by Shean Pao
His withered leg ached, restricted to tight steps between stones and loose bits of shale. He wanted to sleep but dared not do so outside of the protection of his master’s fortress.
Barbarus rubbed at his severed horn. More than a week had passed since he had started searching for this particular ingredient. The ciaróg’s mating cycle was close to ending, so he’d had to descend ever farther into the Hells on his hunt.
The beetles built their nests in shallow cups of dirt and sand. They filled the indentations with a secretion expelled from their mouths that secured their fragile eggs in place. The shell would appear leathery, thickening in preparation for the beetle to tear itself free. He had to find one at just the right stage—a slim chance at best.
As he crept, he searched for signs of the adult ciaróg—their black droppings or a shed outer wing that held a reflective blue-green shimmer. They usually bred, laid their eggs, and then abandoned the nests.
Their sting would swell a man’s arm to twice its size. The venom brought hallucinations. But what Barbarus really feared were their swarms. They could consume a pit fiend in a matter of minutes, stripping its flesh down to the bone.
Barbarus continued searching the vast cavern. He discovered pieces of a grimgre strewn along the rocks and noticed another carcass farther ahead. No point in pawing through these bones, he thought. Grimgres never possessed corestones as the necanthers and pit fiends sometimes did.
But corestones were rare. You didn’t always find one when you cut open the throats of those creatures either.
He pushed a half-chewed femur from his path. Grimgres were the size of a large bear, but they were ponderous, making them a favorite food of pit fiends. Their heads hunched upon their shoulders with almost no necks, and their tough skin bunched under loose scales. They had poor eyesight but an excellent sense of smell. Barbarus had never fought one before, choosing to avoid them instead.
He hurried on. When he drew near the side of the cavern wall, he caught sight of a swirling shadow in the distance—a ciaróg swarm. It hovered too far away to be an immediate concern, but it was something to be wary of should they spin in his direction.
He squeezed through a group of rocks into a cavelike area. There! Three nests!
Hurrying from one to the other, he checked their contents. Two eggs had been newly laid, but if he touched them, their fragile shells would crumble. You could never take a ciaróg egg before the shell had thickened into a tougher casing. It was impossible to pull them free of their hardened secretion otherwise.
A single nest held an egg that had formed into a pod with a seam along the side. Normally he would have kept searching, this one being so close to hatching, but he was bone weary, and he’d found nothing else. If he hurried, he would make it back in time.
Something prickled his senses. He paused, listening, and realized that the low hum of the swarm was drawing closer. He needed to get out.
Barbarus opened his container and wedged it between his knees, careful to set the lid within reach. Then he pried open the seam of the egg with his knife and slid his hand into the brown slime inside. His fingers groped, hand sunk up to his wrist, until he touched the creature.
Thumb against its throat, he yanked the larva out and thrust it into the jar. The creature sank to the bottom, its eyes bulging but shut. He scooped more of the slime on top of it, then slammed the lid on. If too much air got to the ciaróg before it mutated, it would die. This one would transform within a few hours into a winged beetle with wicked pinchers and an abundance of legs. Rash’na’Kul would have to boil the body before that happened.
Barbarus needed to hurry now. If he returned to his master with a dead larva or one in beetle form, Rash’na’Kul would beat him and toss him out of the fortress until he found another. In Barbarus’s exhausted state, that might prove fatal. He’d had no rest since contacting the Willow Woman.
Barbarus drew up short. A hulking shadow passed across the way he had entered. It could be anything, and anything meant deadly.
He backed up and crept around a large rock in the opposite direction, then crawled on his belly beneath a space where two boulders leaned against each other.
He emerged in an open area, slightly elevated and close to one side of the immense cavern wall. The floor sloped downward and then opened into a large gap twenty feet across.
His skin twitched with fear. A number of dangerous creatures could crawl out of the hole at any second. He had to squeeze along the edge of the pit to reach the ground beyond and head back to the caves of his master.
Noises churned from within the cavity as Barbarus sidled around. Gazing down, he saw an incline of rocks and debris that formed a steep slope downward into the breach and spilled onto a barren ledge. To the left, beneath the shelf, was the partial view of another hole, shaped like a star, which led into darkness. To the right, the cavern extended out of sight.
Horror set Barbarus’s heart pounding as he realized he stood at an entrance to the Seventh Level of the Hells.
The scrapings grew into sounds of a scuffle. Then the howl of a pit fiend made his skin try to crawl over itself.
Several howls answered the first, echoing through the chambers below. Barbarus froze, wishing to melt into the rocks around him. He heard a screech, and then the rumbling snarl of a creature iced his blood.
A necanther’s growl. A wild full demon, neither trained nor controlled by a Nepha Lord.
Another cry overlaid the first, followed by a flurry of frantic scrabbles of nails on stone. For a moment all was quiet, and then he heard the wet crunch of rending flesh.
Something tinked like a piece of glass over the rocks below. Through the hole in the floor, a gleam caught his eye in the faint light: a corestone.
It skated across the ground along with a torn, furry foreleg from a pit fiend. Less than twenty feet away, it spun to rest at one star tip of the opening below him. Teetering partly over the edge, it balanced, weighed by the flesh that still clung to it.
Barbarus sucked in breath. A big corestone! He couldn’t imagine its value. With a crystal that size, he could finance a new life anywhere he wished—once he was free. He need only climb down the embankment to reach it and scurry back up.
He would have to hurry. The blood and muscle were slowly sliding off the stone, and it would fall into the lower crevasse as soon as the weight became unbalanced.
Barbarus gripped the edge of the hole and lowered the upper half of his body into the cavity. His irises narrowed; only faint light filtered through.
Almost directly below him, a scattering of waist-high rocks rimmed the edges of the second hole and spread outward over the floor. A large boulder, taller than his head and five feet across, rested at the widest point of the star. It partially blocked his view, but what he did see made his hackles rise.
Forty feet from him, a pack of pit fiends circled the necanther. They darted in, growling and snapping, fangs trying to hook flesh, but the seven-foot-tall creature swiped with its black claws or battered them with immense leathery wings. It was faced away; Barbarus could not see its infamous blood-red eyes.
Ten more pit fiends spilled out of an archway at the far end of the cave, drawn by the battle.
A high-pitched wail echoed off the walls, followed by the sound of flesh tearing. The necanther had caught another pit fiend and torn it in half. The survivors frenzied into an enraged, snarling mass and attacked.
Barbarus knew he should flee. He should rush back to his master and deliver the ciaróg larva before it hatched. Instead, he slid as quietly as he could down the shale toward the corestone.
As soon as he drew close enough, he grasped the crystal. It squirted from his hand, wet with gore, and he fumbled with it over the pit. It flipped into the air, then landed in his fist. He barely caught it.
Without taking time to inspect his prize, he pried loose the leather ties to his satchel. His fingers were damp with blood, and slippery.
A scraping noise sounded behind h
im, and Barbarus spun. A grimgre was sliding down the incline to the ledge above. Barbarus crouched as his heart leapt to his throat.
He was trapped in the Seventh Hell.
The grimgre snarled, trying to see its prey in the dark. Small ears flattened against the side of its block-shaped head; fangs dripped with yellow slime. A forked tongue tasted the air. It was using all of its senses to pinpoint Barbarus.
The corestone fumbled from Barbarus’s fingers and clinked against the lip of the pit as it dropped.
The grimgre swiveled his head toward him and sprang.
Barbarus leapt aside, and the bottle tied to his waist cracked against the rocks. A chunk of glass fell out and sparkled in the air as it vanished into the breach.
Chapter Ten
Seahorse
Clouds hung in the distance. Anarra and Odhran strolled barefoot toward the sea as the shallow waves receded farther than ever before. A twining in the meridians of the earth and the moon pulled the skin of the ocean back to reveal the living muscle, tendons, and sinew that thrived beneath. They inspected creatures left behind in shoals and reefs.
Her skirts trailed in the damp sand and eddies of water. A simple black bodice laced up over her blouse of white linen. A net of seed pearls held up her hair.
Odhran had rolled up his trousers and the sleeves of his cream-colored shirt. They stepped around multitudes of starfish. Shells sparkled, gleaming in multi-hued pearlescent shapes as the sun touched them for the first time.
With both hands, Odhran lifted a great spiral conch to Anarra’s small ear and laughed at her rapt expression.
They explored a waist-high expanse of rock pocketed with indentations and a deep pond within its center. Odhran found a brilliant blue seahorse, which clung to a tiny brown reed in a shallow.
“Look, Anarra.”
They witnessed its diminutive fins spin like a hummingbird’s wings, unable to escape its small prison.
“Oh, it’s glowing. I never knew their colors were so beautiful.” Anarra had only seen their dead, dried-out bodies, given as a gift when she was a girl. She valued the living one more than the shriveled creatures in her collection.
With a sweeping movement, Odhran scooped the seahorse in his palm and deposited it within a larger pool. Tiny fins propelled it deeper into the recesses.
A wide, pale mouth of needle teeth opened beneath the seahorse and consumed it, then vanished in a blink.
Anarra cried out and plunged her hands toward the depths, but the predator had disappeared.
“No,” she whispered, so heart-stricken that Odhran took her hand.
“It’s all right, Anarra.” He smiled. A lock of dark hair curled over his eyes, giving him a boyish expression. He dipped his hands into the water, murmured a word under his breath, and splayed his fingers in a sweeping motion. A swirl of emerald lights danced over the surface.
“Look.”
Tiny bubbles began to rise from the depths, filled with a magical luminescence that could only be of the faé. The bubbles multiplied, joined by hundreds of spiraling green-and-blue seahorses; their fins wove them together in sporadic darting motions.
With their bodies pressed side by side, hands braced on the rock, Odhran and Anarra watched the creatures. After a while, Odhran turned to Anarra and found her smiling at him.
“Maker’s blessing, you are so lovely,” he murmured. His fingers lifted to her cheek, leaving a damp trail at his touch. When she didn’t pull away, he brought his fingertips to her chin and tilted her mouth to his.
At first his kiss felt light as air, sunlight, and honey, a gentle brushing of lips that tantalized. She softened beneath his kiss, melting into him while his arm came round to encircle her slender waist. But the more he feathered her lips with his, the deeper her desire kindled, igniting a fire of sweetness in her mouth.
His hands moved up her body and into her hair. He tilted her head back, his kisses growing more ardent, until she pressed her palm into his chest.
Slowly he relinquished her, both of them drinking in air, eyes filled only with each other. She realized that all her concerns had melted away. There were no enemies to dread nor futures to worry over. She had no fear of things that might happen when he held her in his arms. In his presence, she even forgot about the Feather.
“By the gods, Anarra, you stir my blood,” he whispered, nuzzling her hair.
A misted veil of rain lowered on them with a cold turn of the wind. Holding hands, they ran for the shore while lightning cracked in the distance and darkened clouds billowed on the horizon. A flash streaked across the sky, followed by a sharp snap of thunder.
They fled not to the Star Tower, but up the cliff to the Listener’s Place. There, sheltered by the willow, they watched the storm and kissed again.
Chapter Eleven
The Seventh Hell
Barbarus leapt across the hole and clung to a huge rock on the other side. His claw wedged into a crevice, and he scrabbled up.
The five-hundred-pound grimgre hurtled off the ledge with horrific speed, thrust forward by sliding shale. It half-fell, half-jumped toward Barbarus, but its leap went awry. Its front feet missed the top of the boulder, and its back claws scrambled against the stone as it tried to propel itself upward.
Barbarus scuttled to the edge on the far side, five feet away, but that led to the fight between the necanther and the pit fiends. Two of the smaller bristled creatures broke away from the necanther to peer in his direction.
The grimgre’s head and shoulders lifted over the rock, and Barbarus ran forward. He slashed at the creature with his claws, parting flesh. It snarled and snapped at him.
Suddenly its back legs gained purchase, and it scrambled onto the boulder. Barbarus tried to leap off the rock, but the grimgre spun, and its huge haunch slammed into him.
He went flying off the boulder into the darkness of the star-shaped pit. His nails raked the sides of the fissure as he fell, bloodying his fingers.
Barbarus slammed into a stone protrusion and felt an explosion of pain in his ribs. His plunge ended when he landed in warm water. The pool was not deep enough to break his fall, and he hit the bottom with a slam to his hip.
Barbarus sputtered to the surface, gasping. His hands, waist, and upper torso burned as if they were on fire. He limped two feet to the pool’s rocky edge and pulled himself half-out of the water. While he lay, unable to move, his entire body sang with agony.
Then the agony in his hip, ribs, and hands subsided. He sat up in wonder.
He yanked his feet from the water, but a quick glance around revealed he was no immediate danger. He scanned the pool’s depths for creatures that might lurk within. A blossom of pale, phosphorus light rippled away from him. The liquid felt almost hot, and it smelled strange, like bitter minerals.
Barbarus leaned forward and studied the pool, wondering if it held the source of his vanishing pain. Examining his wounds, he found the skin on his hands still torn and a terrible blue and purple bruise forming on his side. Not healing water, then, but something in it had helped.
He tapped the surface, and it exploded in a green-white glow two inches deep. The light expanded, illuminating the entire pool and the small cavern around him for a moment, then went dark. Barbarus judged the pool to be ten feet wide, twenty feet long, and five feet deep. A crusty film of mineral deposits clung around the edge, along with a surprising growth of fungus.
Barbarus lifted his gaze. The ceiling rose ten feet above him, annoyingly out of reach. Stalactites hung like fangs from it. Around the outer circle of the room, stalagmites sprung from the floor, reaching toward the hanging formations. They formed a clump of bony columns in the forward part of the cavern. Barbarus had the impression that he stood in the mouth of a beast with spiny teeth closed all around him.
Two types of plants fringed the edge of the pool: squat bushes with oval leaves and white vines climbing the stalactites to drape overhead. A cascade of tiny flowers clung to them, glowing with a pale blue ligh
t. Starflurries bobbed and darted around the luminous petals. There was nothing like this cavern in the upper levels.
How did the plants grow without light? Was it the minerals from the stalactites?
Barbarus remembered the larva and checked the broken jar. It was empty. The ciaróg must have washed out when he fell into the pool. He let out a heavy sigh, untied the jar, and set it aside.
Barbarus spent the next two hours exploring every part of the fifty-foot cavern. There was no exit—only the hole above, but he had nothing with which to climb out.
He crawled back to the pool and sat gazing into its depths. Occasionally he tossed a pebble into the water and watched the glow spread to the edges and fade.
He drew his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. His master would be vaguely aware of his location but might not realize for days that he was trapped. Would he send one of his servants to search? None of them would venture into the Seventh Hell unless Rash’na’Kul used a Compelling upon them, and they stood even less chance of surviving than he did.
Weariness made his limbs drag. Barbarus had failed his mission. A heavy depression overcame him despite the beauty of his surroundings. He crept away from the water and lay down. Sleeping in an unfamiliar place was risky, but he had no choice, and he was far from caring.
He could probably survive for a while by eating the plants (unless they were poisonous) but he had little doubt that drinking the water would make him sick.
Desolation settled over him like a dense fog. Anarra had been wrong; he had no choices. He had nothing but wretchedness, and now he would starve to death. There was no hope.
He thought about that for a while. Where did hope spring from?
It occurred to him to pray to the Maker. He had never considered doing this before. His tasks had kept him too busy to ponder about profound things like God. Was he forbidden to pray? He didn’t care. He didn’t have anything to lose. If the Maker heard him, he might be better off. If he didn’t, would it matter?
