‘You cannot guard me against what is here,’ I said gently. ‘Now go, and watch over Dragon and Maruman for me!’
He cantered away down the pipe that the wolves had slept in, followed by the other horses, Sendari bearing Dragon and Maruman on the bier. The rest of us followed at a slow jog, Faraf in the lead bearing Dameon. His head just cleared the top of the pipe, though he would have to get down whenever he came to places where he could smell rhenlings to avoid brushing against any that were clinging to the roof.
I ran beside Faraf to begin with, my hand on her neck, and the others ran behind me as on the day before, linked hand on shoulder to one another, save for Gavyn who still refused to join us. But once again Darga and Rasial ran either side of him, behind us, ensuring that he stayed in the centre of the pipe. We had not lit any of the torches, for Ahmedri had managed to mend only one torch and the others we had used for firewood. We had too few torches left to waste on anything but the places where there were rhenlings. It was not hard, for the pace was not fast. In truth it was easy to run, unencumbered as we were, for Faraf carried the torches and the food we would eat that day, while the other horses carried everything else. All the rest of us carried were a knife and a bottle of water each.
As we had been preparing to leave, Analivia had told me they had reckoned we had supplies enough for three days’ travel beyond the end of the pipe, a week on starvation rations if the wolves could hunt and need not share our food. The horses only had fodder enough for a day but at least we had plenty of water to start with, for Analivia had filled the empty bottles with water taken from the pool in the junction chamber, strained through muslin and cooled, and there would surely be other sources of water to be found once we were out in the open. Even if it was many days’ travel to the city, we should be able to find food and water when we arrived, since the efari must eat and drink.
‘I should have slept straight away, too, instead of eating and talking for an hour,’ said Swallow who was running directly behind me. ‘You seem to have recovered a good deal faster than the rest of us, Elspeth.’
Feeling guilty because I had recovered and guilty that I had not told them how the Agyllians had taught my body to heal itself, I made no response. I will tell them, I thought, as soon as we are out of this accursed pipe.
We jogged and walked turn about, and then rested briefly before doing it again. Given what Swallow had said, I had been watching the others, but they seemed not to be suffering any lingering effects from the taint. Twice Dameon sensed rhenlings ahead and we stopped and lit one of the torches before continuing. Swallow said there was probably no need, but I could not bring myself to pass by without knowing we were not going to touch any of the creatures. Something about the thought of it horrified me in some visceral way. Yet we might have run by unseeing and unscathed, for both times the rhenlings had been sleeping well down in the smaller pipes. They looked so much as they had in the other pipes that I found it hard to imagine that between this day and the one past, the rhenlings had roused and flown and returned to roost without us knowing a thing about it.
We walked and then ran again. I had long since ceased to think anything meaningful or coherent for more than a few minutes at a time. Thoughts floated in and out of my mind without my even attempting to connect them. I either counted steps mindlessly or fell to humming the rhythms our feet made thudding on the pipe. I was no longer running alongside Faraf but behind him, and the others ran separately behind me, as surefooted as I was on a surface that did not change and where there were no obstacles. We had learned to pace ourselves so that we would not collide and to take our bearings from the soft even thud of Faraf’s hoofs. We had run on and off for hours, falling into a rhythm and pace that were easy to maintain.
Whenever Dameon called out that he could sense rhenlings, we slowed to a walk and Ahmedri lit the torch and took the lead. He was in the process of doing this for the fifth time, when, without warning, the pipe suddenly began to jerk and shudder under my feet.
‘What is it?’ Analivia cried out, and then there was a great crack and the deep rumbling of earth and stone and another cracking sound, and then earth was falling on me. At the same time, it seemed to me the air was suddenly heavy with rhenling musk. I began to panic, imagining the hideous things waking and flying to sink their sharp teeth into me.
I stumbled back from the hail of earth and stone, throwing my hands over my head and calling out to Dameon, then I tripped over fallen rubble and fell flat on my back, the impact winding me. I struggled to turn onto my stomach and draw breath. Before I could do so, something heavy fell on my chest. I gave a cry of pain and instinctively rolled to my side to get rid of the weight. The movement hurt me so badly that it made me feel faint. Unable to get up and terrified that I would pass out, I curled towards my legs, lifting my arm to protect my head and face. Earth and stones were still falling and the air was full of choking dust. Muffled by the thunderous clamour, I heard the agonised howl of a wolf, then something heavy crashed down onto my upraised arm and head. There was an excruciating burst of pain and I blacked out.
Sleep was a storm that pulled and pushed and rocked me wildly. I could smell the salt scent of the waves and hear the creak of straining wood and riggings, the keening of the wind. There was no light so I struggled to my feet and wove across a floor that pitched under my feet, telling me, if I had not already guessed it, that I was at sea and there was a storm.
How can I be at sea? I thought.
I forced myself to the door, feeling dizzy and very weak. I was hot, too. I was fevered, I realised, but I pulled open the door. Rain hurled itself at me with painful force as the wind tore the door from my hand and threw it back against the outside of the cabin with a violence that cracked it from top to bottom. The sound was barely audible against the bellowing roar of the storm.
Beyond the side of the ship, black mountains of water heaved and smoked under sheets of rain blown sideways by the force of the wind.
‘Rushton!’ called a voice.
I turned to see Brydda coming towards me. The big rebel looked gaunt and wet as a drowned rat and he had tied a deck rope about his waist. ‘You should not be up, man. There is nothing you can do and it is not safe here. Go back to bed.’
‘Lark said there was an island,’ Rushton said. His voice was a thin rasp.
I am with him again, I realised. In him. Was this a dream or a memory I was sharing with him or was it something that was happening now, and I was seeing it through his eyes because of the link between our spirits?
‘In seas like this, every man and woman’s hope looks like an island,’ Brydda said.
‘The lad has sharper eyes than most, and he is no liar,’ Rushton croaked. He broke into a bout of jagged racking coughs and I felt the thick rattle of phlegm in his chest.
‘Aye and though there is no island on the maps we may have been blown outside their range. We will know soon enough. If the lad is right, we will put in there and wait out the storm.’
‘It will not save us if there is no fresh water,’ Rushton said. I felt the dryness of his throat as my own, and the rain-slicked wood against his hard-calloused hands. ‘The stupid waste of all this rain water,’ he added with a curse.
‘Aye, we should have realised that the pipes needed to be made of something that would not crack so easily. But the Sadorian ships may still have water in their tanks if their pipes are made of some hardier stuff.’
‘Not enough water for all of us to reach The Spit,’ Rushton said. ‘We need an island with water.’
‘An island without water would be better than no island,’ bellowed Brydda above a crackle of lightning. ‘The Umborine looks sound enough, but the Voyager is sitting very low in the water and the Stormdancer is damaged in the hull as well as having the water pipes smashed. We have lost sight altogether of the Auroch. If we stop, there is a good chance that it might be blown in our direction if it is still afloat. And she might still have her pipes intact.’ ‘How do the oth
ers from Obernewtyn fare?’
Brydda gave a ghost of his robust grin. ‘None of them are ill but neither do many of them seem to have your tolerance for the sea. Most of them are puking their guts out below.’ He sobered. ‘Now go back to bed, my friend. You look terrible and you have no safety rope on you.’ He broke off to look past me, eyes bulging. Rushton turned to see what he was looking at and my mouth went dry at the sight of a great black wall of water twenty times higher than a normal wave, looming up over the ship.
Brydda reached out and threw his great arms around me as darkness flowed over the world.
‘Rushton,’ I croaked.
I woke.
I could neither move nor open my eyes. All about me was a heavy pressure and there was a terrible pain in my arm and chest. The air felt thick and wet and my mouth was full of a gritty gruel of blood and dirt, but I had not the strength to spit.
I am buried alive, I thought with a stab of terror.
I had to fight a moment of pure madness that made me want to struggle, knowing if I did, I would likely lose the precious pocket of air keeping me alive. I forced myself to form a probe to summon help, and then realised it would not pass through solid earth. I had a crazed urge to laugh because, despite all of my Talents and despite being the Seeker whose coming had been foreseen and planned, for whom people and beasts were willing to lay down their lives, nothing could help me now. Even my body, which could heal itself, would not save me. If I did not die of whatever injuries I had, I would die of hunger or thirst soon enough.
It was harder and harder to breathe, which told me the air trapped with me was near exhausted. My head ached and my arm hurt abominably, too. I remembered my dream vision of Rushton and the terrible wave looming over him, and a wild tangle of yearning and rage and sorrow roared through me at the thought that he might have drowned. I felt useless tears spill down my cheeks, washing the grit from my eyes.
Then I heard something.
I blinked and listened. I thought I could hear a muffled voice. Was Analivia trapped, too? Perhaps the whole pipe had collapsed. Then, to my incredulous relief, earth was being dug away from my shoulder and in a moment my face was clear. I opened my mouth and gasped in a breath of clean air, then tried to move my arm and near fainted at the pain. Broken, I thought, and groaned.
‘She’s breathing,’ Swallow said. ‘Help me.’
‘Rhenling …’ I managed to croak, for suddenly the air was heavy with the musk of the creatures.
‘She’s awake,’ Analivia gasped. ‘Thank goodness!’
‘It is all right,’ Swallow said soothingly. ‘Wherever the rhenlings are, the tremor and the cave-in have not roused them.’ I felt fingers moving delicately against my eyelids, clearing the earth away, but when I opened my eyes, it was as dark as if they were still closed. The torch Ahmedri had been about to light must have been lost when the pipe gave way. But surely there was another pair of them on Faraf’s back.
A sickening fear welled in me at the realisation that she and Dameon had been ahead of the rest of us, when the roof had fallen in.
Dameon.
‘Dameon!’ I cried, and then groaned again at the pain in my arm.
‘He was far enough ahead of us that the cave-in might have fallen between us,’ Swallow said quickly.
I was not comforted. For all we knew, the rest of the pipe could have been stoved in. But I prayed he was right. They had cleared enough earth away to haul me out and as they moved me, I stifled a groan when a red knife of pain cut into me.
‘I think … my arm is broken. Maybe a rib … too,’ I grated through clenched teeth, wondering grimly if it would have been my skull if I had not thrown up an arm.
There was a cracking sound and the rattling grind of earth shifting and sliding and we all froze. I felt a rain of earth against one leg then it stopped.
‘Carefully,’ Ahmedri said softly as they cleared the rest of the earth away. Then I felt hands lift me gently and set me down a few paces away on the floor of the pipe. The reek of rhenling was so strong it made my eyes water, and yet before the cave-in I had smelled nothing.
‘Is anyone else … hurt?’ I asked.
‘Rasial was knocked out, but she is not badly hurt. The boy is crooning over her now,’ Ahmedri said. ‘Ana has a cut on her head but it is not too deep and the rest is mere scratches and bruises.’
He broke off as I began to cough again. The pain it caused made me see stars in the darkness.
‘Water,’ Analivia said. ‘Ahmedri, Swallow, do either of you have your water bottles? I have lost mine.’
‘I have mine,’ Swallow said. I heard the sound of steps approaching and then he drew in a breath of astonishment. ‘Ye gods, what is this?’ A faint glow of yellow light illuminated Swallow’s startled black-streaked face, and beside him, dimly, I saw Analivia, her forehead and cheek glistening darkly on one side. The light was coming from the top of the water bottle Swallow was holding.
‘Dryka,’ I murmured. ‘That is what beasts call the taint-devouring insects. You must have caught some by accident when you filled the bottles.’
‘Impossible! I strained the water,’ Analivia said.
There was a soft scrabbling noise close by and the scent of rhenling seemed to grow more and more potent. The hair on my neck prickled. The others had frozen too, but now, very slowly, Swallow raised the bottle.
Analivia stifled a cry of horror, for above us several long wide cracks ran over our heads from one side of the pipe to the other, and rhenlings were crawling slowly through on long spidery legs. This must have been going on for some time, because the roof was covered in them and several were edging down the walls. One was so close to my head that I could see its body was not completely furred but dark and leathery in places. What I had taken for extra legs I now saw were furred wings folded against the creature’s back and there were tufts of longer wiry black fur on its legs growing out of some sort of warty growths at the joints that might have been a sickness or merely part of the way the creatures were made. But its eyes were closed to slits and when I looked up, I saw that those entering the pipe moved as slowly as bees confounded by a smudge pot.
‘They are still asleep,’ I whispered. There was a long silence in which no one breathed, but the rhenlings did not react to my voice.
‘The sun has not set,’ Ahmedri said very softly. ‘Obviously the cave-in disturbed them, but it hasn’t quite woken them.’
‘Rheagor said only the touch of prey or the sound of an alarm cry would wake them when the sun was shining,’ I said, my breath beginning to come more easily. For a second, fear had blotted out the pain in my chest, but now it redoubled.
‘We must dig our way out through this before the sun sets,’ Swallow said.
‘We don’t know how much of the pipe caved in,’ Analivia objected.
‘There is no other way,’ Ahmedri said soberly. ‘We could not get back to the bright junction before the sun sets, even if Elspeth were not injured.’
I could not dig and so I lay there, watching the others scooping earth and rock away with their hands, breathing shallowly to lessen the pain in my chest. My arm hurt only when I moved it, for Ahmedri had created a rough splint to support it. I looked from my digging companions to the rhenlings clustered on the roof of the pipe above us with revulsion. My eyes had adjusted enough to the dim light from the bottle that I was able to see more and more of the fell things squirming through the cracks from whatever rift they had been inhabiting.
I did not know how long I had been unconscious. Long enough, for though the rhenlings were not yet awake, it seemed to me they were not far from it. Even as I watched, the one closest to me hissed softly, and its thin black tongue slid over rows of yellowing needle-sharp teeth in its open maw.
I forced myself to turn my head and watch the others digging. Twice, there had been another shower of stones and earth, blocking the hole they had dug, and once there had been a cracking noise and I had gone dry-mouthed with horror at the th
ought of the pipe giving way and the rhenlings falling down onto me as I lay there helpless.
A hand touched my arm and I almost screamed, but it was Gavyn. They had laid me close to Rasial, and Gavyn had been stroking her filthy, bloodstained fur tenderly over and over. Now the boy gave me his loose, sweet smile, and if it had been anyone other than him, I would have thought he was comforting me. Then I noticed that the dog was stirring.
‘Rasial?’ I beastspoke her.
Her eyes opened and narrowed and she growled softly at the rhenling stirring not a hand span from our heads.
‘They are not awake,’ I sent quickly. ‘They will only wake if we touch them, at least until the sun sets. The others are trying to dig through the earth and stone that is blocking our way, so we can get out.’
‘I can feel air moving!’ Swallow hissed, his voice fierce with relief. ‘We are through!’
‘Elspeth?’ It was Dameon’s voice.
A rush of relief flowed through me. ‘I am here!’ I farsent to him, because it was too painful to draw the breath I would need to call out. ‘I am so glad you are not hurt! What of Faraf?’
‘She is fine but two of the wolves were hurt, one badly,’ Dameon said aloud. ‘The pack leader killed him.’
‘Are you all right?’ Analivia said.
‘I am fine. It was the rest of you I feared for. I thought all of you dead but Rheagor insisted to Faraf that you were alive, Elspeth.’
‘She is hurt,’ Swallow said, keeping his voice low. ‘A broken arm and rib. Rasial was knocked unconscious, but the rest of us have no worse than a few gashes and bruises between us. But we need to get out of here. It must be very close to sunset.’
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