by Ben Stivers
“I am sorry to bother you,” the woman began tentatively. She stood with one hand behind her back. Stiffly, she pulled her arm forward, tugging a boy perhaps half of Adam’s age out from behind her. His hair was shaggy and fell across his slender face. Leanness kept close to his bones and like all boys, dirt managed to find a home on his knees and shoes.
“This is my son, Swage. Swage, tell Lady Shanay what you told me.”
Complete fright filled up the boy’s eyes. He shied back, trying to stand behind his mother again, which she did not allow. Seeing his bashfulness, Shanay invited them in to put them at ease. She sat the boy next to Adam and then knelt near him. “Swage, pleased to meet you. This is my son, Adam.”
“Hello,” Adam added, “I’ve seen you out and about with the bigger boys. You can skip rocks better than most of them.”
Swage smiled back, but the smile was not long lived as his mother said, “Tell her, Swage. Tell her what happened.”
The lad looked at the floor, then at Adam and finally to Shanay. Pausing and gathering himself, he said, “I was in the woods two days ago. I was with Lain and Nom. We like to go into the woods along the stream to trap rabbits. My father likes rabbit. Mother cooks it best, he says.”
Shanay let him follow his own road through his tale, though Adam found his mind wandering back to his earliest hunting days.
Swage continued, “There was one more trap, the furthest upstream, right near where the spring comes out of the mountain. The others wanted to go home, but I said, ‘No, you have to check every trap you set every day.’ If you don’t, the other animals will come and take it.”
Shanay nodded her understanding, which helped Swage unwind his tale. “They went back, but I went on. I had cleared the trap. There was a rabbit in it. I set the trap, covered it up and marked it so someone would not step in it. I was ready to go home. The sun had already dipped behind the rise. You know. A lot of shadows in the woods when the sun fades.”
“Yes, I know,” Shanay replied.
Swage paused again in his story, struggling with what he might say next. Finally, he took a deep breath and said quite emphatically, “I saw a ghost.”
Adam smiled dimly, as did Shanay. “A ghost?”
“Yes, a ghost.”
“I see,” said Shanay. “Are you sure it was not the shadows playing tricks on you? They can do that. You are a woodsman. Surely, you have seen such.”
Swage neither smiled nor frowned. His face held no emotion whatsoever as he said, “She spoke to me. Shadows do not talk.”
Shanay did not bother to conceal her surprise, intrigued by the boy’s tale. “She spoke to you? How do you know it was a she?”
“I could see her. Just like you, but—like she was made of smoke. She talked to me for a good while about trees and animals. I liked her. It was almost dark when I got home. Mother was worried.” He looked at his mother.
“We like to have the boys out of the woods before dark,” she said to Shanay as if an explanation were needed. Bears, wolves, wolverines all stalked the woods at night. A young boy would make an easy meal if found out alone. The woods had given itself over to repopulation since the ending of the trolls.
“Well, your mother is wise, Swage. If there are ghosts in the forest, that is all the more reason for you to be home.”
Swage’s expression darkened. “You are making fun of me.”
“No, no I am not,” Shanay said, realizing the boy felt she condescended to him when she only meant to place him further at ease. “I apologize if I made you feel that way. What did this ghost say?”
“Many things,” he explained. “She wanted to me to not be afraid. She told me to come straight home and tell my mother so that I could come and tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes as he struggled to deliver his message, as if the words he did not wish to speak, but his core required of him. “She said to tell Arthur that they are coming to kill you.”
“Kill you?”
“No, kill you.”
Shanay sat back on her haunches. “Who is coming to kill me, Swage? Who did this ghost say was coming to kill me?”
Swage drew out a piece of paper and handed it to Shanay. On it, with a piece of charcoal he had drawn a symbol, the same symbol Adam had seen on the men’s necks in the Lusty Wench.
Adam saw anxiousness etch his mother’s face in a way that he had not seen before. “Did this ghost have a name? Thanatos, perhaps?”
Thanatos could take any shape he wished, and unobtrusiveness and mystical puzzles were his specialty.
“That was not what she said,” Swage replied, starting to sob. Each word caught in a gasp as he put them out. “She—she said you might not believe me. She told me to tell you her name.”
“I do believe you, Swage. I do. Did she tell you her name?”
“She said you would ask and to tell you her name is Lieala. She said to tell you she is a ghost. She said she has left for the Wheel. Mrandor murdered her. He intends to kill you all. She said he was dead, but he is alive. I do not know what that means, but it is what she told me to say.”
Shanay’s face blanched. Her own eyes welled up. She staggered to the table and sat as if she might faint. Adam sprang to her side, putting a hand on her arm and feeling her tremble.
Swage, however, sniffled himself back together. “She was a nice lady. Not like the other. The other frightened me.”
Shanay put her hand on Adam’s and composed herself. “What other lady? There was another?”
“The day before. I did not see her. I only heard her voice. Her voice made me afraid just to hear it, but I could not get away from it until I ran out of the woods.”
Holding her thoughts of Lieala at bay, Shanay asked, “What did the voice say?”
“She is a liar,” Swage set, and his jaw set firmly. Where a moment before trepidation swam in his eyes, now the incensed fury of a little boy for his mother had rowed in.
“What did she say, Swage?” his mother asked, clearly trying to push the discussion along and sounding as if she had not heard this part of the boy’s story.
“She said you and father hated me. That you had always hated me. She said you treat me badly and—” He stopped, his ability to say the next words wedged in his throat as if he would gag. “She said I should tell the other boys the same, and we should cut your throats while you sleep. It would be easy. It would be fun.”
The mother’s hands both flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. Flush came to her face and tears to her eyes. “Swage!”
Swage’s anger flattened. “I hate her, Mother! I would never do that. She is the liar.”
“Do the other boys hear this voice, Swage?” Adam asked when Shanay did not. “Have they said anything to you about this?”
“I did not ask and they have not said. She did not return. I thought that maybe I had dreamed this thing.”
Shanay took Swage’s hand and said, “Would you mind if I say a prayer here with you, Swage? For you and your mother?”
Swage nodded his agreement and so she did. When she was through, she asked, “Will you tell me if you hear that bad lady’s voice again?”
“You think it could have just been a dream? I did until I saw the other lady.”
“It could have been,” Shanay assured, “but if you have another bad dream tell your mother right away.”
Adam knew from the tone in her voice that Shanay did not consider Swage’s story to be a dream, but a living nightmare, perhaps.
Unbeknownst to either, Anthony separated from Wolf when Wolf’s hand torch flickered out and the labyrinth plunged into complete darkness. They had taken only one or two steps and only after the next several did Anthony realize the flame had not returned. He reached out his hand to reorient on Wolf and took several more steps, hoping to lay his hand upon his friend.
“Wolf,” he whispered into the blackness, but he did not gain a reply. He sheathed his sword, and pressed against t
he wall to his right, feeling his way along as he pulled a hand torch from his belt pouch. The darkness could not be more absolute and his ears already had started to regard his blood flowing through his veins. He could hear his heartbeat. Panic threatened.
They had become separated. He struck a light just as he took his next step, suddenly finding himself pitched forward and once again in the dark at the bottom of a long, wet and hard tumble. Had he the breath, he would have cursed, but his landing had not been graceful. If one of his men had come back and told him they had done such a stupid thing, he would have had them rake the stables for a month.
Back in the dark once more, he climbed to his knees and remained still as he retrieved another hand torch. He had tumbled a long way on a steep and slippery slope. No need to fall down another. Hoping he could simply backtrack, he struck the next hand torch.
Far above him, the ceiling stretched, scribing an oval roofline that ended in steep, wet walls. Stalactites protruded from the ceiling, hundreds of them, a myriad of lengths and sizes. The tops were cream colored while the tips were more amber. Even in the dim light, water glistened, running down the sides and dripping from the tips of some. While Anthony had never been in a cave, and while the place looked remarkable, he had no time for admiration. He turned to leave.
The slope behind him was nearly forty-five degrees. A steady thin stream of water covered its surface, emanating from the surface itself, the squeezing of water from the rock. Nothing grew on the slippery rock, but after two attempts and a lengthy and well-educated string of cursing, Anthony decided a return the way he had come did not lay within his grasp.
His choices were two. Stand still, wait for Wolf, hope that Wolf found him or press forward, and try to find his way out along an alternate route.
Scralz would be furious with him, but at the same time, she would worry. Knowing her, she would head right down into the labyrinth to find him and that adventure he did not wish to experience. Holding his hand torch high, he took a further look around. The water continued along his ragged path, though the grade was much less than the entryway. He followed it along for a bit until the path became drier. The path tipped right at one point and the water disappeared along a jagged crack in the edge. At that point, he found himself back on dusty dry rock.
His footsteps kept his heartbeat from hammering his ears, but he would have sworn by his dead mother’s name that he heard the flame burn. Turning a corner, he saw a light to the right, but high up in the chamber.
Shadows flickered there, and he could see shadows. He called out. “Hey! Hey! Down here!”
The shadows remained, but stopped their waltz. He called out again.
Though he could not recognize the voice in the echoing of the cave, a reply came, “Anthony?”
“Down here!” he yelled and waved his torch back and forth. Far above, a shadowed face looked over the edge.
“How did you get down there?”
“Wolf and I got separated. I am trying to find the way back up. Put a marker there, I will put one here. If I can’t find my way, I will return to this spot. You do the same in, say, an hour—make that two. Get some rope in case you have to pull me out of this damned hole!”
“That is quite a haul,” came the reply.
Anthony did not disagree. Hanging far above a floor of tumbled and broken boulders did not agree with his sensibilities, but it may be the only chance he had. “Just mark the spot! Stay together. Come back if we don’t meet up!”
Scratching a deep “X” in the rock right in the center of the trail, he carried forward onto the path, counting his paces to keep them straight in his head. Seven hundred winding paces later, his path ended. He had used four of his ten torches and lit the fifth as he stepped under a low-hanging archway and into a large chamber.
He immediately snuffed out his torch and cringed under the archway, hoping he had not been seen. He slowly and quietly duck-walked backward until he reached a spot where he felt hidden, but could make some assemblage of assessment.
The chamber was perhaps as large as the entire town of Hellsgate with stone waterfalls slicked by running water. Innumerable fingers of stone reached down those flowstones, and he heard the sound of water far, far below, a constant dripping into what must be a silent pool. If the water did not leave the chamber, it should be flooded and it was certainly not. Stalactites were much larger here than the chambers before. Only a few stalagmites rose from the floor around the edges.
He reached down, slid his hand around until he found some wet dirt near the edge from which he had retreated. Quietly, he wiped his hand in the stuff and spread it over his face, his eyelids, and his hands, then finally his neck. Lying down on the floor, he crept forward on his stomach back into the chamber.
He lingered prone, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, assuming that they would. Whether the creatures he thought he saw could see him in the dark with mud caked over his skin, he could not know, but he and his Templars had come into the labyrinth to assess what they might do to deter the creatures that plagued Hellsgate. He could not leave without knowing what they faced.
Once he ascertained a course of action, however, he had no idea how he might find his back to the surface.
Wolf retraced his steps through the labyrinth, carefully counting and usually only being off by a step or two. When at last he reached the entrance, only four Templars had returned. None of them had seen or heard Anthony and sending them back out before they had all returned might waste time.
True, Anthony could be lying somewhere injured, or maybe he had misstepped and become lost. Wolf cursed his own dim-witted decision that they did not need to be tied together if they all stayed close to their partners.
No one had found anything except chambers with exits too small to leave, or tunnels that circled back to the main tunnel, or dead ends.
“Two of you—go back up. Bring some wood. We will start a fire and stay here all day if we must. The air is chill down here. We may as well be warm. Besides, we will run out of hand torches if we don’t.”
Sending the men on their way, he speculated how Arthur might be faring with Crabwell, and what he would have done if he were in the same predicament.
Anthony crept forward on his stomach. For what felt like a full day, he drew himself up a full body length, and then continued that way until he reached what he thought to be about the correct distance. He kept his eyes clamped tight, unsure whether he did so to muster the courage or to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
As he edged forward, the breeze that he had taken for granted in the other tunnels ceased, replaced by a repugnant fetor that stung his nose and nearly caused him to retch. To do so would surely lead to instant death. What he thought he had seen, had he truly seen it, would kill him before he could stand.
At last, his right hand reached again to haul him forward when two of his fingers touched something clammy and with no small part of slime. A sickly slurping accompanied the touch. He froze, leaving his hand touching whatever he had found, not wishing to attract more attention than he might already have.
Despite his brain’s encouragement otherwise, his right eye pried open its lid to see what he encountered. The cavern smoldered faint bilious green phosphorescence. His fingers lay against a bulbous cocoon half again larger than himself. In the dimness, he discerned the goop that lubricated its outsides, an ochre-colored ooze that bubbled with sick-sounding plop each time gas escaped. Strangling the urge to vomit, he cautiously turned his gaze and head together, not wishing to expose the whites of his eyes.
The feeling of a thousand serpents crawled up his legs and back. Within the indentations in the walls and between the trails of the stone waterfalls, yellow serpent-like creatures expanded and contracted. A few slithered around from one ledge to another while others snapped at them, exposing rolling rows of teeth that shined even in the dim luminescence. Around the narrow ridge surrounding the gash in the floor that lead to who-knew-where, Snipes lingered, swa
yed back and forth in a mesmerizing unison to some supernatural refrain that only they heard.
He tried to count the monstrosities, but the light did not assist and after a while, it did not matter. There were too many. Much more than they had seen above in the streets of Hellsgate at night. More than his men would be exterminate here in the labyrinth, even if Anthony could once again find the dismal chamber and they could contain the creatures there.
Inhaling quietly and coalescing his courage, he quit his hand from the cocoon and reached forward, inching further until he peered over the edge of the rift into which the water tumbled. The waterfall vanished into darkness, and although the hole was probably not fathomless, he decided that dropping something over the edge to determine the depth might gain him nothing but a swift, undesired funeral.
He decided to withdraw, but before he could, with a few coughed-up belches and a spraying of ooze, the cocoon split wide at the top and a hand full of small Alones skittered out over the edge, drawing them from the ooze until the cocoon completely deflated. Crawling over him, they slithered their way toward the area where the rest homed. He closed his eyes, feeling the touch of every tentacle and praying fervently that they would not detect him.
Eyes closed, he waited until the last of them passed, and then decided to crawl away, but before he could, the cocoon tipped on its side, splashing him with buckets of the goop. He held his breath, waiting for the slime to slide off his mouth and nose before he inhaled again, wondering if it would, or might he actually need to get up and run.
Run where? If they saw him, if he were faster than they were, if he made no wrong turns, he would simply end up at the slope he could not climb, cornered. He strained until he could no more, then exhaled slowly, feeling an opening in the slime bubble out and pop so that he could breathe what squalid air reached him.