Long, Dark Road

by Bianculli, Susan

  “Here,” he replied, moving so that he and his dranth no longer blocked the sight of a dranth-mounted teen-aged-looking Under-elf who looked exactly like the Conductivus—white fluttering clothes, whiter than white skin, and white-pupiled eyes.

  “Meet Conductivus-venire, or Venire for short, if you wish. He is my apprentice, and he is how I will be able to let your party know whether to disable the control room or not. In order that he be able to complete his mission, we will be actively aiding yor infiltration.”

  “Well, that’s something at least,” I said wryly.

  “Of course, if he is harmed in any way, or if you do anything to alert the Chirasnivians to his mission, I will know of it. There is a soul attached to him whose only duty is to watch you and report to me if necessary,” he added in a casually threatening manner.

  Heather, Ragar, Dusk, Auraus, Jason, and I exchanged looks with each other before dutifully nodding our understanding of the situation at the Conductivus. The six of us Surfacers picked dranths at random to get up on, Heather still not masking her dislike of the reptilian-like mounts, and soon we and the Conductivus’ entourage exited the tall bronze city-state gates of Kelsavax.

  Chapter 23

  It took us about two Lightenings, or so the Conductivus told us when we’d arrived, to reach the Cavern of Convergence that was the closest big nexus cave to a mid-way point between Kelsavax and Chirasniv. During our lengthy ride Dusk, Heather, Jason, and I used the makeup we’d brought to turn us into imitation Under-elves, but Auraus’ disguising was a little more difficult. Although we could make up her face and skin like an Under-elf’s, there was still the matter of her wings. Even though they could be flattened around her to give the appearance of a feathered cape with a tall collar, feathers weren’t exactly an Under-elf material. We did the best we could by having a cloak go over her wings with the tops sticking out the neck hole. But there was really nothing we could do for Ragar except give him an oversized cloak with a deep hood and try to make sure to arrange to have him be in the middle of us whenever we walked anywhere he might be seen.

  Which wouldn’t be suspicious to anyone at all with eyes, I sarcastically thought to myself during one rest period.

  The true Under-elves we traveled with muttered their dislike of what we were doing. But with the Conductivus turning a deliberate blind eye to our actions, the mutterers had to as well.

  When we finally reached our destination, and once the other Under-elves of the entourage were setting up a conference area with rugs, braziers, and collapsible furniture, the Conductivus and Venire pulled us aside. The Conductivus informed us that he had planned to arrive here even earlier than the Chirasnivians would have planned for so that the six of us, plus Venire, could hide in one of the other tunnels nearby. He explained that there would be a diversion to occupy the Chirasnivians at the beginning of the parley, so once it happened we needed to get ourselves into the Chirasnivian tunnels, deal with the Under-elven scouts who would be on the lookout for just such a maneuver, make it into Chirasniv, and get to the controls room and wait for instructions.

  “How can we find this controls room?” asked Auraus.

  Silence was her answer.

  I had had enough of that attitude and let the two Under-elves have it. “All right, let’s get one thing straight. I don’t care how you feel about Auraus and Jason personally, but when we are traveling together you WILL respond to either of them if they ask you a question. Got that?”

  The two white clad Under-elves looked at each other, and then the Conductivus gave Venire a slight nod.

  Venire shrugged in return, and answered Auraus’ question. “That is one of the things I will do. The souls who are tasked with communicating with me will guide me.”

  “But won’t the Conductivus for Chirasniv have souls with her who will be looking out for her interests?” Heather asked.

  The Conductivus raised an eyebrow at her. “I can only hope that I will have brought more than she will, and that my charges can keep hers occupied while you slip away.”

  “Whoa. An occult war,” she said nervously. “I hope it doesn’t, uh, spill over into our plane.”

  The Conductivus just smiled at her but didn’t say anything.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get into position. Just in case.”

  The seven of us went a little inside the tunnel nearest to the Chirasnivian one, and waited. A few Brightenings later we heard the Chirasnivian delegates arriving and saddled up on our dranth. I peeked out the tunnel mouth, waiting for the signal to go. To me, the Chirasnivian Conductivus sitting on her dranth looked even more wan and pale than she had the last time I’d seen her. Her dranth was being led by another Under-elf. Pity for her rose up in my heart. Beside me, Venire tensed.

  “Get ready!” he hissed quietly.

  A large multi-legged worm-like monster rushed out of one of the other tunnels into the cavern! My jaw dropped open as both sides of the parley turned to deal with the creature’s arrival. I flashed a look at Venire, but he wasn’t fazed.

  “Go!” he said sharply and kneed his dranth out towards the tunnel that led to Chirasniv.

  We followed after him as fast as we could, while the combined efforts of the Chirasnivians and the Kelsavaxians worked to deal with the monster. We charged unseen by the delegation, at least, into the tunnel.

  “How did you do that?” Heather called out to Venire after we were away from the cavern but still riding like mad. “How could you get a monster to cooperate like that?”

  “It is called a Huek, and you already know that the Conductivus can allow his charges some ability to affect the physical world. That is how,” he called back.

  “You mean the monster got ghost kicked or something?” asked Jason, fascinated.

  “Or something,” Venire replied.

  We kept up the fast pace for an unknown amount of time, until Venire shouted, “Flatten!”

  We threw ourselves against the necks of our dranth just as crossbow bolts sailed out of the darkness ahead of us, and thanks to Venire’s warning, over us. We Surfacers drew our weapons and charged into a group of Under-elves with the upper hand, probably because our opponents had expected at least some of us to be taken out by the poisoned quarrels. No such luck for them, however, and our dranth crashed, literally into theirs. The dranth started fighting among themselves as the riders on both sides struck blows at the enemy. The apprentice Conductivus, however, stopped at the edge of the fight.

  Venire shouted “Stop!” as he pointed his hands at the Chirasnivians, and suddenly each Chirasnivian was shoved out of their dranth by an unseen force.

  The Chirasnivian dranth stopped fighting as soon as their riders left their backs, and we pulled up on our dranth to stop ours from savaging either the riderless dranth or their fallen riders.

  The enemy Under-elves struggled with their invisible forces for a moment until the Chirasnivian Sub-leader, his eyes going round as he caught sight of the Under-elf in white at the edge of the fight, hissed in wonder, “A Conductivus-venire!”

  All the Chirasnivians stopped fighting, and we Surfacers pulled slowly away back to Venire’s side.

  Venire said to them, “You Duty Scouts will remain where you are, until either I or your delegation returns. Should you attempt to leave or call for help before that time, the souls who are staying here to ensure your obedience will take action against you. Do you understand?”

  The four Chirasnivians nodded with a sulky respect.

  “Come,” said Venire to our group.

  The seven of us maneuvered around the Chirasnivians now sitting docilely in the passageway and picked up the pace on the other side. But as soon as we were out of sight Venire’s dranth slowed to a halt. It seemed that he’d been holding himself up by main strength of will before because now he slumped forward onto his dranth’s neck looking paler than usual.

  “Are you all right?” I asked with concern.

  “Not exactly,” he replied, tiredness in his
voice. “I have never given of myself to four souls to affect four living beings before. I am quite drained.” He held out his hands to look at them dispassionately and watched them quiver with exhaustion.

  Auraus said sympathetically, “I understand. It was like that for me when I was first learning how to cast spells. It took a while for me to learn how not to overcast myself.”

  Venire’s face slowly took on an expression of disgust as he realized that the Wind-rider was comparing herself to him.

  Meanwhile, Heather asked Auraus, “Does overcasting make for a more powerful spell when you let it off?”

  Auraus shook her head. “No, it just exhausts me, and I can possibly lose the spell and all that energy along with it. Here, think of a wineskin. The wineskin is the force of a spell. Then imagine the wineskin filling with wine. That is the power you pour into the spell to cast it. Now imagine more wine being poured into the wineskin than it was designed to hold. The wineskin may or may not stretch a little to give you an extra boost, but there is the possibility of it bursting at the seams so that all the wine is wasted. That is the closest analogy I can give you to spellcasting.”

  I nodded in understanding, though Heather’s eyes looked faintly confused.

  “Would you please stop speaking of abomination, at least in my presence?!” Venire said crankily. “Your use of abomination is nothing like the communion with souls that a Conductivus and a Conductivus-venire knows!”

  Auraus turned a compassionate look on him and dug into her backpack. “Here,” she said, turning to Venire and holding out a familiar small brown leather waterskin to him. “I know that I can get excessively emotional when I have overcast.”

  He took and eyed it with suspicion. “What is it?”

  “It is a concoction of herbs that is brewed into a drink that gives energy for a while. Be careful, though,” she said to him while slanting a half smile at me, “it is meant to be sipped in small amounts from the waterskin, not drunk quickly and completely emptied.”

  I turned pink, remembering how I had drunk my entire potion and how I had vibrated like I’d taken a handful of caffeine pills and mixed them with an energy drink on an empty stomach. Venire saw me redden, smiled a little as he understood to whom Auraus had referred, and took a couple of small sips of the energy drink.

  After a minute he looked better and handed the waterskin back to Auraus. “That is a very useful concoction. Would that its equal could be brewed underground.”

  “Well, you could try making an alliance aboveground for it,” Heather suggested, but Venire looked at her with a faint disgust and then turned away, dismissing the idea.

  Ragar growled at her, “Is this not how our present situation happened? Under-elves making deals for things on the Surface world?”

  “Look, just because one group of Under-elves did something rotten and not in line with what seems to be the usual Under-elven attitudes, doesn’t mean that that can’t be changed. Commerce is good between countries! It allows for expansion of society, the betterment of its people, and expands the variety of goods. What can be grown below and above ground can be exchanged between Surface- and Under-elves, and I’m sure that there are things made down below that wouldn’t have been thought of up above, and vice versa!” Heather snapped.

  I smiled to myself. Heather’s privileged upbringing was showing again. She had to be spouting what her parents had discussed around the table at dinnertime, which seemed to be a lot of business. But, really, she was right. Human history was full of commerce as a reason to stretch borders and create bonds between countries. If we could do it, couldn’t they?

  Venire straightened up on his dranth. “We have at least a Lightening and a Darkening to go before we reach the Shifting Tunnels of Chirasniv, my charges tell me. They also tell me that a Mulwurf is in the vicinity. As fighting such a dangerous monster would take away from our travel time, we should leave swiftly in hopes of avoiding it.”

  Chapter 24

  We agreed with Venire that fighting a monster just for the sake of fighting it was not on our agenda, either, and got our dranth moving as fast as we could down the corridor. After a couple of comfort stops to eat drink and rest, we came out of the tunnel we’d been traveling into an area that Ragar, Auraus, Heather and I recognized. It was the same large cavern where the ceiling had been collapsed by Auraus’ spell, and where I had sort of died and gone to the Place of Soul’s Election and then come back.

  “Hey! The Shifting Tunnels for Chirasniv are that way!” I said, pointing to the correct tunnel entrance.

  Venire’s smile confirmed that he had known that as well, probably because of the souls who traveled with him. The major thing we noticed that was different, however, was that the rubble from the collapsed ceiling had been cleared away.

  “Wow, that must have been a lot of work,” said Heather, whistling.

  “That’s what the ‘underclasses’ are for,” said Dusk in a very dry, disapproving tone.

  “But of course,” interjected Venire, not understanding Dusk’s irony. “What else would they do, then?”

  Auraus frowned at Venire, but said evenly, “But even so, I do not see how such small beings like Troglodytes and Kobolds could have done it.”

  The answer came to me in a flash. “The Ogres, Giants, and other large Surfacers the Chirasnivians have taken! They must do double duty. They can use magic items and do strength related stuff!”

  Ragar nodded his head. “Considering that Bascom had put me to work clearing out the larger pieces of debris after we’d shaken the keep down, that makes much sense, Lise.”

  Venire frowned. “While I do not care if Surfacers are put to work doing menial tasks for Under-elves, I cannot condone them being put to work for magic use. The Surfacers will have to be removed from Chirasniv one way or the other.”

  “And by that you mean ‘freed,’ of course,” Ragar said with a soft growl in his voice, his black and tan cat ears flattening.

  “Of course we are going to free them,” said Dusk hurriedly, recognizing the signs of an explosion in the mountain-cat-elf. “We will take all Surfacers with us this time, so there can be no more temptations left for the Sub-realmers.”

  Venire frowned slightly at the term “Sub-realmer,” but then he shrugged uncaringly. “Do you know the way from here?” he asked me.

  “I–I think so,” I replied.

  He gestured at me to lead the way.

  “What about the Duty Patrol?” Auraus asked. “There will be one either coming or going from here soon.”

  “More likely coming, since we have not run into one yet,” Dusk said.

  “Are you going to take care of them the way you took care of the others?” Heather asked Venire.

  “I need to save my strength for the Chirasnivian gate guards,” he replied. “The gates are not going to open just because we ask it.”

  “Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “Hey, Auraus? Can I have a quick word with you?”

  The golden-haired Wind-rider raised her eyebrows but came with me away from the group. Dusk, sensing maybe what I was about to ask, started a brain-storming session with the others to drown out Auraus’ and my quiet words.

  I whispered to her, “Do you have any spells that can, I dunno, do misdirection or something?”

  Auraus looked thoughtful. “I do have a spell that can make a noise. If we hide in one of the killing fields, I can make the noise just as the Duty Scouts enter the cavern and have them chase it away from us,” she replied in a low tone.

  “Perfect. Let’s do that,” I said enthusiastically, turning to go rejoin the others. “We’ll just have to make sure you’re away from Venire when you cast it.”

  We made it successfully to the middle killing field on the route to the citystate and hid out behind the natural stone columns and stalagmites all around the cavern at Venire’s warning. We didn’t have long to wait for the Duty Patrol to make its appearance. As promised, Auraus made what sounded like someone swearing at
the Chirasnivian arrival, followed swiftly by the sounds of something galloping away. The Duty Patrol gave chase to the sounds, and as soon as they were out of sight we charged into the tunnel that they’d come from. Venire shot a look of disdain at Auraus for her magic use, but the Wind-rider returned him a sunny smile. That, I think, threw him off for a bit, and I made a mental note of it. Some short time later we crossed the killing field closest to Chirasniv and headed down the last tunnel towards the gates. Just before we came into Elven hearing range, Venire stopped us.

  “I will go alone to the gates,” he said. “I will not be a cause of alarm, although I will be one of curiosity. I will be able to order the gate guards around through my charges. Expect an Under-elf to come for you soon. If there is not any contact from me with one Brightening, then I have failed, and you are on your own.”

  “That is your whole plan?” asked Ragar with disbelief. “Riding up to the gate?”

  Venire looked at him a little haughtily. “Do you have a better?”

  Ragar dropped his eyes and said nothing. Venire’s look turned smug.

  “I did not think so,” he said as he nudged his mount forward and went quickly out of sight.

  “I do not like him,” Ragar said sulkily, his whiskers twitching.

  “You don’t have to like him. You just have to work with him,” I said. “Given what we’ve seen happening with him, though, I expect we’re going to see an Under-elven gate guard here pretty soon.”

  I was right. It wasn’t before long a dranth appeared in the tunnel ahead of us, and his rider faded into view almost immediately after that. I was relieved, because I hadn’t been sure this was going to work at all. The Under-elf looked sullen, and that expression sparked a remembrance from my escape from here last time. This had been one of the gate guards that I’d had put to sleep with Emalai’s potent liquor she’d conjured from the potion flask that Frelanfur had later eaten. His amber eyes widened briefly when he saw us, and he looked at me before he hooded his eyes and motioned to us to follow him. We followed him silently until we reached the opened gates. Once beyond them, our conductor dismounted and walked into the gate house. We did the same, and inside the gate house we saw Venire and the other gate guard waiting.