“Nae, masiúl. Canna ma iompair tu gualach cannamo.” (No, I can walk. I would carry you if these shoulders were able.)
“Si (Yes),” Caenith said with a smile.
He offered her his giant hand then, and she took a finger, which was all she needed. They set out. Since the back half of the chamber was inaccessible without swimming in the lake, and the tunnels there were likely to be flooded anyhow, Caenith aimed for one of the shafts to the south. He was sure of their direction, for even at this depth his compass was unerring, and south seemed a good way to go. In all his years and vocations, Caenith had never taken an interest in prospecting on this scale: he sniffed out the lodes in animal caves or the veins that hid in waterfalls, but never went too deep into the earth. For Geadhain’s body was a sacred place; a living entity with a plodding, almost undetectable heartbeat of tremors, shifts, and grumbles. Yet here, the silence was deafening. It was as if the Green Mother was asleep or even dead. Acute as his senses were, they did not hear the clacking of rats that should live in dark places, nor the fluttering of bats or the chittering of crawly things. Nothing lived here; not even the smallest mite scuttled from his boots as they waded through the ashy sand.
Green Mother, why have you forsaken this place? he wondered.
Kuuuheeeeeeee.
Or had she? His ears perked up to a sound coming from one of the tunnels, though it was dispersed as if from all directions and not one. He could not say what it was, that noise: a warbling whisper of wind, an instrument, or the quavering of a watery throat. Before he could puzzle over it further, the sound faded, though it left a chilly prickling of sweat upon him. Macha had heard nothing. She tugged on him and asked why he had stopped. Faech (nothing), he assured her, and hurried on. Macha frowned, for she had not made it so far in captivity without reading the whims of men and knew that her knight was lying to her.
A dozen tunnels awaited the pair when they reached the end of the beach. Some were collapsed entirely; others were split along their beams and sagging from the weight of stone atop them; none of them looked safe to travel. To make his decision of which route to take, the Wolf gently tossed his head and filled his chest with air. Most of what he inhaled was that distasteful, dry mildew and putrefaction that he had come to expect, yet hidden in the corruption was a tease of fresh air. No other nose but his would have found it, and the source was spans and spans away. Where there was air, there was freedom, and he followed that scent.
Kindly as a father, he helped the young seal step over the rubble of the mine shaft he had picked. On the other side of the obstruction, as he guided them into the winding passage, he exhibited the same care. He spotted tools under the dust that she might trip on, or places of the floor and ceiling around which they needed to tread warily. Each of them could tell that they were the first in many hundreds of years to walk these paths, and they moved ahead as cautious explorers of this great tomb. Where are the bones? wondered Caenith. For as they wandered this grave of twenty thousand souls, he saw carts, tools, even garments discarded under the ash, and yet no sign of the bodies that once wielded or wore such items.
At forks in the path, he would stop and smell which route was desirable. And although the tunnels appeared to continue indefinitely and without distinction, as if they were trapped in a nightmare, he always sensed the correct way. While they did not speak much, the grim and gleaming smile of the Wolf came to Macha often, which was all that she needed and almost all of what she could see in a space so dim. These smiles warmed the Wolf as much as they did his charge. How this child, with her sordid history, had ever come to trust a Wolf and another strange fellow was a miracle of the Green Mother’s compassion. He was anxious for Morigan to meet Macha, for they shared a determination against adversity that he felt made them kindred spirits. He also wanted Morigan to see that he could care as mortals do, and not only for her. He wanted her to recognize that he was not simply a beast masquerading as a man. She knew this truth about him already, he felt, or she would not have committed herself to him in blood and promise. Nonetheless, it was validating to understand this lesson himself.
“Ta mae ageanch feach tu, baeg rón (I am lucky to have found you, little seal),” he muttered unexpectedly.
“Ta mae ageanch tu feach mae, Mactyre (I am lucky you have found me, Wolf),” Macha replied with a grin.
Hand to finger, they continued down the mine shaft. Time had separated from meaning long ago, and there was only the march. One foot and then the other. Onward into the wet shadows while the relics of a damned civilization peeked at them from heaps of ash. Neither could have said how much time had passed when the cry came again, echoing out of the murk behind them.
Kuuuheeee.
Caenith had not forgotten the sound, pushed it to the back of his mind, perhaps, as it was a sound that one wanted to ignore. Hearing the cry again, he could not dismiss it as anything idle: it had come from a mouth or some approximate opening. As he was still quite weak, and not in the state for a fight, he did what was prudent and picked up Macha and their pace. He managed a fair speed, certainly faster than Macha could run by herself. He sniffed the air wildly, hunting their freedom, and while it was not quite open sky that he caught the tail of, he sensed them approaching open space. He kicked a clouded path down the mine shaft toward a gray chamber and emerged into less suffocating confines.
However, he felt no relief, and his slapping feet slowed to a stunned shuffle. After a dearth of landmarks, here was a section of the old undercity that was remarkably intact: a tremendous stretch of housing that spread to either side of him. These homes were from an era that he remembered, which meant that they were old. Square boxes with decks and oxidized-iron roofs. They were the sort of dwelling that a frontiersman would live in, only in a place without prairie sunshine or anything bright. For every window frame was fanged in broken glass and ready to bite; many of the porches or roofs had crumpled, as if from a great blast, and spilled their insides out onto the large causeway on which he stood; and the collective emptiness of so many abandoned households was as chilling as screaming into a void. Carriages lay toppled in the street, while others were perfectly stuck in time: their doors opened, as if someone was to step out. Children had lived here, too, he noticed, for toys and wooden swords were mingled in one sandy bank that poured from a nearby dwelling. A rag doll winked at him from the spill. It was wondrously preserved for fabric, like all that he had seen in the Iron Valley, as if mold itself could not even thrive as an organism here, only dust.
If Caenith needed any motivation to stop staring and find his feet once more, another Kuuuheeee trilled in the air. He couldn’t ascertain from where, which was quite annoying, given his perceptiveness. He hustled down the large avenue. Streets ran elsewhere into derelict neighborhoods, but these he ignored. His nose, his instincts were telling him to continue down the main road. He was worried about many things at present: what that noise was, the less-than-acceptable condition of his strength. Thackery was worth a concern, as well, for he had no idea how the old conjurer was doing, though he suspected that the man had enough tricks of his own to endure this dark night, at least for a while. Amid the uncertainty, little Macha was a welcome weight to tether his anxiety. She held on, nuzzled his neck, and once or twice called him her knight.
The shadowy road was reaching its end: a facade that sloped upward into darkened heights that Caenith could not make out. How deep are we? he worried. And how much farther to go? In the bottom of the wall, small as mice holes, were more mine shafts running off to unfathomable ends. He thought to pause only to check the scent, and then held his tread when more than sweet air came to him. A musty, mucky smell, as if the lake had followed them. After he sniffed himself and Macha, and cleared them of fault, he looked for the cause. No lesser eye would have noted it, and even his was strained to see the sliver of darker darkness that lurked in the opening of the tunnel he was to take. He approached with caution and then stopped cold once enough of the creature was revealed.
>
Kuuuheee!
Whether it was man or woman, he could not determine. Nor could he make sense of the jet-black membranous skin in which the creature was tightly wrapped. Or the caul that clung to its head. Or the warped bones, the pulsing sphincter of a mouth, and the uneven eye sockets that could creatively be deemed a face beneath the shroud. No matter how it shivered and twisted, it could not straighten itself past a hunched mockery of standing. He thought of persons consumed in flame, their bodies scorched and fused. He thought of roaches squealing from their egg sacs. A thousand horrible things, he thought, and none of them could capture what stood a hundred strides from him, reaching with its palsied fingerless limbs.
The thing dribbled its noise again. Kuuheee!
He could detect it now, the edge of pain in the call, and what he could not perceive, his extraordinary senses explained to him. This is a creature that once had a mouth to cry with and a soul to weep for. This is a creature that was once alive.
“An Ochrach (The Hungry)!” hissed Macha.
The brave child could not keep herself hidden against the Wolf and had looked to see what stalled them. Her assertion was correct, and had he gotten a good view at the one up above that had tricked them here, he might have been better prepared. Every whelp, pup, and slow-walker of Alabion knew tales of the Hungry: those that would not pass, those who lingered between the veil, bound by selfishness or torment to a life they were denied. The Hungry could take as many shapes as hatred had expressions—violent, sad, sinister—with flesh or without. The ones with flesh could be harmed, but not by steel, tooth, or claw, only by magik.
Urgently, he scanned the ashes and sand for something with which to defend himself. A tipped miner’s wagon caught his attention and he ran for it, dropping to his knees as soon as he arrived. He set Macha down, barked at her to be still, and then began shoveling through the spillage like a mad dog after his bone. Tongs, hammers, chisels, picks, and all the tools of the excavator’s trade that were deemed unfit were tossed over his shoulder. He was seeking whatever instrument would blister the palm of a creature as magikal as himself: anything cast of feliron, which would not be unheard of in these depths.
Hurry! Hurry! he huffed.
Kuuheee! Kuuhee!
Not a single cry that time, but one bleat to another. When he looked up from his foraging, he saw that the Hungry had slithered alarmingly fast down the road, closing almost half the distance that separated them in specks. He had to rip himself from the hideous spectacle as it lurched again. Kuuuheee! Kuuuhee! Kuuuhee! The warbles were flying like flocking birds now. They were coming, the Hungry, alerted by their kindred’s call, drawn by the hateful brightness of two souls in their lightless purgatory. Macha had not the Wolf’s sight, though she could sense the movement in the darkness, the sloppy shapes rising from shadows or dragging themselves lamely as hobbled warriors onto the street. She could smell the nauseating stink of the Iron Valley’s damned: something earthy and sickly pungent—prunes and clay, perhaps—that made the glands salivate and the gut roil. Macha fought to contain her stomach as the stench and shambling Hungry closed in. She tried to restrain her screams, for she knew that wouldn’t help. Nonetheless, she could not hold them in as the first Hungry that they had spotted abruptly manifested in a quivering motion above her knight and joined her in a shout.
“Aaaaah!”
Kuuuheee!
“Calliachtine (Witchburn)!” shouted the Wolf.
He was not unaware of his jeopardy. He felt the cold rush over his back, smelled the rank despair of the Hungry, and saw the warped visage reflected in the blade of the pick he had retrieved. The instrument sizzled as he touched it—not that he minded his pain—and he swung it in a swift arc. Now, the horror was soft, and he was strong, and he cleaved the Hungry from hip to shoulder. As if a watersculptor’s spell had been broken, the creature fell into a slop of darkness. Although this one nightmare had ended, the undercity had only begun to stir. Caenith snatched up his charge and bolted into the unprotected mine shaft. Vibrating figures threw themselves toward him, and he bashed one with his feliron tool and was too quick to be caught by the rest.
I shall not break, he chanted again. That, the life he protected, the friend he had made of the old man, and the bloodmate toward whom he raced were enough to power a body far beyond collapse.
He sniffed and ran, hunting the taste of freedom that was growing closer and closer. All around them now, the Long Nightmare was churning itself to unlife: the forgotten souls of the Iron Valley were waking and raging at the desecration of their rest. The Wolf dashed through black corridors, sprang over splintery pits, and felled any glistening, hideous apparition that appeared in their path until they were coated in slaughter. Once more, time escaped the Wolf. There was only the race, the thunder of heart and foot, and the wash of rancid blood over his face, which sometimes he licked off: eating death. Ruler of the Hunt. His wounds were forgotten, and he felt unstoppable. How long their imprisonment beneath the earth had lasted could not be gauged, though in these moments of pure carnality, he could have gone on forever.
When the darkness secreted a sound to his ears other than the cries of the Hungry, the Wolf was drawn from his trance. That was Thackery’s voice, cascading toward him from a space up ahead. He sped toward the noise, clipping scores of the Hungry that oozed from the walls or popped up like weeds before him. As a rush of wind, he blew into an airy expanse, and only his fantastic reflexes stopped him from skidding over a cliff. On one side of him, a shrieking fall to oblivion; on the other, a broad ledge that wound upward along a steep wall. In what was the sweetest sight next to Morigan, the sage was above him. Against the ravenous darkness, the twist of glory, the staff that he held shone like dawn itself. The sage walked down the slope and held it before himself as a holy prophet would: issuing judgment upon the keening black souls in his way that boiled away to gas or threw themselves off the precipice. A line of the damned clogged the ledge, souls surely drawn by Thackery’s shouting and magik. Caenith mustered his fury and roared through the rows of the Hungry. The foes were so thick, and his maneuverability so hampered that he could not fend off every freezing cold touch that stuck to him and peeled away flesh like it was hacked. Striped with red and black as a hunting cat, swinging murderously with a single arm, and screaming with every motion, Caenith climbed the path of pain. Macha screamed with him, and he prayed to all the spirits of Alabion that it was for valor and not out of agony. As long as she screamed, she lived, and it was this dark thought that carried him to Thackery’s bosom of light.
“Begone!” shouted the sage.
In the chamber of Thackery’s Will, his feelings condensed: the desperate joy at his companions’ appearances, his sorrow at the state of the great Wolf and Macha, and guilt at his foolishness in treading the Iron Valley. What tore into the world was a radiance to melt the coldest darkness. The Wolf dropped his gory pick to shield his eyes as the sun rose inside the Iron Valley, and what straggling damned remained upon the ledge were scattered into stardust. Thackery was spent and fell upon his staff; the light in the wood dulled to a warm ember. He wheezed out merciful gratitude.
“I’m so blessed to have found you. All night wandering and scouring the Valley, until I discovered a way inside. That was when I encountered them, the faceless lurkers of this place. But I knew that you two were not lost! I can’t believe that we survived this nightmare.”
“We have not, until we see the sky,” replied Caenith.
The keening had receded, not vanished, and the Wolf went to the edge of their footing and cast his senses down into the endless dark to see where the voices had gone. He could hear the Hungry in the depths, more cries than he could ever count, and he was shivering as he stepped away from the ledge. His fright mounted as Macha’s arms slipped from about his neck, and he had to react in an instant to catch and cradle her.
“Baeg rón! Baeg rón (Little seal! Little seal)!” he cried.
Thackery came over to examine her.
She would not wake to shakes or names, and too much of her condition was obscured by filth. Perhaps Thackery could mend her, even though fleshbinding wasn’t his forte. He would try when he had more strength. At least her chest rose and fell, if a tad erratically. Apparently, this cursory assessment was good enough for Caenith, for the Wolf was staggering up the ledge.
“I can smell the day,” he grunted. “We must hurry. I doubt the Hungry will follow us into the light.”
Thackery rushed after his friend. He gasped as he saw the Wolf’s raw crimson back, the hide of a flayed man, yet he never considered a suggestion to slow on behalf of these wounds. For the Wolf was right: their danger had not ended. They were climbing higher, limping through shadows that had begun to ease to brown, when a cacophony rose from the abyss. A cauldron of something wicked had boiled over below, and the chamber shook with cold, steamy belches and a wailing that cut into their temples like a knife.
“We’ve woken it!” hollered Caenith. “We’ve caused too much noise! Too much light! Unchained the Long Nightmare! Run!”
Thackery ran.
From the ripping at his cape, he could only guess that a tempest chased them. He didn’t want to confront the stupefying horror that the wind was really the hateful breath of twenty thousand dead souls: the wrath of slaves free of their chains and flesh. Through clouds of sand and piles of stones they battled, as the cavern was steadily swallowed by whatever dreaded mouth was at their backs. A mouth it surely was, or an orgy of slavering orifices, for all the wailing that it did. Blind and deaf in the tumult, the unstoppable Wolf somehow hefted the two of them—while holding dear Macha—against the storm and toward a pinprick of light. Once, Thackery glanced back, and not then or evermore would his mind grasp the madness it saw: the deteriorating ridge, the billows of destruction, boulders flung to and fro like marbles. What riveted him most was the twisting maelstrom of vestigial limbs and gelatinous bodies; the gobbling darkness, wherein every stretched, irregular mouth inside the mess was making the same wretched KUUUHEEEE!
Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Page 49
