“We can’t exactly hide,” he pointed out, and I scoffed.
“Put the light away, and we can.”
He nodded, then looked at Kem. “One of your friends finally catch up?”
Kem shook his head. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“They don’t like coming through here.”
“Imagine that,” I muttered, then lifted my voice a little. “If he takes the horses ahead, whatever noise they make won’t give us away. You and I can lay in wait.”
“Or it’s his friend, and they’ll trap us between them. Or he’ll just take the horses and leave us here. Why don’t you go with him? I can handle this.” His eyes held mine, and the iciness they held made me shiver. He trusted me—in this instance, at any rate—and he didn’t trust Kem. If Kem betrayed us I may very well have to kill him. But Kem was afraid of me…
It was both an unnerving and interesting situation. “All right. Keep the light, in case you need it.”
He nodded. “You’ve got the other one,” he said, telling me indirectly that Kem didn’t know about the third. “Be careful.”
“You, too.” I found myself looking at him, looking into his eyes and sensing strange things I couldn’t even begin to understand. Apprehension pushed me abruptly to my feet and I steadied myself against the wall.
Tanris stood, too. “You going to be all right?”
“Fine.”
“Liar.”
“Braggart,” I shot back, and things settled into a familiar, comfortable pattern.
Kem rose more slowly and made his way to the front, tying the reins of my horse to the saddle of the one he led while I took up the leads of the packhorses. He didn’t notice Tanris handing me the war axe. I hefted it experimentally. Then Tanris squeezed my shoulder and went to work his way past the packhorses and into the dark. The cat leaped delicately after him. Good riddance. The witchlight winked out. I waited a moment until the disconcerting sensation that accompanied loss of vision settled, then clicked to the horses, urging them forward.
“I’m fine, in case you’re interested,” I informed Kem, a little dizzy, a little prickly, but nothing worse.
“You are not fine.”
“How do you know?”
“Letters and symbols written on the wall came to life, wrapped around you, lit you like a bonfire, and made you scream and babble strange things. For a long time.”
That explained why my throat hurt. I looked down at my invisible hands. At least I wasn’t glowing any more, though I couldn’t help being curious about what it had looked like, and if it was actually real or some strange product of the cave. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Did I do anything to you?”
“No.”
That wasn’t quite the truth. I pressed him. “I scared you.”
“Yes.”
Somewhat surprised by the honesty of his answer, I fell silent, counting off about two hundred paces that included a snakelike bend in the passage. “All right, stop. We wait here.”
Wordlessly, he came to a halt. I considered having him join me, but frankly I preferred having the horses between us. As strange a mood as he was in, I didn’t know what he’d do. It would have been a simple thing for him to either take the lead horse and keep right on going, or leave the troublesome thing and make a run for it, and I listened intently lest he try sneaking away. I decided that he must be more afraid of the Ancestors than of me. Neither one of us said anything, and I imagined him straining his ears just the way I did, waiting for something from the passage behind us that might indicate what was happening with Tanris. It took considerably longer than it ought, but Time was a slippery thing here.
In an effort to distract myself, I mulled over the perpetual puzzle of Duzayan’s letters. Clearly he was planning a seizure of power, else he wouldn’t need soldiers and ships and pirates. If the missives from the priest were in code, I had yet to decipher them. Of what use to a coup was a pile of musty books? Spells, perhaps? Details to a successful historic plan he wished to use again? The intervention of the gods?
The glow of the witchlight reflecting on the walls as Tanris rejoined us seemed almost cheerful, and I edged past the horses to meet him. I did not expect to see the light held straight out in the trembling hand of the girl we’d saved from Kem and his friends and then left behind in Uzuun Village.
— 14 —
Goose Bumps
“What’s she doing here?” I exclaimed. No one, apparently, had told her that the Ghost Walk was a scary place to go alone—or with other people, for that matter. Even in the fragile witchlight she was white as a sheet.
“I don’t know,” Tanris said, coming along behind her. He’d kept a good distance between himself and her and walked with his sword drawn, which startled me. Was he afraid of her? Or… was she real? “All she did was squeak when I surprised her, and then she sat right down and cried. Hasn’t said a word.”
“Are you crazy, girl?” I asked.
She gave me a distressed look, then hurried forward, thrusting the light at me. I barely caught the thing and held it up to appraise her. She wore ill-fitting men’s clothes and a knapsack, her face was smudged and her eyes red and puffy. I wondered how much of her time in the passage she had spent in tears, and what she might have seen or heard. She’d had no one to reassure her or to warn her what was happening.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
She pressed both hands tightly over her mouth, and for a moment I feared she might vomit, but she just cried more. That girl spent more time crying than anyone I had ever known. Granted, her folks had suffered a tragic ending, but crying wouldn’t bring them back or pave the way to a better existence, and she had no idea at all what keeping company with us entailed. Given the choice, I would avoid us. Vigorously.
“You can’t come with us,” I explained. “We told you that before.”
“We can’t just leave her here,” Tanris said, just as I’d known he would.
Kem hung back behind me, as silent as the girl. I turned my head to study him for a moment. The emotions wafting off him weren’t nearly as strong as the girl’s terror—not even as strong as Tanris’s annoyance and underlying apprehension—though he was wary and curious and carefully reserved. “Got any ideas?” I asked him.
Kem rubbed his cheek. “I’d say it might help to have another person along, but if she can’t hold herself together we’re asking for trouble.”
Lest I invite disaster, I didn’t ask what kind of trouble he anticipated. “Did you hear that?” I asked her.
She nodded and cried.
I heaved a sigh of exasperation. “You can’t cry. You have to remain calm. There are things in here with us.”
“The Ancestors,” Kem supplied helpfully.
“Ghosts and such,” Tanris tacked on.
Sick and scared already, she couldn’t possibly like what I had to say next. “We can’t travel with lights. This kind—” I held up the witchlight, “isn’t wholly reliable. The torches only last a couple of hours, and we have to use them carefully.”
Her eyes widened in horror.
I sighed.
Tanris sighed.
One of the horses sighed.
“We should go,” Kem said.
“Do you know your way around horses?” Tanris asked.
She nodded hesitantly.
“Good.” His decisiveness was appealing. Annoying, too. “You can help, then. We could use somebody to take the extra horse. You lead it along. Keep it calm, and it’ll help keep you calm. You must stay calm. Do you understand?”
She was mute, not stupid. She nodded and wiped her tear-streaked face.
“You follow Crow, and I’ll come behind.”
She nodded again, and we sorted ourselves out like a bunch of people and ponies on a string. I held the witchlight wistfully, then tucked it back in my pouch.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
I do not know what time it might have been when we stopped. I know that my feet dragged, my eyes could barely stay open, and Horse kept bumping her nose against my back. Every time she did, I stumbled on for a while longer, and then my eyes would drift closed again. My exhaustion robbed me of concern about the narrowness of the way or the depth of the darkness. I was consumed only with the need to keep putting one foot in front of the other until we found daylight—and there would be daylight. It was a promise I held onto with savage need.
Ragged sleep wove a tapestry of dreams not my own. I knew this even as I dreamed, and I still could not escape. Some were mundane, consisting of things as trivial as building and nourishing a fire, walking through a mountain field, or talking with someone as I worked on building a wall of stone. Others terrified me. I dreamed of being hunted, now and then catching glimpses of the awful creatures chasing me—great, manlike creatures that towered over me and wore the heads of animals. I dreamed a darkness enfolded me, and out of it loomed a charred figure, features melting to expose one eyeball and his teeth, and I knew he was still unutterably dangerous. I dreamed of flames over which I held a great brass plate onto which I’d poured a measure of some sort of powder. The plate did not get hot to the touch, but the powder heated, melted, and became a glass surface in which I saw things—not just shadows reflected from my surroundings, but faces I knew. I saw myself. My reflection stared directly at me, and for such a length of time as to make chills run up my spine. Could it see me? Then my reflection looked away, determination stamped all over the familiar features. The scene shifted to a tall and beautiful white building, and inside the walls a horribly violent murder. I woke screaming.
After we settled the horses and ascertained that no one had died from the heart attacks I’d inadvertently instigated, I learned that my companions hadn’t fared much better than I. We decided we did not wish to try to sleep any more.
We did not talk much as we walked. The darkness weighed heavily on us, sapping even the desire to converse. I do not know about the others, but numbness wrapped me. I was in such a daze that I didn’t realize Kem had stopped until I ran into the horse he led. It stomped a foot and stepped backwards into me, swishing its tail and snorting. “Whoa, whoaa…!” I had to push my own horse backwards, prompting a chain reaction of indignation down the line. Luckily the line was short.
“Why did we stop?” I asked, peering uselessly ahead into the darkness.
“Two things,” Kem said, his voice drifting eerily. “First, I can’t stand your constant whispering any more. Second, I’m standing in water.”
I wasn’t whispering! What was he going on about? “I take it there’s not supposed to be water.”
“There never has been before.” Even so, he sounded quite calm.
“Is it real?”
He kept silent for a little space. “I don’t know.”
“What’s the trouble?” Tanris’s voice came from behind, sounding very far away.
“There might be water.” What a ridiculous thing to say. There was either water, or there wasn’t. “Just go, Kem, and—well, it’s just water.”
And water it was. The passageway dipped downward here, and the further we went, the more obvious the incline became. The water made the going treacherous and slippery for both us and the horses, and what started out as an ankle-deep nuisance rose slowly to our knees, then our thighs and our waists.
From ahead came sudden splashing far wilder than mere wading necessitated, a gasp, more splashing, then swearing. Whatever had happened, Kem had not drowned. Were there things in the water? Where would they have come from, and what did they eat?
“Are you all right?” I called out to him, picturing some scaled creature with a mouth as big as a horse and lined with thirteen rows of knife-like teeth.
“There’s a—” Indecipherable muttering filled in the sentence, and then, “ledge!”
Certainly a less worrisome outcome than the monster. I tried to decide if a mysterious ledge was better or worse than the magic that may or may not have attacked me. Or the giant scaled creature. “How deep?”
“Just a moment.” More splashing followed, then a bubbling, unnerving silence, another splash and a gasp. I imagined Kem sinking or diving into the water to discover the depth and then resurfacing. How disorienting the black depths must be! “I can’t find the bottom,” he rasped. “There must have been some kind of shift. An earthquake or something.”
My hand tightened on poor Horse’s bridle. If an earthquake had changed the passage that drastically, did it even have an outlet any more? And how in the names of the plentiful gods were we going to get the horses turned around so we could get out again?
Tanris startled me, coming up alongside. “The passage is wider here,” he said. “Maybe ten feet?”
That much? It was practically palatial. Fingertips against one wall, I stretched the opposite hand. I met no resistance. “We could turn around.”
“Or see if we can still go ahead.”
“See?” I laughed.
“You know what I mean.”
We lit one of the torches. The cave wall continued along the right hand side, then disappeared past the light cast by the wavering flame. The ceiling dipped down low but the still, black water reflected the torch for a long way. To the left, both water and cavern extended beyond our line of sight. The floor descended into the water for about five feet, then broke off abruptly.
We argued about whether to go forward or back, and if we went forward should one of us first swim to the other side to ascertain conditions? And if only one went, should he take the horse too, and risk having no place to go? And that begged the question of whether it would be too far for a man to swim at all. The thought of the amount of time we might have lost made me ill. We couldn’t afford to go back and take the longer route.
“I’ll go,” I said, putting an end to the argument.
“No, it should be me. I told you I’d show you the way,” Kem protested, and I rolled my eyes.
“Fine, you go. By yourself. No sense risking the horse.”
“Stay close to the wall,” Tanris advised. “Just in case this space opens up further still.” He was always so practical and so full of horrible ideas. If Kem kept to the edge, he could find his way around to where—hopefully—the passage continued. If he didn’t, he might very well get lost and drown.
“Better yet,” I said, pulling one of the witchlights out of my pouch, “take this.”
He paused apprehensively, then nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t lose it. Make sure it’s lit when we start across so we know where to go. They like to be warm.”
After a moment’s disbelief, he offered a strained smile. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” we echoed as he struck out. We watched the pale light bobbing along, lighting the wall next to him for a long way.
“Ceiling’s awfully low!” he called back to us, and then there came some more of his elegant swearing and the light disappeared. We caught our breaths and held them until the light reappeared, then moved sideways. Faint splashes marked his progress, and I found myself leaning forward, straining to see something, anything. Past the ring of light our torch cast, it was hard to say if he was moving across or away.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“Swimming,” Tanris supplied with his usual skill at stating the obvious. The cat wound around his ankles. He bent to pick it up, cradling it in one arm while he rubbed its head. Incredibly brave or wildly obtuse, the fool creature purred noisily. “Think the ceiling comes down too low to go under?”
“We might be able to swim under water for a little way, but what about the horses?”
He grunted.
The light disappeared again. We waited. And then we waited a little more. Tanris rubbed the cat’s head and regarded the girl with pursed lips. “What’s your name?” he asked.
She shrugged and looked down at her boots.
“You don’t know?”
> A nod.
“You do, but you’re not saying?”
“She’s mute, Tanris,” I reminded him. She just pressed her lips together.
“Surely she’s got a name.”
“Most folks do. Can you write?” I inquired. She shook her head and I held my hands palm up. What could we do? “She’s a girl, I’m going to call her that.”
“You can’t just call her Girl.”
“Why not?” I crooked my brows at her. “Do you care?”
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, a very confused—but still silent—expression.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I suppose you could always try guessing.”
He rolled his eyes. “That could take forever.”
“You have something pressing to occupy yourself with while we’re toiling across the empire?”
“Is it a common name?” Tanris asked.
She shrugged again.
“Hey, Girl, want a bit of jerky?”
She smiled and nodded.
Tanris snorted his disgust. I fetched her the jerky. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had a dose of the antidote, so I took it out and administered the required two drops. Without looking, I felt the girl watching me curiously. Nervously. It was impossible to tell if she was frightened of the situation still, or of me.
“Kem?” I called out, fastening the stopper and tucking the vial away.
We waited a little more. The horses shifted and sighed and switched their tails. And then Tanris took a turn hollering, and I had to admit he had an enviable set of lungs. “Kem Bohadri!” The phrase echoed eerily.
The water worked with the uneven walls and ceiling to distort the reply. “I found it!” couldn’t possibly be misinterpreted as an echo.
“Is it good?” Tanris bellowed, loud enough to make me wince.
Is it good… good… Came back to us. We looked at each other and waited. We received no answer, and we could not see the witchlight. Tanris rubbed his jaw consideringly, then tried again. “Kem Bohadri!” he called again, hands cupped around his mouth.
We were back to holding our breaths again. I ventured a glance at Girl. She peered anxiously across the water, her face pinched and pale. The walls and the water, and perhaps the cursed Ancestors as well, did strange and unearthly things to our words.
As the Crow Flies: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Page 18