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Chapter Nineteen



Druadaen reflected that if someone had told him six months ago that he would have considered any part of any cave a comfortable and welcome place to relax, he would have doubted their sanity. That was no longer the case.

The soaring cavern into which Ahearn led them looked extremely unpromising. The masses of stalagmites made it almost impossible to move through, and paradoxically, Ahearn seemed determined to move to the almost inaccessible rear wall. He followed a winding path, barely wide enough for one, which ended at the foot of a sizable “pillar”: the joining of a stalactite and stalagmite into a column. Not breaking his stride, he was about to collide with it when he sidestepped sharply to the right, then just as quickly to the left…

And disappeared.

“Come on,” his voice called. “Don’t lollygag out there where you might be seen!”

Druadaen followed Ahearn’s steps and discovered that although the top and the bottom of the pillar were flush against the back wall, the column itself stood out from it by about two feet. And in that concealed space was an opening in the wall, a little over two feet wide and five feet high. Druadaen slipped through.

He emerged into a roughly oval chamber with a small pool of water at the rear. This ceiling had only a few stalactites; it was dominated by cracks and rents that led up into darkness.

Ahearn noticed Druadaen inspecting the lightless scars in the rock, then the ground immediately underneath it. “Yes, that’s the black of a cook fire,” he said, nodding at the circular charring just beyond the toes of Druadaen’s boots. “The gaps above it carry off most of the smoke. Doesn’t look like it’s been used since we were here.”

Elweyr, one of the last to file in, added, “Doesn’t look like anything at all has been here but rats, and not a lot of those, either.”

Umkhira, who until now had been distracted since the aftermath of the fight, seemed to awaken to her surroundings. “How did you find this place?”

“Partly luck, partly method,” Ahearn explained, hands on hips as he inspected the walls in the full light of the lantern. Holes had been bored into them in various places. Elweyr began cutting through the hafts of two spears they had salvaged earlier and inserting the lengths into the holes. A pattern of hooks for hanging gear began taking shape.

“There’s a method to finding a cave like this one?” asked S’ythreni dubiously.

Ahearn nodded. “Yes. It’s called persistence. In the Under, you don’t waste anything, including the opportunity to take a careful look at every new place you visit. You never know when you’re going to find something useful.” He looked around the chamber fondly. “But we never expected anything quite like this.”

Druadaen heard the pride in his voice. “It was you who found it, wasn’t it?”

The swordsman smiled. “Guilty as charged. I wasn’t the first, though. We found old—nay, ancient—gear here that day. Broken bronze swords and other cast-offs.”

“Ballashan empire,” Elweyr added confidently. “Although it could have been left here by Bent who’d found it someplace else. It might have gone from tribe to tribe for centuries. Or longer.”

“Either way,” Ahearn summarized, “we spent almost a year in this place, growing the force we eventually used to get back to the surface.”

Umkhira, still distracted, was aware enough to frown and observe, “It has not been so difficult getting down. Why was it more difficult to go up?”

“Well, we didn’t know about the entry we came in—or any other—when we started out here in the Under. Not even the one I came in through. I’d remember it if I saw it, but…once I was captured, I lost all track of where I was. Prisoners and slaves don’t get regular briefings, y’see.”

Kaakhag rumble-chortled ruefully, signaled, had to prod Umkhira to get her to translate. “How did you wind up in this place? He has never heard of humans seeking to enter the Under. Even bounty hunters are not so greedy or foolish.”

“Well,” Ahearn muttered, “if it hadn’t been for this one”—he poked Elweyr—“I’d never have been here at all. But someone had to bring him back!”

Elweyr felt the stares of the others and rolled his eyes. “I was returning from study. Up in Eld Shire.”

“A true crossroads of sophisticated mancery!” S’ythreni’s tone was facetious, but Druadaen noticed that, as was often the case, her tone was a little less sharp when addressing Elweyr.

He shot a rueful smile at her. “You go where you find the teachers you need. The short of the tale is that the caravan with which I was returning was about a day away from the river Ryepare when it was overrun by Bent.”

“Urzhen?”

“Mostly, but there were some kaghabs mixed in with ’em, and they’re big enough to kill horses with one or two blows. Which they did. Half of the caravan was lucky enough to get away.” He sighed. “I’ve never been particularly lucky.”

Umkhira seemed to awaken into the conversation. “I must differ. You are alive. That is surprising and unusual enough.”

He nodded. “It is, but it was not a matter of luck. The tribe’s shaman—who might have been HalfBent—apparently went through the loot from the caravan, found my books, and figured out that they were mine.”

Umkhira frowned. “An urzh shaman spared you because you could read?”

“Not because I could read, but because I was studying mantic scripts and glyphs. And I was still young enough that I wasn’t a danger to him or the tribe he was with.”

“Wouldn’t seem to make you very useful then, either,” S’ythreni observed.

Elweyr shrugged. “He thought I could show him how to read thaumantic codices: what he called ‘human mancery.’ He got it in his head that maybe he could learn to master those and still channel his god’s bestowals.”

S’ythreni stared. “Even for an urzh, that’s…” She shook her head. “Was he really that stupid?”

Umkhira looked angry but said nothing.

Elweyr shrugged. “Well, he couldn’t know if he didn’t try. Besides, do you actually know it’s not possible?”

S’ythreni frowned. “Well, they’ve never done it.”

“Not unless they are heretics,” Umkhira snapped. She continued without looking at S’ythreni. “What is truly stupid is to speculate on a matter of which one has no knowledge…particularly when in the presence of one who might.”

S’ythreni’s face became calm, almost blank. With sudden, chilling certitude, Druadaen recognized what that expression signified: a completely dispassionate readiness to kill. “And you have such knowledge?” she asked quietly.

“In fact, I do,” Umkhira replied, almost haughtily. “What Elweyr recounts is not often done among urzhen because it is heresy to do so. As it is among human gods. And Iavan as well, if my dams and sires told me true.”

“They did,” S’ythreni said with lethal mildness before she turned back to Elweyr. “And did this shaman master both?”

Elweyr shook his head. “Not while I was there. He didn’t speak much Commerce and I didn’t speak a word of urzhen, so communication was slow. After he was done cuffing and threatening me over our lack of progress, he began to realize that part of the problem was the limitation of his own language; it doesn’t have the vocabulary needed for that kind of discussion. So he decided to get, well, language tutors.”

Druadaen glanced at Ahearn. “And is that where you enter the tale?”

“Well, yes and no. It is where I enter the tale, but not as a tutor.” Clasping a knee, his posture and tone became positively bardic—to the point of caricature. “As it so happens, I was one of the lucky ones in that caravan where Elweyr’s tale of woe began. Made it back down to the Sea of Kudak and then over to Menara, where I was at loose ends for some weeks.

“Then, one night, I discovered a very discreet but worldly couple waiting at my lodging before I could get in my cups. Somehow, they had heard that I was recently arrived from adventures in Eld Shire, where I had almost ended my days as an urzhen delicacy after a savage caravan attack. They wondered what more I knew of the region and the urzhen who lived in it.

“Of course, they were this fellow’s parents, and they already knew more than they let on.”

“Such as?” S’ythreni drawled.

“Well, they knew I had been bountying up near the western arm of the Gur Grehar, so I was sure to know about the Bent in that region. They also knew I’d spent my way through the meager earnings I’d brought back. So between their generous offer and my imminent penury, I took passage back to find and retrieve him…and promptly got snared myself.”

He laughed. “But some little bit of luck was attached to my sorry carcass, even so. The raiders what laid their scrabbly claws on me were from the same tribe that nicked Elweyr. And they proceeded to bring me before the very same shaman. But most important of all, not a one of them had any inkling of how much I knew of their ways and language.” He grinned. “We plotted our escape in the very middle of ‘language lessons.’” He glanced toward the outer cavern. “When we finally ran, we passed within five feet of this place.”

Kaakhag poked Umkhira to convey his question. “And that is how you came to learn the ways of the Underblack?”

“It is,” Elweyr answered. “We knew they would not want to follow us further down; the Rot often lose hunting parties there.”

Kaakhag made startled signs. “So you knew it was suicide, then?”

Near suicide,” corrected Ahearn with a smile and a finger raised in didactic exception. “We also knew that the bodies of hunters who’d run afoul of beasts, rather than the Red, would still have gear on them.”

“That was a mad wager with your lives,” S’ythreni breathed.

“Not so mad when it’s your only chance,” Ahearn said with a philosophical smile. “Besides, in his time among the Rot, Elweyr had learned the way to the Grotto of Stone Bones.”

“The what?” asked Druadaen.

“The way we’re going to get out of here, once we’ve found Kaakhag’s get-brother. But we’ll have to be smart and fast, we will. Last time, we had twoscore Bent warriors and porters helping us.”

Druadaen tried to keep the disbelief out of his voice. “So you two became the leaders of a whole tribe?”

Ahearn looked like he was about to say “yes” when some iota of humility intervened. “Well, not really a tribe, but a hrug, a gang. We’re not Bent, so we couldn’t be the head of a tribe. But that’s a story for another time. Kaakhag there looks like he has an urgent point to make, water to release, or both.”

Umkhira was so distracted she did not immediately realize that the group was waiting for her translation. “He says that in the places we were today, he has seen the hash of the tribe that held him, but it has been changed. A new sigil has been blended into it.”

“You don’t see that, often,” Ahearn muttered.

Druadaen leaned forward. “What does it mean?”

Elweyr shrugged. “It means the chief Kaakhag knew has been replaced, but the tribe itself was not defeated or absorbed by another tribe.”

Umkhira was frowning. “It may have been the only hash Kaakhag saw today, but I saw something else on the wall near the site of our last skirmish.” She glanced at Kaakhag’s agitated gestures and explained to him, “You did not see it because it is not meant to be seen. It is a pattern of nicks and cuts in the wall, widely separated.”

Ahearn nodded slowly. “And what do those marks signify?”

She squared her shoulders, the way Druadaen had watched her do in Truce or Consequences just before uttering words she was loath, but honor bound, to speak. “It is a Lightstrider sign.”

S’ythreni goggled. “Down here?”

“It is a sign of danger and distress,” Umkhira continued without stopping. “The Lightstrider who made it is a young huntress, part of a tribe with which mine occasionally intermarries.” She sighed, closed her eyes. “I may not ignore it.”

Ahearn shrugged. “So?”

Her eyes opened into a wary squint. “I gave my word; you command my axe for a year.”

Ahearn squinted back, as if he was insulted. “So you did. But if you think I am going to demand that you forsake a stripling of your own kind…” His voice was firm, but his eyes became pained and hard. “If you believe I would ask such a thing, I free you of your oath. I have no need of followers who think so ill of me. But first things first: Does the mark show where this young huntress is?”

Umkhira’s voice suggested she had a hard time believing what she was hearing. “By leaving the marks beneath the new hash, she is indicating that it is the tribe that holds her.”

“Well, then,” Ahearn resolved with a slap of his knee. “Our paths continue together at least a little way further. I don’t suppose she passed any information on this tribe or its chief?”

Umkhira shook her head.

But Elweyr was frowning. “I would appreciate it if you or Kaakhag would draw the tribe’s new hash for me,” he murmured. “It’s been too dark for us humans to see it.”

“Very well,” Umkhira replied as her finger started tracing a sigil in the dust.

When it was done, Elweyr looked at it for several long, silent seconds. Then: “It’s his.”

“‘His’?” repeated S’ythreni.

But Ahearn was rising slowly to his feet, face suddenly pale with rage and shock. “It can’t be.”

Elweyr just nodded. “But it is.”

Druadaen looked back and forth between them. “You mean…the shaman who held the two of you as slaves?”

They nodded, then Ahearn turned to his friend. “How’d you even know to ask?”

“I didn’t…not until Umkhira mentioned the young huntress. Then, I started seeing the pattern.”

Ahearn raised an eyebrow. “Make sense, man. A young ur zhog hostage was part of a pattern that includes us?”

Elweyr nodded. “First, he’s trying to learn how to read—or just speak—human language from me. Then from you. And now he keeps this young Lightstrider a prisoner rather than just killing her. That’s why I suspected, Ahearn; it’s part of a pattern. And the pattern points at what he’s really after.”

“This shaman is keeping captives to learn from peoples that know more about the surface world than he does.” Druadaen frowned. “I think that’s why he’s situated himself here: he’s trying to get control of a major passage that links the Underblack and the Undergloom. Which will increase in importance as the hordeing gets closer.”

Umkhira frowned. “So he would collect tolls? But even if he could, the Red and the rest of the underkin could simply use other passages to the surface. I am told there are many.”

Ahearn shook his head. “There are, but the one beyond these chambers is the widest and the most direct. No doubt some underkin will forge their own paths, but they’ll have to go through the Rot and that’s a messy and uncertain business, at best.”

S’ythreni’s slow smile was half ironic, half admiring. “But if they’re willing to pay a toll to the shaman, any Bent coming up from the Black will know they can reach the surface quickly and without a fight.”

Druadaen nodded. “And that’s where the shaman’s knowledge of the surface becomes crucial. He not only provides them with the fastest route out of the tunnels; he can tell them the quickest way to get to choice places to raid and pillage. Meanwhile, the other Rot can emerge through other tunnels and become the guides or even leaders of the underkin, since they’ve spent the last ten years raiding it from time to time.”

Umkhira was nodding as Kaakhag signed at her. “He says that this all sounds very well, but that the Red and the underkin will not know, or want, to arrive with coin to pay a toll. They will only have weapons, hunger, and the desire to kill. Anything.”

Elweyr nodded. “All true. But if the shaman is clever—and this one is—he won’t ask for payment in coin or goods. He’ll want recruits. And with too many mouths to feed, the underkin will be happy to part with a few of their underlings. And then he turns around and sells the other end of the deal to the Rot by telling the tribes of the Undergloom that he can ensure that when the Red and other kin-eaters go a-hordeing to the surface, that he can prevent clashes by keeping them on an agreed-upon route. And all he needs from the Rot is their cooperation…and modest compensation.”

S’ythreni cocked a long eyebrow. “More slaves? More service?”

Druadaen nodded. “He doesn’t need the best warriors: just enough followers that he cannot be successfully challenged.”

Kaakhag frowned, chin sinking into his hands as if his head were growing heavier by the second.

Elweyr nodded. “And that’s when the shaman will start occupying and holding intersections, water sources, and access to better hunting areas.”

Ahearn nodded. “And only then does he start charging tolls. Small, and payable in common goods, probably, but it would add up. Before long, he’d not only have more bodies than any three tribes, but more loot than any ten.”

Druadaen leaned back. “And to ensure that he does not become a target of envy or assassination, he needs to grow his personal powers—both as a shaman and a mantic. He could become impossible to overthrow.”

Umkhira frowned. “If all that is true, he will not join the Horde.”

Kaakhag’s hand signals were so hurried she could barely keep up. “Yes, you are right. Because even the most successful tribes will lose many warriors, but the shaman’s numbers would be even greater when the Horde is finished.”

Umkhira nodded. “If these guesses are rough shapes of the truth, then we have many reasons to strike him—the shaman himself—as quickly and as hard as we can.” Kaakhag signaled emphatic agreement.

Ahearn nodded back. “Agreed.” He glanced at Druadaen, who was frowning; he was less than certain that killing one figure could have such a decisive impact. “First rule of the Under, Dunarran: A group rarely survives the death of its leader. That leader’s power and reputation is all that holds tribes and hrugs together in the first place. So if we mean to rescue Kaakhag’s get-brother and the Lightstrider huntress, we can’t just grab ’em and run.”

Elweyr nodded. “If we don’t get rid of the shaman, he’ll keep his forces on our trail. We’ll never get out alive. But if we kill him, the tribe will fly to pieces, the weak sticking to the strong like mites clinging to a fleeing dog.” He frowned. “Problem is, we don’t even know where the bastard is holed up.”

Kaakhag gestured back toward the entry. “There are only a few chambers in this part of the Under big enough to hold a single tribe. So if he means to grow larger than that, he will need to claim more than one of them,” Umkhira translated. “He will leave hashes on them as warnings to others. So if your guesses are right, he will be easy to find.”

Umkhira looked up, added. “Besides, my kinswoman will have left more of her hidden signs. So if you are right about why the shaman has kept her, she will not be far from him.”

S’ythreni stared around the group. “My worry is that right before arriving here, we killed at least one pair of his guards. So he may be looking for us, too.”

Ahearn shook his head. “No. So far, we’ve been like a fly dancing at the far strands of a spider’s web. He’s no doubt noticed a tug or two, but that’s nothing strange in the Under. And as Umkhira pointed out, we’ve been careful to pilfer the bodies and leave ’em just as he’d expect passing raiders to do.”

She smiled. “I guess I’ll have to forgive you for agreeing to take all the ‘useless’ gear.”

Ahearn smiled back. “See? Always a method to my madness.”

“Always?”

“Well,…usually. Now, let’s get fed and get to sleep. We’ve much to do, come the morrow.”


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