope and dropped to the floor. “What does something that big eat? People?”
“It could eat everybody in Cineth and it wouldn’t be enough to fill a belly that size,” Giliead argued, leaning out of the opening to yank at the hook until it came loose.
Ilias collected the rope. There hadn’t been any word of large numbers of sheep or cattle going missing, so the thing hadn’t left the island. Yet. “It’s got to be eating something.” Even if the thing didn’t eat people now, after living in this place something would probably teach it.
Ilias slung the rope over his shoulder and they started down the shaft. It had been hollowed out of the cavern wall, perhaps as an air passage to the chambers of the old city, and sloped steeply down. There was just room for them to walk abreast and the ceiling was only a little above the top of Giliead’s head.
The light was gray and dim by the time they reached the first cross passage and they both paused, listening. “Something’s different,” Ilias said softly.
Giliead stood poised in the join, brows knit thoughtfully, one hand on the wall of the shaft. “The air’s coming from the wrong direction.”
The breeze came from up the cross passage instead of down, not from the lower caves where Ixion had done his work. Ilias had gotten almost used to the taint of corruption in the air, but now he could smell hot metal and an overlay of something bitter and acrid. “Smell that?”
Giliead nodded, unslinging his pack to dig out one of the pitch-coated torches they had prepared earlier. “This part of the passage was closed off before. I thought it might go to the other caves, the ones closer to the surface, but it was blocked.” He took a step down the cross passage into that damp cool breeze. “It’s not blocked now.”
“That’s odd.” Ilias stared into the darkness, thinking it over. Giliead was talking about the time when he had been alone down here. Ilias’s memory was hazy on everything that had happened after Ixion had caught him and Giliead had never spoken of the details. Whatever was down here, Ilias could do without the return visit to Ixion’s workroom.
They got the torch lit with flint and tinder and started down the passage, wary of sudden pitfalls or traps in this unknown territory. Soon the shaft lost its square shape and began to look more like a natural tunnel, the walls growing rougher and narrowing until they had to turn sideways to slip through. It slanted down, first gradually, then dramatically, and they had to scramble down nearly vertical slopes.
When the passage widened out again it was abrupt and they suddenly found themselves in a larger chamber. Ilias fell back a pace, drawing his sword to cover Giliead’s back as his friend lifted the torch to check the knobs of rock overhead. Things often hid in the ceilings of the big chambers in the lower caves, waiting to drop on whatever passed below.
As they made their way cautiously forward, Ilias’s foot knocked against something that rolled away. He spared a quick glance down and reported tersely, “Bones.” His eyes widened as the flicker of light revealed more of the chamber floor. It was covered with bones. “Uh, lots of bones.”
Giliead turned around, trying to look in every direction at once. There were two other tunnels intersecting here and it was a good spot for a trap. “What kind?”
Ilias glanced around, studying the remains with a practiced eye. The odor of decay that hung in the air all through the caves made it impossible to judge how recent the death was. He nudged a skull out of a pile with the toe of his boot. It looked human, except for the elongated jaw and the fangs. The bones didn’t appear that old, but the scavengers in the lower caves would strip any carcass they found within hours and many of the long bones were broken or chewed. “Howler,” he said. “Nothing looks fresh, though.” He frowned at a skull, then leaned down to pick it up. It had a neat hole drilled through it, just above the right eye. “What does that look like to you?” he asked Giliead, holding it out.
Giliead spared it a glance, brows quirking. “Like something bored into its head and ate out the insides?”
“That’s what I thought.” Mouth twisted in disgust, he tossed the skull back into the pile. “Which way?”
“The air is coming from this one.” Giliead picked the tunnel on the far left. “What’s that smell?” he muttered.
“I still can’t place it. Bitter, isn’t it?” Ilias paused to sheathe his sword and while Giliead kept watch, he used his knife to scratch a trail mark on the floor. The trail marks were a language all their own, the individual lines telling which direction the maker had come from, which direction he went, what his name was and what he was looking for. Hias wrote the mark to say they were looking for trouble, which he thought summed up the situation nicely.
Not that Halian or anybody else will be coming through here to appreciate it, I hope, he thought, getting to his feet and following Giliead into the next tunnel. Giliead had made Halian swear on his grandmother’s ashes not to come after them if they didn’t come back. Ilias hoped that Halian would hold to it, even if it meant their bodies were lost and their souls trapped here forever.
The acrid odor in the air became thicker as the tunnel floor slanted even further down. “So say you’re Ixion—” Ilias began.
“I’d rather not, thanks, I have enough problems of my own.” Giliead lifted the torch to chase away the shadows overhead.
“—and you’re sitting around one day in your dark dank cave, watching the howlers and the grend hump and kill each other, and you think, ‘Hello, I’ll make something that jumps on people’s heads and bores through their skulls and eats out the insides.’ Why does that happen?”
“Because he’s a wizard and that’s what wizards do,” Giliead said patiently. “What else—” He stopped abruptly.
Ilias froze, a hand going to his sword. He heard it too, a muted click of claws against stone. He drew the weapon, shifting to stand back to back with Giliead, his eyes on the rock above their heads. There would be tunnels up there, the openings hidden in folds and shadows. “Back or forward?” he whispered. The passage was too narrow to fight in.
“Back—” Giliead began. Then from the direction of the bone chamber, two lean man-sized shapes appeared at the edge o
f the torchlight, the flame reflected in mad hungry eyes. “Forward!” they finished in unison.
Ilias let Giliead worry about what was ahead and kept his eyes on the passage behind them as he backed away. The firelight threw leaping red-tinged shadows on the howlers’ slick mottled green hides, which he knew were disconcertingly like human skin to the touch. The creatures had the elongated heads and long spidery hands of harmless rock lizards, but their jaws were heavy with vicious fangs and their claws were like razors.
These howlers warily kept their distance, as if they had been hunted before. That’s all we need, for these things to get smart, Ilias thought in exasperation. He shouted, darting forward. The one in the lead took the bait, springing at him, hands reaching. Ilias ducked under the sweep of its claws, thrusting his sword upward and skewering it in the belly.
It recoiled with a screech, lurching into the wall and clawing at the rock. He dodged back as it struck the ground; the others fell on it as prey, maddened by the scent of blood.
Warily watching the dark shapes tear at the frantic creature, Ilias heard Giliead curse and risked a look over his shoulder. The tunnel came to an abrupt end not far ahead. “Damn,” he breathed, turning back. The wounded howler writhed at the bottom of the snarling heap.
“Down here,” Giliead said sharply, sweeping the torch along the ground in a haze of sparks. At the base of the boulders blocking the passage were openings in the rock. He leaned down, thrusting the torch into the largest, then jumped.
Ilias scrambled down after him, sliding, then leaping down to level ground. Giliead had found a large, low-ceilinged tunnel, wide enough for them to make a stand. Giliead cast the torch behind them and drew his sword as the first of the howlers leapt down to the chamber floor.
Driven wild by the fresh blood, the howlers lost all ability to coordinate their attack and came at them in a confused rush. Ilias took the first one with a straight thrust into the chest. As he pulled his sword free it went down, still clawing for him. He blocked a blow as another ran at him, half severing its arm, then spinning close to slice its head off. Ducking under the next creature’s wild swing, he took its leg off at the knee and risked a look around as it fell.
Giliead freed his sword from a creature’s chest with a hard shove from his boot. He shifted to close the distance between them as Ilias eyed the howlers warily.
Seven of the creatures sprawled limp and bleeding on the ground as the others withdrew to the far side of the chamber, hissing and growling. Ilias frowned, watching as they stooped and weaved, their heads bobbing in what looked like a strange dance. “What the . . .” Giliead muttered. Ilias shrugged, baffled, as one by one the howlers crept back up the rocks into the upper tunnel.
Ilias pivoted, trying to see the rest of the chamber as Giliead grabbed up the torch again. “Are they trying to get above us?” he demanded. Howlers never gave up prey.
“They didn’t even take the dead ones, that’s—” Giliead cocked his head, lifting the torch higher. “You hear that?”
After a moment, Ilias nodded. It was faint, but he could hear a humming, like disturbed bees.
“We’ve found it,” Giliead said softly, absolute conviction in his voice. He stepped forward and thrust the torch against the wall, grinding it out.
As his eyes adjusted, Ilias could make out the shape of a tunnel in the far wall, gently limned with a pearly white light. He heard Giliead move toward it. Right, Ilias thought, taking a deep breath. This is what we came for. He would have rather fought howlers. He followed Giliead’s quiet footsteps.
The tunnel wound around, slanting downward, and the humming grew steadily louder. Ilias thought he could hear a faint metallic banging as well. The strange white light grew brighter until the last turn revealed it spilling from a jagged gap in the low ceiling. Ilias stared at it in dismay. That light, without the flicker and color of real flame, was something only wizards made.
Giliead stepped around it, moving forward. Ilias followed more cautiously. The ability the god had given Giliead to sense the presence of curses had kept them alive on more than one occasion and Ilias was trusting to it now.
Ilias stopped at the edge of the pool of light, craning his neck to look up. Far overhead he could see reflections on white crystalline stone clinging to an arching cavern roof like so many frozen water droplets. This had to be some other part of the central cavern. A shadow passed over the opening and Ilias ducked back hastily. From somewhere above two voices spoke a rapid spate of words in an unfamiliar tongue with a strange harsh sound to it. Cineth had trade from everywhere but Ilias didn’t think he had ever heard speech like that before. He edged away from the spot of light as Giliead motioned urgently for him to hurry.
Ahead there was another narrow opening in the side of the tunnel and Giliead climbed the rock to look through. He froze, the set of his shoulders telling Ilias he had seen something shocking. Ilias twitched, impatient to know the worst. Finally Giliead moved aside and Ilias swung up to push in beside him. What he saw made his eyes widen. A hysterical scream seemed the only appropriate response, but he settled for swearing softly under his breath. It was much, much worse than he had ever imagined.
The opening looked out on a large cavern, the floor only about twenty paces below this level. It was filled with people, dozens of them. They swarmed around a huge structure of bare metal ribs supported on a high scaffold. From the shape outlined by the metal bars it might be a giant ship, maybe a barge, except that the lines were subtly wrong and it was just stupid to build a ship out of metal. The worst part was that they were using curses to construct it; several men, if they were men, had some kind of small torch that emitted a fire so brilliant it was like a captured star. They were playing the torches over the metal, as if melting it into place.
Ilias shot a worried look at Giliead. His friend’s grim expression was just visible in the reflected light. Yes, we‘re in trouble, he thought. So many wizards.
But not like Ixion. He had looked and dressed just like a normal man and had even managed to fool everyone into thinking he was one for a time. The people below were anything but normal. Their clothes were drably colored, all dull browns, and they wore half masks of some kind of dark-colored glass over their eyes. Their hair, if they had any, was gathered up under baggy brown caps. Ilias was sweating in the warm damp air but the men below were covered up as if they expected to have to plow through a snowy mountain pass. Their sleeves came down to reach their gloved hands, the collars went up nearly to their chins, leaving only the pale skin around the mouth, nose, and throat exposed.
And their wizard lights were different from the ones Ixion had used. His had been small silent misty wisps of illumination that floated on the cave breezes; these were giant things a good two paces across, set in metal holders driven into the rock or on high metal stands. Looking at them was like trying to stare into the sun and they made a low hum, the source of the strange noise.
Then as Ilias watched, a group of howlers came out of another tunnel dragging a bundle of metal poles, watched over by a pair of wizards. The white light gleamed off their slick mottled skin and mad eyes. These wizards had tamed the howlers, then, just as Ixion had.
Then one suddenly dropped its burden, crouching and snarling. A wizard stood nearby, unrolling a coil of black rope; he shouted a warning and pointed at the creature. The noise and sudden movement attracted it; with snakelike quickness it darted at him.
Just as it leapt on him another wizard pulled something dark out of the sheath at his belt, pointing it at the howler. Ilias flinched back at a sudden sharp report. That’s a new one, he thought, glancing at Giliead, who was wincing at the echo that reverberated through the cavern. His ears still ringing, Ilias looked back in time to see the howler reel and fall, its legs kicking spasmodically. The other howlers didn’t go after it, but huddled in a group, hissing in alarm. Ilias wet his lips. At least now we know what taught the howlers to be wary of people.
Some wizards were herding the
others back to work, as if it was a normal occurrence. One gestured for two of the others to haul the howler’s victim away. He was limp, though the creature had barely touched him and there was no blood trail on the stone; they dragged him by his arms with his head hanging back to bounce on the ground, as if they knew he was dead or didn’t care. Or that curse, weapon, whatever it was killed him too.
He looked up at Giliead. Ilias had seen wizards kill before, but curses always took time to work. If they didn’t, he and Gil would be dead several times over. He nudged the bigger man’s arm with an elbow and mouthed, “What was that thing?”
Giliead shook his head, equally baffled. He leaned down to say in a nearly voiceless whisper, “Some of them aren’t wizards. Some are slaves, see?”
After a moment of study Ilias nodded. The ones who were doing the herding all wore leather belts with the odd-shaped sheaths attached, often with other pouches and metal implements. The ones being herded didn’t have such accoutrements. They were also the ones doing all the actual labor, using the cursed tools, carrying pipes and poles and heavy cables. The others pointed and gave orders and watched, or scribbled things on small square boards they seemed to use as miniature portable writing desks. They also moved more confidently, shoulders stiff, jaws squared. Not so many wizards as it had looked at first, then. Still too many, Ihas thought.
A touch on his shoulder made Ilias jump and he realized he had been staring in horrified fascination for some time. His legs were stiff from crouching so long. He scrambled down the rock after Giliead and they retreated back up the tunnel, to just before the chamber where the howlers had fought them and fled. They sat back against the rock under an overhang, squeezing in shoulder to shoulder, more for comfort than any need for concealment. “Well?” Ilias said, keeping his voice low.