Chapter Twenty-Six
It was only when he hit the Dip that Druadaen realized his eyes were still open. The oily fluid did not merely sting them; it felt like deep-plunging daggers.
He almost opened his mouth into a gasp before remembering that he would not only alert whatever creature was stalking them but swallow a mouthful of the noxious liquid. He tightened his lips even more and clenched his jaw for good measure.
Even if he’d been able to open his eyes, he doubted the glow of the dying lichen could have penetrated the murk of the Dip. But after half a minute under the surface, he felt vibrations through the rock at his back; some heavy creature was circling the Pool. Then, something stuck down into it—a claw?—but was hastily pulled out.
Despite years spent swimming in Tlulanxu’s bay, Druadaen was beginning to wonder if he could hold his breath long enough when he distinctly heard, and felt, rapid movement through the rock. It became steadily fainter, then faded away entirely. He decided to count until twenty to be sure…
But he only reached “twelve.” Zhuklu’a’s hand shook his shoulder. Druadaen stood, extending his toes to the bottom of the Pool to keep his chin above the Dip. He moved slowly, carefully, to keep it out of his eyes. He glanced at their rucksacks, still in an unmolested line against the wall. “Why did it not detect us? Or rip through our bags?”
Brother shrugged, signed as Zhuklu’a translated. “He says if it is the kind of creature he suspects, it would avoid the smell of your dried meat. The smoking and spices would sicken it. As for us, it would be unable to detect our scent through the reek of the Dip, particularly while we were under the surface of the Pool.”
“Fine for urzhen, perhaps, but I am glad to get out,” said Ahearn, as he clambered out of the Pool. He glanced over his shoulder at Druadaen. “You stay in there much longer, and you will become famous.”
“As what?”
“As the first green Dunarran.”
“Then that is what I shall become.”
Half out of the Dip, Elweyr cocked his head. “Why?”
“I’ll answer your question with one of my own. If the creature should return, and we fail to hear it in time, how quickly can you get back into the Pool without making a splash? One loud enough to reveal exactly where we are hiding?”
The group started exchanging glances.
“And so,” Druadaen finished, “if it knows to go fishing for us in the Pool, it is just a matter of time before it scoops us all out.”
The others settled further down in the Pool. Ahearn, grumbling, slipped back over the side. “I’ll be scratching at my privates for months,” he groused.
“Better than having them devoured by whatever monstrosity is hunting us,” S’ythreni muttered. “What I want to know is why this pool is in such a dangerous place?”
Zhuklu’a regarded her blankly. “Where else would you put a pool for those who are dedicating their lives to the warrior’s path?”
“Fair point,” the aeosti conceded. “But still, it seems like the tunnels here are on a thoroughfare to whatever dark hells are beneath us.”
The young Lightstrider nodded. “They are. The Pool is very close to one of the widest, if winding, ways down to the Black and the Root itself. So while dangerous, this place also connects the Rot to their beginnings. Or so they believe.”
Druadaen murmured, “I am curious—”
“When are you not?” Zhuklu’a interrupted, but her expression was amused rather than annoyed.
He smiled. “When the Red wander up from the Root of the World, are they already Dipped?”
She raised an eyebrow, turned to Brother, who was already signing his answer. “Some of the shaman’s new allies mentioned that those who came up from the Root of the World were neither Dipped nor Scorched.”
“Scorched?”
“That is how they are given their red eyes. Their lids are pinned back. The eyes are covered with a paste. It burns terribly.”
Druadaen frowned. “Why do they do it?”
It was Ahearn who answered. “Not that I ever knew how they got that way, but I can tell you why they do it: an urzh with red eyes not only sees heat better, but light as well. So much so, that nighttime on the surface is like daylight for them. But actual daylight almost blinds them. Even beams from a bulls-eye lantern can—”
S’ythreni held up a hand, head cocked, listening intently. The others settled lower in the water, ready to submerge again. “No,” she said finally, “not the monster. Footsteps. Only two people.”
Ahearn seemed to vault straight out of the Pool of the Warrior. “Then crouching in muck is the worst place to be. See to your weapons!” He was already moving toward the door, bastard sword in one hand, a dagger in the other.
But S’ythreni was cleaning, not brandishing, her Dip-soaked weapons. “No need.”
From out in the tunnel, there was the rapping of metal on stone.
“Well, come on in, then!” Ahearn muttered sharply.
Umkhira and Kaakhag slipped around the corner into the chamber. They nodded to see that the others were almost ready to move, but frowned at the fetid muck dripping from them.
“What news, then?” Ahearn asked.
“Good and bad,” Umkhira began, her nose wrinkling. “The good news is that we found the way to the back door without any wrong turns. It is not far.”
Elweyr’s unblinking gaze was baleful. “And the bad news?”
“That the creature that caught our scent has followed us. It is close.”
“We know,” Druadaen replied. “It was here. We escaped it by ducking under the Dip.”
“Clever,” Umkhira nodded, “but also unfortunate. The moment we leave this chamber, you will all be trailing that scent.”
S’ythreni huffed in aggravation. “Superb. So what is our strategy, now?”
Ahearn managed to smile and grimace at the same time. “To run like all the hells are right behind us, High-Ears. Grab your packs. Anyone who can’t run the rest of the way out of here is staying behind as dinner.”
* * *
As they approached the small exit to the surface, Druadaen saw why, in addition to being on the other side of the river they’d followed north, this passage was called the “back door.”
Only wide enough for one person to pass at a time, it was sealed against intruders. Just a few feet within, a massive boulder was set in the earth, sealing off access to the outside except for a narrow gap between it and the cave wall. A stone disk—probably a millstone, originally—had been rolled into that gap, blocking the opening. From the look of it, persons on the outside would have no purchase on the mill stone, and so, be unable to move it. From the inside, however…
“Druadaen,” Ahearn muttered as he strode toward a dark crevice near the entry, “you look like just the kind of strapping and well-educated lad who’d know how to put a lever to good use.”
“I am,” said Druadaen, following him.
“Then make use of this.” The swordsman produced two steelwood staffs from the notch in the stone.
Druadaen took one of the pry bars, studied the disk blocking the entry. There was no way to get behind it; the gap between the boulder and the cavern wall was too tight. “How do you plan to move it?”
“Why, by getting it to rock back and forth a bit.” Ahearn jabbed the end of his rod down into the point where the disk met the cavern floor.
“That could take a very long time,” Druadaen commented.
“Well, if it does, then it does. Or do you have a better idea, Dunarran?”
“Actually, I just might.”
* * *
Druadaen’s plan was progressing as he’d hoped. It meant fewer people on guard duty, but so far, that trade had proven quite valuable.
At the other end of the long chamber, the three full-grown urzhen watched the tunnel mouth. They were the fighters best suited for detecting and fighting adversaries in near-darkness, and while one stood guard, the other two worked to build a deadfall trap. It was poised immediately to the right side of the opening and was designed to be released by one tug on a rope. It was delicate work, and Umkhira proved to be the only one with enough manual dexterity to initially build, and then intermittently adjust, the most difficult part: the balanced rock lever that would unleash the stones above it. If the lever was too stable, the stones wouldn’t fall, but if it was too sensitive, it wouldn’t hold them in place. Elweyr stayed well back from the opening, ready to intervene when and if an enemy arrived.
At the back door, Ahearn and Druadaen pushed at the steelwood levers, sweating side by side. But instead of just trying to rock it so that it would build enough momentum to then roll it out of the narrow slot between the wall and the boulder, Druadaen had positioned Zhuklu’a on top of that boulder. Every time the old millstone rolled back toward the two straining humans, she dumped a rucksack full of dirt, grit and small rocks into the narrow space behind it. As a result, that space was filling up, and every time the millstone rolled back upon it, it crushed that ballast into a finer and denser pile: a pile that was starting to become a ramp. Each time the mill stone rolled back, it started its return roll earlier and with more force. They couldn’t push it as far anymore, but that didn’t matter; as the ramp grew, more momentum from each push was being retained.
S’ythreni, who was filling the rucksacks used by Zhuklu’a, handed the next load up to her and called around the boulder. “Is it starting to roll out of the doorway, yet?”
“Soon,” called Druadaen. “Four more loads, maybe five.”
“Damn if it isn’t working,” swore Ahearn cheerily. “I’ll never live this down, being tutored by a Dunarran who’s just barely left home.”
Druadaen cocked an eye at him and was in the middle of formulating a response when Umkhira spat out an explosive oath. He turned, and for a moment, couldn’t make full sense of what he saw.
Umkhira had backed swiftly into the chamber from her guard position at the mouth of the tunnel, swinging her axe high, as if she were trying to hit a bird. The other two urzhen—Kaakhag and Brother—tossed aside the last of the rocks they were adding to the deadfall trap, grabbing for their own weapons. Elweyr was simultaneously craning his neck for a better view and lifting the lantern’s hood.
Umkhira swung again, then suddenly she leaped backwards—so hard and far that she fell—narrowly avoiding a claw that seemed to grow out of the ceiling.
Druadaen yanked his sword out of its scabbard, ran toward the tunnel mouth, and heard Ahearn and the others following—just as the sudden flare of Elweyr’s lantern revealed what was actually transpiring.
Umkhira was scrambling to her feet, shouting a warning in her own dialect of urzhen, but Brother didn’t understand it in time to realize that the threat was not just already in the tunnel mouth: it was overhead.
Druadaen had a brief glimpse of four baleful eyes reflecting the lantern just before a sinuous creature leaped down upon Brother, twisting around as it descended from the ceiling. Its jaws made a sound that was part shearing, part crunching as the Rot howled in pain and terror. Kaakhag emitted the only sound Druadaen had ever heard him make—a shrill, despairing wheeze—and charged the monster, axe swinging.
But the blow never landed. One of the creature’s six limbs flashed out and hit Kaakhag’s calf, cutting a wide gash in it. The force of the blow sprawled the big urzh backwards.
Umkhira, once again on her feet and axe in hand, slashed at the beast even as its hide began to change color. No longer the black of the tunnels, it swiftly matched the gray of the lamplit rocks, the transition revealing its sinuous body: a mass of rhino-hide plates studded with color-shifting spines and spiky fur.
Despite its armor, the creature recoiled from Umkhira’s heavy blow and, still dragging the screaming Brother, pushed through the entry toward her…
…just as its fluid motion became a ragged series of hesitant jerks, as if each movement now required a great deal of deliberation and focus. As Druadaen raced past Elweyr, he saw the cause: the mantic’s hands were rigidly extended toward the creature. Druadaen charged to close with it—
And skidded to a halt. If Elweyr was right, if the mere interposition of his body disrupted the mantic’s thaumates…
Druadaen dropped his sword and stepped further away from Elweyr. He swung his bow off his back as Ahearn and S’ythreni ran past. He shook his head at their shouts of anger, surprise, bafflement. There wasn’t time to explain and he had to keep his concentration on one thing: stringing his bow faster than he ever had before.
Where the creature’s jaws held Brother, dark blood was welling up rapidly—a mortal wound. Umkhira brought her axe down again, clipped off the leg that was holding him. The creature yowl-trilled and pushed toward her as Kaakhag limped back on his now twice-wounded leg and hacked at the center of its long body.
Blue-green ichor fountained briefly. As it stopped, the middle and rear legs on that side scissored, catching Kaakhag between them before he could complete his second swing. Moving unevenly, it dragged him forward as it kept after Umkhira.
As Druadaen got the bowstring’s loop into the nock of the bow’s lower limb, Kaakhag reached back to grab something, anything, to resist the pull of the monster—and his hand closed around the deadfall trap’s trigger-line.
The rocks slid down with a roar, crushing him and that entire side of the creature. Its four eyes bulged in either pain or rage. It lashed out toward Umkhira but missed: she was swift and it was still moving erratically. An instant later, as Ahearn and S’ythreni charged in and started slashing at it from the other side, Druadaen finished the step-through stringing of his bow, brought it up to meet the arrow he had pulled from over his shoulder, drew, and yelled, “Arrow!”
The swordsman and the aeosti jumped out of the way just as the fletching reached Druadaen’s ear—and he heard and felt a sharp snick! in the grip. The bow shattered loudly.
Whether or not Ahearn and S’ythreni realized what had happened, they leaped back in to press their attack. Having seen the hornlike plates turn the blow of axes, they aimed at the junctures with the points of their weapons.
It might have been an impossibly hazardous strategy, getting in and staying so close, had Elweyr not continued to exert his restrictions upon the creature’s movement and the rear half of its left side not been crushed and still partially pinned by the rockslide. After a few tries, S’ythreni’s weapons found a gap. More of the ichor leaked out. Ahearn watched for the source, and reversing his grip for a thrust, drove his bastard sword in with both hands. Sickly teal-green blood jetted out and the creature collapsed. The wound continued to gush for several more seconds before the flow began to abate.
S’ythreni stared at the litter of bodies and shouted at Kaakhag’s corpse. “I thought you said these things were small! Like the rats they kill!”
Zhuklu’a had scampered down off the boulder. “Most all of them are,” she said quietly.
“Well…this one wasn’t!” S’ythreni sounded like she was about to sob.
“It is from the Black, maybe deeper,” Zhuklu’a explained. “Like fish, few of those spawned survive, but the ones that do keep growing as long as they live…and they live a very long time. The oldest go to the deep Black to find large enough prey. They change there: harder armor, bigger claws, sharper teeth.”
“Does it matter?” Ahearn sighed grimly, looking back at the stone disk with which they had been struggling. “And we were almost out, too.” He spat at the collapsed creature. “Another bit of buggering from the universe, to remind us just how easily we can be bumped out of it.”
Elweyr checked to see if Umkhira had been injured, approached the bloody heap of bodies and stones. “The two of us will salvage what we can. The rest of you should finish rolling the stone out of the way. Let’s get out of this miserable place.”