by Matthew Iden
There was no back of her head: her skull was simply missing behind the ears. The thing I had killed had...removed everything but the eyes and skin. There were small indentations along the scalp where its claws had taken hold of her.
I spat to one side, trying to clear my mouth and my mind, then dragged Lilath's corpse to one of the infernal cracks in the earth that we were always in danger of falling into. I tipped her body and that of the monster that had defiled her into the rift. The two fell out of sight, to become food for some other grotesque of the Bleak.
I hurried back to the camp, abandoning silence. I no longer cared if my struggle with Lilath's killer brought every demon in the place down on me, though I had learned there were things worse than death. I stumbled back the way I had come, trying desperately to erase the images in my mind. Some spirit watched over me, as I made it back to the dull glow of our "campfire" safely.
Harlan and Filki had beaten me back to camp and the four were crowded together, speaking in whispers. They looked up as I came near, their faces hopeful, but something in my look must have warned them. Harlan turned away and Galdur sighed, dropping his head.
"Did you find her?" Karn asked. I felt my guts twist when I saw his expression. Karn the Axe, Karn the Killer, who had split apart men and beasts for half his life, close to weeping over a priestess of Belal. "Tamik?"
"She's gone," I said. I tried to go to my bedroll, but he grabbed my arm. His grip was like an iron band.
"Gone? Or dead?" he demanded.
I looked into his eyes. "Just gone, Karn."
No more was said and we ate a cold meal before sleeping in shifts, as if it were our first night in this hell.
. . .
We five continued on, poorer for having lost our companions and lovers and friends. Deeper we pushed, seeing mysteries and wonders that the good folk on the surface never dreamed existed. Pulsing orange rivers of molten rock and diamond-studded cliffs became commonplace. We encountered creatures so strange that they made the fiends of the upper Bleak seem normal. And the horror that came with fighting them became accepted, as well. We survived, but mere existence is not life.
A new danger threatened us, though this challenge was from within. With time, I had hoped we would regain our cohesion as a group, but the Bleak seemed to invade each of our souls, driving wedges between us. Each of the small flaws that had been laughable in a tavern a year before now became insurmountable differences.
A simple choice of paths made this clear. For once, we had come across a split in the linked caverns and corridors: one crooked path going up in a gentle rise, the other plummeting steeply down. With something like euphoria, we chose the first, snatching at any possibility that we had found the beginning of our way to the surface. We had nearly gone out of sight of the fork when Galdur turned around.
"Harlan?" the old man called. We stopped and looked back. Harlan, his thumbs hooked in his sword belt, was looking into the hole where it disappeared into the pitch black of the Bleak. "Catch up, boy. You'll be lost."
The knight-errant swayed in place, but continued to stare down into the darkness. I hurried back, my mind still racing at the thought that we might have found our path to the surface. To home.
As I reached his side, I scowled suspiciously down into the blackness, afraid he had seen some new demon ready to trail us to our deaths. When I saw nothing, I turned my scowl on Harlan. "What is the matter, squire?"
He didn't answer. I felt a tingle along my spine and took a step back, putting a hand to my dagger. Death had worn many faces in the Bleak and I had lived this long through nothing but luck and suspicion. If Harlan's mind had been taken by something none of us had noticed, I was not going to be the next victim.
But the knight to-be simply shook himself and looked at me. His gaunt face had an earnest expression and his eyes were bright. "Tamik. This is the path for me."
"What are you talking about, boy?" Galdur said, as the others reached us.
Still speaking to me, Harlan continued. "My fate, Tamik. It's not merely to crawl out of the darkness to the world above. I was sent--commanded--to battle the evil that afflicts the Bleak."
"We've been battling it, Harlan," Filki said.
"No, Filki," he said, turning to the elf. "We've been surviving. Holding on. This is not the same thing as fighting. Evil has won because we've been complacent, allowing it to hound us. It is time to face the evil and denounce it."
"You're mad," Karn said with a grunt.
"No, Karn. I'm seeing things aright for the first time," Harlan said, his voice almost ringing. "Join me, friends. Let us triumph over this evil place by attacking it, for once, instead of allowing it to decide the time and place of our demise."
I have to admit, some sliver of the knight-errant's madness infected me. I am a thief and a liar, a skulker and an assassin. But I had grown tired of being hunted, of dying by pieces. What it would feel like, I wondered for a brief moment, to charge headlong into the Bleak and demand satisfaction? To either face my end bravely or taste victory against the bastard creations of the deep?
But the answer, of course, was...against whom would we battle? What single fight could we possibly have that would cripple the evils that had haunted us? None. There was no more "vanquishing" the Bleak than there was pulling down the sky or drinking all the oceans. The Bleak's wickedness was total and forever.
"Harlan, leave this plan," I said. "There are tourneys to be won and villains to be slain on the surface. Let the Bleak rot."
He smiled, a gentle smile, and shook his head. "I cannot, Tamik Two-Knives. This is my destiny."
I grimaced at the fool's choice of words and Karn said flatly, "Need you that gold and those gems, then, squire?"
Harlan handed over his share of loot happily. The bars and coins and jewels seemed like so much deadweight now, but Karn grinned wide enough when he put the knight-errant's share in his own pack and marched back up our original path. Seeing that arguments were futile, I grasped Harlan's hand and mumbled farewell. Galdur and Filki entreated him to come with us, but I knew their pleas would be ignored. Harlan had been looking for a noble way to die since we had met.
We watched as tightened his belt, flung his frayed cloak over his shoulders, and marched deeper into the Bleak to follow his heart.
. . .
For days after, we listened for Harlan. Galdur and Filki hoped he had changed his mind while Karn, the cynic, wished aloud that he'd lure the fiends away. For my part, I wondered if Harlan had actually stumbled upon the true way to the surface, as our path--though it had climbed steadily for many hours of marching--returned to a twisting, winding trail into the depths, taking our spirits with it.
A week after Harlan's departure, we were camped by the muddy light of Filki's fire, eating a meal of rock fungus and plate beetle. Galdur was lecturing Filki on the technologies and cultures of the Delven, the ancient race that had supposedly ruled the World Under the World. We had come across their outposts and small shrines--or so Galdur had claimed--but we had yet to see the Delven cities that the sage had promised, with their golden halls and marble columns.
"Admit it, old man," Karn said with rough humor from his bed roll, propping himself up on one elbow. "You wouldn't know a Delven if it bit you in the arse. We've been in the gods-damned Bleak for three seasons or more and we haven't seen more than a Delven piss-pot, never mind a gold throne or a chest filled with rubies."
Galdur was not a physical man and was usually careful to avoid disagreeing with Karn, but he drew himself up, his face pale with anger. "You grunt like a rutting boar. It is my learning that has kept us alive this long, my research that has made this expedition possible--"
"Thank the gods for that," Karn said, grinning, amused by the old man's fury.
"Ridiculous man, obsessed with gold when the secrets of the Delven might be in the very next cavern. It is only by the worst of luck that we didn't find their deepest vaults. If it hadn't been for me, you would've been back in that
reeking tavern where I found you, lacking even the few riches you did unearth."
I sat up and looked over at Karn. The amusement drained from his face as Filki frowned and said, "What do you mean if it hadn't been for you, Galdur?"
The sage, wise in so many ways, allowed his mouth to wander. He looked at Filki with contempt. "Do you think the rockfall happened by itself, idiot? You brainless band of children. Skipping and dancing into the Bleak, happy to pry the tin off a Delven tombstone when a world of power and wealth were an arm's length away."
"What did you do, old man?" Karn said, rising to his feet.
Sensing he'd made a mistake, Galdur scowled and said, "I did what I had to insure that you would make good on your promise to help me find the cities of the Delven."
"And?" I asked.
Stubborn and defensive, Galdur looked at me, then back to Karn. "I needed assurances--"
"What did you do, sage?" I said.
"I…I collapsed the cavern behind us as you slept off the wine you'd brought. The Delven were engineers with a mind for defense. Ancient texts I had studied showed it was easy enough to remove the pins and bolts from any of the supports. And so I did."
"Gods damn you, old man," Karn said, his voice low and seething. "We would've been home months ago but for you. Lilath amd Meki would be alive, but for you."
"I had nothing to do with--" Galdur started to say, but was cut off with a squeak as Karn leapt across the tiny camp and picked him up by the throat.
I scrambled to my feet, though whether to help Karn or stop him, I don't know. Filki, faster and more aware, began chanting, weaving a spell of sleep or some other effect to keep Karn from breaking the old man's neck.
Karn's arm felt like a tree trunk as I wrapped both hands around his bicep, trying to pull him away. Galdur turned red, then a dark purple, as the Axe cursed and spat while he squeezed the life from the sage. Only as Filki finished his spell did I feel the muscles in my comrade's arm begin to relax. I was reaching up to pry his hands away from Galdur’s throat when the old man, taking advantage of the respite, brought his hands up in an arcane gesture of his own. There was a clap as though the rock itself split around us and I was thrown across the cavern like a carcass.
I awoke later. I don't know when. Filki was tangled in the blankets of his bedroll, moaning. The smell of roasted flesh filled the cavern and my mind screamed at me to move, as I was sure that the scent would bring a hundred devils of the Bleak down upon us. But my arms could only twitch and swim in the air for long minutes until, with an effort, I was able to get to my hands and knees and crawl, like a drunk dog, over to where Karn had been strangling Galdur.
Karn was little more than a greasy smudge on the cave floor. I only knew it was my brother-in-arms by the axe haft, charred and with melted, twisted rings of bronze twined around it. Galdur had been untouched by his own spell, but lay with Karn's finger and thumb rings embedded deep in his throat. His neck had not been broken, but crushed by the huge man, perhaps in a last spasm before the magefire had hit him. Galdur's eyes bulged from his head, white and glassy, and his teeth were barred as though he were hissing.
I groaned and crawled away from the carnage, sick of soul and body, not sure I cared what might be drawn to the hideous smell. I collapsed on a bedroll, cursing. The Bleak had tortured us for an eon and yet the worst betrayal of all had been from within. Was the Bleak a living thing, I wondered, a god or a demon that needed to be fed? Would it require all of our souls and all of our blood? If so, it was damned close to the end. I groaned again and buried my face in the rough wool.
A few minutes later, out of curses, I pushed myself to my knees, then to my feet. I staggered to where Filki lay, motionless now. My heart jumped, afraid that he had been more injured than I had thought, but then I saw his chest rise and fall. I knelt and shook him. The elf's shoulders were thin, like the bones of a bird's wing.
"Filki. We have to go. Galdur's woken the sprits-know-what with that thrice-damned spell. Filki."
The Fey's eyes opened and tears spilled down the sides and along his cheeks. He whispered, "I'm dreaming, Tamik. It's so beautiful. We're back home, with Meki's deerhounds at our feet, and the hearth fire blazing--"
I slapped him. He cried out and raised his arms to cover his head as I slapped him again and again. I hit him until I was out of breath and gasping.
"Never say that," I said, my chest heaving. "Dream if you must, but never tell me about it. If I'm to die in this gods-damned pit, I'll do it with a curse on my lips, not a lament. I'll pull your tongue out if you say those things again."
He was crying, but I turned my back on him and gathered my things. I kept my eyes from the bloody mess in the corner and in a minute had everything I needed. Filki, sniffling, looked at me and what I'd packed.
"What about the gold, Tamik? And the gems?"
"We can't eat them. We can't kill with them. So we leave them."
I expected a fight--Filki liked his baubles--but instead he nodded, as if he'd expected me to say the words long ago. We left a hoard in that cave without a backward glance. I wondered what some other group of fools might think a century hence, when they stumbled into a cavern filled with loot and two bodies still stinking of magic, anger, and betrayal.
. . .
With but two of us, we rarely spoke and often days would pass before we uttered a word. At those times our speech was a crow's croaking and we'd have to take a precious mouthful of water or lick the moisture from the cave walls to even form a sentence. Our sight grew more and more accustomed to the darkness until we stopped using Filki's feylight when we made camp. Instead, we squatted in the ever-present night, aware of each other by smell, sound, and touch like the other horrors of the Bleak.
The only improvement was that the halls and corridors of the World Under the World had leveled off. We no longer plunged into steep cavern depths and, I'd feared, to our doom. Rather, the paths and trails in the dark wound on and on without end, flat and featureless corridors going on forever. This became its own kind of hell. What had seemed a cause for celebration turned into dreadful monotony and, like all who are truly lost, we wondered every minute of every day if we were simply walking in circles. I began leaving small markers of pebbles and rocks to tell me if we'd indeed been crossing our trail. But then I began fearing that the monsters and fiends of the Bleak had been removing them after we'd gone, obliterating our trail. Or perhaps Filki had been scuffing them apart for some mad reason only the elf knew. Or--perhaps this was the answer I couldn't bear to consider--we'd been moving forward the entire time and the Bleak was truly endless.
I don't know if it was the hopeless repetition of our trek or simply the accumulated hardship we suffered, but a month after Karn and Galdur killed one another, Filki went mad.
We were sitting in the dark, having stopped to rest without needing to communicate. I went to a corner of the cave to mash blue cave mold with my hands into a paste so I could eat it; I had lost almost all of my teeth by now and had to swallow my food whole. But in the infinite boredom that was our journey, the little chores of survival had taken on over-sized meaning and I was concentrating very hard on my task to the exclusion of all else.
I was nearly done, when some instinct made me freeze. Changes in air pressure and a certain smell told me Filki was near me, very near. I had not heard him move.
The muddy glow of his feylight grew from the soft, almost indiscernible glow of a firefly to a strong, pulsing illumination which sent pain shooting through my eyes and head.
"Filki," I croaked, backing away. "What in the gods' name are you doing?"
The elf said nothing, but I could see his eyes by the light of his magical fire. Where before they'd been a violet hue, now they were dull black, like pebbles. "Tamik," he finally said. "I know the secret."
"What secret?"
"Why we've been unable to leave this cursed place," he said. His voice was reasonable, conversational, and it sent a chill down my spine. "It's taken me a y
ear to understand."
I looked at him, feeling odd. "Understand what?"
"Sacrifice," he said simply.
"Filki, what are you talking about?"
"We are invaders to the Bleak, Tamik. Intruders. We are an infection in her innards. We need to be removed. Perhaps not all. One might escape unnoticed by the Mother of Caverns, but our little host of seven had no chance. We were a fire lancing through her bowels, causing her pain. We hurt her, Tamik. And she fought back the only way she knew how."
"How does that help us?" I asked, suspicious.
"Haven't you noticed how long its been since we’ve been attacked? Not a rock fiend nor a mind gaunt nor a stone harrow for weeks."
"Aye. All right," I said, relieved that Filki seemed to be at least making a kind of sense, if a strange one. "What is that, do you think?"
"It's because we have been reduced to merely an irritation."
"So, we're safe?"
"No," he said, his eyes widening. The pebbles of his eyes became round as eggs. "It's so simple, Tamik. If seven caused her agony, and four gave her pain, and two are a nuisance..."
"...then one would be best," I finished for him and drew my daggers.
His hands wove a complicated pattern as I lunged forward. There was a noiseless flash of light, brighter than the sun, brighter than the afterlife, and I screamed in agony. Filki's broken mind had planned the attack, that much was clear. A dull, distant part of my brain thought of Filki's dead eyes and I realized he had blinded himself in preparation for this moment.
I stumbled as the pain of the light lanced through my head. I felt Filki dodge to one side and heard the whisper of his knife clear its sheath. My eyes were streaming--tears? blood?--but I forced myself to open them. The feylight was already not as bright; perhaps the elf had only enough magic left for one attack. I hoped so, for I took a desperate gamble and rolled forward towards what I thought was a shadow.
