Chapter Twenty-Two
“Well,” said S’ythreni in a fey tone, “I never thought I’d wind up being an urzhen god’s hand of vengeance.”
Ahearn wiped sweat from his brow when the last of the retreating footfalls gave way to silence. He positioned himself to one side of the entry, motioned Druadaen toward the other, then nodded at Elweyr. “Good on you, stopping that bastard’s god! He was ready to plow us under, he was.”
Elweyr was frowning, looking among the bodies. “I didn’t stop him or his god,” he muttered.
“Well, then it’s our great good luck the old swine was muffing his miracles.”
“He wasn’t muffing anything.”
Ahearn glared at his friend. “Well, then what the blazes stopped him?”
Elweyr looked at Druadaen. “It was him.”
“What?” Druadaen asked in unison with Ahearn.
“How could that be?” the swordsman continued. “You said the Dunarran hasn’t the smallest bit of mancery about him.”
The thaumantic shook his head. “I know what I said. And I stand by it.” He glanced toward Druadaen again. Sheepishly, this time. “I checked, shortly after we met you at the tavern. Just a precaution early on, you understand.”
Druadaen didn’t understand and didn’t like it, but nodded; at the moment, he wanted to hear what else the thaumantic had to say.
“I am certain it wasn’t that shaman; I’ve tried cases with enough of them to know…as you’re well aware. Their power doesn’t come from either elemental or protean manas. You can feel it comes from somewhere—or something—else and is arriving for a specific purpose.”
Elweyr shook his head. “But here, there was no opposing power of any kind. Nothing that worked against my thaumate. The moment its outer edge reached him”—he pointed at Druadaen—“it was gone. It didn’t even fold in on itself, the way a failed or broken construct does. It just winked away. Instantly.”
Ahearn was irate. “Well, what the hells would cause that?”
“The hells might be where you’d have to make your inquiries,” Elweyr said.
“Do we have the time for this?” S’ythreni sighed. Umkhira grunted and nodded profound approval of the aeosti’s point.
“In fact,” Ahearn snapped, “we don’t dare not to take time for this. If Elweyr is right, then we need to know when his mancery will work and when it won’t. Or are you two happy to live in ignorance and roll the dice every time?”
The aeosti and the urzh did something either rarely did: closed their mouths tightly and looked away…and in Umkhira’s case, to start in surprise. “He’s gone,” she muttered.
“What? Who?” Ahearn asked irritably.
“Kaakhag.”
Ahearn started to scan the cavern, but Umkhira shook her head. “He left a trail.” She pointed: an unbroken spatter of blood led from where they’d clustered against the wall and promptly mixed into the drops shed by the wounded Rot they had routed.
“Well, that ties it,” Ahearn fumed. “We’d best go get him right—”
“No,” interrupted Umkhira. “I will get him. Any Rot who did not already see me in here may stop for at least a few moments, wondering what a Lightstrider is doing in the Undergloom. But if they see a human, they will simply attack.”
Ahearn stared at her for a moment. When she did not move to go after Kaakhag, he shrugged, “Well?”
Umkhira shook her head. “It would be unwise for me to go after him so soon. Right now, the tribe is either still learning of what has happened or is in blind terror of us: we reached and killed their leader in a single battle.
“But if I go to their tunnels and they identify me as one of the intruders, I had better be able to smite them by the dozen, or I will seem vulnerable. That will turn their terror to rage, and they will come back at us. Quickly.”
“They will anyway,” S’ythreni observed.
“Yes, but it could be a quarter of an hour before they are calm enough to reflect upon what they know about us, what they don’t know, and how to respond.”
Druadaen frowned. “And what of your kinswoman?”
Umkhira nodded. “She is already here.” She pointed at the crevice leading to the almost-secret chamber. “I heard her during the combat, and I have tarried here too long.” She began to stride to the back wall.
S’ythreni finished recocking her crossbow and held it in one hand as she drew a shortsword with her other. “I’m coming with you.”
“I am safe on my own.”
S’ythreni shrugged, then smiled. “Yes, but are the valuables?”
Umkhira blinked. “You are bold indeed if by that you mean to question my honor, aeosti.”
S’ythreni rolled her eyes. “And you are being foolish indeed if you think I’m being serious, Lightstrider.” She slipped around Umkhira. “We need to make a quick search, and only you and I have the eyes for that job. Let the humans pick through the bodies and guard the entry until Kaakhag returns.”
Umkhira, frowning uncertainly, followed S’ythreni, muttering to herself.
Ahearn spat. “Well, this is a fine fix. I swear, Dunarran, if you knew of this and didn’t tell—”
“There seems to be much questioning of honesty, at present,” Druadaen interrupted. “Let us not leave this chamber with a debt of honor to be settled between us, Ahearn.”
Who started, then studied him with narrowed eyes. “You’d lose. Badly.”
Druadaen shrugged. “Even if my courage was wanting, I would not tolerate the suggestion that I might have withheld such information. Bring it up again, and I shall ask for satisfaction. In the meantime, I have pertinent questions for Elweyr.” He turned to the thaumantic. “Clearly I do not disrupt all your thaumates. You have invoked many since we came into the Under.”
Ahearn visibly shook off his anger and raised an eyebrow. “Now there’s a point I should have seen right away.”
Druadaen elected not to express his profound agreement, keeping his focus on Elweyr, instead. “There must be a reason for both outcomes. You are the only among us who have the knowledge and senses that might discern some pattern under which both might occur. Do you have any speculations on that?”
Elweyr’s eyes narrowed and he started nodding. “There is a pattern, Druadaen, but the key to it isn’t what happened here in the Under.” He rightly perceived the complete lack of understanding in both men’s eyes. “What happened in Menara is also consistent with this. Remember when I couldn’t create the protective effect in the tavern? And then Bannef couldn’t bring off whatever mancery he’d intended? I thought I’d failed, and we thought that Shaananca had projected something to stop Bannef from outside the tavern.”
Ahearn nodded. “But maybe it was this fellow, all along. Bollocksing the spells.”
Elweyr winced at the term “spells” but nodded. “He was within the boundaries of all those thaumates. But all the others since then—the dazes I imposed upon all he guards we’ve encountered so far—did not have him within the field of their expression. Or on the path between the mantic and their attempted construct.”
Ahearn shrugged. “So that’s good news, yeh?”
Elweyr was rubbing his chin. “It is. In fact, it could be very good news. But I have to think on that. Now, who’s going to look through these bodies?”
“You and Druadaen.”
“Me?” Druadaen raised an eyebrow.
Ahearn grinned. “You’ll be close enough to help if I hear the buggers coming back. And searching through a slew of bodies is different than going over one or two dead. Separate skill. Learn from Elweyr. He’s the best. Aren’t you, chum?”
Elweyr only shrugged. That was probably as close as he would come to agreeing with his friend’s hyperbole.
As they sped through their grisly task, Druadaen watched the thaumantic, who had a clear routine: first assess weapons, then anything on the fingers and neck, and lastly the contents of pockets and pouches. But what Elweyr’s trained eyes could read almost instantly Druadaen found himself puzzling over for much longer. Partly because he was frequently distracted by the bodies themselves.
Although the great majority of the urzh were Rots like Kaakhag, there were others that were clearly of the Red. And the difference was not restricted to the color of their sclerae. Many of their eyes were not only larger, but almost as round as a tarsier’s. Their jaws were either furnished with tusklike incisors and more dramatically prognathous or had smaller jaws with a wider mouth jammed with a crooked mix of sharklike teeth interspersed with fangs as thin and pointed as those on an anglerfish. Almost all of them had twisted, tapering ears akin to the ur gaban, but in many cases, were almost perpendicular to the side of their head.
He encountered two other creatures which, despite their bipedal physiology, looked as though they had interbred with animals. “Are these Beastkynde?” Druadaen asked, using the term that he’d most frequently encountered during long hours reading in the Archive Recondite.
“Shifters, you mean?” Elweyr answered. “No. Shifters won’t associate with the Bent. And vice versa.”
Druadaen kept looking at the strange faces, which from some angles looked almost like a short-muzzled canine, and from others like a weasel or hyena. “And these are—Bent?”
“Yes…although not one of the ur species. They’re called hyek. Not usually found in the Under, but during winter, anything is possible.” He saw that Druadaen was edging toward the largest of the small-headed, immense-bodied monstrosities that had barely succumbed to two poisoned arrows. “Don’t bother with the blugners; they won’t have anything you want.”
“Is blugner another term for…er, a giant?”
Elweyr stifled a laugh. “A giant? Gods, no. According to what I’ve been told, they aren’t big enough. And no, they aren’t Bent.”
“Why?”
Elweyr shrugged. “Well, they don’t consider themselves Bent, and the Bent feel similarly. You can call them underkin; that refers to any race that lives down here and walks on two legs.”
He pulled a ring off another blugner’s bloody finger, which was shaped more like a stump than a digit, yet furnished with a nail the length and shape of a talon. He glanced back at the body. “But blugner are more often referred to as Deepkin.” He smiled at Druadaen’s quizzical look. “They’re the most dangerous and mysterious of the underkin. No one knows much about them. They’re not even related to the Bent, so far as anyone can tell. Take a closer look at your blugner, there where the kirtle has separated, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Druadaen did, and was confused for a moment, distracted by the exposed chest. He wondered why any creature with just two arms would have multiple sets of pectorals—until he realized they were teats. Bile rushed up; he swallowed it back down.
Elweyr nodded at the barrellike torso. “Those dugs mark it as a sow. Which is an apt term for how they whelp and raise their young. No, keep your questions for later; we have to get back to work. I doubt we have much time left.”
Druadaen worked for another five minutes, turning over bodies, rifling through pockets and pouches, trying not to feel like a bandit…but quite aware that, from the perspective of the Bent, that was exactly what he was. Of course, it was no different than what the urzh did to each other—as Kaakhag pointed out every time they had bodies to search—but that hardly mattered: each being’s context was their own. And Druadaen’s kept telling him that since entering the Under, he had not just traveled far down into the earth but might have sunk even further than that as a person.
He returned to the door with his meager findings: mostly pie-sliced pieces of copper coins and inferior billon: too much copper, too little silver. Elweyr had done a little better, but not much.
Ahearn smirked at both their palmfuls of coin fragments, glanced at the room behind them. “I remember when all those weapons, all that gear, was pure treasure. Now, we just turn our noses up at it.”
“Well,” S’ythreni said as she emerged from the crevice in the back wall, “you won’t turn your nose up at this.” She was cradling a shield filled with a wild variety of objects and coins.
“Or this,” added Umkhira, who followed her, one hand grasping several weapons, the other steadying her fellow Lightstrider, who appeared to be a young teenager with unusually sleek, muscular limbs. She was rubbing her wrists, which were badly abraded; whoever had tied them had used very tight knots.
Ahearn spared a glance away from the entry. “She can travel, then?”
“Yes, and warns us that we should leave quickly.”
“Aye, we know that the rest will—”
“No: we are in a battleground.”
Ahearn gawked at the bodies they were standing among. “This is news?”
“Do not be dense, human. She means that we have walked into the middle of a war.”
Elweyr pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and rubbed intensely. “A war? Between whom?”
“She—Zhuklu’a—does not know. She only heard parts of conversations and does not understand Undercant any better than she does Commerce. But on both sides, prisoners have been taken and many executed. Trophies and treasure have clearly been seized—or offered as tribute—from other parts of the Under. And there is much movement.”
“Then why didn’t we detect any?”
“I have not had the time to question her in detail, but it sounds as if the war paused when the ur gurur—those you call blugners—arrived about a month ago. Since then, no other tribes dare approach the tunnels to the Underblack.”
Druadaen glanced at Umkhira. “Didn’t Kaakhag say that when the killing among the Bent becomes routine, they are at the cusp of hordeing?”
“I think you can ask him yourself in a moment,” whispered Ahearn, listening at the entry.
S’ythreni rolled her eyes, drifted to his side, listened, then said, “We know it’s you, Kaakhag. Hurry in.”
“Can you teach me how to do that?” Ahearn asked with a smile.
She touched her narrow but high ears. “Come back when you have a pair of these.”
Kaakhag limped in, helped by another Rot, whose stare was simultaneously desperate, fearful, and hostile. Kaakhag signed at him. The fellow signed back and seemed to relax. Slightly.
Ahearn stood directly in front of Kaakhag. “This stripling of a Lightstrider says we’re in the middle of a war. Is that—?” He didn’t bother to finish: Kaakhag’s hand signs were emphatically affirmative and kept adding details.
Umkhira may have gone slightly pale. “According to his get-brother, the shaman has already started negotiating with powers in the Underblack. The blugners were, ah, resettled here to ensure he remains in power while final terms were agreed upon.”
S’ythreni nodded, cocked her head in the direction of the crevice. “I am no expert at such things, but I’d say this shaman was preparing to build an army, too.”
Umkhira sighed. “The aeosti speaks truth. Behind the back wall, there is a second, smaller chamber that you might call a storehouse or maybe an armory. Weapons have been stacked there, along with shields and armor. About half still bear the marks of the tribes that made them.”
Elweyr frowned. “So: taken in battle, not given as tribute.”
Kaakhag nodded as Umkhira continued. “Other weapons have been broken apart. Much of the iron and bronze has been reduced to raw stock, possibly for reworking into new weapons.”
“So,” Ahearn sighed, “we were in time to rescue these two lovelies but too late to finish the job safely.”
“What do you mean?” Druadaen asked.
Ahearn jerked a thumb at the passage through which they had entered. “Well, there’s no going back that way, is there?” He glanced at the two Rot brothers, who shook their heads so hard that drops of sweat flew. “So that leaves us the back door. Which I’m guessing you lasses found straight away?”
“We didn’t have to,” Umkhira explained, with a gesture toward Zhuklu’a. “She showed us. He kept her close, so she saw things that only a few in his own tribe know about.”
“Does she happen to know if that passage leads back into the Undergloom, or down to the Black?”
“Black,” Zhuklu’a said without hesitation, but with a thick accent.
“Of course it does,” Ahearn nodded sardonically. “Wouldn’t be much good as an escape route, otherwise. Meaning we’re pretty much caught between a tribe whose shaman-chief we’ve just decapitated, and his new underkin allies. And that,” he finished, turning back to Druadaen, “is what I meant by saying it’s too late to finish this job safely. Because as it turns out, getting into the Under wasn’t the problem; it will be getting out that may undo us.”
But Kaakhag was gesturing again, as wildly as if he had been having a fit.
Zhuklu’a surprised everyone by translating even more easily than Umkhira. “He says we will have no chance getting out if we stand here talking. We must flee. Now.”
“And we will, although I think the Bent we fought in here are still running in the other direction.”
But Kaakhag was not mollified. Instead, he became more agitated, limping over to the second largest of the blugners, gesticulating.
Druadaen followed him, studying the huge body.
“What’s he on about with that blugner sow?” Ahearn muttered, holding a pair of crude urzhen rucksacks steady as S’ythreni and Umkhira loaded them with the valuables they had found.
Zhuklu’a frowned. “He says the blugner sows travel with at least one other female. Always.”
“And so? Maybe the other was killed earlier, not in this chamber.”
This time it was the brother who made desperate motions. “No, because then this one would not still be here. He says the sows ensure their safety through alliance with each other. And when one of an allied pair dies, the other goes in search of a new Sister Sow.”
Elweyr spoke from where he was applying a salve to Kaakhag’s leg. “Well, then maybe the other sow will get the word and look for her new Sister.”
“He says no, that is not what the other sow will do.”
Druadaen stepped closer. “Explain.”
Zhuklu’a looked back and forth as she conveyed the brother’s rapid gestures. “The Sister who still lives was here to help keep the shaman alive. She has failed. And she lost her Sister. She needs to find us before she returns to the Underblack. If she does not, um, pay that, um—‘debt of duty’?—then she will lose her position here and become an outcast in the Black. But if she succeeds in making good her failures, she will be allowed to search for a new Sister Sow and to return here as matriarch.”
“Well,” muttered Ahearn, starting to tighten his gear for fast travel, “I see why the two green brothers are so eager to leave. We’d best steal a march on the other sow and frustrate her plans.”
Zhuklu’a shook her head. “Leaving now, even moving as quickly as we may, will not be enough. This I know as well as they do. The blugners have a sense of smell unlike any other creature. Imagine that scents are like voices in a crowded room. Now imagine what it would be like if you could hear all of them clearly, no matter how many there were. Hear each word, understand each speaking.”
She looked around the group. “That is how the noses of blugners work. Particularly the sows. So the sow will be able to follow wherever we go. Unless we can somehow run far enough and fast enough that our scent will fade faster than she—and the tribe—can follow.”
Ahearn and Elweyr exchanged glances. That latter looked away and shook his head: not in negation, but resignation.
Ahearn just sighed. “So we’ll have to go down into the tangliest part of the Black,” he muttered, suppressing what might have been a shiver. “Just like we did the last time we had to run for our lives in this gods-forsaken place. So let’s step lively.”