She snapped her head around to see what he was talking about. Iron screeched as a swollen maroon claw closed around the bars dividing the first and second prison cell. Something huge and red was slowly pulling itself out of prison floor, the stone groaning and splintering around it.
Jendara turned back to the prison door and drew a deep breath.
“Jendara!” Tam shouted, one arm supporting Glayn as he waded desperately toward her. “Hurry!” The others were right behind him.
She plunged under the water, sliding her way down to the lock. With cold, stiff fingers, she slipped her pick inside. Grit ground inside the mechanism, and she hoped the ancestors heard her silent prayers not to let it jam.
The lock gave a little jerk and loosened. She pried at it. The corrosion held it tight. Her lungs burned: she’d forgotten to overbreathe. Cursing, Jendara pulled herself to the surface.
“Is it open?” Zuna shouted.
“Where’s the creature?” Jendara gasped.
“Behind us!” Boruc said. “Tell me that lock’s undone!”
“I can’t get the lock off the bolt,” Jendara explained. “Maybe if we shake the gate, it’ll break down some of the corrosion.”
“Okay—” Vorrin began.
Then something yanked him backward.
“Vorrin!” Jendara screamed. The water roiled behind her, foam obscuring man and beast.
She shoved past Tam. The pick fell into the water. She didn’t give a damn. “Vorrin!
Jendara plunged beneath the surface. Silt and debris had turned the water to something like stew. She couldn’t see a thing. The water even sounded like chaos. Something leathery struck her on the temple and she fought to get her feet back under her, feeling blindly around as she came out of the water to gasp for air.
Her hand closed on the leathery thing—Vorrin’s boot, she knew its texture by heart—and she yanked hard. His motionless body collided with hers. “Help me!” she shouted.
Zuna reached for Vorrin and pulled him back toward the gate even as the creature drew itself up out of the water. Its red-and-purple mottled body hulked over Jendara, the shape of a crab but far larger—practically the size of an ogre. Its claw snapped shut just inches from Jendara’s face. Its other forelimb sported a warped and twisted hand, gripping a stone knife.
A tremendous clang sounded behind her.
“Jendara! We got it open!”
“I’ll close it behind me,” she called. The creature’s evil black eyes sparkled at her. She didn’t stand a chance of fighting this thing in the water.
It lunged at her with its primitive blade. She caught the blow on the edge of her axe and the steel rang out. Its claw shot out and she ducked under the blow. Inside its defenses, she swung her axe and the creature screeched in pain as the blade bit into its misshapen hand.
She resisted a sudden urge to laugh. This was what she was made for—fighting her enemies face to face, not swimming around like a frightened little fish. She scored a crunching blow higher up on its arm.
“We’re out!”
Beneath the water, the creature lashed out with one of its sturdy back legs, sweeping Jendara’s feet out from under her. She went down, nearly inhaling water. In a fair fight, she could kill this thing, but not like this. She had to retreat. She got her footing and backed away.
She filled the air with blows as she made her way toward the doorway, chopping at the creature’s claw as it snapped at her again and again. She wished she could risk drawing her sword, but didn’t dare waste time wrestling it from the soaked leather of her scabbard. She felt behind her for the gate and nearly shouted out when her fingers hit it.
“Hurry!” Boruc shouted.
She threw herself backward. Boruc yanked on the gate just as the crab-thing’s claw clamped shut around her ankle. The lantern tied to the gate clanged and clattered as their bodies shook the bars, and shadows flickered wildly.
“It’s got me,” Jendara grunted. The tough leather of her boot had kept the claw from biting into the flesh of her ankle, but now the gate ground into her leg, too. Hands closed on her shoulders, pulling her as if she were the rope in a vicious game of tug-of-war.
There wasn’t enough room to swing her axe. She struck out with her free foot, but the creature hardly noticed. Then Boruc threw himself across her, his dagger driving down into the claw with a nasty crunch. The creature shrieked in pain and surprise.
Jendara slammed the gate shut behind her and dropped to fumble in the mud below for a second. The bolt. The crab-thing lashed out with its injured claw, the sharp tip of its pincer slashing across her forearm just as she slammed the bolt home.
She yanked her arm away. Blood ran from the wound, although it was shallow. She could still move her fingers. They closed on a piece of ancient skeleton.
Gasping for air, she came up to the surface. The beast threw itself at the gate. The bolt held, but she wasn’t sure if the creature was smart enough to figure out how to open it, and she didn’t have a way to reattach the padlock. She drove the long bone in her hand into the door’s main lock. By the ancestors, she hoped that would hold.
Boruc grabbed her arm. “Let’s go!”
“The lantern!”
“Forget it!” He yanked her up the stairs.
The crab-thing threw itself at the gate again. Glass shattered as it crushed the lantern with its great mass, and the stairway went dark. Jendara stumbled on an uneven riser but caught herself before she fell.
The creature banged against the steel grate, again and again, the ugly clanging echoing all the way up to the next level.
10
ROCKFALL
The stairs only went up a short distance before they paused at a broad landing. Cutting up to the right, another flight of stairs ran into the darkness. The group had paused to wait to for Jendara and Boruc.
“Everyone all right?” she asked.
Tam shook his head. “Vorrin’s bleeding bad.”
“M’fine,” Vorrin mumbled.
Down below, the giant crab creature rattled the grate again. Jendara tightened her lips. “Tam, try to put pressure on his wound. Let’s put another flight of stairs between us and that son of a bitch.”
Zuna led them up the next flight of stairs. Jendara put an arm around Vorrin’s waist. This close, she could hear the hiss of his breath through teeth clenched against pain. Below them, the crab-thing clanged louder. Jendara found herself repeating the same words over and over under her breath: Please let the lock hold. Please let Vorrin be okay. Please let the lock hold. Please let Vorrin be okay …
“That’s not very comforting,” Vorrin said weakly.
“You,” Jendara mock-growled. She stopped whispering and took more of his weight on her arm.
They stumbled out into the next hallway. This one was wide, a definite street instead of a corridor. Shells crunched under Jendara’s boots as she helped Tam ease Vorrin onto the floor.
Glayn knelt beside Vorrin. “Take off your shirt.”
Jendara helped him get the sodden thing off. The blood came from a gash running down his arm—a long one, and deep. Boruc lit his lantern and held it close enough to show the shining mass of exposed meat.
“Oh, that’s ugly.” Glayn took off his pack and rummaged a moment until he found needle and thread. “Going to have to sew you up, Cap.” He hesitated a moment and then, like a man ever ready to patch sails, brought out his leather thimble.
“That ain’t the worst of it,” Boruc said in a grim voice. “Look at this shoulder.”
Jendara moved around to take a look at the second wound. It didn’t bleed. Maybe it wouldn’t have looked so bad if it had. Sullen purple welts showed on both the front and back side of the shoulder, deepening into swollen puncture wounds big enough for Jendara to fit a finger or two into. “Oh, shit.”
“It bit hard there.” Vorrin gave a pained grunt as Glayn’s needle pierced his skin.
“Sorry, Cap. You’ve got tough hide,” the gnome apologized.
>
“Good thing, too,” Vorrin managed.
Jendara winked at him. “At least it’s just your left arm.”
He managed a smile. “Nothing I use, right?”
“Jendara? If you look in my pack, there’s a little roll of flannel in the bottom. Could you get it for me?” Glayn asked. “Probably wet,” he added in a grumble.
The roll of flannel was indeed damp, like everything else inside. As Jendara closed up the pack’s top, she gave the group a careful looking-over. Every one of them was soaked through. Vorrin had turned a shade of pale closer to gray, and his teeth chattered, as did Yerka’s. Kran leaned casually against the wall as if he were as comfortable here as in their own cottage, but as Jendara turned back to Vorrin, she caught a glimpse of him rubbing his arms. She had nothing to warm or dry him. They had to get back to the Milady soon. They’d start risking hypothermia if they didn’t get out of the cold and wet.
She handed the roll of flannel to Glayn, who had finished his stitching. He pulled a small blue bottle out of the fabric. Jendara plucked it from his fingers. “Is that what I think it is?”
He nodded. “Picked it up in Halgrim at an exorbitant price, along with a few I stowed back on the ship. I figured you can never be too careful.” He took back the bottle, cracked the wax seal, and held it out to Vorrin. “Drink up.”
Vorrin eyed the bottle. “Is that brandy?”
“Healing potion,” Jendara growled. “So drink it.”
He reached for the bottle and raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said healing potions were for helpless assholes.”
“Hey, I never said ‘helpless.’”
He knocked back the bottle and shuddered as the potion burned down his gullet.
Boruc settled down beside them, notebook in hand. “I think this is the second level.” He pointed at the map he’d drawn. “We dropped down when we went into the prisons. That big landing must have led into the third level, the one just above the sewer tunnels. The next flight of stairs took us up here. I’m not sure how far south we’ve come, though. With a little luck, we might be at the halfway point.”
Jendara’s forehead wrinkled as she thought about his words. “So if we can find a staircase up, we’ll probably be in one of the streets intersecting the boulevard?”
He nodded. “I hope.”
She tossed Vorrin his shirt. “Then let’s go.”
Boruc took the lead, and Jendara walked beside Vorrin again, Zuna and Kran just in front of her. Even the dog walked like it was tired.
Her mind wandered back to that prison. That creature and its larder had managed to stay inside the island when it rose to the surface, as had that seaweed monster that had lured Vorrin and Glayn away. How many other creatures had managed to find a bolt-hole while the sea sluiced out of the island’s tunnels? She felt naked, walking down this hallway with Vorrin injured and two noncombatants in her party. There were so many people to protect and not enough of her to go around.
When Zuna stopped, Jendara nearly walked into her back.
“What’s wrong?”
Boruc turned to face them. “Look ahead. This tunnel’s collapsed.”
Zuna put her hands on her hips. “We’re at an intersection, right? Can we take the hallway to right? There’s some rock blocking the way, but it looks like spillover from the cave-in.”
Boruc frowned. “We can’t be sure of that.”
“Let me check,” Zuna said. She turned up her lantern and began scrambling over the rocks until she was near the top of the blockage. She leaned precariously over a boulder. “Oh yeah, it’s totally clear past this point.”
“Then we try it,” Jendara said. She felt tremendously tired. Vorrin was hurt, Sarni was missing, they were all soaked through and running out of lantern oil, and now the island itself seemed eager to turn them around and trap them. She’d rather deal with an entire pack of ulat-kini than feel lost.
“Then start shifting.” Boruc hoisted a boulder and began trucking it to the far side of the tunnel.
“Don’t block off the stairs,” Jendara warned. “Try to pile it up next to the walls.”
Zuna sat the lantern on the floor and hoisted a big rock. Jendara grabbed her own boulder and caught up with her. “Nice work.”
Zuna gave her a sideways glance. “Thanks.”
“This is going to take a long time,” Jendara said. She hunkered down to grab a chunk of rock. Zuna just grunted and turned away.
Jendara shook her head. Zuna needed to toughen up if she was going to handle adventuring. She could be angry if she wanted to, but it didn’t change the fact that her stupid hair had given them away at that ulat-kini camp. Jendara moved to the heap of rubble. They didn’t have time to coddle people’s feelings out in the field.
Then Glayn began to sing, not loudly, and not one of his usual work songs. There was no sound of the sea or raucous chorus for drinking. But somehow how his voice evoked the sensation of gentle breezes stirring the trees, the soft light of spring dancing on wildflowers.
“Yer a real nice singer,” Yerka told the gnome. “I almost feel warmer.”
The gnome beamed at her and started another tune. Everyone looked more cheerful as the music continued—even Zuna.
A few songs later, Boruc decided the side tunnel was clear enough to enter. The group huddled around Kran’s lantern, waiting in silence as Boruc disappeared to explore. Without comment, Tam lit the lantern he’d kept in reserve.
The sound of Boruc’s footfalls brought them all to their feet. “Well?” Vorrin asked.
“Looks clear enough,” Boruc announced. “There are a few rocks down the hall, but nothing blocking the way.” He patted the tunnel wall. “It’s sturdier than it looks.”
A sudden rumbling made Jendara leap forward, but she was too late. Rocks tumbled down from above, crashing as they closed off the tunnel a second time.
“Boruc!”
Dust filled the air. Coughing, blinded, she stumbled forward. Someone grabbed onto her.
“Give it a second to settle, Dara,” Vorrin warned. A fist-sized hunk of rock tumbled out of the wall of rubble ahead of her—if Vorrin hadn’t pulled her backward, she would have been brained.
Everything went quiet, except for a tiny patter of water coming down from the ceiling. Jendara had to force herself to breathe again.
“Boruc!” she shouted.
“I’m okay!” His voice was muffled, but sounded normal enough. “There’s—” He had to stop to cough.
Jendara reached for Kran’s lantern and studied the fall. She could see open space beyond. “Looks like the original cave-in just dropped another load of rock.” She raised her voice. “Boruc, can you see anything? Is your tunnel still clear?”
He was quiet a moment. “Maybe.” She could hear a little grunt. “I can’t see too good. Rocks got me pinned right up against this wall. Lantern’s all right, though!”
Jendara rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous man. Worried about his lantern at a time like this.” She turned back to the others. “It looks clear to me, so I guess we keep hauling rocks. But be careful. Real damn careful.”
They worked slowly, Jendara stopping them now and then to check on Boruc. His voice sounded more strained each time he answered. She hoped like hell they weren’t going to get him crushed. There was no way to tell if moving a rock on this side of the heap might cause a rock on Boruc’s to fall; it was like building a house of cards with her eyes closed and a crossbow bolt pressed to her temple. She tasted blood and knew she was biting her lip.
“This big stone is holding up a lot of loose bits,” Tam pointed out. “If I can push it out of the way, we might be able to bring down half of the pile.”
She studied the rock. He had a point. The rock looked smooth enough to pivot, and pushing on the right-hand side of the massive slab might make the left ease out enough to drop a massive load of gravel. The hole it could make would certainly be big enough for someone to climb through.
“Let’s try it. But slow, r
ight?”
He nodded and set his shoulder to the stone. “I’m pushing slowly.”
Boruc cried out.
“Are you all right?”
“Something started pushing into my side. Scared me.”
Jendara and Tam exchanged glances. Boruc had to be just on the other side of that stone. They were closer than she’d thought.
“Boruc, can you move away from that stone?”
“No.” His voice was small. “It’s hard to breathe,” he admitted.
“Okay.” She closed her eyes and thought for a second. “Okay, I have an idea. I hope it doesn’t get anyone killed. Tam, give me a hand up.”
Vorrin stepped in front of her. “What are you going to do?”
“We’re almost through, right?” She pointed up at gravel Tam had hoped they could move. “I’m going to clear out some of those little rocks, squeeze through the wall, and see if I can get Boruc out of the way so you and Tam finish moving this big rock.”
“But when you come out the other side, you’ll be twelve feet up in the air.”
“It’ll be a jump,” she agreed.
“You could bring down half the wall on your head.”
“I don’t think I will,” she argued. She put her hands on his shoulders. “And if I do, I know you’ll dig me out.”
He sighed. “I don’t like this.”
“I know, but it’s the best plan we’ve got right now. We need another set of hands on that far side, and I’m our best bet.” She turned to Tam. “Can I climb up on your shoulders?”
He knelt and up she went. She tossed down a few handfuls of gravel before selecting a stone the size of her head. Her boots wobbled on Tam’s shoulders as she worked it out. She could see through the wall now, although the hole she’d made was barely large enough for a child.
Well, it would get bigger as she forced herself through it. She grabbed onto the wall of rubble and pulled herself forward.
Everything shifted as she slid down the tumbling slope. She thought she’d catch herself on something, but she just slid down, down, rocks tumbling and crashing all around her. She brought her arms up to protect her face and felt her boots catch on a ridge of rock. She hung for a second like a fish on a line. A rock hit her scalp, cut a gouge, and then spun off into the darkness.
Starspawn Page 11
