ONCE it would have been easy to fall under the spell of this place. If he hadn’t seen Sentarshadeen, or Ysterialpoerin. Or the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. Or Pelashia’s Veil. They entered a cavern that seemed to stretch on for miles, its vaulted ceiling stretching off to the distant horizon. But his senses told him that the space he and his troops stood within was small. It was only that the walls were carved in the semblance of distant caverns, the imitation so perfect that it could fool the eye, but not the body. Only the fact that their Coldfire illuminated the deepest “depths” of the carven caverns hinted at the artifice. Kellen paused to run his fingers over the carving, almost unable to believe what his senses told him even as he broke the illusion.
They moved on.
As they passed into the next chamber, the temperature dropped sharply, and the air began to feel much damper. Kellen inhaled deeply. They must be nearing the Angarussa, which meant they could start to clear some of the side-passages soon. After so long in the arid cold of winter, the dampness felt good.
This chamber, unlike the one they were leaving, was large in truth. The Coldfire illumination they all carried seemed to shrink back, burning brightly in a tight ball above their heads, illuminating the floor, but not reaching out to the walls or the ceiling.
The floor was inlaid in a pattern of green and white squares.
A few steps farther into the chamber, Kellen understood why.
Here, the action of rock and water had again created tall columns of stone that stretched from floor to ceiling. But these the Elves had not left untouched. Though they remained where the random action of Nature had deposited them, of the partial columns that had been allowed to remain, each one had been carved into the likeness of a xaique game-piece. It was as if some giant unfinished game of xaique were being played out on the floor of this chamber.
The moment Kellen approached the first of the carvings, he felt a thrill of unease.
Something is wrong here.
He did not know where the conviction came from. He had never seen Halacira before. But the feeling was strong, and he trusted it.
And a moment later, he understood.
One of the xaique figures—a delicate little dancer, her arms raised to offer a garland of flowers—had been smashed. The inside surface of the stone was paler than the outside; the mutilations to the statue seemed to glow in the dimness, and the chips and fragments that lay scattered on the stone floor glittered almost like ice.
At his shoulder, he heard Isinwen draw breath sharply, and heard a low susurrus of speech as word was passed back through the waiting Elves.
No Elf would have done this. No Elf could have done this.
Show me, Kellen said to his magic.
But instead of the clear vision of what-had-been that he had come to expect, it was as if a fog descended over his vision. He did not see what had gone before, nor did he see the utter darkness of the cavern without Coldfire. Instead he saw twisting shadows that slithered over each other like ink poured into water. He knew something had been here—and something Tainted, it was easy to guess—but precisely what it had been, he could not see.
He blinked his battle-sight away and turned to Isinwen.
“We know now that there have been trespassers here. But when they were here, and whether they remain, I cannot tell. You will oblige me by asking everyone to remain alert. And send someone to warn the sentries and Umerchiel.”
“Komentai,” Isinwen said, turning away to pass the order.
A lot of Shadowed Elves had escaped after the Battle for the Heart of the Forest. No one knew how many, but enough to cause serious problems for the Allies. They could be here. Something that hated Elves certainly was. If the Shadowed Elves were, it seemed to Kellen that they did not want to fight another losing battle. Perhaps they had learned wisdom in their earlier defeats. Or perhaps they knew that they were the last of their kind.
But from everything he’d learned of them previously, he thought that if he offered them a great enough prize, and a tempting enough target, he could lure them out. The Shadowed Elves seemed to be incapable of avoiding battle when their enemy came close enough.
“I need a few volunteers …” Kellen said, turning to his sub-commanders.
WITH fifty chosen Knights at his back, Kellen moved deeper into Halacira. Since everyone with him had volunteered to go, the difficulty had been in picking the best people for the task, not in finding ones willing to go.
He chose Knights that he could afford to lose.
There was every possibility that he was leading them into a trap. It was, after all, partly his intention to spring a trap. But he accepted the grim possibility that the trap’s jaws might close on them all with lethal effect.
He had no choice but to place himself at risk. Of everyone there, he had not only the best chance to keep the warriors with him safe, but to provide an irresistible target for any enemy within these caverns. He knew, without false pride, that Shadow Mountain desperately wanted to get its hands on him, both because of his past victories over it, and because he was a Knight-Mage. If a Wildmage represented a source of both power and food to the Endarkened, he knew that a Knight-Mage must represent even more enticing bait.
As he and the Elves accompanying him moved across the enormous xaique board and toward what the maps had marked as the Southern Promenade, they saw that more and more of the carven xaique-pieces had been marred in some way, though none as thoroughly as the first they’d seen. There were no traps that he was able to detect, though now Kellen traveled a zig-zag course across the cavern floor, sweeping every inch of it himself. His sense of unease deepened. Beyond the Southern Promenade—another series of linked caverns, with galleries leading off them; the perfect place for an ambush—they should reach the banks of the Angarussa Underground, and beyond that a long, comparatively narrow passage leading up to the surface again. If they were allowed to traverse that entire distance unchallenged—it was at least a mile, if he was reading the maps at all correctly—then there would be no choice but to try another sweep, and another, through different parts of the cave-system, until they were absolutely certain they had secured every last square inch of it.
It might take sennights.
And meanwhile, what would be happening in Sentarshadeen?
They left the xaique chamber.
The next chamber’s walls had been extensively carved—into the semblance of a Flower Forest. Kellen realized he would search the caverns of Halacira in vain for signs of mining; it had slowly dawned on him that the elaborate stone-carving was the way that the Elves disguised—or at least made up for—their mineworking activities. But the chamber seemed completely untouched by any activities of the interlopers.
The next chamber was carved with scenes of … mining. Stone scaffolds covered the walls, with stone figures climbing upon them, stone tools in their hands.
Still nothing.
He wondered what it was about the xaique board that had roused someone’s anger to smash it and reveal their presence.
Xaique is about war. The figure with the garland … Master Belesharon told me she has something to do with the Flower Wars, which aren’t actually real wars. Whoever is here is sending a sort of message to us—they want to be found—though I think only Master Belesharon could understand the whole of it.
I understand enough. I understand that there’s someone here who needs to be gotten rid of.
The mining-cavern was long and comparatively narrow, its floor sloping very slightly downward. Suddenly Kellen’s armored sabaton skidded on the smooth stone floor.
It was wet.
He knelt down and touched the stone. A distinct sheen of moisture clung to the stone, heavy enough to make it slippery. He raised his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Water.
“Be careful,” he said aloud. “The floor is wet.”
And why was it wet? It was true that the Angarussa had undoubtedly been running very high in its bed this season—both above and undergrou
nd—but if Kellen was certain of one thing, it was that the Elves would have made certain that the caverns would not flood. And if for some strange reason they did not choose to do that, Umerchiel would have mentioned the possibility of flooding.
But if there was a trap, they were supposed to be walking into it. Gritting his teeth, Kellen gave the signal to advance.
The floor in the next cavern—its walls, suitably, as this was the last one before they reached the Angarussa, were carved with a frieze of selkies at play amid the currents of a river—was also slick with moisture, but no wetter than the floor of the one before.
At the end of the cavern, they came to a wall.
It was nothing the Elves had made. It was well-built, of blocks of shaped stone obviously cut from someplace here in the caverns, but compared to the workmanship of the Elves, it was as crude as a child’s mud-pies. It blocked the opening to the next cavern, the one that led to the Angarussa. It was not quite finished, at least if it had been meant to seal the opening completely; there was still an opening at the top, where a few courses of stone had yet to be laid.
Umerchiel had described the chamber beyond to him, and it was clearly indicated on the map. A long low transverse gallery, the Angarussa ran through it at the bottom of a deep gorge: This chamber was actually entirely artificial, created to expose the river where it traveled beneath the earth. A stone bridge crossed the river at the top of the gorge, level with the floor of the gallery, and led to the passageway to the surface, where Churashil was waiting with his guard-party.
Kellen regarded the wall with his battle-sight. Not the trigger to a trap, but part of one. He pulled off his heavy leather glove and the armored gauntlet beneath it and touched the wall with his bare hand.
The stone was damp, beaded with water.
Holding his breath, he tapped it experimentally—and very gently—with his sword. The stone gave back a dull thudding sound. The wall was very thick, or else the chamber beyond had been filled in completely.
“I’m going to see if I can see over the top,” Kellen said.
“Komentai, let me go,” Ambanire said urgently.
“No. This is a trap. I need to see more.”
Replacing his glove and gauntlet, and sheathing his sword, Kellen began to climb.
He reached the top, and sent the ball of Coldfire hovering over his head out into the chamber.
For an instant he could not believe what he saw.
Water. Black and still and smooth as glass, it filled the chamber beyond to the level of the retaining wall, a vast underground lake extending into the passage to the surface.
Suddenly there was a booming crash, and Kellen saw the level of the water in the lake begin to drop sharply.
“Ambanire, sound the alarm,” he said, dropping back to the ground. Whatever had been meant to kill them, he’d just found it. He drew his sword.
UMERCHERIEL’S forces had reached the xaique chamber a little after Kellen’s party had gone on ahead. Isinwen showed him the mutilated statues, and they settled in to wait.
It was hard to calculate time so far beneath the earth, but Isinwen thought that no more than three quarters of an hour had passed when he felt a long rumbling shake the rock beneath his feet.
A roaring sound built, as if suddenly they stood beneath an enormous waterfall, and a strong wind began to blow from the direction they had come.
He heard the sound of running—no, splashing—feet.
The orderly ranks of waiting Knights parted to allow the passage of the guards Kellen and Umerchiel had left on the side-galleries of the first cavern. They were as wet as if they’d fallen into the Angarussa itself.
“Isinwen! The caves fill with water!”
The ground shook again, and over the roar of water, Isinwen heard the distant notes of Ambanire’s warhorn.
The water was to his ankles now, rising with a relentless surging motion. It came from the direction of the cavern’s mouth.
“Follow me,” Isinwen said. “Quickly!”
A strong steady wind began to blow toward Kellen, and he felt the rock beneath his feet shudder, as if the subterranean earth were some nightmare beast attempting to cast off unwelcome vermin. He risked one more climb up the wall. It was just as he’d feared. The water was already level with the surface of the bridge, and whirlpools eddied in its surface as the artificial lake was sucked elsewhere into the caverns. Suddenly the water that had been seeping toward them slowly but steadily began to pour into the chamber with the steady force of the An-garussa itself. When Kellen dropped to the floor again he was standing ankle-deep in a river that poured inexorably through the caverns with the steady force of a rising spring.
Dams. It was why the Angarussa had been so easy to cross. It had been frozen nearly solid because there hadn’t been much water in its bed. Kellen knew from bitter experience that the Shadowed Elves were master engineers; they must have constructed a series of dams and spillways down here somewhere and diverted the Angarussa to fill them. Now they were pumping that water back up into the upper caverns, trapping Isinwen and the rest of his force.
As Kellen stared out at the rock it was as if, for a moment, it turned to smoke. He could see the dam-mechanism; the series of side and lower galleries painstakingly bricked up and outfitted with a complex mechanism of pumps and conduits over the last three moonturns.
There was no way he could reach them to disable it.
And there was worse. The vibrations he had felt were the sound of several of the side-galleries collapsing. The water roaring into the Caverns of Halacira would have even less space to fill than otherwise, and so it would fill it faster.
But though the work of the Shadowed Elves was brilliantly-conceived and sweeping in scope, it had been hastily-executed and would not hold for long. Already Kellen’s battle-sight showed him that the damming and pumping mechanisms were buckling under the strain of operation and the new walls designed to seal up caverns as artificial dams were crumbling under the weight of the water pressing on them. Soon all the Shadowed Elves’ careful work would give way and nearly everything would return to normal within the Caverns of Halacira.
But before that happened, Kellen and the people he had led down here would all be dead. If he could not get his army out before the water trapped them here, two thirds of the force Redhelwar had sent with him would drown beneath the earth.
And there was only one way out.
Across the bridge.
“We’ve got to get this wall down,” he told his men. “This is the way we’re going out.”
He began to hack at the wall with his sword.
THE stone was soft and water-soaked; the wall was not something that was meant to hold for long. Ambanire shoved him rudely aside and began chipping at the mortar between two stones with his dagger; Kellen quickly switched to the smaller weapon and applied himself to the softer bands between the stone as well.
The water was rising around their legs.
Cilarnen or Jermayan could summon a lightning bolt to blast the stone to ash. As far as Kellen knew, he had no such abilities—even if he could call up a thunderstorm out of season, he couldn’t bring the lightning here—and if he could, it would be far more likely to strike Elven armor than inert stone. He hammered harder at the wall, fury and frustration lending him a strength nearly that of his companions. He had not led them this far just to let them die.
“Shield—and push.”
It was not his own thought. It seemed to come from outside him. It was almost Shalkan’s voice, and yet not.
But I don’t Shield—I can’t!
Shield was a spell no Knight-Mage cast, or needed.
But he wasn’t going to let his people die simply because he wasn’t willing to try.
“Stand back,” he told the others.
The water was to their hips.
When Idalia had thought he was going to be a regular Wildmage, she’d told him about casting Shield-spells. A Wildmage Shielded naturally when Healin
g, though that wasn’t quite the same thing. And of course, in his lessons in the High Magick, he’d had the principles of Mage-Shield dinned into him by Anigrel morning, noon, and night for almost a decade.
He did his best to forget all of it.
He placed his hands flat against the wall.
I need this, he said to the Wild Magic. I need this for my people. They trust me to keep them alive. I will pay any price—anything!
He felt the Presence descend.
“When the time comes, you must… let go.”
Once he would have thought of that as a light Price. Now he thought it might be the highest Price of all.
Yes, he thought.
The sense of listening Presence departed.
His hands began to glow—brighter than the Coldfire above his head, until he had to close his eyes. Not the green glow of Healing—that he had seen before. Nor was it the blue light he had unconsciously expected—the first voice in his mind had sounded a lot like Shalkan. Instead, it was almost a blend of the two, a deep blue green, a color he had never seen in Nature. Even with his eyes closed, he could still see what the light was doing. It spread from his hands over the wall, and where it touched, the red glow of Taint vanished like smoke, until the entire wall radiated with the Shield he should never have been able to cast.
He pushed.
The stone resisted, but now it was soft and rotten, almost like chalk. His hands went through, pushing a large chunk of the center of the wall with them, and he pulled back just in time to keep from getting hit by the top of the wall as it fell free.
Water began to rush through the gap.
“Come on,” he said to the others, his voice ragged with the exhaustion that came with summoning the Wild Magic. “Tear it down. Quickly.”
A mile was a variable distance.
It was one thing if you were walking through the woods on a warm spring day. Another if you were riding—or walking—through a winter blizzard.
Yet another trying to move through waist-deep water in a cave beneath the earth.
The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 194