by M. M. Perry
“Then we need to get moving now,” Cass said.
The group, to a man, rushed to the cart. They unloaded the gear they would need and replaced it with detritus from Ivan’s garden, artfully wrapped in blankets to make it look, if they were lucky and their pursuer’s eyesight not particularly keen, as if the wagon was still laden with goods. Anya unhitched the pony from the wagon and saddled it up. She handed the reins over to Ivan.
“Whoever is following me will probably guess the pony is grazing around the back of the hut, if he notices it is missing at all. You really need to not be here when they realize what I have done, Ivan. I know it will be hard to leave and I am sorry this is happening so fast…” Anya was interrupted by Ivan’s hand on hers.
“I’m ready to go. I think I have been ready for some time now, little one. You have nothing to apologize for. But, you could do me a favor,” Ivan said smiling.
“What do you need?”
“For you to succeed, Anya. Free our people. Lift this burden from them.”
Anya started to reply, but could find no words. Instead she nodded once, the single gesture serving as affirmation and farewell. Ivan patted her hand several times before dropping it to turn and climb up on his pony. Anya reached into her tunic and pulled out a small pouch.
“You will need this, too,” Anya said offering it to Ivan. It made muffled metallic clinking sounds as it dropped from her hand into his.
“And you should get going,” he replied as he slipped the pouch inside his own shirt. “Whoever was following you did not have a wagon to pull, and is likely on something a bit faster than a pony. Good luck to you and your friends. As always, I look forward to our next meeting, Anya. I think you will have a great deal to tell then.”
Ivan took one last look at his hut, then patted the pony’s rump with his hand. The small horse headed off at a trot down the hill. Cass’ inclination was to rush away as well, but she waited for Anya to take the lead. It wasn’t until Ivan was out of sight that Anya looked around at everyone.
“This way, and hurry,” she motioned for them to follow her and then took off at a brisk jog.
Everyone did their best to follow as fast as Anya was moving, but the rocky terrain made it difficult for those less used to such travel. Suman and Viola had the worst time of it and trailed behind the group. Patch, sure-footed, caught up and ran alongside Anya as she jogged.
“Good thing Sam decided to stay behind,” Nat joked as they ran.
“Might be why he stayed back,” Gunnarr joked. “Looked up at the mountain and saw what we were in for.”
Cass slowed enough to turn around and jog backwards, looking nervously at the road which was still visible from this distance. As Suman and Viola passed her by, she worried about how much longer they’d be exposed to anyone on the road, and wondered if she shouldn’t have prodded Anya to get the group moving sooner. However, when she turned back around, ready to pick her pace back up, she was shocked to discover that Anya and Patch were gone. She pushed herself into a sprint and quickly overtook the remainder of the group just as they were approaching a steep, craggy wall of the mountain where a scrubby tree was trying its best to grow right out the side of the exposed rock face. It wasn’t until she was within a few strides of the wall that she saw how Anya and Patch had disappeared. There was a narrow crevasse in the rock that was hardly visible from here, and surely not from the road. Above it were carved symbols, which even Cass had a vague recollection of, that warned travelers of the deathsglove infestation within the cave. Cass and the rest of the party quickly moved inside. Suman and Viola, once in the dark of the cave, stopped to catch their breath.
“Do you think we were seen?” Cass asked.
“It does not matter now, does it?” Anya asked. “Besides, we will know soon enough if we hear them following us. If we do not hear them by the time we get into the caves, then we have made it, whether they are following or not.”
Anya pulled a torch and tinderbox out of her pack. In less than a minute, she had the torch going. It blazed with a strange color for fire—blue.
“Very nice. A fancy torch. I think I’d prefer a normal one, though, if you have it. That doesn’t seem to light up the cave as well,” Suman said nervously, eyeing the deep shadows that seemed to be jumping off the walls at him before darting back in the flickering light. “I think we’ll need a touch more light if we want to avoid the deathsglove. And I, for one, would really like to do that. Avoid them, that is. Anyone object to avoiding the deathsglove?” He hardly paused to take a breath. “See? No objections. Everyone’s for more light, and less death. So, a torch for me then?”
“Trust me, this is the only torch you will want in these caves,” Anya tried to reassure him. “And even if you do not think so, we do not have time to argue. We have to keep moving.”
Their progress through the caves was slow but steady. The damp, cool air clung to the party’s faces. They remained close to each other, ever watching the walls, ceilings and floors for any discoloration that might mark out a patch of slime. Anya seemed almost unconcerned, compared to the rest of the party, forging ahead without a glance to either side.
Suman worried the woman had become suicidal. She had, after all, disobeyed her village’s most important law. He was imperceptibly, he hoped, closing the distance between himself and Cass to raise his concern when she came to a sudden stop.
Ahead of them the cave opened suddenly out into a cathedral-like space, with the ceiling rapidly receding above them into darkness. But it wasn’t the immensity of the chamber that had caused the group to pause. As far as the torchlight reached all along one wall and extending far out onto the floor the stone radiated a blue color so bright it was almost white. It looked as if someone had splashed buckets of paint along that wall and it had slid down to the floor and pooled there.
Suman gasped and clutched at Viola.
“Is that,” he asked no one in particular, “is that all deathsglove?”
“It can’t be,” Viola replied, “deathsglove is a pale green. At least that’s what I’ve read.”
“The torch,” Anya said, waving it in broad arcs. The deathsglove seemed to writhe under the moving light. “We discovered this trick long ago. If you mix in the oil of the vecada, it makes the fire burn blue. Originally, we only used it for celebrations. Something pretty to look at. It also smells nice. Quite by accident we discovered that the light cast from a vecada fire also causes deathsglove to glow. The legend I was told was that a man from our village became lost in caves and his torch was failing. He happened to have some vecada with him. Desperate to keep his torch going, because to be lost in the dark here is certain death, he hurriedly did his best to squeeze out what oil he could with the materials at hand. It worked. Added to the pitch on his torch, it invigorated the flame enough for him to see by again. He was as surprised as you are now when he came upon a patch of deathsglove and it lit up so brightly. His discovery has proved invaluable for us.”
“I’ll bet,” Viola said, making a mental note of this new information.
“Obviously, stay away from that wall,” Anya said. “And step carefully.”
The group moved slowly through the huge room. Suman stared at the edge of the slime pool. He could swear the lichen was moving toward them, inching slowly across the room. After another moment, he was sure this couldn’t be a trick of the light.
“It’s moving, isn’t it?” he hissed.
“Keep up,” Anya barked back at him. “It cannot move fast enough to catch you if you keep moving.”
Suman looked back the way they had come. Now the floor near the entrance also glowed blue.
“It’s closing off our exit!”
Anya turned around and grabbed Suman so hard with her free hand that he winced.
“Yes. It is a massive creature that is spread throughout the cave system. Not many individual creatures. One massive creature, with all its parts working together to catch every morsel that it comes in contact with. Mont
hs might pass before another meal as large as a man stumbles past again. So it will expend every ounce of energy that it must to catch all of us. So it is racing to encircle us. But on our scale, it is still slow. At best, it can move at the pace an infant moves. We can outmaneuver it. But not if we panic. If we panic, we will make a mistake and find ourselves trapped. But if we are calm, we can avoid it. It is acting on instinct, not planning. It senses us so it moves to surround and engulf us. If you follow me, watch your step, and keep moving, we will be fine. Okay?”
Suman nodded and took a deep breath. Anya, sensing he was calmed, moved back to the head of the group to lead.
“I don’t know, I’ve seen some infants that crawl remarkably fast,” Patch began to say but stopped when Viola glowered at him.
She took Suman’s hand in hers and pulled him after her.
“I thought you weren’t afraid to die. You belong to Midassa after all,” Viola said softly, trying to reassure him. Despite her initial misgivings, he was growing on her.
“Yeah, sure, I can’t die. But I don’t think there’s anything in my contract that says I can’t be stuck in a cave and slowly digested until my time is up,” he said shakily. “Every day the slime could digest most of me, and I’m pretty sure I’d regenerate just enough so it could do it all over again. That would go on for, oh, one hundred and seventy-three days, if I’ve been counting right. Not how I’d imagined spending my final days when I signed on.”
“Oh,” Viola said realizing.
“Yeah,” Suman said. He began to feel a little calmer talking to the petite redhead. She reminded him a little of a girl from his village. “I pictured myself surrounded by more opulence, less dank. And with a beautiful girl like you to while away the hours. I suppose I should act a little braver if I have any hope of that dream being realized, eh?”
“You’d have a hard time romancing me,” Viola joked, trying to lighten the mood, “brave or not.”
“What, not manly enough? Allow me to assure you that apparent display of cowardice actually was not. Rather, it was a test to see if you were a compassionate person worthy of my attention. A sadist,” he looked ahead at Patch, who was studiously ignoring them, “would have mocked me, and I’d have known they weren’t worth a wooden slug,” Suman said.
“If anything,” Viola said smiling, “you’re a little too manly for me.”
“Too manly?” Suman asked, “How can I be… Oh,” it finally clicked for him. “Ohhhh… Well then, that’s okay. It completely explains why you were immune to my considerable charm, without in the least impugning my virility.”
“Is that what that was? Considerable amounts of charm? You know what they say about quality over quantity, right?”
“Ouch. That wasn’t very nice,” Suman replied, grinning. “But you’re right, I am a bit out of practice. Not a lot of banter called for back in the Golden City, what with the drop-dead gorgeous but completely vapid golems not really needing any enticement other than ‘you, here, now,’ I may be a touch out of practice. Maybe you could help me polish my delivery up a bit, seeing as how we both play for the same team?”
“Will someone please just toss me to the deathsglove now,” Patch said disgustedly.
Despite their best efforts to alleviate the mood with a bit of light-hearted ribaldry, neither Suman nor Viola was able to relax. The entire group was on edge as they walked through the dark cave. The glowing torch dimly lit up blue patches here and there in the distance, but it didn’t provide much light aside from that. It was far darker than most of the travelers would have preferred. The highlighted patches of deathsglove, slowly creeping towards them, seemed to drift unsuspended in the blackness around them—meandering apparitions floating after them in the darkness.
“How long until we resurface?” Cass asked.
“We will be in here for a while. I know the deathsglove makes it seem foolhardy to venture here, but it will actually help us. As it follows us, it will fill in the passage behind us. Any pursuers will have to deal with that. That is good, because it will slow them down considerably. But it will not stop them. They will have brought bait to lure it away to one of the many other arms of this cave system,” Anya said as she pushed her torch into another opening to look for signs of the lichen.
“So if we start seeing less of it, that means they’re here?” Cass asked.
“It may mean something else has attracted this particular portion of the deathsglove, but not necessarily our pursuers. Or it could just mean that since I was last here, the deathsglove has shifted itself pursuing some other meal. This deathsglove is very, very old, so it has become massive, spread out through miles of this cave system. You can make it shift some portion of itself with a shank or two of razorback, but not enough to draw the bulk of the creature. Some also depends on whether or not the deathsglove thinks it can catch us, too. If it feels it is closing on us, or that we have veered off into a dead end, we could have more trouble. It will exert more energy, and more of itself, to block our path more quickly and completely.”
“Think? It thinks? It’s not just reacting to us, like a plant, or a bug even? You’re telling me it’s actively planning out its actions?” Cass was staring at a glowing seam along the path they were taking. When she really concentrated, she could just perceive an increase in the strength of the glow oozing along behind the crack in the wall. “Is it smart enough to block our exit?”
“Yes and no,” Anya replied. “There are many exits from these caves, and even more paths that eventually join up and lead to those exits, but very few that lead to the sanctuary. It would not waste its energy trying to guess which one we will use. After all, it has no way of knowing we are going to the sanctuary, and if it guessed wrong, it would be out a meal. If there were only one exit, or even just a handful, or if it could somehow know which one we were heading for, you can be sure we would find ourselves quickly trapped, awaiting the inevitable. At least when our pursuers get here, if they come that is, the deathsglove will have to decide which group to hunt, or split its focus between both parties. I am hoping that will give us the space we need.”
They continued on in silence for a time, everyone in the party trying not to picture themselves trapped in a room, deathsglove slowly oozing up, and then over them, digesting them slowly and painfully over a matter of hours or days. As they proceeded, the amount of deathsglove they found confronting them steadily increased. At one point they had to edge along, pressed firmly against a wall, in single file. Patch brought up the rear.
“It doesn’t seem to be thinning out at all,” Gunnarr noted.
“No, it doesn’t,” Anya said, concerned.
“I thought you said that might mean anything,” Suman said.
“Normally it would not, and seeing a bit more or less than I expected would not bother me. But this is a heavy concentration. I think it has grown since I was last here. A lot,” she said.
Anya picked up the pace, and her concern ratcheted up the anxiety of the group another notch. As they pressed on, the air filled with a stench, at first subtle, but soon overpowering. The stench became so thick that at one point Suman gagged, and had to pause for a moment to keep himself from being sick. Viola paused beside him, covering her nose and trying not to wretch herself. As they moved along through the passageway a glow, distant and brighter than she had become accustomed to in the pervasive gloom, caught Cass’ attention. By the time they reached the opening that had started as a far off pinpoint, the light had become nearly blinding. As she leaned carefully into the room, thrusting her torch ahead of her, Anya gasped. When Cass stepped up next to Anya and peered into the cavern she knew why. She held an arm out behind her to signal that the rest of the group should stay back.
Natural light filtered in from a cleft in the ceiling of the cavern high above. If the torch still caused the deathsglove to glow in the light, it was too faint for Cass to see. Every surface was covered with a pale green sheen. It looked harmless to Cass in the light of day, no longer
glowing eerily blue. Piled in the center of the space were what had once been several razorbacks, mostly covered in slime. The moldering pile had become amorphous enough that Cass couldn’t guess how many carcasses had gone into making it. Flies buzzed around the corpses. The unfortunate many who happened to land on the deathsglove never took flight again, finding themselves stuck to the glue-like surface of the creature. The portion of the deathsglove nearer the pile of razorbacks was dotted with thousands of them. As they perished and began decomposing the flies contributed to the fetid smell, attracting more carrion eaters looking for a feast that, in turn, found themselves feasted upon.
“They must have fallen through,” Anya said, pointing toward the boulders strewn around the pile.
“We can’t get through that. Every inch is covered with deathsglove,” Viola said, peeking around Cass’ arm.
“We can’t go back,” Patch said looking behind him. “It has to have filled that passageway we only just managed to slip through by now.”
Anya looked around the cave, weighing their options. A wide buttress of rock jutted out from the wall to the left, its upper surface clear of deathsglove, generally flat and only a leap away, albeit a very wide leap. The buttress continued along the wall, mostly unbroken, circumnavigating the huge puddle of deathsglove.