by Tara Janzen
Mychael leaned back against the wall and waited, breaking himself off a piece of seedcake and watching the curve of light slowly widen on the other side of the cave. He’d eaten a few unsavory things when he’d been alone underground, mostly tua—blind lizards—when he could catch the little beasts, but since meeting up with the Quicken-tree he’d been well supplied with food: seedcakes and catkins, strips of dried berry mash wrapped in green leaves—which they called murrey and which was not unlike the sweet pottage he knew by the same name—honeysticks, acorns, apples. ’Twas all good fare, if a little short of meat.
“Malashm,” he called out as Shay ducked through the low opening and entered the cavern on his hands and knees. The crescent of the boy’s dreamstone light expanded into a full, glowing circle when released from the tunnel, lighting up the herd of bulls above the passage and making them appear to move in the shifting blue light.
“Malashm,” Shay called back, signaling him before starting across the scree slope. The boy trekked over the pile of shifting rubble and rocks with a sureness of foot inherent in all the wild folk. Tightly wrapped chausses covered his legs down to short boots closed with silver rings. He wore a fitted shirt under his tunic. In dreamstone light, the clothes took on the look of liquid silver patinated with verdigris, and Shay’s green eyes shone aqua.
As did Llynya’s. Rhuddlan had sent her into the deep with the Liosalfar, much to Mychael’s chagrin.
“Let’s take the deer path,” the boy said as he dropped to the floor. A leaf-bladed short sword was stuck in his belt, angling down his thigh nearly to his knee. “There’s a connecting tunnel between it and Trig’s route we can cut across. Save ourselves some time in catching up with them.”
“Aye, we’ve taken too long as it is,” Mychael agreed, pushing off the wall and heading toward the opening beneath the running deer. ’Twas the last day of their time below, and he was as ready as the next to begin their ascent. ’Twould not be long, though, before he was drawn back to the dark. He was always drawn back.
“Is that one of Moira’s bannocks?” Shay asked, gesturing at the seedcake in Mychael’s hand.
Mychael grinned and handed the food over. “I’ve got naught but a handful of acorns after this, so make it last.”
“Aye, I will,” Shay promised, then put the whole of it in his mouth in one bite.
Mychael shook his head, still grinning, and followed the boy out.
The passage of the running deer was high-ceilinged and broad enough to walk four abreast, a luxury in the deep dark, if one didn’t mind the odd bit of worm slime. Shay and Mychael strode along its ample corridor, making good time. The first vibration hit them when they were a halflan from the painted cavern. ’Twas a sensation too familiar to be mistaken for anything other than what it was —the old worm on a run.
Mychael looked to Shay, who swore and dropped to one knee, laying his hand flat on the tunnel’s floor. Mychael didn’t need to use his hand. He felt the wave of power ripple up through the soles of his feet from the bare rock, a steady basso profundo trembling that quickly spread to every part of his body.
“Fireline broke and he’s heading this way,” the boy said, looking up with a sheepish grin. “Race you to the next tunnel.” Before the words were out of his mouth, Shay had scrambled to his feet and was racing down the deer passage.
Mychael swore and took off at a run. ’Twasn’t one of his firelines that had broken, nor was it the first time one of Shay’s had, the boy’s attention to detail being less than desirable.
’Twas a long way to a passage small enough to give sanctuary, nearly another full lan. Others were closer, but in the wrong direction with neither of them of a mind to try to beat the old worm to a safe hole by running toward him.
When the beast was less than a quarterlan behind them—and still picking up speed—Shay collapsed against the rock wall.
“Sticks!”
Mychael skidded to a halt opposite him. They weren’t going to make it, not this time. Damn. His breath came in labored gasps. His body was doubled over from the stitch in his side. He looked across the passage and found Shay to be in the same pained, breathless position, except the Quicken-tree boy had a grin on his face.
“Fancy yerself as worm fodder, do ye?”
Mychael grinned back despite himself. Forget dragons and doom. Shay was going to be the death of him.
The old worm turned the last curve behind them, and the rumble of his movements rippled down into the tunnel where they stood, sending a fresh wave of vibrations up their legs.
“Fireline,” Mychael gasped, still fighting for his breath.
They both dropped to their knees. Mychael pulled two sealed gourds off his pack strap while clenching his other fist around the haft of his dreamstone dagger, heating up the light. Shay did the same. Trig had drilled them a hundred times on the making of a fireline. There were seven steps:
One—heat your blades. Worms don’t like light.
Done.
Two—draw a line across the cavern floor with your dagger; incising a shallow groove to hold the makings of your fireline.
He and Shay each carved a jagged slash on the floor, their steel blades scraping off each other when the knives met in the middle of the tunnel.
Three—pour a small amount of hadyn draig out of gourd number one into the groove. Follow with gourd number two, shaking enough roc tan onto the hadyn draig to sustain a strong fire. Be careful! Roc tan has been known to spontaneously burst into flame.
Mychael smashed his gourds against the tunnel wall, one after the other, and tossed the whole of them onto the floor. He looked to Shay and found the boy frozen in place, staring wide-eyed into the dark ahead.
Mychael looked too, and a queasy feeling roiled up from his stomach. ’Twasn’t the dark that had frozen Shay. ’Twas the black face of the old worm filling up the hole and coming right at them. An odd smell pervaded the air, of worm and must and something burnt. He grabbed Shay’s gourds and broke them against the floor.
Four, five, six—forget it.
Seven—there are three ways to successfully ignite a sulfur twig. First, holding the twig tightly between your thumb and first finger—
Mychael pulled a handful of the twigs out of a pocket sewn into his tunic and scraped them across the rock wall. He only needed one to light.
One did.
He threw them on the fireline, grabbed Shay, and ran like hell. A wall of heat slammed into them before they’d gotten ten paces. They stumbled, righted themselves, and kept on running. Behind them, they heard the old worm screeching and sliding, fighting himself to a stop, the sound of it like a cold iron bolt being forced into a too small hole, a deep, pained, heavy grating that echoed up and down the passage and spurred them on to greater speed.
~ ~ ~
Any march into the deep dark normally took two full days, and they’d gone two and a half beyond that, pressing forward from their last sortie. Trig was leading when he heard water in the distance, the rush and tumble of it as it fell over a ledge and splashed into a pool. The cavern of Crai Force was coming up and would be a good place to make camp.
He signaled a halt, and one by one the dreamstone blades behind him were extinguished, slipped into covered sheaths to conceal their blue light. He sheathed his own blade last, plunging the small band of Quicken-tree warriors into total darkness. A frisson of unease skittered up his spine. ’Twas something he never got used to, the complete absence of light this far down in the caves. The higher caverns and tunnels were riddled with veins of quartz that held dreamstone light for hours, life-sustaining light. The deep dark had naught but a darkness so coldly empty it sucked the life out of a man’s bones. No Quicken-tree, not even Liosalfar, could survive in it for more than a fortnight, not even with dreamstones. The gates of time, the last outpost before the Magia Wall, were a refuge from the darkness, a sanctuary capable of reversing the ill effects of a too-long journey. Trig had abided there once during the Wars, letting the timeless
ness of the place seep into his bones and bring him around from a hazardous descent.
“Bedwyr,” he said, and the man came down a short flight of stairs that had been cut into the rock. “Crai Force ahead at twenty paces. Take Math and Nia and scout toward the falls. Llynya and I will circle around to the south.”
“What of Shay and Mychael ab Arawn?”
“They’ll have the old worm beyond our track boundary by now, and know to return by way of the passages we marked. If memory serves, the cavern ahead is no more than a quarterlan long, too small for them to miss us.” Trig had assigned the two to the firelines to keep Mychael and the blade-master from each other. He had enough to worry him, what with Naas’s vision of five nights past.
“The ab Arawn boy would as soon live in the dark,” Bedwyr said, his tone one of gruff condemnation.
’Twasn’t the first time Bedwyr had complained, and if pressed, Trig would have agreed. Mychael ab Arawn had an affinity with the depths of the earth that went far beyond what any Quicken-tree could bear, and for certes he had an affinity with the timeless place that was the Weir. The truth of that marked him clear enough.
“Make no mistake,” Trig said. “Mychael ab Arawn is not a child. He’s a man full grown, and we haven’t seen the half of him yet.” Not even close to half, if Naas knew what she was about. Trig had his doubts; Rhuddlan less so, but the old woman had barely spoken two words in the last fifteen years, and then she’d conjured a vision that was no more than a story any child knew and laid it at Rhuddlan’s feet as if ’twas doom itself. Trig was holding judgment, but he was watching the boy as well.
Aye, he was watching the boy and every turn in the trail.
“Man?” Bedwyr snorted. “He and Shay are more like young pups than men, pups with no more sense than to follow their noses into trouble.”
Trig recognized the fear in Bedwyr’s easy dismissal, fear of the unknown, for Mychael ab Arawn was surely that. Many of the Quicken-tree had been unsure of taking him into their company, the stranger who had come to them from out of the deep dark in the heat of battle, a man raised among the hooded brothers of Strata Florida. He had not the gentle soul of his sister. Far from it. Trig had stood for him, though, and would again if needed. More than any other, Mychael ab Arawn had the right of their fellowship and, if necessary, their protection. He was the son of Rhiannon, the last seer of Carn Merioneth. He had proven adept at Druidic lore, and thus, like his mother, he was of use to the Quicken-tree—but the son was no meek thing to follow in anyone’s footsteps. Madron despaired of ever turning him to her will or his duty. Even Rhuddlan was unable to tame the boy, but not for much longer. Ailfinn Mapp was coming, and there was not a boy or man alive that the Prydion Mage could not bring to heel.
The blood ran strong in Rhiannon’s son, aright, mayhaps stronger than in any who had come before him. ’Twas what Naas had told them, that the boy would prove to have the stuff of legends in him.
“Dragon’s blood,” Trig muttered. ’Twas what set Bedwyr to twitching and what had kept himself awake for three nights in the deep dark and the night he’d spent above since the old woman had conjured her vision on the east wall.
Chiding himself for getting set in his ways, he reached out and unerringly clasped Bedwyr’s shoulder, his senses of hearing and smell and a heightened awareness of proximity taking up where sight left off in the all-pervasive darkness. “We’re a half day from the next crystal shaft. After we check it, we’ll head back to Lanbarrdein.”
Bedwyr agreed, mayhaps too quickly, calling Math and Nia forward to go on with him and leaving Trig to wonder if his second in command had grown overly skittish. Or mayhaps Bedwyr was only feeling the same unease Trig felt being so far down in the deep dark. Or mayhaps ’twas something else altogether. Damn vision.
They had been checking the western shafts, amethystine tubes of crystal, all summer. Now Rhuddlan was having them go deeper with every sortie, searching farther afield for trouble, when trouble was at their very door.
If Rhuddlan had let him skewer one of the wolfpack runners, they would have known a few things quick enough, and instead of looking for breaks in the damson shafts, they might be in the old tunnels far up under the northern ranges, smoking out skraelings. He had not forgotten where they lived, the dirty bunch, and should he live three lifetimes he would ne’er forget how they smelled. Foul, they were, pungent and odoriferous. He’d slaughtered hundreds in the last war and would do the same again, if they dared to mass on Merioneth’s borders.
A sudden infusion of lavender brought his head around. Llynya had come up beside him, chewing on flower petals she kept in a small bag hanging from her belt. Trig had recognized the potion pouch as one of Aedyth’s, but he could not fathom what benefit there was in chewing petals of lavender. He used them as a comfit, more often than not dipped in honey.
The sprite had made not a sound with her approach, the only clue of her nearness being the lavender, and for that he was grateful. Llynya had always been exceptionally light on her feet, and he was glad she still had one of her most intrinsic skills. Between her and Mychael ab Arawn, Trig doubted if they would leave enough of a trail on wet sand to be followed. In the caverns, they were both invisible.
He’d checked.
“Take the lead,” he told her. “We’re going to the south, away from the falls. Don’t forget to read—”
“The marks at the end of the passage and just inside the cavern,” she finished for him. “I have not forgotten, Trig.”
Youth, he thought. Youth and impetuosity, and impertinence. She’d nearly drawn her dagger on Bedwyr, so Trey had said. Aye, and that must have given even the blade-master a start, to have an Yr Is-ddwfn aetheling set to flash steel.
A fresh burst of lavender told Trig she’d popped another bit of flower in her mouth. He would not have brought her so soon into the deep dark, but Rhuddlan had insisted, and surprisingly—for they seemed never to be of the same mind—Madron had agreed.
Llynya took the lead and he followed behind. At the end of the passageway, where it opened into the cavern, she stopped to read the marks in the rock with her fingers.
“ ’Tis called Crai Force and is a quarterlan long,” she said, and Trig nodded to himself. He had not forgotten. “The water is fresh and good and always runs, and in spring can flood the cave.”
She continued forward, smoothing her hand along the wall.
“There’re a few lines of history,” she went on. “A couple of battles. Comings and goings. Who made camp in the cavern. Here’s something interesting: Stept Agah, the last of the Starlight-born, was born beside the falls in the one hundred twenty-fourth year of the Twelfth Dynasty of the Douvan Kingdom. A bit before our time, eh, Trig?”
“Aye, before our time, sprite,” he said, following her into the cave. The sound of tumbling water was louder in the cavern. A light mist filled the air. Off to Trig’s left, Bedwyr gave an order, his voice echoing softly back toward the passage. There was no light, not so much as a flickering leak of dreamstone blade, and no sense of movement other than the Quicken-tree. All was as he had expected, yet something struck him as amiss.
“The Douvan Kingdom is mentioned again after—”
He reached for Llynya’s hand, silencing her by pressing his thumb against the inside of her wrist. There is danger in the dark. She grew as still as he.
Trig turned, lifting his nose toward the center of the cave. With little effort he sorted through and discarded the green smell of the other Quicken-tree and Llynya’s lavender. The various scents of earth were always the strongest ones in the caves, unless prifarym or the old worm had passed through. Neither had been there. The crisp, cleanly sweet smell of the water followed the earth smell. Beneath the water, he detected the scent of the rock. It came to him through his nose and left a faint metallic taste on his tongue. He licked his lips, exposing more of his tongue to the air. There was nothing more. Nothing. Nothing except... except...
He took a step deeper into t
he cavern, closing his eyes to direct his senses inward. There. At the edge of rock taste and earth smell lay the barest trace of something dry, and fine, and bitter. Sha-shakrieg.
Fear washed through him, sudden and icy. Spider people.
He released Llynya with a hissed command to fight and pulled his blade, throwing light into the cave. Instantly, a long, thin filament dropped out of the dark above him and wrapped around his arm.
“Bedwyr!” he roared as another filament caught him around the leg. “Khardeen! Khar—” His war cry was cut short by a filament wrapping around his throat. Llynya dashed in and slashed at it with her dagger. She freed him with a clean cut and twisted her body away before the next thread could catch her.
A scream of pure defiance tore through the air, and Trig whirled around to find its maker. ’Twas Nia, her body bound by a web of silken Sha-shakrieg threads, with more coming down out of the dark and wrapping around her, hundreds of them.
Bedwyr and Math were fighting their way clear of the threads entangling them, trying to reach her even as the sprite raced across the cavern floor. All to no avail. Nia began rising toward the ceiling, lifted upward into the dark by the unseen. She looked to be a star, a brilliant, shining, screaming star hanging by silvery threads, her body encased in a lustrous cocoon that reflected a thousand blue flashes of dreamstone light. Another filament snaked out of the dark and wrapped around her face, sealing her mouth shut and leaving naught but her final scream ricocheting through the cavern.
With a curse and a roar, Bedwyr cut the last of his bonds and let fly with his blade, hurling it beyond Nia to the darkness above her. Trig heard the knife hit home, and in seconds the shrouded, lanky form of a Sha-shakrieg fell to the cavern floor, trailing a silver filament.
A moment’s silence followed the death, then the Sha-shakrieg dropped out of the dark and were upon them.