The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  Blays was spinning in circles, hacking at the air with one sword while awkwardly slamming the hilt of the other into his back, where beetles were biting at him with their oversized jaws. Dante shaped three darts and slung them into the monstrous vermin, painting Blays' back with their innards.

  Gladdic walked straight at the torrent of bugs, his fingers splayed before him. Ether gushed from his hand like horizontal rain. Each droplet stoved in the head or thorax of another beetle, piling them up on the ground not unlike the way they'd piled up the dead Blighted in Bressel. Dante followed his lead, hemming in the left flank of the insects. Blays took a moment to recover from getting swarmed, then waded back into the fray, stabbing at the beetles with short, quick thrusts.

  The rippling carpet of insects went still. With nether and ether continuing to pound into them, they turned about, hissing over the ground to retreat into whatever cracks they had come from.

  The dead lay strewn about by the score. Blays flicked his wrists, shedding the worst of the gore from his swords. The air smelled like the burning leaves of a noxious plant.

  "Suppose those were the guardians of this rift?" Dante said.

  "Let's hope so." Blays twisted his head for a look at the shredded back of his doublet. "Because that means we just won. Mind fixing me up?"

  Dante saw to his back while Gladdic used the ether to restore his shirt to its undamaged form.

  "You could not get the earth to rise," Gladdic said.

  "Hey, it rose all right," Dante said. "If anything, it rose too hard. It was like it had a will of its own and was just waiting to be set free. Which means we're not going to be able to open any shortcuts down to Adaine. We'll have to find the same route he took."

  They continued across the cavern, reaching the gap Dante had spotted from the rise, but this turned out to be a false exit, dead-ending just a few feet in. They backed out and Dante sent his mind into the walls, searching for another passage. He couldn't seem to see as far or as clearly as he ought to be able, possibly due to the same quality that had caused the earth to turn against him.

  "There are tunnels under the ground," he said slowly. "Dozens of them."

  Blays lifted his foot, as if expecting to find one beneath it. "Great, so we have options."

  "I don't think we should take any of them. They're all jumbled up like a pot of buckwheat noodles. Some of them don't even seem to lead anywhere."

  "But some of them do?"

  "There's a crevice off to the left. It feels like it circles down to another chamber of some kind. That's the route we'll try first."

  Dante followed the wall toward the crack he'd sensed. The opening was hidden from sight until you were right on top of it and the tunnel beyond was dark. He stopped in the entrance, allowing himself one last look at the light blue glow of the gemstones before carrying onward.

  The passage was utterly barren. It curled downward at a manageable angle. By the time it leveled out, the pressure in Dante's head had grown enough to notice the difference, although he guessed they were still something like a quarter of a mile from Adaine.

  A new cavern yawned before them, reminiscent of the one before, but different enough to be uncanny. The light that shined from the gems here was a deeper blue, like that of the open sea or the coming night, spangled with violet and purple gems as well. Most of the mushrooms were taller and thinner, paler too, although some seemed to have no stems at all and were just massive hemispherical caps resting upon the floor, four to eight feet across. They were criss-crossed with two large seams and their skins were translucent, traced with fine veins.

  The mushrooms hosted white stickbugs with limbs as thin as gossamer, snails with crystalline shells that reflected the countless points of light within the room, and oversized black crickets that chirped and clicked at each other. There were streams here as well and pale eyeless fish hung in the slow currents.

  Dante edged into the room, which felt less welcoming than the one above and more like the gardens of a dark fairy who steals children by night. Although the bugs didn't display much shyness, nothing rushed to attack him, either. He sent his mind toward the rocky walls to hunt for the next tunnel onward, but he still didn't have the same range he normally did. It felt like the earth was resisting being read. Annoyed, he tested his ability on the ground around him.

  "There are holes under the big flat mushrooms," he said, part curious and part confused. "Like their roots have hollowed out entire tunnels below them. They're tangled together the same way we saw in the cavern above us."

  Blays eyed one of the huge seamed caps. "Maybe they eat their way through the rock. The land's alive here, isn't it? If it's alive, it stands to reason you can eat it."

  "I don't think that's what Elenna meant. Anyway, I'm having a hard time reading the walls. We'll have to get closer to them."

  "How arduous. It sounds like we might even have to use our eyes." Blays frowned down at one of the sprawling caps. "Although I'm starting to wish I didn't have any. These things are hideous."

  Leaning back, he nudged the cap with his boot. Something pulsed beneath the mushroom's skin. Dante shuddered and walked on, stepping over a pace-wide stream.

  A wet rasp sounded behind them. He spun. The mushroom Blays had toed was rising into the air on a stalk as fat as the cap. The three of them backed away as it climbed six feet high, then twelve. It began to tilt forward on its own weight, its cap dangling toward them.

  Dante reeled the nether toward him. "Why do you always have to touch things?"

  "I didn't touch it," Blays said. "I kicked it. Anyway, it's a mushroom. I feel pretty confident we can outrun it."

  Dante glanced over his shoulder and took another step backward. He turned back just in time to witness the cap's cross-shaped seams split apart and splay wide, revealing a mouth full of jagged, crystalline shards.

  "Are those teeth?" Blays skipped back. "What kind of a mushroom has teeth?"

  "The carnivorous kind," Dante said. "Time to go!"

  The worm-like thing whipped forward, snapping at Blays. He threw himself flat, somehow drawing one of his swords as he fell, raking it across the worm's neck. The Odo Sein weapon cut through the skin and the soft flesh beneath, then scraped into something hard, shedding blinding sparks.

  The teeth clonked together above Blays' head. Dante caught a whiff of decay. He rolled the nether into a spear and slung it at what passed for the monster's face. The shadows hit with a breath-catching crunch. One of the thing's mouth flaps tore loose, dangling from its head like a wet sock. Crystal teeth tinkled to the ground.

  The worm unleashed an airy hoot and reared back. Blays sprung to his feet, drawing his other sword. Gladdic hit at the wound in the worm's head with a scythe of light. Pieces of teeth sprayed into the air, and the ether tore a long gash from the worm's mouth and down its body, but it merely wriggled in pain, bleeding white fluid, then snapped at Gladdic, extending further from its hole.

  Gladdic snarled, caught flat-footed. Blays hip-checked him to the ground and hacked at the worm with both blades, dislodging a piece of its head and spinning his body past the beast's battered teeth.

  The worm retracted, spattering white blood behind it. Blays tossed a sword into the air, grabbed Gladdic's hand and yanked him to his feet, then snagged the handle of his weapon before it fell to the ground.

  Two other "mushrooms caps" next to the bleeding worm shot free from their holes, snaking upward. Without needing to speak a word, Dante, Blays, and Gladdic turned and ran. Ahead, two more worms popped from their spots in the ground, launching mushrooms to all sides. The dark crickets began to screech like wounded animals.

  Both of the worms snapped at Dante. He swerved to his left, punishing the closer of the two with a face full of shadows, yet it came onward, littering broken teeth and torn skin behind it. The four-part jaw closed on Dante's right leg. The stinking maw was five feet across—wide enough to swallow a man whole—and if Dante hadn't just blasted a large part of it away, it would h
ave enveloped his leg and bitten through it like a carrot. As it was, the jaws couldn't close tight, yet some of the dagger-like teeth—the others were flattish squares of crystal, as if for grinding rock—stabbed into his thigh.

  He yelled out, stabbing at the worm with a long prong of nether. Blays chopped at its exposed neck. The worm adjusted its jaws, looking for a better bite; then the attacks grew too much and it drew back.

  It dragged Dante along with it. He slammed its teeth with a hammer-blow of nether. They shattered and his leg pulled free.

  The cuts were deep and should have hurt madly, but instead his leg felt as warm as a hearth, all but numb. Venom. Dante staggered away, pressing shadows to his cuts. Greenish foam spewed from them. Once the venom was clear, he closed his wounds, loping after Gladdic, Blays covering the rear. They'd been running for the far wall but it was still sixty yards away. And more of the worms were sprouting like ghastly trees, mouths splitting apart to taste the air.

  Dante reached out for the stone in the wall ahead, meaning to look for the exit, but it was still too far away for him to get a hold on.

  The loon throbbed in Dante's ear. "Not now, Nak!"

  "Yes, now." Nak's voice brooked no argument. Dante had made a point of allowing his Council and advisors to be more free to debate and disagree with him than many rulers would suffer, but Nak's outright contradiction was shocking. "Otherwise there won't be a later. The White Lich is opening the portal."

  27

  "You're sure of this?" Dante said.

  "A patch of woods just south of us is starting to go thin," Nak said. "Like it's being stretched, and is about to tear. It's just like the people reported seeing when the lich opened the doorways into Bressel."

  "We haven't found Adaine yet. But we're very close. We just need a few more minutes."

  "I expect we can last that long. The question is, can the Mists?"

  "Have to go, Nak. If you don't hear from me again, lead them well. And try to find a good death."

  As Dante and Nak had been speaking, Gladdic had been leading the way through the growing forest of giant, rock-jawed worms. They came now to the cavern wall. There were no passages in sight. Faced with the choice of breaking to the right or to the left, Dante, remembering how Sabel had always opted to go left on his own journey through the caverns, chose to do the same.

  "The lich is opening a doorway to the survivors," he said. "We have to find a way out of here!"

  Blays took a warding hack at a worm snapping at them from the side. "You're sure you don't want to stick around and get turned into mushroom fertilizer?"

  Gladdic slipped on a patch of gravel, catching himself in a shallow puddle. The worm that had just harried Blays reached for Gladdic's bony shin. Dante sent a bolt of nether down its wide-open mouth, ripping into its throat. The worm reared back and whipped itself side to side.

  The three of them dashed away from it, continuing along the wall. They were now close enough for Dante to read its shape, yet he wasn't finding any passages onward.

  A trio of worms shot from the ground next to the wall, driving them back toward the center of the cavern. Yet they'd only taken three steps before another worm swung down from the ceiling, which had gotten much lower the nearer they'd come to the edge of the room. Blays chopped at it and danced back from its crushing jaws.

  Among the clack of quartz teeth and the squelch of the worms' long bodies snaking from their holes, a new sound filled the cavern: the hiss of something like running water.

  "The beetles return," Gladdic said. "We must find a way out!"

  Dante wrapped himself in nether, readying a barrage for the approaching insects. "There's no exit! And if I try to carve one open, the stone will be the next to attack us!"

  Blays took another poke at the worm hanging from the ceiling, then cocked his head. "Where is Adaine right now?"

  "If I knew that, do you think we'd be running around getting chomped by worms?"

  "Is he below us?"

  "Yes!"

  "Then we'll take one of the worm-holes down to him."

  "The thing about worm-holes is they tend to be full of worms."

  "Which we'll solve by killing our way through it."

  "If we come out through the ceiling, we'll be smashed against the floor!"

  "Better than getting smashed between monster teeth. Now find us a hole!"

  Dante clenched his teeth and sent his mind into the cavern floor. There were dozens of tubes there, many of them twined together, others circling aimlessly, a few dipping under the surface before bending back up to emerge elsewhere in the room. Dante couldn't sense deep enough to be sure that any of the tunnels ran to the ceiling of the cavern below them—or even to be sure that there was another cavern below them—but one nearby tube angled downward with minimal detours or twists. He ran toward it.

  "Ho!" Gladdic yelled, the pure white light of the ether driving back the eerie purple of the room. It raced forward in thin beams and slaughtered a host of the giant beetles coming toward them from the side.

  Dante splashed into a stream. The first step was shallow, but the next ones took him to his knee, then to the hip. The water was much colder than it ought to be and he feared what might lurk beneath it. He thrashed to the other side before he could find out.

  The beetles massed at the other bank, feelers tapping at the quiet water. The first of them took to the air, flapping across the stream and landing on the near bank with a click. Scores followed after it.

  Yet the delay was just enough for Dante and the others to swerve around another pair of worms and reach the hole Dante had sensed. Unlike many of the others, this one looked empty.

  "That's our exit." He pointed it out. "I'll take the lead—"

  "Tally ho!" Blays jumped inside.

  Dante yelled curses after him, but had more than enough experience to know this wouldn't so much as cause Blays to hesitate, let along bring him back, and thus the only option was to leap in behind him and try to minimize the trouble he was about to get into. He did so.

  The tunnel was vertical and pitch black. This was enough to shock Dante into perfect stupidity, which was also the ideal condition for the ether to fill him. He snapped his fingers.

  Light shot through the tunnel just in time to illuminate the ground before he smashed into it. He landed ass-first, sliding on as the tunnel angled.

  "Gladdic!" he called, and was answered instantly by a thud and a pained grunt from above.

  Dante summoned some nether and sank it along the course of the tunnel, following it as far as the strange rock would allow. There was another short drop ahead—on cue, Blays whooped in surprise—and then the angle gentled again, turning once more into a slide instead of a fall. Yet Dante still couldn't see where the passage ended.

  He came to the drop, spreading his arms and legs to lessen the impact. The landing didn't cost him more than a bruise. Further down the tunnel, Blays let out a long yell.

  Dante swung around a slight curve. Ahead, the light of the ether silhouetted Blays, who had come to a halt—and was engaged in a complicated, four-limbed dance.

  One of the great worms blocked the tunnel behind him. Its jaws were open, reaching toward Blays, but the rock walls prevented its mouth from opening all the way, and Blays was currently skedaddling over the beast's lips, bracing himself against the wall with one hand while bearing a sword in the other and cutting downward whenever he had the balance to strike.

  As the light approached him, he didn't look back. "Feel free to help at any time!"

  Dante sprawled out, bracing himself against the sides of the tube and scraping to a stop. He packed a black spear and hurled it downward. It swerved around Blays and into the worm's open mouth. White blood splashed up at Blays. The thing gave an airy shriek, filling the passage with rot.

  It swung its jaws shut. Blays jumped upward, letting them close, then landed on the thing's head, hacking and sawing. The worm contracted its body and slid away down the tunnel. Blays followed
it, stabbing with abandon. Gladdic had arrived behind Dante and the two of them pelted it as they could. The tunnel walls grew slick with its pale blood. Loose pieces flapped along down the decline.

  They carried around a slight bend, battering away at the creature. Crystals and gobbets rattled and plopped about them. The worm gave another shriek, then went limp. It slid onward for another few seconds, then came to a wet-sounding stop.

  "Pretty sure it's dead." Blays' voice echoed through the tight tunnel. "But I'm even more sure it's stuck. What now? Carve our way through it?"

  Dante closed his eyes and felt down through the stone. "It's not stuck. It's hit the bottom of the tunnel. There's a cavern below us that I could open the floor into—but I don't know how far it is to the ground."

  "Maybe you can slant the exit so it isn't straight down. Let gravity flush this thing out while we hang tight and figure out—"

  With a deafening cry, the worm surged forward, snapping its ravaged face at Blays. Dante took hold of the nether in the stone beneath it and liquefied it.

  The stone tried to resist, but it was immediately shoved loose by the massive weight of the worm. A plug of mud fell into the open space below, followed by the beast. Dante struggled to stop himself from sliding after them, but the walls were too slimy with gore. He tumbled into open space after Blays and before Gladdic.

  Like the last two, the cavern they were falling into was lit by gems and crystals, but these were black and dark purple and the room was as dark as twilight. Gladdic threw light below them. The ground was forty feet away and coming fast. The mud was already splattering across it. The tail end of the worm was right behind the loose earth, landing with an incredibly loud slap and a rather violent expulsion of fluids. The body smacked down behind it like a cut rope.

  "Going to do something?" Blays said.

  "Yes," Dante said. "Tell you to cover your heads!"