Deepest, Darkest

by William Ritter

  “What—”

  “Listen,” her mother whispered.

  Fable went quiet.

  Footsteps.

  The two of them remained rooted to the spot, listening as the footsteps neared. Gradually, a shape appeared ahead of them. It was only a dark lump in the fog at first, but the figure sharpened as it emerged from the cloud with the slap, slap of bare feet on the stones. Soon they could see that it was a bald, greenish creature, no taller than Fable, with broad, pointed ears.

  “Is that . . . a goblin?” said Fable.

  “Hello?” said Raina.

  The creature shuffled to a halt, swaying slightly.

  “Identify yourself,” said Raina.

  “Edge o’ the fog,” the creature mumbled lazily, as if talking in his sleep. “Got ta go back.”

  “Wait.” Raina stepped closer. Her cloak sent the mists swirling in mesmerizing spirals that climbed up to her waist as she waded in. She stared at the little man, then shook her head as if trying to clear cobwebs from her mind. “Thief King?”

  Fable strained her eyes to see the goblin’s face. She had rarely seen the High Chief of the Hollowcliff Horde not wearing his signature top hat—the one with a plume of bright red cardinal feathers—but the figure before them did have the same nose, the same pale scar cutting through one eyebrow. “Chief Nudd?” she said. “Is that you?”

  The goblin’s eyes stared numbly forward, not showing any sign of recognition. “Got ta go back,” he repeated. Then, with the shambling steps of a sleepwalker, Nudd turned and plodded away, back into the glowing clouds.

  “Stop!” Raina plunged in after him, the mists swallowing her a little too eagerly. “Come back!”

  “Wait for m—mm!” Fable began, but before she could finish, a hand slapped over her mouth and an arm grabbed her roughly from behind.

  “MmmMMmph!” She tried to scream, but her voice was muffled. She could see her mother’s shadow fading into the mist. She tried to spin away from her attacker, but the grip around her arms tightened and she was yanked backward. She bit down hard on the fingers covering her mouth and heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her—and then there were more hands, small and rough, clutching at her arms, her hair, her neck. Fable shuddered. Something was crawling all over her, snuffling and chittering. She kicked and wriggled, but before she could get her feet beneath her, she found herself yanked backward, and in an instant the whole world went all wrong.

  The tunnel vanished with a dull whoom. The constant background noises of wind and droplets of water echoing in the distance abruptly silenced, and Fable’s whole body felt oddly warm—like she had fallen backward into a hot spring, only this was definitely not water. Everything around her was dark and sticky, like she was swimming through molasses. She could feel herself moving, sliding through the darkness, but lifting her arm or raising a knee through the thick, warm fluid was harder than trying to push through the boggy mud of the mire.

  Fable held her breath as long as she could, felt her lungs straining with effort. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sensation ended. Air rushed over her face, her ears began working again, and Fable fell to her knees in a new tunnel. Sparkling gems in the rocks lit the walls with a dim blue glow.

  Fable gulped lungfuls of air for a few seconds and then spun to her feet in a graceful flurry of motion that might have looked impressive and intimidating . . . if she hadn’t ended up with a face full of her own curly hair. She spat and batted it out of her eyes. Her knees bent, her fists balled, and she readied herself for a fight.

  In front of her stood the woman in the austere gray dress. Her bristly pets nestled around her feet and on her shoulders.

  “Madam Root,” Fable growled. “What did you just do to me?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Madam Root. “My dear, sweet kobolds, on the other hand, have just taken you on a trip through solid stone. It’s a neat little trick, isn’t it? They’ve gotten quite good at it over the years. Hardly ever leave someone behind anymore. They live inside the rocks, don’t you know? Cunning creatures.”

  “So you are the kidnapper after all,” Fable snarled. “Well, you’re not going to get away with it!”

  Madam Root rolled her eyes. “I should have left you in twenty feet of bedrock. I already regret saving you.”

  “Saving me?” Fable snapped. “You didn’t save me! You stole me!”

  “Have you considered the possibility that I might have just done both?”

  Fable hesitated. “Saved me from what?” She looked around. “Where did you take me? Where’s my mama? Take me back to my mama right now.”

  “Ugh. You stupid child. I tried to warn you both. But did you listen? No. You couldn’t leave well enough alone, so you went deeper. And now your mother is gone.”

  “M-my mother’s not gone. She went after Mr. Nudd. He’s our friend, and friends don’t just leave each other.”

  “Everybody leaves,” said the woman, icily. “Eventually.”

  “Well, not me!” said Fable. “I’m getting my mama back right now! And Nudd, and Tinn, and Cole, and . . . and everybody!”

  The woman regarded Fable.

  “You want to know what’s happened to your mama? What’s probably happening to all of your friends right now?”

  Fable’s brow furrowed. Her fists were shaking.

  “I’ll show you.” Madam Root spun on her heel without further discussion and strode away into the tunnel. The kobolds skittered along behind her, several of them diving into the stone floor and resurfacing a few feet farther along. They reminded Fable of otters as they swam.

  She glanced around herself nervously. It was very empty. “Why should I trust you?” she yelled at the woman’s back.

  “You probably shouldn’t,” Madam Root replied without turning. “But you don’t have a lot of other options at the moment, now, do you?”

  Fable ground her teeth. Before the woman could vanish again, Fable jogged after her. “Okay. So where are you taking me?”

  “They call it Delvers’ Deep. Or they used to.”

  “Well,” said Fable, when it became clear the woman was not going to explain further, “those are words, I guess. What’s a delver?”

  The woman walked briskly, so that Fable had to quick-step to keep up. “I remember when the delvers first came to my mountains, many centuries ago,” she said. “They were such humble creatures, simple and earnest. They could commune with the bats, and my kobolds found them amusing.”

  “Can delvers do magic?”

  “They could,” she said, “once. They are related to elves—not that you would guess it to see them today, all hunched over and beady-eyed. The world changed, you see, a very long time ago. Magic moved on. The delvers did not. And so they became something else—something . . . less. Their skin grew more calloused with every passing generation, and their vision more narrow.”

  She slipped fluidly between a tight cleft in the rocks and waited as Fable followed with considerably more scooting and scraping.

  “They seemed to respect the earth, though,” she continued when Fable was with her again, “and they shunned the daylight—so for a time I felt a kinship with them. I allowed them to carve out their space, shovelful by shovelful, within my domain. They believed in impossible dreams, and worshipped long-forgotten gods, and I found this charming, in a way. Their corner of the underground was a peaceful place, save for the rhythm of the picks and the axes. They were so determined, in those early days, so single-minded, and their toil amused me. They hated the world above with such blind zeal, and their hate amused me, too. It was not aimed at me, so what was the harm? I did not recognize it for what it was.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was . . . the Beginning,” said Madam Root gravely. The way she said it, Fable could practically hear the capital B. “I was on the foothills of a treacherous mo
untain that I was too shortsighted to see rising up in front of me. It was obvious what they were, even back then. They did not hide it. But I did let them carry on. They were so few, and their progress was so painstakingly slow—I did not fear their presence. I dare say I even enjoyed it at times—their quiet, diligent fury. What harm could such low creatures cause?” The woman took a deep breath. “But the delvers who began the thing gave rise to the delvers who continued it. And those new delvers found new ways to hate. And all the while, they dug. Shovelful by shovelful. Generation after generation. Before I realized it, their humble burrow had become a great, domed cavern. Whenever I thought they might finally be satisfied, might finally let it rest, they found new depths to plumb. I never imagined they could actually achieve it, but this newest generation of delvers—they could be the ones to finally finish it.”

  “Finish what?” said Fable.

  “You,” said Madam Root. “All of you.”

  Fable’s jaw tensed. “My mama won’t let that happen.”

  Madam Root did not respond.

  “What’s it called now?” Fable said.

  “Hm?” The woman in gray spared her a sideways glance over one shoulder.

  “You said it used to be called Delvers’ Deep. What do they call it now?”

  “They call it the Low Temple,” said the woman. “I call it the Cavern of Lost Souls.” She drew to a stop finally, turning to face Fable properly. “Would you like to know why?”

  The mouth of the tunnel opened into empty space. No stairway, no railing—there was simply a rocky path right up until there wasn’t. And what wasn’t was massive. Fable could barely see the far side. It was as if the whole world had flipped upside down, with a layer of clouds floating just below them like rolling red fields and a ceiling of stone that hung thousands of feet above them.

  “Don’t get too close to the fog,” Madam Root cautioned. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

  Fable listened. In the distance, she could make out the clink of metal on stone. It was coming from somewhere beneath the fog. “Is that delvers?”

  Madam Root shook her head. “Not for many years now. The first delvers did their own digging. Diligent workers. These ones have long since found more insidious ways to make the rest of the world do their digging for them. It was only trespassers in the beginning—lost explorers and greedy miners who chiseled into their domain—nobody who would be missed. But when those captives proved useful, the delvers began capturing prisoners from above. They used to be cautious about it: one at a time, different species each time, never too many at once. They have grown more and more brazen of late.”

  Fable clenched her fists. “I want to see what’s going on down there,” she said.

  “Go through that fog and you’ll be a part of what’s going on down there.”

  Fable drew a deep breath and said: “Gale.”

  It was nothing like the storm winds Fable could produce in the open air, but still Madam Root put out a hand to steady herself. The hem of her dress whipped in the breeze as a column of wind poured out of the tunnel behind them and cut down into the fog. It pushed the clouds aside just long enough for Fable to spy a crowd of at least a dozen figures far below, arranged along the bottom edge of the cavern. They hefted axes and hauled wheelbarrows, shuffling as they walked and swaying where they stood, all of them looking as mindless and exhausted as Chief Nudd. One worker appeared to have collapsed to the ground. He lay motionless as the others paid him no mind, stepping over the body as they went about their tasks. They were not one race. The smallest looked like gnats from this distance, and the largest looked like lumbering railway cars with fur. Fable picked out bushy-bearded gnomes, goat-legged satyrs, a scaly naga, and plenty more creatures she could not as easily identify before the mists melted back together into an inscrutable cloud bank.

  “This is where they take the fortunate ones,” Madam Root said. “The fog turns them into shadows first—makes them forget who they were. They cannot think for themselves or act against their new masters. They serve the order until they die for the order. If your mother is theirs now, she is not your mother anymore.”

  “No. Not my mama. They won’t turn her. My mama is strong.”

  Madam Root sighed heavily. “More’s the pity. The order likes the strong ones.”

  “She can turn into a bear! Maybe the mist doesn’t work on animals!”

  “Did you see the beasts down there? The big ones hauling away the loose rock?”

  Fable nodded. Her chest felt heavy.

  “Those are called kobbs. Distant relatives to the kobolds—an ancient race. Prehistoric kobbs carved these tunnels, even before my time. Impossibly powerful, graceful creatures. They can move mountains, yet they would not harm an earthworm. Do you know how many kobbs exist in the world today?”

  Fable shook her head.

  “Neither do I,” said Madam Root. “Because they keep to themselves, sweet giants. There were seven in this region, until recently. The order has taken them all. Now they only work until they collapse. To the best of my knowledge, there are three still living.”

  “I get it!” Fable burst out. “I get it, okay? The delvers are the worst!”

  “Not the worst.” Madam Root shook her head. “The worst,” she added soberly, “is what the delvers are waking up.”

  As if on cue, the earth shook. Dust and grit trickled down into Fable’s hair.

  Fable squared her jaw and stood as tall as she could. “I’m not running away from this.”

  Madam Root shrugged. “Just as well. Running would do you no good.”

  Twenty

  Cole ran through the twisting, shadowy corridors. He could hear the sounds of footsteps pounding after him, never farther away than a few bends in the serpentine tunnel.

  They were catching up.

  The floor pitched downward abruptly, and Cole lost his footing, tumbling uncontrollably down the slope. He pushed himself to his feet the moment he hit level ground again, but it was too late—heavy hands grabbed him by the shoulders and wrenched him aside.

  “Get off of m—” he tried to shout, but a warm hand clapped over his mouth.

  “Shh!” a voice shushed.

  Cole’s heart was hammering against his chest. He panted through his nose. His captor hauled him into a slim alcove in the rocks, no larger than a broom closet. There, the two of them stood, frozen, with Cole caught in a tight bear hug. Cole could feel the stranger’s heavy breaths as they waited. He smelled like dirty laundry.

  The sound of footsteps neared, and in a blur of light and flapping fabric, Tommy and the acolytes thundered past.

  “The Low Priest is gonna feed your bones to the kobbs,” one of them said.

  “This is not my fault,” Tommy’s voice barked.

  “Just find the brat,” said another.

  The footsteps faded gradually as the creatures raced off into the darkness.

  The hand slowly lowered from Cole’s mouth. “You do not want them to catch you,” said the stranger. His voice was low and gravelly.

  “Yeah. I picked up on that,” Cole whispered.

  The rough hands slowly released Cole, and the stranger peeked out of the alcove. In the darkness, Cole could not tell what sort of creature he was, but his hair was matted, his clothes were more dirt than fabric, and he smelled like musty leather.

  “Come with me,” the ragged figure whispered, then crept out into the tunnel the way they had come.

  Cole glanced up and down the corridor nervously. It was never a good sign when your best option was running into the shadows with a dirty stranger—but he would have to take what he could get at this point. He followed as quietly as he could.

  About twenty feet up the tunnel, the stranger planted one foot on the wall and pushed himself up to grab the lip of a wide crevice Cole hadn’t even realized was there. He swung over the top and disappeared for a moment, th
en reached back down for Cole. “Come on. They don’t come this way.”

  Cole took the proffered hand and looked into his rescuer’s face for the first time. If the man hadn’t had Cole’s arm in a firm grip, Cole might have fallen over backward. That face. It was dirty, pale, and covered in a scruffy beard . . . but Cole knew that face like he knew his own.

  The man hauled him up and through the crevice, depositing him on his feet in a new cave. This one was speckled with more of the shining blue stones, circling them like constellations in the night sky. He did not wait for Cole, but pressed onward, through another series of tunnels that twisted and turned until the passage opened into a wide chamber with a trickling waterfall on the far end. He plodded over to the waterfall and scooped out a drink for himself.

  “Y-you’re him.” Cole’s voice was barely a whisper.

  The man turned, a puzzled look on his familiar face.

  Cole stared at those cheekbones, his nose, those eyes. They were so like his own and like his brother’s, and yet also different—a little wider here, a little sharper there. They were the features that had smiled out at Cole his entire life from the black-and-white photograph on the mantel. There was no mistaking that face. This man was Joseph Burton.

  “Hello, young man,” Joseph said. “You look so familiar. Have we met?”

  Cole steeled himself. “I’m . . .” He swallowed, then raised his chin and looked his father in the eyes. “I’m Cole.”

  Joseph nodded. “Are you really? Good name. My wife and I had a good long talk about maybe calling our son Cole, actually. We’ll have to make a final decision about that soon. It was going to be Thomas, but . . . it got complicated.” He splashed his face and pushed his dirty hair back on his head. “Where are you from, Cole?”

  Cole blinked. “Um. Endsborough.”

  “You live in Endsborough? I live in Endsborough, too!”