by Russ Linton
She squinted into the gauntlet of light. Countless eyes stared back. Miniature crystalline spiders coated her arm, their bodies glowing brighter than the cave walls.
"Spiders," she said aloud.
The word filled the empty tunnel and even the splashing water behind her sounded far away. She half-expected the Hollow One to respond, but it was nowhere in sight. She raised her arm and made her way deeper into the tunnel.
The sides narrowed, the ceiling dropped, and soon she was stooping, but she pressed on, feeling more liberated than confined. Deeper she went until the tunnel opened into a tall, domed chamber. In the center, the Hollow One sat on a carpet of moss.
"Come."
She stepped lightly, feeling the soft squish of the ocher moss between her toes. Tentatively, she took another step. Her footing held, despite the constant sensation that she was walking on mist. The tiny spiders on her arm leapt into the air and floated toward the walls on hastily-spun strands of silk.
"Is this your troll hut?" she asked.
The Hollow One shrugged. "This is a hole in the earth. My hut. Yours." It gestured to the sparkling walls. "Home to the spiders as you call them." Amusement overtook its reedy tone. "They know you. This is good."
She rubbed her arm where the tiny feet had touched her. "What exactly do they know?"
"That you are indeed a spider. You may catch many flies. Though one may prove too large for your web." It patted the moss next to it.
Kaaliya sighed and dropped heavily to the ground. "So many riddles. Why is that?"
"Only truth is spoken here."
She settled into the moss and fell back without knowing she'd done so. Aching muscles uncoiled as she sank into the surface.
"I'm so tired."
"See? Truth," laughed The Hollow One. It rose and moved toward the tunnel. She followed it with her eyes but couldn't find the strength to do more. "Rest. You have a long journey ahead of you."
"Mhmmm..."
The spiders scattered across the ceiling and dimmed. They did know her. In some strange way, they were connected. Like her and Old Jai, connected by stories. Or her and Shailen, connected by dual natures, like fire and water. Maybe she should have listened to his caution and not climbed down?
So far under the earth, her clothes soaked through, she should've been cold, but she wasn't. She felt…embraced. That was the right word. Isn't that what the Hollow One had said? She'd been embraced by the bones of the earth? It was a strange feeling, but she couldn't keep her eyes open long enough to worry about it.
CHAPTER VIII
"Kaaliya?" She heard her name whispered and a hand touched her shoulder. Her name sounded again, and someone shook her. Shailen. "Are you okay?"
"You came?" she asked. She scrunched her eyes and rubbed her forearm across them. "How?"
"I'm sorry it took us so long," he said. "I tried to climb down..."
She looked at the dirt on his hands and saw the deep earthy stain on his thighs where he must have clung to the rope for dear life.
"But the rope, the bucket, it doesn't reach down here," she said.
"We had to borrow more rope."
We. Of course, he'd run to the village and gotten others. There weren't many Pit dwellers who would bother tracking down a reckless girl lost so far below the inhabited ledges. She was surprised by the gesture and amazed at Shailen's bravery. She started to thank him but then her heart dropped.
"Who did you get to help?"
She hoped it was Old Jai. What better person to lead her out of the darkness?
Shailen's eyes weren't on her but on the effusive glow of the ceiling. "Your father."
She sat up.
A torch lit the narrow tunnel into the chamber. She heard a thud, followed by cursing. Her father squeezed in through the gap, and the constellation of spiders above retreated ahead of the greasy torchlight. Shailen shrank away, distracted as she watched the ceiling move.
The gap had been much too small, and she wasn't sure how her father had managed to get inside. A welt was already forming on his forehead. Dirt and grime skinned his hands and knees, and she realized how out of place that was on him. His smile, supposedly of joy and relief, was a leering glare in the dancing orange fire of the torch.
"My dear Kaaliya!"
The cushion of moss under her felt like guilt, and she avoided his eyes. His hand reached out to pull her to her feet. She rose without his assistance and gritted her teeth at the pain.
"I'm so happy to have found you." He pulled her close with his free hand, and she flinched. She kept her hands at her side and her head down, waiting. He moved her to arm's length. "I was worried I'd lost you like your mother. You can't leave me like her, dear girl."
Shailen tore his eyes away from the ceiling where shadow and smoke had replaced the glowing spiders. His curiosity shifted to concern as he read her expression. There were things about her she'd never meant for him to know.
"Are you hurt?" her father asked. He bent, inspecting her closely, the heat of the torch biting and the smoke stinging her eyes. Kaaliya looked away from Shailen as her father took inventory of the bruises and scrapes on her legs, then lifted her ragged shirt to inspect, finally ended with her hand in his, turning it over and over. "So much climbing has made your hands rough." He sighed in dismay. "Come, let's get you home."
Her father dragged her out toward the tunnel, the torch held before them. He continued to talk, but she didn't hear. Her feet left the moss and fell on the cold and uneven stone. Her father had blundered ahead without noticing the change, but she saw Shailen pause and press his foot deep into the carpet one last time.
The tunnel, the ledge, they were both different in the fire's unsteady glow. Darkness hunted them from the fringes. When they exited the tunnel, the tree looked sinister, clawing up from the guano mound like a hand from a grave.
"...firewood so close." Her father looked past her to Shailen. "A healthy young man like yourself, you should be able to gather it?"
Kaaliya stopped. Her father, still moving, yanked her arm and she stumbled out of the tunnel. His grip tightened.
"What's wrong?" He waved the torch toward where a fresh rope hung. Shadow crawled across his face. "Come, let's go home."
She shook her head.
He smiled, the corner of his mouth sharp points and his eyes flicking to Shailen. "You can't stay here, dear."
Shailen watched mutely.
"The boy will go first, eh?" Her father directed Shailen to the rope with a hard stare. "He'll then pull us up with the winch. No problem."
Kaaliya looked at Shailen and his indecisive hold on the rope.
"He can't do it alone. Maybe you should go first," she mumbled.
"The boy has help, dear. We had a visitor waiting for you. He's been very patient."
She shot Shailen a glance, and he winced. Shaking her head, she swallowed back tears and understanding dawned on Shailen's features. She'd kept her business to herself all the years she'd known him. Never had she invited him beyond that off-kilter lintel.
"Maybe we should wait," Shailen offered. "Let her rest."
Her father dropped her hand and spun to face Shailen. "We have no time for rest. It's been one wasted night already. I won't lose another."
She tried to hide from Shailen's astonished look.
"M-m-maybe she's hurt?" More unexpected bravery from her friend, but he was pushing into depths he didn't fully comprehend.
Her father advanced, and Shailen shuffled away from him further out onto the open shelf that held the tree. "She's made of sterner stuff than you, boy. She's fine, aren't you?"
Kaaliya nodded meekly.
"I don't–" Shailen's words were cut short. The slap was sharp, a crack that lingered in the impenetrable depths. The boy staggered and raised his hands as darkness welled up behind him.
"Don't talk back to me. Climb the rope."
"Please sir," Shailen wailed. "I mean no disrespect."
"You…" her father kicked t
he crouching boy, and Shailen scooted away. Away from the tunnel. Away from the rope. "…are talking…" The man unleashed another vicious kick, and Kaaliya stepped toward them, her tears flowing freely. "…not climbing."
"Stop!" she yelled.
She withdrew as her father eyed her.
"Has he spoiled you?"
The absurdity of the question shocked her, and she couldn't answer at first. "No! He's a friend."
"Well?" he demanded, turning to Shailen.
Any answer the boy might have given trailed off as he jerked violently backward, barely catching his balance. His groping hands, feeling their way along the ground as he scuttled away, had found where the shelf dropped into nothing.
"Tell me!"
Shailen's wide eyes moved frantically between the edge and her father. Unintelligible sounds choked from his mouth. The bravery that had escorted him down the rope was lost. His old fear gripped him.
"Please, no," she whispered, creeping toward the two, scared that her presence might upset the deadly balance.
Her father reached for the boy. Desperate, Shailen lunged for the outstretched arm. The two collided and her father swiped with the torch, battering Shailen's forearm and releasing a spray of orange sparks. The boy gasped, his attention focused on the yawning void behind him.
Kaaliya quickened her pace as the struggle continued, her father swatting and Shailen fighting madly to move away from the edge. The torch tumbled. Orange shadow dropped into the Pit like a dying sun.
"You little bastard!"
With the torch lost, the sounds were her beacon. Muffled cries and grunts, rock scraping rock, wordless rage, and protests.
Then a noise reached her she'd heard a hundred times before while scaling the sheer walls of the Pit. Instinctively, she froze as though she were the one perched on the wall and the foothold she thought secure had loosened.
A choked cry of alarm sounded and dissipated, like the retreating glow of the torch.
She couldn't move. Deep, solitary panting continued somewhere ahead of her.
"Shailen?" she called.
"This is your fault," her father's accusation crept out of the black. "Now get up that damn rope."
Kaaliya turned and ran. She honed in on the sound of the spring that straddled the tunnel entrance and slowed, feeling her way around the corner.
"Kaaliya!" her father shouted. "Come back here!"
She moved faster. Behind her, her father stumbled and cursed.
"Hollow One!" she shouted.
White light seared the walls. The surviving darkness was her own shadow made black and monstrous by the sudden flare. Spiders streamed along the ceiling and walls. She raised her arm, and they spiraled down to sheath it, but they didn't stop there. Tiny legs tickled her shoulders and face. They cascaded down her chest and legs. Soon they'd covered her from head to toe.
Her father held himself propped against the tunnel entrance, dazzled by the display. As his vision returned, his mouth dropped open, and his eyes shone like two swollen moons. She pointed a finger at him.
"You killed him, didn't you."
"Kaaliya? Is…is that you?" he stammered, his false bravado born of cruelty shriveling. "He fell—it was an accident."
"Only truth is spoken here," she whispered.
"Come," he said, backing away. "We must leave this place."
She didn't answer. Instead, she reached toward him with an upturned palm. The spiders leapt at him in a coruscating arc, enveloping him.
Screams erupted from within the glowing mass where her father once was. She shielded her eyes to see the spiders enshroud her father's face, burning brighter than she'd seen before, so bright the tree beyond the tunnel opening shone like a bone-white hand held up in rebuke. She fled down the tunnel.
When she reached the domed chamber she collapsed on the moss, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her father's screams echoed from the tunnel.
"I want it to go away," she pleaded into the mossy patch.
"What, Cave Daughter?" The Hollow One rose from the moss next to her, the tiny fibers boiling like maggots around its bare form. "What do you wish to go away?"
"All of this. I should be the one in the Pit. Not Shailen."
"You will see beyond the darkness one day. Today is not that day."
Another scream echoed through the chamber.
"Are they hurting him? The spiders?"
"They know him for what he is, but the only wounds he suffers are his own fear."
"Make it go away."
"We will do more than that."
She began to sit up, but it knelt and placed a hand on her shoulder. Knotted fingers pressed her into the moss. Fibers began to writhe and squirm along her flesh, and she sank. Alarmed, she stared into the Hollow One's eyes, pupils wriggling like ants caught in sap. Eyes somehow like Old Jai's, in that they saw more than what this moment in time would allow. Further she sank, the troll forcing her into the ground until the wriggling moss probed at the corners of her mouth. She wanted to scream but instead listened to her father's cries fading away, like Shailen's.
Soon, everything was dark. She could stay, she thought. This was what she'd sought when she leapt from her precarious position. Nothing was lost or cast off in this place. Everything that was here, belonged.
***
Kaaliya awoke under the sheltering boughs of a tree. In her wildest imaginings, she'd never conjured a tree like this. Whip-like branches draped the ground on all sides. Beside her lay a leaf from the Hollow One's tree piled with edible roots. Next to this was a gourd. She picked it up and sniffed the contents—water from the spring.
She crawled forward and parted the branches of the sheltering tree. A blue sky bound by open plains greeted her. More of the tendriled trees dotted the horizon, and a road ribboned between them and off into the distance. A bird squalled, proud and powerful, and she squinted into the sun.
Returning to the protective canopy, she took up the gourd and drank, then nibbled at the roots until she'd cleared the leaf which held them. Picking the leaf up by the stem, she stepped out onto the road.
She took a few steps, those turning into long strides. Cerudell, Stronghold, all the cities and hidden places from Old Jai's stories awaited her. Taboo or not, she'd hoped to see them all and more. One day she promised herself to return, rich beyond wealth, ready to repay Old Jai. Or at least offer a fair trade.
CHAPTER IX
Song and the oppressive atmosphere coated Sidge like an oily sludge. He watched Izhar, unsure if he was the only one with the knotted feeling in his gut and certain he was the only one with an incessant burning along his antennae. A thread of smoke, black and coarse, rose above twisted trees. Burnt wood and the pervasive smell of decay surrounded them. The song grew stronger as the accompaniment of hidden marsh denizens fell silent.
Izhar reined in the Paint and the vardo slid to a stop. The former Cloud Born's hand wandered absently to his collar where the corestone should've hung. As he slid from the driver's bench, Sidge followed suit on his own side.
A layer of brackish water, followed by slick mud, swallowed his feet. This was no place for a camp. His mentor's gaze sought him between the horse's twitching tail and the vardo. Izhar pointed at his eyes and made a sweeping gesture. Sidge understood and swiveled his head to scan every available angle.
Like the plains, sparse copses of trees jutted from waist-high grass, but here their trunks shone, naked and skeletal. A few clung jealously to leaves on spidery limbs.
Sidge waded alongside Izhar as they crept toward the smoke.
"Probably just their campfire," muttered Izhar.
Moving closer, Sidge could see the tall grass had been flattened as if cleared for camp. Overlapping stalks formed a solid carpet over the silt. At the edge of the clearing charred masses oozed. Heat and a sickening stench like baked vomit rose from these and Sidge rushed further in to escape the smell.
Other formless shapes littered the ground. Sidge faltered as he recognize
d them—high quality silk, gray as the overcast sky. On the far side, gold pierced a tangle of bracken beside a tree where Gohala's wagon slouched, half-sunk. They'd found his camp.
He and Izhar approached the closest bundle of robes. Torn temple vestments slurped free of the mud with the old Master's pull. Black muck and crimson blood stained them.
Sidge wandered among the robes, trying to tell if any might be occupied. As he prayed to Vasheru that he was in the grips of another bizarre vision, the ground shifted beside him.
A tailor's eye told him the grasses near his feet had been woven together in an attempt at camouflage. A moan bubbled from underneath the mat. He flared his wings and leapt backward.
They both stared at the ground, waiting. After several heartbeats, Izhar pointed at the mat and motioned for him to move it aside then raised his hand and flapped his fingers like wings.
Sidge froze. He understood—he'd move the woven reeds and then take flight while Izhar called on Vasheru's Fire to scour any threat. Cloud Born or not, this didn't seem the time to question Izhar's experience. He bent and gripped the edge of the mat.
Izhar intoned a mantra of Fire. The air thickened and lightning crackled along his fingertips while Sidge felt the invisible pull radiate through the corestone pendant at his chest. With a deep breath, he ripped the mat aside and the eldritch glow of Izhar's building power lit the hidden cavity.
"Wait!" Sidge shouted.
Driven into the sludge was the hollow trunk of a tree. Muck filled the cavity and eyes peered from within. Eyes of a familiar face. A brother's face.
"Farsal!" Sidge fell to his knees and reached into the sludge. The moans became a shriek, and the trapped acolyte thrashed. "We will free you, hold on!"
Izhar joined in the effort. Limbs slick, they both struggled against the hungry earth. Farsal's head lolled, his eyes bulged with pain. Eyelids fluttered and disappeared into his skull.
