Deepest, Darkest

by William Ritter

  “What exactly do you know about the stolen?” said Madam Root.

  “I know that people and creatures have been taken from aboveground and kept here, below,” said Raina, “in what you have made perfectly clear is your domain. I do not yet know the reason, but I will. Is their capture your doing?”

  “Hmh.” Madam Root made a noise that might have been a laugh. “My doing is none of your concern, wood witch,” she said. “I have been doing since before the oldest tree in your forest was even a seed, and I will continue to do with or without your leave. You will get nothing back. I promise you that. Dig too deeply, and you will lose even more.” She paused. “But I am curious. You came all this way for stolen souls. Did you intend to bargain with me for their return? Or threaten me until I release them?”

  “Neither would do me any good, would it?” answered Raina.

  Madam Root did not reply.

  “No, I think not.” Raina answered her own question, and her shoulders relaxed. “Because you did not take them.”

  Madam Root’s head cocked to one side. “And how could you possibly be so sure of that?”

  “You would be happy to let me think that you did,” said Raina. The deadly edge was gradually fading from her voice, like a hound’s hackles slowly lowering. In its place, Fable could detect just a hint of amusement in her mother’s cadence. “You would be happy to let me think you were a thief and a killer. To let me hate you. To let me fear you.” Raina regarded Madam Root thoughtfully. “Fear would serve its purpose. Fear is power, of a sort.”

  The little creature on Madam Root’s shoulder poked its head up and blinked two overlarge eyes at Raina.

  “They used to whisper my name,” the woman said. “When their lanterns sputtered and the cold crept over them.” She stroked the little creature’s chin. “And they left offerings. If they heard my warning taps and cleared out before a collapse, or if the stone gave way and revealed a rich vein—they would leave me gifts. Human coins. Polished stones. My sweet kobolds used to delight in finding them. I loved to see them happy, the wee things.” The creature on her shoulder was purring. “But over time, their gifts came less often. They took more and left less. Do you know how long it has been since I heard any of my titles on a human tongue?”

  “They stopped believing in you.”

  “And yet I am still here.”

  “It’s about stories,” said Raina, gently. “They need the stories. I have a bit of experience with that myself. I would be happy to give you a few suggestions.” Madam Root raised her eyes warily. “Have you considered a career as a terrifying hag?” asked Raina. “It can be surprisingly rewarding.”

  “You mock me.”

  “Do I look like I’m laughing? You could be the most feared force in the underground.”

  Madam Root shook her head. “I do not need their fear. But it would be nice to have their respect back.”

  Raina leaned back and heaved a sigh. “Fear is easier. But when all this is over, I will see what I can do.”

  “Why?”

  Raina straightened. “Because,” she said with authority, “we are queens.”

  “I am not a queen.”

  “Aren’t you, now?”

  “If ever I had a right to that title, that time is far behind me.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, and you will allow them to believe it,” Raina said. “Let idiot men fear you or let them forget you—their opinions make you no less a queen.”

  Madam Root regarded Raina for several seconds. “Queens have power,” she said. “No power in the earth will bring back what I have lost.” She drew a deep breath, and her shoulders sagged within her ashen gown. Her face was a mix of fury and frustration and . . . something else. Fable couldn’t quite place it. Something sad.

  “What did you lose?” said Fable.

  Madam Root finally broke eye contact with Raina, letting her gaze drift upward. “Not as much as you are going to lose,” she said. She said it not with venom, but with a sort of chilly, dreadful certainty.

  An icy breeze howled through the cavern, sending shivers up Fable’s neck. With a muffled fizz, the orb of light at her fingertips fell dark, and the cave went black.

  Seventeen

  Tinn opened his eyes. A blurry light floated in front of him. He blinked, trying to focus. Something was dragging him along the rocky ground by one foot. Instinctively he tugged it back.

  “Tinn?” said Evie, startled. She turned, and a patch of candlelight illuminated her face. “Tinn! Oh, thank goodness! I’m really sorry about bonking your head. It’s hard to navigate down here.”

  “My head?” Tinn mumbled.

  “Nothing,” said Evie. “You probably bumped it during the fall, and not while I was pulling you across the floor.”

  Tinn pushed himself up to sitting. It took tremendous effort, like his body was made of lead. “Ugh. I feel like I got run over by a train. How’d you make it down here without getting hurt?”

  “Oh, I got plenty hurt. Check out my arms.” Evie pulled up her sleeves. Tinn was used to counting bruises after an especially rocky adventure, but it would have been easier to count the rare patches of Evie’s arms that were not bruised. “Pretty nasty cut on my knee, too,” she said. “And a lump on the back of my head that’s gonna smart tomorrow. But it could be a lot worse.”

  “Dang. You’re taking it well. You don’t even seem sore.”

  Evie shrugged. “I’m good at being sore.”

  Tinn tilted his head. He still felt foggy, and he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

  “I’m a foot shorter than everybody I hang out with, and my joints are as bad as Uncle Jim’s,” said Evie. “If I stopped moving every time I was sore, I’d never get anything done.”

  “Huh.” Tinn nodded. “Well, I’m definitely not good at being sore—not this sore, anyway. My whole body hurts.”

  “Think you can stand?”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  With Evie’s help, Tinn stood up. Pain rippled through his limbs. His ankle had taken a bad hit on the way down, and it throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat—but at least he could put weight on it. He looked around as he tested out each muscle carefully. By the light of Evie’s candle, he could see that the cavern was huge. The walls sloped outward as they rose, making it feel like they were stuck in the bottom of a giant bowl, or perhaps on the inside of an enormous globe. He couldn’t see the ceiling properly—the candlelight only pushed back the gloom so far—but he guessed it was at least a hundred feet above them.

  “We popped out up there,” Evie said, pointing at a spot high on the wall behind him. “And sorta slid and rolled down the slope. It wasn’t exactly smooth, and it tore up my vest on one side so I lost half of my stuff, but I’m still counting it as lucky.”

  “Didn’t feel especially lucky.”

  “Yeah, well. Imagine if the shaft had opened up right in the middle and dropped us straight down, instead of along the slope,” she said. She made a low whistle as her eyes traced an imaginary descent from the ceiling to the rocky floor. “Splat.”

  “Fair enough,” said Tinn. “So how do we get out?”

  “Climbing back the way we came is no good,” she said. “I tried. A bunch of times. It just gets too steep and there’s no good footholds. There are a couple of tunnels over on that side of the cave, though. The one on the right zigzags a bunch and gets narrower after a few minutes, but the one on the left feels like it slopes up bit by bit. I think that’s our best bet.”

  “How long have I been out?” Tinn shook his head.

  “I’ve been through two candles,” answered Evie. “So . . . an hour at least?”

  “How many candles do we have left?”

  Evie swallowed. She held up the stub still flickering in her hand. “About a half?”

  Tinn took a deep breath. “Tunnel on the left it is.”

  Evie held
the candle aloft as they walked, but still, Tinn found himself stumbling and knocking his already abused head against the rocks. He needed better eyes if he was going to get through this without pummeling himself senseless.

  Better eyes. Tinn felt like an idiot—he could do that! What was the point of being a changeling if he didn’t use his powers when he needed them?

  He concentrated as they moved forward, imagining his own eyes taking on the narrow slits of a cat’s. He felt the familiar warm tingle of transformation bouncing around his skull for a moment, and then gradually the darkness shifted. It worked! The tunnel did not become less dark, exactly, but the shadows gained distinction. He could make out Evie’s shoulders and the faint light catching her hair. He could see the moisture on the rocks and the curve of the tunnel up ahead. Tinn allowed himself a smile.

  His moment of good cheer fell away as the echoes of a piteous cry drifted toward them out of the darkness. Tinn froze. He met Evie’s nervous glance, and the two of them held perfectly still as they listened. In the distance, they could make out the word “Please,” and then another word was cut short by a howl of pain.

  “The other tunnel is starting to sound pretty good,” Tinn murmured.

  Evie glanced at what was left of her candle and then turned her face toward the source of the noise. “The other tunnel could lead to nothing,” she whispered. “This one definitely leads to something.”

  Tinn steeled his jaw and nodded. “Starting to really wish I had taken Kull up on that sneaking lesson,” he murmured. Together, they crept around the next bend and the next, until they could make out a faint light coming from up ahead. Muffled voices bounced around the corner.

  “. . . only unconscious,” one of them was saying.

  “That’s fine. I hate when they go on and on anyway.”

  Evie snuffed out the candle and tucked the stub back into one of the pouches on her vest. Breathlessly, the two of them peeked around the edge of the last turn.

  Torchlight flooded the scene before them. A body lay slumped on the ground, small, lumpy, and clad in dirty scraps. It looked to Tinn like a hob—harmless forest folk. He clenched his fists. Hobs were tactless and occasionally greedy, but they would never harm a soul. They didn’t even have sharp fangs or claws or any natural advantages in a fight.

  Three figures stood over the hob, all clad in matching dusty red robes. Their faces were inhuman, but Tinn couldn’t place their species—their heads were too thick to be elfin and too slight to be trolls. They had beady eyes and long, leathery ears, and their noses were squashed up against their faces like they had run headlong into a wall too many times. One of them wore a leather cap, but the other two had wiry hair brushed straight back on their heads.

  The closest robed figure was turned away from Tinn and Evie, and they could clearly see a symbol stitched into the back of his garments in fiery orange thread.

  Evie nudged Tinn. The sigil was a circular design like a tree with a rounded top—identical to the one Cole had been carrying around for weeks—except this version was encompassed by a serpent. The orange thread caught the firelight in flashes and glimmers, as if the whole design were made of liquid fire.

  “Loyal acolytes,” a voice boomed from just up the passageway. “Is the offering prepared?” The robed figures all straightened and snapped to attention.

  “Yes, Low Priest,” the one with his back to Tinn and Evie replied. “She was moaning terribly about the honor she is to receive, so we told her to be quiet.”

  The Low Priest stepped slowly into view. He was clad like the others, but the fabric of his robes almost seemed to glow and shift like liquid magma, and it bore none of the dust and soot that coated the others’. Around his neck hung a polished stone pendant, the familiar rounded-tree sigil etched on its surface.

  “She didn’t listen the first time,” said the acolyte in the leather cap. His tiny, dark eyes glinted in the torchlight. “So we told her more firmly the second time.”

  At their feet, the unfortunate hob chose this moment to groan and rouse herself. “Unngh.”

  A shadow rippled behind the Low Priest, and a chilly tingle ran up Tinn’s spine. The scar on the palm of his hand felt ice-cold.

  I SMELL FEAR, said a voice that reverberated uncomfortably in Tinn’s skull. He held his breath. The Thing did not tower over the acolytes as it would have in its former glory, but slunk along the ground like a hungry wolf. It was a shapeless mass of dripping shadows, its hide constantly shifting like the swirling ashes of a fire. It clearly had not returned to its full power since their last encounter, but there was no doubt this was the same monster that had nearly consumed Tinn in the heart of the Wild Wood.

  The acolytes eyed the Thing warily as it approached the hob.

  HELLO, LITTLE HOB, said the Thing. YOU ARE A LONG WAY FROM HOME.

  Tinn’s knees bent and his whole body tensed. He couldn’t let the Thing kill that helpless creature. Evie gripped his arm firmly. “No,” she whispered. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “G-g-go away!” stammered the hob, finally finding consciousness in time to clumsily tumble backward away from the Thing, eyes suddenly wide with terror.

  A tendril of shadows swept behind the frightened creature, catching her before her back could hit the ground. The hob cringed as the darkness touched her skin. Her eyes clenched shut and she began to whimper.

  One of the wiry-haired acolytes took a half step backward, his expression visibly disgusted. “What is the darkling doing?” he asked.

  “Have you never seen the darkling at work, Korvum?” The Low Priest kept his eyes on the Thing as he answered. “What a treat for you, then. Our esteemed guest is feeding on the emotions of this evening’s offering, drinking the creature’s fear and panic. In time, the simple beast will feel nothing at all.”

  “Is that . . . wise?” Korvum asked. He pulled his eyes away from the Thing and turned back to the Low Priest. “That is, shouldn’t the Ancient One receive the whole of the gift? Is it not wrong to offer a weakened sacrifice?”

  The Low Priest took slow steps toward Korvum, and the other acolytes backed away, averting their eyes.

  “I-I’m sorry, Low Priest,” Korvum stammered. “I should not have questioned your will.”

  “No. It is good,” said the Low Priest. “You wish only the best for the Ancient One. It is right to be generous to our once and future master. Your generosity will be remembered.”

  “Th-thank you, Low Priest.”

  The priest turned to the Thing. “Darkling, leave the tribute.”

  The Thing halted and turned what might have been a head toward the Low Priest. The hob took a gasping breath, like it had just emerged from underwater.

  I EXERCISE RESTRAINT, hissed the Thing. THERE WILL STILL BE PLENTY OF MARROW LEFT IN THE BONES.

  “I said leave it.”

  The Thing’s shadows rippled with its displeasure. The tendrils released the pathetic hob, coils of darkness crawling back around the Thing like a swarm of bees returning to the hive. For a moment Tinn wondered if the priest was about to become its next meal.

  “Do not fret,” the Low Priest added. “You will not go hungry. I have promised you your strength, after all, and Acolyte Korvum has kindly offered himself, that you might feast without such cumbersome restraint.”

  The acolyte’s eyes widened, and his skin lost what little color it had.

  “He is,” the priest added, “very generous.”

  “Low Priest, wait!” But Korvum’s plea was cut short as watery darkness whipped around the acolyte and enveloped him. The hob dragged herself to the wall as the dark shape that had once been Korvum sank to his knees.

  Tinn could not watch. He pressed his back to the stones and closed his eyes. The scar on his palm surged with pain, and he concentrated on breathing evenly to keep from passing out. When he dared glance back, the Thing’s shadows wer
e rippling away from a pile of red robes and ashen bones.

  The Thing swelled, its darkness looking ever so slightly more solid.

  “Would either of you care to voice any concerns?” the Low Priest asked. The remaining acolytes shook their heads. “Excellent. Then let us proceed to the ritual. Bring the hob.”

  The Thing raised its head, turning this way and that like a hound on the scent. THAT SMELL.

  The Low Priest glanced down at the cowering hob. “Has it soiled itself? The last one made such a mess.”

  IT IS NOT THE HOB.

  The pain in Tinn’s hand was becoming unbearable. He hugged it to his chest. This was bad. This was very bad. His heart thudded in his ears. With his free hand he grabbed Evie’s arm and silently urged her back, behind him.

  I KNOW THAT SMELL. The Thing finally fixed on their direction. Its shadows melted and re-formed, melted and re-formed, shifting closer and closer.

  Tinn and Evie pressed back as quietly as they could. Every scuff of a shoe against the stone sounded like an alarm bell. Tinn wanted so badly to run, to barrel down the passageway. But there was no outrunning the Thing. There was only hoping it wouldn’t . . .

  The Thing slid around the corner directly in front of him. Tinn felt numb. It was so close, Tinn could have reached out and touched it—but then it stopped. The Thing’s shadows were just as Tinn remembered them, swirling slivers of ice and smoke and ink, dripping and weaving through the air. One could almost imagine that the shadows were a dark veil draped over some wild beast. Through the darkness, Tinn could almost make out the shape at the heart of the Thing. In the middle of the hateful, horrible monster was a terrified scrap of a real, solid, living creature. It was still in there, somewhere. Tinn had seen it before, just once.

  Tinn felt faint. The Thing stared straight at him for several seconds, breathed him in, then made a noise like a contented sigh. Tinn’s mind was racing. Fight? Run? Stand his ground? He thought he just might be able to endure whatever torment the horrible villain had prepared for him if it meant knowing that Evie could escape. And then the Thing did something Tinn was not prepared for.