To his right were the glittery blue ice falls, hanging like a tumble of melted candle wax. There were at least ten paces worth of open space out to the backside of what might have been a roaring waterfall in a warmer climate. The frozen spill was easily thirty full strides wide, and the sunlight reflected through the thick ice, creating an eerie blue glow.
Had he taken the time to look up, he would have seen how, a few hundred feet above him, the frozen flow poured out over the edge of a jutting shelf of granite that cantilevered over this part of the passage. Under any normal circumstances he would have been taken in by the majesty and beauty of such a rare sight, but as it was, he was cursing the placement of the frozen fall of water because it blocked his view of what was transpiring farther along the ledge.
Again, Vanx deftly slipped his lanyard’s hook off of the hand line and over the next ring without even slowing down. Then he was out from under the falls and curving even farther to his left around the ledge. The roar that accompanied the shocking sight he came upon nearly caused him to fumble and fall again.
A giant snake was extending out of the cliff face. It had a wide, triangular head with a horned snout that reminded Vanx of the rhinosours back on Zyth. The hole it was using was just ten feet above the hand line and a few feet ahead of where Vanx had stopped. Already, enough of the sinuous, tree-trunk-thick body was extended out from the wall that it had doubled around on itself and was striking back at Gallarael, who had moved a good distance from where she should have been.
The cliff face kept curving to the left but came back in a horseshoe shape. Gallarael was in the crook of the horseshoe, at least fifteen feet below the ledge on which she should have been. Vanx couldn’t see her blackened skin, for her coat was strapped to her with all the climbing gear, but he knew she was in her changeling form. She was clinging to the cliff face with her long foreclaws and nothing more. Above, half of her lanyard was dangling uselessly from the hand line as she craned her head about, looking for a way to go.
Chelda was almost directly across from where Vanx was now. Over there, the ledge was wide enough to provide substantial footing. Chelda was trying desperately to string a bow. The contents of several of their packs were strewn about the ground at her feet. Apparently, just finding the bow had been a chore. Vanx cringed, for Chelda wasn’t wearing a harness anymore. If she slipped, she would die.
Kegger wasn’t far from her and was still hauling mightily on the pull-line. Vanx followed its taut length to the trolley. There, still seventy feet or more from the cliff face, with his arms and legs dangling from the corpse rig, was Xavian’s still form. Trussed in the canvas cradle, he lurched along, suspended over nothing but a few thousand feet of open space. Kegger was doing all he could.
The serpentine monster darted in at Gallarael with swift and explosive speed. She screamed again, only this time there was a primal quality to the call, like that of a cornered animal knowingly about to make its stand.
Vanx felt for a weapon, but with the thick shrew fur coat that was belted tightly around him, all he could get at was the plain utility dagger he kept in his boot.
The slithery beast roared, and Gallarael leapt away from the cliff in a backward arcing flip that carried her body just over the striking serpent’s stubby snout horn and out of its snapping jaws. She landed face down on the serpent’s neck, just below its yellow-green, plate-sized eyes and, like a clingy cocklebur, she dug her claws into its scaly hide and held on.
The serpent must have felt her claws. It began twisting and thrashing about violently. It slammed its neck into the cliff face in an attempt to throw Gallarael, then tried to crush her between its body and the rocks, but her claws held firm. Just above the serpent’s impact, a pair of terrified ramma bolted frantically in opposite directions.
Vanx made to unfasten his lanyard so that he could chance racing up the cliff face to see if he could get his dagger into the beast. Maybe he could distract it so that it didn’t crush Gallarael against the wall or shake her loose.
With a deep, resigning huff of breath, Vanx steeled himself and pulled his lanyard free. It wasn’t meant to happen, though, for no sooner did he start up away from the ledge than one of the ramma came tumbling down, almost on top of him. It was all he could do to reset his lanyard and hug the cliff so the falling animal didn’t smash him off and take him tumbling down with it. It screamed and bleated when it went by and thrashed its hooves wildly at the air as it continued down into the gulch.
“Nooo!” Chelda shouted. “Oh no!”
Vanx saw that she was looking at Gallarael.
Then he saw Gallarael sailing, feet over head, as she was slung from the serpent’s neck by the whipping force of its flailing. It looked as if Gallarael’s body would crash into the cliff almost directly under where Chelda stood, but the downward pull of her fall kept her from making it that far across. Vanx saw Chelda sprawl face down over the lip of the canyon. When she looked up, even from the great distance between them, he could see tears welling in her eyes.
“Come on, Chelda,” Kegger yelled. “Help me save this one!” He gave out a roar and hauled on the rope. The rope seemed to be pulling back at him.
Craning his head around, Vanx saw that the serpent had fouled itself in the trolley-line. It was hissing and twisting and coiling around as it tried to pull itself back into its hole. One of its eyes was a goo-dripping ruin.
By the time Chelda gained Kegger’s side, the trolley-line was stretched as tight as a harp string. Out over the open nothingness, Xavian was being tossed and yanked about like a rag doll. The pull-line went slack for the sudden lack of dip in the other rope, and in that moment Kegger took off running toward the tree line, taking the slack of the pull-line with him. Vanx saw him hook his huge arm around a tree’s trunk and spin with his momentum, as if the tree were a dancing partner. Then he was pulling in slack and tying knots, just before the trolley-line snapped with an earsplitting “CRACK.”
Now freed from the tangle, the serpent reversed itself back into a different hole and slithered in as quickly as it could manage. Vanx couldn’t help but marvel when its tail came out of one hole, twisted and flicked around, and then disappeared down another.
Xavian was only thirty or forty feet from the safety of the opposing cliff top when the trolley-line snapped. Luckily for the unconscious mage, that was all the distance he had to swing before he slapped into the rock face. The pull-line was still attached to the trolley, and now Kegger was using the tree and Chelda’s strength to pull Xavian up out of the gulch.
Vanx was bleeding freely from several wounds, and while his vision was clear, his half-Zythian orbs were burning as they shed salty tears for Gallarael. His head was split and dripping blood and he was scraped raw in more than a few places. Darl helped him on across, and it was a long while before any of them tried to speak. For that time, Darl’s muttered curses and Chelda’s quiet sobbing were the only sounds in the whole frozen world.
*
Vanx slipped in and out of consciousness as he was helped to the old cabin the rim riders used. The blow to his head had him spinning. Kegger left Chelda to rinse the blood from Vanx’s cheek and brow and to keep an eye on Poops and Xavian. She did these things mechanically, and only once did she try to speak to Vanx.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “Poor, poor Gallarael.” Another fit of tears and sniffles overcame her.
Vanx only dimly realized what had just happened, and the pain and anguish of losing Gallarael couldn’t well up past the foggy haze of his battered skull just yet. What did register was that Chelda had called her Gallarael, and Gallarael was the Princess of Parydon. Why that stuck out in Vanx’s mind, he’d never know, but it held there along with wavering visions of an angry prince and an outraged king. The idea of calling in the full host of Parydonia and the powerful minds of the King’s Royal Order of Wizards to come destroy the Hoar Witch and her foul creatures fluttered around in his brain for a fleeting instant, but then the image of Gallarael’s
smile came to him, and hot, salty tears burned his eyes again. A moment later, he was clinging to Chelda and trying his best not to drown in the tidal wave of guilt and misery that was washing over him.
*
Kegger, after setting the others in the cabin and getting a fire started, ordered Darl to dig into the snow for the storage locker that was hidden behind the shelter. There, they found several more coils of rope and some other gear. Kegger tied all of the ropes into a descending rig, while Darl went about gathering up the gear and supplies that Chelda had raged through in her race to find a weapon.
All the while, Darl grumbled and cursed, but he didn’t even bother to argue when Kegger gave him his next orders, for he already knew what they’d be.
“Get into the descending harness,” Kegger said in a firm but weary voice. “I’d go down myself, but none of you could pull my weight back up.”
“Won’t be easy for yee to pull me back up neither, Kee,” Darl said. “I seen her sprawled on the sheelf about a theerd of the way dewn. There’ll be two of us on the wey back up, and only one of us’ll be breathing.”
“Just put her body in a harness and tie it to the drop-line,” Kegger said. “Hopefully, I’ll have you back up before full dark and we can both pull her body out.” He glanced at the cabin and frowned. “There’s no need to allow them a look at the girl in the light of day.”
“’Twern’t no girl when she fell,” Darl remarked. “If you see that skat-eatin’ slither-snake, yee better be pulling me out, Keeg.” Darl shouldered a corpse rig over the descending rig into which he’d strapped.
“It was hurt, Darl. She clawed its eye out before it threw her, and look.” Kegger pointed across the open horseshoe span toward the glittery frozen falls. The sheer backdrop of the cliff behind it was dark enough that the falls stood out. The lowering sun had turned the whole spectacle a bright rosy color, but that’s not what he was pointing out. Several huge, flittering moths of silver, blue and green had alighted on the nooks and juts around the falls. One of them was opening and closing its great delicate wings slowly and repeatedly. The prismatic colors between the dark swirling patches reflected the sun in an oily sheen of ripples in blue, yellow, lavender and turquoise. “The birds are wheeling back in too,” Kegger reassured him. “We should have realized that none of them were about when we first started across.” He spat to the side and gave Darl an apologetic look. “I was just glad they weren’t fluttering around and bugging our passage.”
From behind them, the leaves rustled. One of the ramma snorted before easing into view. When it saw Darl, it relaxed its posture and started grazing on what vegetation penetrated the snow there.
“’Twern’t yeer fault, Keeg.” Darl shook his head. “They’d have come without us, and what theen? Wee be pulling all of them, frozen steff and breken up out of the gelch in canvas.”
Kegger nodded toward the ledge. As he tied the end of the descending line to the same tree trunk that had saved Xavian, another ramma plodded into their vicinity. This one was still visibly terrified.
Darl dismissed them, crawled over, and started down. It wasn’t until a few moments later, when he was a good way down the cliff face that Kegger figured out why the ramma wasn’t settling.
A chorus of wolfish calls erupted from the trees. Not only did these aggressive howls sound unlike any wolves Kegger had ever heard before, but they sounded hungry and near. They were so close that he was trembling like a palsied old man when he began frantically trying to haul Darl back up.
Chapter Thirty
Deep under the deep
and deeper in the Underground.
That is where you’ll find yourself,
If you wander round a fairy mound.
--A rim rider campfire song
The crash of undergrowth behind Kegger told him that Darl would have to survive on his own. He didn’t hesitate. Kegger yanked three times on the drop-line, waited long enough for Darl to get a grip on the hang-line, then let go and went for his axe. He knew Darl wouldn’t free-fall, even if he didn’t have a grip, but Darl was the last thing on his mind when he came up into a fighter’s crouch, holding something other than his favorite weapon. The heavy-headed cliff hammer wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do, for already the shadowy form of a four-legged wolfish beast with ember eyes was darting forth out of the forest at him. As he raised his hammer to strike, he saw more of them from the corners of his eyes. His heart exploded with excitement and fear, but he didn’t panic.
“Chelda Flar!” he yelled as his hammer smashed the fur and flesh from the skull of the first beast that came within his range. “Hurry it up, girl!” He paused to spin and avoid another charging creature. “Bring the bow!”
This one looked a bit smaller than the first, and if he didn’t know that they were on the edge of the Lurr, he would’ve thought that his mind was playing tricks, because this wolf had scales instead of fur.
“There’s a whole pack of ‘em!” Kegger yelled at the top of his lungs. “Bring my axe!”
One of them hit him from behind, this one the size of a timber wolf with the head of a badger. Its foreclaws raked scratches down Kegger’s back, shredding his hard-earned cloak, but it didn’t knock the huge gargan off of his feet. He spun and greeted it with his hammer. He felt the teeth of another creature sink into the unprotected area of his wrist, between his sleeve and the glove of his free hand. This allowed the badger-beast to dodge his hammer blow and slink in low past Kegger’s guard.
Kegger roared out a challenge. In a rage, he swung the wolf that was latched onto his wrist from its feet. He came around and slammed it into the nearest tree. When he brought his eyes up, the badger-headed bastard was coming for his throat. It had a look of glee in its feral gaze. He thought his life was over then, but the wolf’s eyes suddenly narrowed, and it yelped as it slammed into him. Its teeth met Kegger’s chin, and the weight of its charge bowled them both over. Kegger half-expected to feel his throat being ripped open, but the wolf was only twitching and jerking.
He twisted back and saw Vanx stumbling out of the doorway, a thin little sword in one hand and Kegger’s huge axe held awkwardly in the other. Kegger heaved the badger-beast’s bulk to the side and rolled to his hands and knees. He saw Chelda’s arrow sticking out of the wolf that had tackled him, then he saw the scale-covered wolf-thing, the one that he’d slammed into the tree. It was slinking off into the shadows, dragging a broken hind leg.
Thinking that was all of them, Kegger started to feel a wave of relief wash over him, but the feeling was premature.
“Run!” Chelda screamed from somewhere between him and the cabin. The thrum of her bowstring punctuated the fear and urgency in her voice.
Kegger didn’t look back, because he already heard the low, rumbling snarl. He took only one long step before it sank its teeth into a calf muscle. His thick elk-hide britches were no protection at all against the vise-like jaws. A lighter man might have been slung about by the ferocious wolf-beast, but due to his size, most of Kegger’s calf muscle was violently torn away instead.
Kegger screamed out in pain but managed to scrabble away from the hulking wolfish monster on two hands and his good leg.
*
Seeing Kegger’s ruined leg, Vanx threw down the axe and charged over to protect him. The gargan wouldn’t be needing the weapon anymore.
Chelda put a second arrow in the bigger wolf’s shoulder, but it didn’t even flinch as it casually chugged down the bloody morsel it’d torn from Kegger’s leg. After the beast swallowed, it fixed Chelda in its bright tourmaline gaze. It then reared its head back and howled out a series of cackling yelps that sounded far too much like laughter. The only thing more unnerving than the sound was the fact that Chelda was having to look up to meet its eyes.
Chelda threw down her bow and drew her sword. Around them, a howling chorus of at least a dozen other wolven voices returned their leader’s mocking call. The big wolf shrank back a bit, though, and Chelda saw for the first time t
hat her blade was glowing a pale shade of blue. The howling suddenly ceased. Chelda started to charge at the hyena-wolf, but it was gone. Only a fleeting whisper remained beneath the shadowy trees where it had just been.
After a moment of listening, Chelda spoke up. “They’ve gone, I think. The glow of this blade scared them away.”
“Find Darl,” Vanx told her, but only after he scanned the area and was satisfied that the things were indeed gone. “I’ll take care of Kegger.”
The rim rider passed out when Vanx cinched a cord above his knee to staunch the flow of blood. Kegger did nothing other than bulge his eyes out and grit his teeth until then, though, so it came as a kind of mercy when he finally succumbed to the shock of his injury. Vanx knew he could work a minor healing on the wound but didn’t want to do it blindly. So much meat was missing, and the savaged area was so jagged and bloody, that he didn’t want to chance fusing the wrong parts together. There was a chance, albeit a slim one, that Kegger could retain some ability to use his foot and lower leg. Cleaning the wound thoroughly before Vanx put his magic to it would increase his chances. Getting Xavian awake to use his more potent healing spells would be even better, but without knowing how long Darl’s concoction would keep the wizard out of his wits, the aid couldn’t be counted on.
Seeing there was nothing more he could do for Kegger out here in the trees, Vanx called out for Chelda. “Any sign of him?”
He saw her rise up. She was over by the cliff studying a shredded length of rope that was tied to a tree.
Vanx watched her pick another rope from the ground. This one trailed from the tree over the ledge, and by the lack of resistance at the other end when she pulled it, he could tell that Darl wasn’t connected to it. Vanx wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
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