The Long Journey Home (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 8)

by M. R. Mathias

  “I wonder if any of them went back down in the hole,” said Castavonti in a groggy tone from where he was just coming to. “I’m no longer as keen on this excursion from the route I was contacted for.”

  “It’s a long swim home,” Chelda snapped. Apparently, she’d regained her composure.

  Vanx eyed her, wondering how often her exaggerated sharpness toward people was to cover fear, or her father issues, or the unjustified shame over her life choices he knew she sometimes felt. Maybe she was just mean. Vanx didn’t care; she was the most loyal person he knew, and he couldn’t imagine a world without her.

  As they got the camp back in order and burned all the gear with spider splatter on it, Vanx wondered about Gallarael. She’d been with child when the Paragon had gotten hold of her.

  He couldn’t lie to himself. He was glad the child didn’t make it, for Gallarael was a changeling, saved, but also changed, by dragon’s blood, and Vanx was the only half-human, half-Zythian to survive childbirth…ever. Their offspring could have only been malformed…or worse. He was glad she’d survived, though, and he imagined Chelda wanted to get back to see Moonsy as badly as he wanted to see Gal.

  “Light a few torches and drop them in,” Vanx said. “It’s almost dawn anyway, and I need to know what else is down there before I go in.”

  “You are not going alone,” Zeezle said.

  “Nah, you’re not,” Chelda added, looking as if she were unsure but committed.

  Vanx sighed and told them about the portent he’d seen in the mirror.

  Even after they all understood the implications of his vision, only Castavonti had objections to going down. Then the conversation over what should be done with Poops started, and it was well past dawn before an agreeable decision was made.

  Chapter Ten

  If you set out after a copper,

  you might bring home a clipping.

  If you set out after a bar of gold,

  at least a few coppers you will bring.

  It was decided, against Chelda’s will but with her agreement and understanding, that she would stay up top with Castavonti and Poops. Vanx didn’t trust the dog with the sea mage alone, and Chelda couldn’t disagree.

  There was also the issue of her size. If something bad happened, she could use her gargan strength to pull either of the two out, maybe both at the same time.

  Vanx and Zeezle were both as agile as cats and could use magic and weapons, both with expert efficiency. So the situation was fine with Vanx. There was no one else he would rather have with him, and that included the pooch, because he couldn’t get the dog out of the hole without a struggle.

  The light of day revealed a series of pegs that spiraled down the imperfect pit. Even though the peg ladder was there, they let a rope down to where the burned out torches could barely be seen. They used it to rappel, one after the other, the hundred or so feet they needed to descend.

  Once at the bottom, Zeezle glanced down the single tunnel that led away, and checked the pegs. “They are sturdy enough down here. I could get out by them, I think.”

  “Watch your eyes,” Vanx said. “I’m going to burn these webs out of the way.”

  Vanx cast a potent blast of wizard fire, and it shot down the downward sloping shaft, burning hundreds of webs to ash.

  They were cautious when they entered. There might have been another spider or two still down there, because the sound of a skittering rock, and maybe a groan, came from somewhere farther ahead of them.

  Then the orb of light glowing over Zeezle went gliding ahead.

  Vanx stepped out of the passage and looked up. He gave Chelda a wave. She was leaned over looking back at them. Poops’s head was there, too. She returned the gesture. Poops gave a yip of confidence, then reminded Vanx that they were still together via their familiar link.

  Vanx took in a deep breath and quickly caught up with Zeezle.

  “The last place that crazy old wizard sent me was full of pitfalls,” Vanx said. “Be careful.”

  “If he sent you here, I doubt there is anything deadly awaiting,” Zeezle responded.

  Vanx’s friend had a higher opinion of the ancient mage than he did. It wasn’t that he didn’t respect the legendary man and all he’d done fighting against the demons in Xwarda. It was that he would let generations of humanity suffer just to save his familiar. The Paragon had forced him to swear not to oppose him, just to keep his imprisoned familiar alive. The wizard had used Vanx. He wondered if he wasn’t being used again.

  I would save you. Poops’s thought rippled through his mind, leaving Vanx feeling a little guilty.

  He knew he would save Poops, too, but it seemed so cowardly. A true hero would sacrifice himself and his familiar to avoid a thousand years of human oppression. Then he remembered the pile of ancient texts the old mage had been studying for ages and that the wizard had called humanity a sickness.

  He should have taken the texts.

  Maybe the wizard had a reason, beyond saving his familiar, for allowing the Paragon Dracus to run rampant. Vanx never wanted to be forced to make that kind of choice, but he knew he wanted to sail to Xwarda and ask Faulkramahn himself for the answers. Of course, that would be after he went home to the Deep and made sure all was still in order there.

  “There’s something up there,” Zeezle said very quietly. Then his voice went ethereal and he spoke into Vanx’s head. I can’t tell what it is; Can you sniff it out?

  Before he knew what was happening, Poops was using Vanx’s inferior nostrils to try and detect what sort of living scent was ahead of them. The dog had been listening, Vanx knew, and had responded on his own. Vanx decided in his heart that he would have let the world rot to hell before he’d let go of Sir Poopsalot. He remembered the wizard saying that he’d entrusted the task of the Emerald Earth Stone, and now this amber gem, to him because he would understand, if only because of the depth of his and Poops’s familiar bond.

  He supposed Faulkramahn really was the greatest wizard who ever lived, for he was correct on all accounts.

  “Fargin’ hells!” Zeezle huffed, as one of the spiders, this one bigger and with its large abdomen covered in squirming palm-sized babies, came at them with a purpose.

  It was at the same instant Poops recognized a strong reptilian scent that a pair of snake tails reached out and wrapped around the mother arachnid and her young.

  Realizing that they weren’t tails, but tentacles, Vanx cast a great blast of wizard’s fire ahead of them. Then Zeezle was unexpectedly off his feet, a smaller tentacle dragging him roughly down the tunnel faster than Vanx could run.

  Chapter Eleven

  Time is a conundrum

  that keeps going round and round and round again.

  Sometimes you have too much on your hands,

  yet there’s never enough, my friend.

  Vanx started after Zeezle but had to swat at all the baby arachnoids.

  He finally cast a shielding around himself to avoid the few dozen bright little spiders still skittering around in confusion.

  Once he was safe from the arachnoids, he ran, pumping his legs as fast as he could. He was running so fast he had to concentrate to keep his orb of light ahead of him. He leapt over a pile of fallen rock and sloshed through an underground stream. When he came to a “Y” in the cave way, he made to send the orb down each fork but saw fresh blood smeared on the wall of the first he chose.

  He dashed down that tunnel and found the grade was taking him down a lot faster than the previous passage he’d been in.

  “Vanx!” Zeezle’s yelling voice by his feet nearly scared a turd out of his arse.

  There was a length of tentacle, and Zeezle’s sword lying beside his friend. It took Vanx’s racing mind a breath or two to take in the situation and convince himself Zeezle was safe, but once he did, he saw that his friend was pretty banged up.

  Vanx’s first thought was that he was an idiot for not bringing the Glaive of Gladiolus with them. But already Zeezle was healing
himself while drinking what was left from a leaking waterskin.

  “I nearly lost the sword,” he said after a few moments.

  “We wouldn’t want that.” Vanx nodded. It was a two-hundred-year-old family blade. Like his sword, it was irreplaceable.

  “Nah.” Zeezle grinned. “I think you blinded that thing. If we hurry, we might be able to find and kill it before it regains its eyes.”

  “It was reptilian.” Vanx turned the tentacle over with his boot. The bottom looked like a snake’s belly. “It probably senses with the vibration of a tongue or some such.”

  “Aye. You scorched it and scared it, though, and it’s still ahead of us somewhere.”

  “Yup, but what we are after might be down the other passage. I think that since we know what is in this one, we should go back and check the other. Maybe the gem is down there without some hungry, tentacled bastard.”

  “Maybe so,” Zeezle agreed. He got to his feet, and Vanx noticed a slight limp.

  “I can leave you at the “Y” and go get the Glaive from Chelda?” Vanx asked.

  “Nah, nah.” Zeezle waved him off. “It’s just a horse knot on my thigh.”

  “Then let’s get this over with.”

  “Let’s.” Zeezle let Vanx lead this time, and they continued with extreme caution at a slow, steady pace.

  At the “Y”, they went the only way they hadn’t yet been. They found that, like the rough, borehole tunnel Zeezle had been dragged down, this one was steep. There were scatters of debris here and there, but these passages had either been carved by master dwarves, or made by some great rock bore. The idea of the latter creature put a hollow feeling in Vanx’s stomach.

  Luckily, they were soon at the opening of a large cavern.

  The cavern of Vanx’s most recent portent.

  There was the gem sitting amid all the coppers, and coming from around the corner, where daylight shone in, the shadow of the great crablike thing showed that it was coming, too.

  “Stay put,” Vanx told Zeezle as he darted out and snatched the gem from the pile of coppers and returned, just as the monstrous creature came round the corner and saw them.

  “Back, Zeezle,” Vanx yelled as he entered the nearly perfectly cylindrical cavern. “Go back.”

  Zeezle was there, but he was lying against the wall, slumped over.

  Vanx saw Zeezle’s thigh and the festering wound there. It wasn’t from the reptilian thing that had grabbed him. It was a spider sting, most likely from one of the little babies. His leg was twice its normal size, his tough leather pants were restraining flesh that was trying to expand in a few places, making the situation look all the more painful.

  There wasn’t much time to think. Vanx stashed the fat amber gem and heaved Zeezle over his shoulder.

  He started away from the cavern opening but found that not far up ahead was the tentacled thing, waiting for them.

  At least that fargin’ albino crab bastard can’t reach us, Vanx thought. Then he felt its hot breath and heard it snarling right behind him; but he was right: it couldn’t get to them. He took three steps toward the three tentacles ahead of him and dropped his friend.

  Time to make a stand, Vanx thought as he recited the words to the first spell that came to mind.

  Chapter Twelve

  Have you heard the screams,

  the wind whistling through the lines?

  Have you felt windblown rain so hard

  it’ll put out a man’s eyes?

  Chelda and Castavonti had been racing after Poops for some time.

  Chelda understood they were going to help Vanx, but she had no idea where they were going or exactly what the danger would be when they got there. Castavonti was having a hard time keeping up, but she didn’t care. She trusted Poops as much as she did Vanx, for somehow they were one and the same most of the time.

  She held the Glaive in her left hand and the dwarven hammer in the other. Ready to pound or heal, whichever was required of her, but she was about to lose the sea mage, and that worried her, too. If she lost him, the elements would claim him in a night.

  She could hear Poops’s loud panting ahead of her, so she slowed enough that Castavonti could keep her in sight, then she started back down toward the lake.

  She saw the cavern—half in, half out of the water and nearly perfectly round. It was in a slab of granite six hundred feet high and clearly unnatural. Chelda saw Poops splash through the shallows and disappear into the darkness.

  “Come on, man,” she yelled. “I’m going in.”

  “It’s not me,” Castavonti growled back. “It’s these gods-be-damned robes. I’m coming right behind you.”

  “You’d better be,” she mumbled under her breath as she came out of the thin trees and raced across the open ground between forest and lake. The water didn’t slow her at all, because to her gargan frame it was barely ankle deep. It did make the leather of her new Harthgarian boots stretch, which caused her to have to use extra caution, lest her feet slip inside the wet leather and cause her to falter.

  She was as worried as could be about Vanx and now Poops. As she left the daylight behind her, she heard the dog yelp. When she rounded the corner, she was shocked to see that a perfectly cylindrical beam of light was piercing a huge cavern full of pale crabs the size of caravan wagons.

  There were three of them that she could see. Worse, the whole floor was a sheen of glassy water. Chelda could take three steps and fall into a hole, and the idea of that terrified her more than the spiders had.

  She found Poops splashing his way back toward her. He looked to be bleeding, but the wound apparently wasn’t bad enough to hinder his stride, for he was moving as fast as she’d ever seen him move.

  She watched the way he came and saw that he never fell into a hole.

  “What is it, Poops?” she asked, poking him with the elven blade of healing, as soon as he was close enough.

  “Grrrrufff, ruff, gruff,” the dog responded.

  “I don’t speak dog like Vanxy does, Sir Poopsalot.” Chelda huffed. “Where are they? Are they close?”

  Poops barked and pointed his nose toward a continuation of the winding bore worm hole they were standing in. Chelda knew that’s what these nearly perfectly round tubes were. There were a few in the mountains where she grew up. The dead giveaway was the lack of stalags, for the great bore worms coated their tunnels with something that prevented them from getting blocked or narrowed by mineral deposits.

  “Where are they?” Castavonti huffed as he came sloshing up, holding the hem of his soaked robes at his waist, heaving for breath. “Are we too late?”

  “What can you do about that?” She didn’t have to point out that one of the ugly-headed crabs was following Poops’s blood trail toward where they stood. Its eyes were on stalks that arced up and away from the thing’s body and pointed downward.

  Chelda saw the weakness in this immediately. It wasn’t looking forward, so it had no idea what it was following. It was just following. Maybe it sensed vibration, too, she wondered. That creepy, eyeless head could have been bat-ish as much as anything.

  “Hey, mage, are you going to do something?” she asked.

  “Chah,” Castavonti exhaled, and a pulse of yellow energy shot from his pointing finger at the thing.

  The impact of the blast flipped the creature over and left a gaping wound.

  Chelda sighed with relief because it didn’t look like it was going to be able to right itself.

  “We need to get those things out of there,” Chelda snapped. “That’s where Vanx and Zeezle are.”

  “Oh shit,” said Castavonti, as if hope had fled him.

  Chelda shook her head, for the man looked as if he could barely stand.

  Chapter Thirteen

  All alone in this world of madness,

  this heart of stone can feel no sadness.

  Vanx cast the best healing spell he knew on Zeezle’s spider bite, and the angry red color of the wound faded instantly. Pus and poiso
n leaked out the opening as it tried to heal the pocket of venom the spider had injected.

  Vanx couldn’t dally with the spell, for he had to draw his sword, step over Zeezle, and meet the three snake-tail-like tentacles that were trying to get hold of one of them.

  He ducked one of the tentacles. Then he hopped over another, spinning to cleave an arm’s length from the third. It retreated, and another came snaking in to take its place. He chanced a glance over his shoulder, and he saw that the giant crab beast was reaching one of its pincers down at Zeezle’s limp, sweaty form.

  He also noticed that all the healing he’d done had been overtaken again by the spider venom.

  Vanx spun and cast a spell. He hoped Tempus Fist would come to him, but it didn’t. The less destructive pulses he’d seen Castavonti use before were what went streaking out of his outstretched fingertip. It was the better choice.

  He had to spin back to avoid getting wrapped by one of the reptilian reachers, and he managed it, but barely. He felt Poops get cut by something, and panic over his familiar assailed him. He should have left the others up top instead of calling Poops for help.

  The crab beast behind him was still there, but it was disoriented and spilling slimy green and black-colored ooze from its main body, where two of the three pulses Vanx had let loose struck it.

  Vanx decided to quit with the sword, and he cast the same spell into the darkness where the body of the snake-tentacled creature was.

  To his great surprise, it roared back at him, and Vanx was forced to dive onto Zeezle to avoid a faster, smaller tentacle that looked more like a tongue than a snake.

  The pink appendage went right over them, and got hold of the stunned crab beast. With violent force that almost crushed Vanx and Zeezle both, it yanked the monster past them and up the tunnel.

  Vanx coughed, thinking maybe his ribs were cracked, but he cast the healing spell on Zeezle, who looked dead.

  He was thinking he should throw Zeezle over his shoulder and carry him back up to the hole where they entered, but there were two of the pale-skinned crab beasts fighting to get past one another as they approached.