Cavelost

by Courtney Privett

  I asked her about the Jarrah once she woke, but she refused to explain her earlier words. Perhaps they were only dream thoughts and she has no memory of speaking them. I won't push her into speaking more about it for now. At the moment, we're both more concerned about finding our way out of this labyrinth than figuring out why I'm here in the first place. She's afraid we will be overheard if we speak too much. Based on the fear in her face, I'm inclined to agree. I'm only an intruder in these caves and she was born here. She knows what will happen if the Varaku find us.

  I'm chewing the last of a handful of mushrooms. Slowly. Yana is getting restless, but my legs are so heavy that it's going to be hard to force myself to continue. I want to sleep, but I can't. We need to travel farther, just a little bit farther. I need to push myself to the edge of collapse or I'll blame myself if something catches up to us.

  A thump and a yelp echo off the stalactites. I chase the remainder of my mushrooms with a gulp of musty water. How far away was that? I can't tell. Damn it... I'm a useless slug and if something eats me, it's my own fault.

  Yana's eyes are closed and her ears are fully upright. She sniffs the air and cringes. "Another here now. Another like you. We see. Bring sword. Bring scary."

  "Is it the Jarrah?" I ask.

  "No. Was here. Not now. Brought new one. The Jarrah now gone. Come. We see. Maybe we kill if not nice. Put away that thing your fingers dance a rod on. What did you call it? A book?"

  Time to go. Sword in hand, legs tense and unsteady. It's been a while since I last killed anyone. Hopefully I'm not too out of practice.

  Day 6, part 3

  Why?

  I don't understand. Why is he here? Why am I here? Why are we both here? This makes no sense. He was someone I vaguely suspected as being responsible for me being in the cave, not another possible victim.

  Daelis Goldtree.

  Why? Damn it, why? Of all the people to find here, why him?

  I didn't recognize him at first. He was on his side with his back to me, so I had to tiptoe around his feet to get a better look. His face was shrouded in shadow and half-hidden by his flaxen hair. The light of my dwarfstone lantern competed with his matching one to momentarily blind me.

  Then I saw the pendant that hung from a golden chain around his neck. An odd, swirly tree studded with emeralds. A golden tree. Goldtree. Daelis always wore his family sigil for the world to see. He was proud of his heritage, so proud that he refused to admit he probably had more than one half-elven child.

  I lowered my sword when I recognized the tree and sheathed it when I realized the wearer was unconscious. I crouched next to him and moved his hair off his face. Definitely Daelis. I'd forgotten how much Shan looked like him.

  "Why are you here, you lying bastard?" I whispered, fully knowing that even if he heard me, he couldn't reply.

  "You know this one?" Yana asked. She held a spiky grouping of quartz crystals in her hand. It was an improvised weapon, and I assumed it could be a deadly one if she smashed at the right points with it.

  "Yes, sweet girl. I know him. His name is Daelis."

  "What are he? Bad? Good?"

  I shook my head and stared at Daelis's fair face. I loved him once. Maybe I still do, just a little, but only because of Shan. It's complicated, dear girl. "Neither. I'd call him bad if we were anywhere else, but here I think he's just another lost creature."

  Yana held the quartz over her head. "Bash his head. Leave to die. Easy. Food for Varaku."

  I grabbed Yana's wrist and slowly lowered her hand to her side. "No. He deserves many not-so-nice things, but not that. We're not going to hurt him. We won't even go away and leave him so he wakes up not knowing we were here. We'll be taking him with us once he can walk."

  Yana spat at Daelis's shoe. "Why you care, Rin? You not like Daelis creature, so let him die. We keep moving away from Varaku now."

  Daelis's breathing was labored and uneven. The rock under his ribs appeared to be restricting his respirations. I rolled him onto his back and the movement of his chest relaxed into a more normal rhythm. He remained otherwise unresponsive. I sighed as I ran a fingertip along his cheekbone. "No, Yana. I can't leave him behind. I used to like him. Love him, actually. Childish, idealistic love, but love nonetheless. He's the father of my eldest child. I haven't spoken to him in over seventeen years, but I suppose that's going to change once he wakes up."

  "He is mate of Rin?" Yana's arm muscles twitched, then unwound. She dropped the quartz cluster at her feet.

  "He was. We're not going to feed him to the Varaku, okay?"

  Yana tilted her head to the side. "No feed."

  So, now I'm sitting here with Daelis while nervous Yana scowls at the mushrooms that grow on the curve of a nearby wall. I'd ask her how long she thinks before Daelis starts to wake up, but I doubt she knows anything about whatever he was drugged with. Even if she did, she doesn't understand my references to passing time. Things are either then, now, or soon for her. No minutes, no hours, no years wasted away underground while the sun rises and sets out of reach.

  I don't know what to do with Daelis once he wakes. Will he think I'm the reason he's here? I hope not. Our shared past and its aftermath are irrelevant down here. I'll explain our situation as best as I can and then we'll fight our way to the surface. Together, all three of us. What happens when we get there doesn't matter for the moment. That's soon and we need to be in the now. Then is only a shadow on the wall.

  We'll get out of here. We'll find our way home. Then, I'll figure out who did this to us and detach his head from his shoulders.

  Day 7

  Daelis is still unconscious. I wonder how long I was asleep before I woke. Didn't feel like more than a couple hours, but time doesn't make sense down here. I've been tempted a couple times to just walk away from him, but my conscience begged me not to. I can't bring myself to leave him to die alone. His faults are numerous, but I don't think he's evil, or even malicious. Arrogant and immature for sure, perhaps a little narcissistic, but not evil. He couldn't have helped create a child like Shan if he was.

  Please wake up, Daelis. I'm anxious, rehearsing over and over in my mind what I'm going to say to him. How can I explain our situation to him when I can't even figure it out myself?

  Yana ate her mushrooms and now sits silently in the same position she assumed yesterday. She holds her hands aloft and bubbles burst from her clubbed fingertips. Where did they come from? This must be some minor form of magic. It's lovely. I wonder what else she can do.

  The bubbles slowly drift about the chamber. Some pop on us, others on stalactites. They catch the light of the dwarfstone lanterns and reflect pale blue. Beautiful. I smile at Yana and she returns the expression as best she can. I'm not sure if she understands what it means.

  "Those are pretty, Yana," I say. Daelis flinches at my words. Maybe the drugs he was given are starting to wear off.

  Yana rubs her upturned nose, then raises her left hand and releases another bubble storm. "Trick babies can do. Boredom play." She blows on a bubble grouping, which drifts toward me and pops upon contact with my face. "Easy game. You try."

  "I don't think many humans can do that. Perhaps warlocks and mages, but I'm just a swordfighter."

  "No magic, but Rin is strong. Rin kills bad things."

  Fingers brush against my thigh, then grasp my wrist.

  "Where...?" Daelis's voice is hoarse and weak.

  I shift my hips so I can look at him while I write. His eyes are open, but unfocused. They're normally a brilliant blue-green, but the lanterns dull them to gray. Gray, gray, too much gray. I miss real color, unmuted color, the radiant green of grass and the phenomenal hues of a sunset. If Daelis's striking eyes are nothing but gray down here, then I can't trust my vision to relay true colors to my mind. Cave color is an illusion.

  "Don't worry about that right now. Go back to sleep if you can. I'll try to explain when you're more alert." I use the same tone of voice with him that I used to comfort my children when
they were young and woke from nightmares.

  “Rin? ...really you? What have... have you done?" Daelis's eyelids flutter as his fingernails dig into my wrist.

  "Shhh... sleep now. I'll tell you all I know when you wake."

  His eyes close and he releases my wrist. I need a little more time to eat and organize my thoughts before he wakes again. This is already harder than I thought it would be. Oh well, has to be done. Can't escape Daelis any more than I can escape these infernal caves.

  Day 7, part 2

  He's awake now. Upright and alert. The first thing he did was accuse me of bringing him here. Even though I explained my own situation as it intersects with his, he's suspicious of me. That's understandable. I can't trust my own memories, either.

  "If you didn't bring me here, then why are you sitting here? Why are you claiming to help me? Why aren't you saving yourself?" Daelis asked not long after he woke. He stared into the water cup in his hands. "Considering what I did to you, I'm surprised you didn't kill me while I was unconscious."

  "I considered it," I admitted. "Also considered taking your lantern and satchel and leaving you to die in the dark. Couldn't go through with it, though. I still have this tiny bit of misguided hope that you'll one day acknowledge our son and explain both to him and to me why you threw us away so carelessly."

  "Oh. Shannon." Daelis finished his water, then slowly rotated the cup between his palms.

  "Shan. He hates being called Shannon. You'd do well to remember that when you meet him. And you will meet him. So help me, when we get out of here, you are going to talk to him."

  "I've met him, you know?" Daelis wouldn't look at me. His eyes were fearful as they darted toward Yana, who squinted at him from the shadows. "He doesn't know I'm his father, but I've met him. I'm the reason he was accepted at the University. The Masters did not want to accept a half-blood bastard boy from the merchant class into their rank of scholars, no matter how intelligent and capable he was, but I convinced them otherwise. I spoke to Shannon—Shan—before he appeared at the Master Council, and I helped him construct his argument. That didn't convince the Masters, but my political influence injected into their deliberations did."

  "And you let him believe he was admitted solely on his own merit." This made sense. I was surprised when Shan came home one day with a letter of acceptance into the University of Jadeshire. Scholars below the upper class are only rarely admitted, and fatherless scholars are nearly unheard of. "I suppose I ought to thank you for that."

  "No more than I need to thank you for not killing me in my sleep. Given our current situation, a quick death may have been preferable." Daelis's eyes narrowed as Yana rocked from side to side and growled. "Rin, what is that thing? It's terrifying."

  "She's not a thing. She's a little girl, no more than six or eight years old by human standards. Her name is Yana. I found her a couple days ago. She was running from the creatures that enslaved her people. She doesn't like you, but she likes me so she's not going to hurt you. She wants to, though, so don't give her an excuse to change her mind."

  "Is she coming with us?" Daelis hugged his arms to his chest and shivered. The Goldtrees hail from a faction of desert elves, so Daelis has never been tolerant of the cold. The damp chill of the cave was likely seeping into his joints and leaving him feeling like he'd never be warm again. He can learn to deal with it. A little discomfort won't kill him, even if he thinks it might.

  "Yes. We're going to escape from the caves. All three of us. I'm not leaving either of you to die here."

  That brings us to the present. Daelis has been staring at me in uncomfortable silence for quite some time now. I imagine his legs are still unsteady from whatever drugs he was given, so I'll give him some more time to recover before I make him get up and head into the tunnels. Perhaps in the meantime he'll cooperate enough to do something semi-useful, like help me figure out who put us here.

  I need to remind myself that I don't hate him. Not right now. I hated him yesterday and I can go back to hating him once we're above ground, but for now I need to remain indifferent. He owes our son a long and honest conversation, so I need to get him home alive.

  Day 7, the list

  This is maddening. We're trying to figure out what enemies we have in common, but our circles have few intersects. He's nobility and I'm a commoner. My former profession put me in contact with people from all different classes, but Daelis's world is insular and he has few contacts outside the aristocracy and its necessary associates.

  Here's the nonsense we've come up with so far. I doubt any of these people had anything to do with our kidnapping and abandonment, but we need to be inclusive until we learn more details.

  Rin Sylleth or Daelis Goldtree–Unlikely, but we don't trust each other, so one could be tricking the other.

  Mordegan Vale–My former employer wasn't happy with me when I quit, and even more so when Ragan left after Alon's death. He views his mercenaries as possessions, so I stole two valuable assets from him. Mordegan has had several conflicts with Daelis, who debates the legality of some of his activities and advocates for his arrest and imprisonment. Mordegan has the contacts and resources to drug us and leave us in a cave.

  Rohir Lim–I hadn't considered this one until Daelis mentioned that he had stolen from both of us. I don't know what my second son's father has been doing for the past sixteen years, so it's possible he could have made the transition from thief to underground crime lord.

  Lord Lindaer Starbright–Daelis's childhood nemesis is now his acid-tongued rival. They subtly sabotage each other on a regular basis. I kind of assassinated Starbright's father a couple years ago.

  Elsin Sylleth–What does my older brother have to do with anything? Well, it turns out, my secret about Shan's paternity was never as much of a secret as I convinced myself it was. My family suspected Daelis from the moment I fell into despair upon being fired from his employment when I was six months pregnant. Their suspicions were confirmed when I gave birth to a fair little half-elven boy. Elsin confronted Daelis, both verbally and physically, and Daelis effectively had him exiled by getting him assigned to the Northern Cavalry. Elsin's misery-laced letters to our parents stopped coming last year, and I don't know if he's alive. He hated his assignment, and maybe he blamed his problems on me in addition to Daelis. Still, I don't think he'd do anything that could get me killed.

  Nina Callan–The retired captain of the wall sentinels resented the loss of her prized protégé to unexpected motherhood, and she's known for holding long-term grudges. She's never liked Daelis and they often fought over security policy. I doubt she's a threat these days, though Daelis disagrees. Nina is over seventy years old and he gave her no choice but age-related retirement two months ago. The new captain is an idiot, so that likely refreshes her memories of my failure.

  Rhyst Hanor–Honestly, I have no idea who this is, but Daelis insists he knows me. I guess he runs a guild of hired swords that is in competition with Mordegan's mercs. Among other responsibilities, Daelis oversees law and security for Jadeshire, so he is automatically in conflict with most of of the city's less-than-innocent citizens.

  Nylian Lightborn, High King of Bacra–I suppose if we're being fanciful, we can take our suspicions all the way to the summit. Neither of us have ever met the elf who rules over the realms within the High Kingdom of Bacra from his seat in the Halls of Anthora, but Daelis's father reports to him as Duke of Jadeshire, High Lord of the Jade Realm. Daelon Goldtree and the High King are cousins to some distant degree, but I can't see any way anything having to do with the High King would connect to me.

  ?

  That's all we've come up with so far. We'll add to the list if we think of anyone else. We still don't have much to draw from, and Daelis has never heard of The Jarrah, either. We're lost in the dark, and we're stuck together until we either die or find the light. Time to rest now. Tomorrow we will push ourselves as far as we can, and hopefully that will mean real progress. I'm scared that we're heading to ou
r deaths, but I won't let the other two know that. I'm the strong one here and the only one with a sword, and I'll be the one who leads us to safety.

  Day 8

  A silver coin sat on top of a flat stone. I knocked it into a crevice before the others could see. I couldn't let them know that after hours and hours of painful climbing, near-falls, and listening to Daelis whine about the cold, we were almost back where I started. The tunnels we had been trying to escape through did nothing but circle. I failed, and wasted a week while doing so.

  They can't know. I need to pretend this area is just as new to me as it is to them. I'll just have to hide my marker coins and keep going in the other direction until we find tunnels I haven't tried yet.

  Once I found the coin, I intentionally led us to the quartz-brightened cave pool where I had rested before I found Yana. I pretended to look around in wonder as the lanterns caught the crystals and lit them up like stars.

  "Well, this is certainly one of the prettier things I've seen today," Daelis said. He knelt and dipped his hand into the water. "It's a little cold, but not too much. Do you think it's safe enough to stay here for a little while? We need to rest."

  Yana ran her fingertips along an embedded quartz grouping. "Sanctuary safe. Varaku not come here."

  I set down my lantern and rubbed my gritty face. "Yes. Better place to rest than anywhere else we've seen. We'll stay here tonight. Or day. Don't know anything about the time and doesn't matter."

  Later, Daelis and I sat silently while Yana splashed about the pool. Daelis's shaking hands repeatedly ventured into his satchel. Touching things, especially paper, was one of several of his nervous tics. He couldn't hide his fear as well as I could. He could hide his lies and smile with faked sincerity, but his fear unmasked him and left him naked and vulnerable. He wasn't used to being uncomfortable or being in situations beyond his control. I tried to convince myself that he deserved to be afraid, but it wasn't working. Elven lords are trained for power, knowledge, and charisma, not resilience in bizarre situations.