by Sean Russell
Kehler’s head and shoulders appeared. “You’re not as addled as you think. I began in the next passage, but it joins this one and then peters out to nothing. I was able to turn around in the join and come out this way.”
Kehler stood up stiffly and let out a long breath. “Well, it wasn’t so bad. Shall I do another?”
“No, it’s my turn. There is oil enough in the lamp? Then I shall be tortured next.”
He sloughed off his coat, and took up the lantern. The next passage was no larger than the first two, but more importantly it was not smaller, and Hayes reached the lantern in and, with great reluctance, crawled in behind.
Once in the tube for his full length Hayes stopped. He looked down the narrow tunnel, which bent away from him and went up slightly. What he could see did not seem terribly frightening. Tight but no worse than he had done. It was what lay beyond that preyed upon his imagination. Could it become so tight that he would not be able to go either forward or back?
With great effort Hayes pushed back the fear and forced himself to go on. From previous experience he knew that his shoulders were made narrowest if he put one arm forward and one back and slithered along on his side or stomach, depending on the shape of the passage. He would move the lantern ahead a few inches then drag himself along, scrabbling for purchase with his feet, regulating his breathing so that he did not panic, for panic was the great enemy. He would have been better to have been born with a less active imagination, as it only made things worse. He could imagine the most gruesome scenarios: getting stuck in the passage; breaking the lamp and setting himself on fire in a place where he could barely move, let alone put himself out; and on and on. He shut his eyes and tried to will the images away. Best to think of nothing but moving ahead the next few inches, of moving the lantern carefully, being sure to set it where it would not fall and shatter the chimney.
To his great relief the passage did not grow tighter, nor did he set himself ablaze, so after thirty feet he began to relax a little. Suddenly the passage opened into a small room perhaps four feet square and here he sat up and rested for a few minutes, drawing deep ragged breaths.
From this room the tunnel continued on at an angle from an upper corner and he studied it for a moment, thinking it might be hard to get started unless there were some good holds inside that he could use to pull himself up. For a second he considered merely going back and telling Kehler that the passage ended, but he realized that he would not feel right about telling such a lie—and what if the secret they sought were here? No sense coming all this way and not making as thorough a search as they were able.
As he reached for the lantern to go on, he realized that a small bit of metal lay on the floor. He picked it up and found he held a copper rivet, perhaps from a belt or even a boot. This was not an unexplored passage! Someone had been here before. He looked up at the opening. If it was true that Baumgere did not find what he sought, then there was little reason to go on. Hayes felt his spirits lift.
Resolving to at least look into the tunnel, he thrust the lantern into the passage and peered in. Wedging himself in the opening, he managed to crawl in six feet, but it definitely tightened down to the size of a man’s head in another length.
His energy restored by this, he crawled back out to the main passage and found Kehler wrapped in a blanket, fast asleep.
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t need to call for help,” he said as he shook his friend awake. “Look at this.” He held the rivet out for Kehler to examine.
“You found it in there?”
“Yes. The passage burrows in for thirty feet or so to a small room. From there the passage doesn’t go seven feet before shrinking down to mole size. But the rivet was on the floor.”
“Farrelle’s ghost. So Baumgere had explored this far.”
“Assuming it was Baumgere.”
Kehler nodded, continuing to stare at the bit of copper. “It is unfortunate that we are still poking into passages that our good fallen-priest already eliminated, but I can see no other method of going about this. Can you?”
Hayes shook his head.
Kehler forced himself up. “Well, my turn for the fire.” He lifted the lantern and shook it slightly, listening to the sound of fuel in the reservoir. Before he entered the next opening he took a candle and marked those that they had explored with an X in wax. A moment latter he had wriggled into the rock, leaving Hayes to listen to his progress and watch the light fade to darkness.
Hayes wrapped himself in Kehler’s blanket and settled on the two packs. It was hard to stay awake, but he wanted to be sure to hear his friend should he call out.
And so it went for several hours as they eliminated one passage after another. Exhaustion caught up with them and they slept. As they became more and more fatigued, Hayes found it harder to stay warm when he was not exerting himself and lay shivering in the darkness, sleeping fitfully and shifting his position often. Each time he slept, the dream returned, though he never managed to catch up with the lights and their bearers, but wandered alone in the underworld, hollow with hunger and thirst and yearning, never able to find his way out.
A rasping wakened him, and Hayes opened his eyes to a slight glow coming from the opening his friend had crawled into some unknown time ago. Hayes threw aside the blanket and stumbled as he went. From out of the hole he could hear muttering and the harsh rasp of breath. Hayes stuck his head in the hole and called out.
The sounds stopped and Hayes called out again.
“Am I almost out?” came Kehler’s reply, though it was half grunted as he began to move again.
“I think so. I can hear you clearly.”
“Farrelle be praised.”
It was another quarter of the hour before Kehler’s feet appeared and Hayes took hold and dragged his exhausted friend out. Kehler wavered as he found his feet and Hayes grabbed hold of him lest he fall.
“Sit down, Kehler.”
“No, let me stand.” He steadied himself on the rock wall. “Let me feel the space around me.” He moved his arm and worked his cramped shoulders, gasping as though he had been under water.
“Flames,” he said between breaths. “Bloody blood and flames. What a hellhole.”
“What did you find?”
“Find? Nothing, only two hundred feet of passage so tight I thought I should never get out again. Farrelle’s flames, I hope they’re not all like that.” He lowered himself to the rock and leaned his back against the wall. “How long was I gone?”
Hayes produced his timepiece. “Three hours and a bit, I think.”
“Well. . . . We will be here some time if they all take such effort. Flames, I wish we knew which tunnels Baumgere eliminated. We could save ourselves days. We haven’t brought nearly enough food, I fear.”
“We’ll have to ration, that’s all.”
“Yes, but all this effort has made me hungry all the time.”
“Well, it is about mealtime anyway—noon in the world above.” Hayes began to rummage in his pack for food. “Let’s eat something, and then I’ll take my turn.”
Before they ate, Kehler took up a candle and made a prominent X above the opening he had just explored, as though to be absolutely sure not to have to enter it again.
They ate and drank and spoke of small things of the world above. Laughed at old stories of wilder days, and did everything they could to put the matter they pursued from their minds. Hayes had never really been convinced that they would find fame and fortune from this mad endeavor, but had accompanied his friend partly out of loyalty, partly from curiosity, and perhaps in part for lack of anything better to do. His creditors were unlikely to find him here. But now that the true cost of the exploration was becoming apparent, he wondered if it would not be more sensible to give it up. It was difficult for him to imagine that they would find anything that would make this terrible crawling into the bowels of
the earth worthwhile.
“Can you bear to do another?” Kehler asked after they had both avoided the issue as long as possible.
Hayes felt the darkness reach out and touch him, the infinite cold stored in stone seeping into his beating heart. “We can’t quit now,” he heard himself say. He tried to control his fear. “I, for one, need the fortune you promised.” With the utmost care he filled the lantern, knowing that they could ill afford to spill a drop.
Hayes stretched his stiff muscles, took up the lantern, and went to meet the next passage. His courage failed him as he stood looking into the dark mouth that was about to consume him, but then he forced himself to go on. Leaning down, he stretched as far as he could, setting the lantern in the passage. He was surprised at how unresponsive his muscles were, as though he had driven them beyond exhaustion and now they no longer answered to his commands as they should.
He crawled awkwardly into the unyielding rock, feeling it bite into his battered knees and the heels of his hands. When his hip contacted the rock, Hayes stopped for a moment and let the pain subside.
“I feel like an old man,” he muttered to himself.
“What’s that?” he heard Kehler call out.
“Nothing but curses. Put on the tea, I shan’t be but a moment.”
He reached out and moved the lantern ahead, dragging himself after it, battering his shoulder cruelly into the rock. On he went, trying not to think about what lay ahead. He didn’t even look up the passage except to move the lantern, for it hurt too much to wrench his neck around any more than he had to. A few moments passed before he began to warm from the exertion and then he broke out in a sweat that did not feel natural, as though he were falling ill as well.
The passage tightened down around him, and he contorted himself around to find a way forward, trying to maneuver his shoulder and hip around irregularities in the rock. For a moment Hayes jammed his shoulder back against a swelling and forced himself to relax, breathing deeply. He was so tired that he could hardly force himself to move.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. He knew he wasn’t seriously stuck here, it was more the fatigue, he hardly had the strength it required to get himself free.
“I can go back,” he reassured himself. “Go back.” His voice sounded so overwhelmed with fatigue and laden with sadness that he almost thought he listened to another, and this frightened him almost more than anything. He shook himself, not sure if he had begun to fall asleep.
Forcing himself to back up a little, he managed to release his shoulder and then wriggle around to get past the projection that impeded him.
The cold sweat did not abate, as though it were not a bodily fluid at all but cold fear that flowed out of his pores.
He reached out to move the lantern, forcing himself to raise his head so as not to burn his fingers yet again, and he recoiled in horror, smashing himself hard into the stone, and hearing himself cry out. The lantern toppled, leaking oil, and immediately caught fire. And there he stuck, gasping for breath, cowering back against the stone, unable to bear the sight. Beyond the flames lay a human skull, a tiny wisp of hair still clinging to it like a spider’s web. One skeletal hand reaching out toward him, toward the world of light.
Oh, bloody flames. Farrelle save me. . . . It is a child. A poor, forsaken child.
Without thought as to what would happen, he reached quickly into the flame, putting the lantern upright, his sleeve catching fire.
“Nooo!” He battered his wrist against the stone in desperation and managed to put the sleeve out before he went up in flame himself, though his hand stung insufferably from burns. He coughed from the smoke and backed away from the lantern that still sat in the center of a ball of flame.
Flames! Let me go. It is a child. Baumgere’s child. Farrelle grant him peace.
The leaked oil burned away, and though he was nearly blind from the sting of the smoke, Hayes forced himself to move forward again, and reached out gingerly and touched the lantern’s handle. Still too hot. He would have to wait.
He could see the entire skeleton now, spread out behind the skull, so small and shrunken he wondered how the child could ever have become jammed in such a passage, but he was sure that was what had happened, for it narrowed to almost nothing around the child’s remains.
After the handle had cooled, he lifted the lantern with his burned hand and began a slow retreat, not taking his eyes from the horror, as though afraid it might follow.
The crawl out was painfully slow, inching along like a slug, finding his way through the narrow parts, until he emerged in the passage again. He lay on the floor while Kehler bent over him and took up the scorched lantern.
“Did you call me? I awoke to a sound, but I was not sure if it was a dream.” He looked at his friend who sat up now and covered his face with his unburned hand. “Hayes? Are you all right?”
Hayes shook his head, though he kept his hand over his face, as though he could shut out the horror. “I found the child . . . Baumgere’s child.”
He felt Kehler’s hand on his shoulder. “Wedged in the tunnel?”
Hayes nodded. “Though the skeleton is so small it is impossible to imagine how. Flames, Kehler, the man was a monster! Only a child, and he sent him into that hell. What terror the poor boy must have known. The priest was right to refuse that man absolution. I pray he is burning still.”
Kehler sat on the floor beside his friend, saying nothing, but hoping perhaps that just being near would mean something. Hayes could not remember shedding tears since childhood, but he felt the sting of them now. The poor child. . . . What a horrible death. Trapped in a nightmare that had but one escape. No one deserved such a death. Except perhaps Baumgere himself.
Hayes felt a rage burn up in him toward this man. It was lucky for Baumgere that he was long dead, for Hayes was certain he would seek him out, otherwise. Refusal of absolution might seem like a terrible punishment to a Farrellite, but Hayes had a more earthly retribution in mind.
Thirty
Erasmus stood by the lake of the mirror, holding his lantern aloft to illuminate the scene. It was haunting, as well as unreal in some way—the strange beauty of another world.
Behind him he could hear the others talking, the sound of their voices carrying down the passage like a strange mumbling in another tongue. He half expected some unknown creature of the underworld to appear.
Erasmus and his companions had soon realized that one lantern was not sufficient for three men, for the leader had to have light, and most of the time this left the last man in near-darkness. It was too dangerous to proceed in this way, so they had lit a second lantern, though they put it out whenever they stopped to rest or eat.
Erasmus shed his pack and began climbing over the nearest rock, searching, and it was just then that the others appeared, the strange rumble of their words turning into common Farr the second they emerged into the chamber.
“There should be a boat here,” Clarendon called out to Erasmus. “Can you see it?”
“No. I fear it has been carried away, or Hayes and Kehler have not returned it.”
“Can’t we climb around?” Rose asked as Erasmus joined them.
Clarendon sat down on his pack, shaking his head, and looking a little angry. “No. That is why the boats were built. It is impossible to pass except over the water. Damn their imprudence. If they are in any trouble, we shall be of no use whatsoever.”
“If one can’t pass over the water we must pass through it,” Erasmus said, peeling off his coat. “How far is it to the end?”
“Three hundred feet, perhaps a bit more,” Clarendon said, rising as though he would protest Erasmus’ proposal. “But the water is quite deep, and one cannot always find holds along the walls. It is too dangerous, Mr. Flattery. Far too dangerous.”
Erasmus pulled off a boot. “But not for one who can swim, Randall, whi
ch, fortunately, I can.”
“But three hundred feet, Mr. Flattery . . .!” Clarendon said, forcing Erasmus to laugh.
“I don’t know exactly how far I can swim, for I haven’t measured in some years, but in my youth I swam upwards of five miles at a stretch, so I think I can stay afloat for three hundred feet, even at this advanced age. The problem shall be that when I get to the lake’s far end, I will have no light.” He stopped pulling off his clothes and considered this. “If we put a candle in a tin bowl I shall try to carry it with me.”
This was done, and with some trepidation Erasmus slipped into the icy waters. He tried floating the bowl before him but in ten feet he’d put the flame out. After returning to have it lit again he swam on his back and held the bowl and candle clear of the water. If he went slowly enough and was careful not to blow out the flame with his own breath, he might just make it to the far end.
But this was not to be, most of the way there the flame snuffed out again, and Erasmus decided to carry on, hoping the weak light from the lamps would be enough.
He was shivering when he finally came to the lake’s end, and was beginning to imagine all kinds of creatures that might live in such a lake, when a faint curve, too consistent to be natural caught his eye.
He scrambled out of the water, stubbing a toe brutally, and found the two skiffs side by side in the darkness. Without further damage to either himself or the boat he managed to launch one of the craft, and shivering like it was the worst winter, he set his oars to work. In a moment he was back with his companions and pulling on clothes over his wet limbs.
“What lies at the far end?” the priest asked.
“I can’t say, for I could hardly see,” Erasmus answered, beating his arms across his chest and slapping his shoulders to try to gain warmth.
“Just a small shelf of rock not unlike this, though not so large. Perhaps there was an opening to a passage.” Clarendon blew out the flame in one lantern. “I think we should make a meal here and then rest. We have been pressing hard, and this place is as comfortable as any we shall see for some time.”