by Cathryn Hein
‘Sorry. I’m not much of a rock climber,’ she said, swiping dust from the seat of her pants and then looking at him.
He squeezed her shoulder. ‘It’s okay. You are very brave for coming with me.’
‘I couldn’t let you have all the fun now, could I?’
They left their packs at the base of the boulder and stepped towards the cave. He flicked on the torch and shone it into the entrance. She’d half expected bats but the roof was clear. The front of the opening was stone like the rest of the mound, a boulder forming a natural lintel.
He glanced at her and then moved forward with practised stealth, watchful, his eyes scanning the surrounds for danger. She slipped in behind him, her boots rustling through the leaves strewn at the entrance but then becoming almost silent as she stepped onto the layer of dust on the floor of the cave. It rose around her feet like a miniature storm, the particles so fine they stayed suspended, eerie in the torchlight, as though she was walking through a grey cloud.
That same sensation of creeping unease she’d experienced in the car, and again as they first surveyed the mound, inched up Olivia’s back and sprinkled goosebumps over her shoulders. She smiled as Raimund caught her rubbing her arms.
‘It’s a bit cooler in here,’ she said, hiding her disquiet.
His brows knitted slightly, as though he didn’t understand what she was talking about, but then nodded. ‘You’ll be okay once you become accustomed.’
Ducking his head, Raimund shone his torch across the walls, floor and ceiling of the low and broad passageway. There was enough room for the two of them to stand hunched over side by side, with an arm’s width to the walls on either side. Olivia took a step to stand next to him but was blocked by his outstretched arm.
‘Stay behind,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first.’
She didn’t argue. Raimund knew what he was doing, she didn’t.
They crept along the passage, the torch moving constantly, sliding over the shiny, slowly moistening walls and roof. The ground began to slope downwards, and as Raimund had predicted, the air had stabilised to a cool but pleasant temperature. The dust disappeared, giving way to slick rock, and Olivia was grateful for her sturdy boots as she tried to keep her balance on the slippery surface. She kept one hand on the wall, her fingers touching the damp stone, wondering what ancient secrets it had seen.
The curves and slopes of the passage soon left her mildly disoriented. She had no idea where they were in relation to the surface. There was no sun, no moss, no plants or flowers or trees to help her know. Only this stygian underworld whose rocks whispered eerily in the dark.
She estimated they had descended thirty or so metres when the passage split into two. Raimund halted at the fork, shining his torch over the walls and down the two passages. They both appeared identical.
‘Any ideas?’ he asked, looking at her over his shoulder.
She moved alongside him, frowning as she surveyed the rock. Taking her time, she examined the surface, moving further down the left-hand passage as she checked for any mark the Grey Knight might have left to indicate which way was the path to Durendal. Raimund followed with the torch, carrying out his own inspection. After a few metres, she retraced her steps and scrutinised the right-hand passage.
As she ran her hand over the rock above her head, a tingle of awareness began to whisper across her skin. The texture felt different. Not right somehow. Keeping her palm on the line she called to Raimund.
‘Shine it here.’
He raised the torch and she lifted her palm away. Carved into the rock, its edge dulled by water erosion and accumulated salts, was the symbol.
The Grey Knight had left them a sign.
Raimund didn’t hesitate. In an instant he was moving down the right-hand passage, his torch sweeping the walls, roof and floor, checking for danger.
Every now and then, high up on the wall, they would find another symbol carved into the rock. Some appeared fresh, the outline bright against the darker-stained rock, while others were barely visible, eroded by the dynamics of nature. Several times the passage twisted, turning sharply right or left, and Olivia had the feeling that this wasn’t natural, that the turns were man-made. Formed like the protective angled entrances to castles which were designed to prevent an enemy gaining a clear shot at the interior.
‘Do you think this is natural?’ she asked Raimund after yet another acute turn.
‘I don’t know. The turns seem too symmetrical but I cannot see how —’
Suddenly, the dark rushed in. Olivia reached out but Raimund was no longer standing tall in front of her. A grunt sounded, followed by a scuffle of boots scraping against stone. The torchlight swung wildly, bouncing off the roof and walls, then disappeared altogether before flashing upwards.
‘Raimund?’
She took a small step forward, her heart pounding, looking down to follow the erratic cast of the beam. As her eyes adjusted, she saw only his hand, his fingers clawed against the edge of a timber-and-dirt-covered pit.
A cold flood of dread drenched her. Whimpering, she crouched at the edge and peered over. Raimund dangled by one arm, the other held the torch. His feet scrabbled against the sheer wall of the pit, desperate for purchase.
His voice sounded authoritative, but she could hear the effort it took to talk. ‘Stay where you are, Olivia. Do not come any closer.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’ Quelling the panic running wild in her chest, she stared down, trying to figure out the best way to help. She dropped to one knee and stretched out her left arm, running her right over the rocky floor, looking for anchor.
‘Drop the torch and reach for me.’
Raimund’s head jerked up. Sweat had turned his forehead shiny. The cords of his neck stood out. His chest was heaving.
‘Get back!’
‘Drop the bloody torch and swing your other hand up!’
‘I cannot leave you in darkness.’
‘Then throw it to me!’
Raimund let out a grunt and the torch flew over Olivia’s head. It cracked against the cave floor, flickered and then returned to its steady glow. Quickly, she scrambled for it and then shone it back at Raimund. He had both hands on the ledge but still his feet could find no purchase.
He looked back, his teeth gritted, every muscle bulging. ‘Get back. The edge.’
As soon as he spoke the ground beneath his right hand crumbled. His grip faltered. His fingers dug in, but he succeeded in only further weakening the wall. In horror, Olivia saw his hold give way altogether, leaving him dangling by only his left arm.
‘Give me your hand.’
‘No. Too heavy.’
Her panic returned, and this time, it refused to leave, churning in her stomach like fetid sewerage. Crawling closer, her sobs echoing off walls that felt as though they were about to fall in on her, she reached out her arm.
‘Please. Give me your hand.’
‘You will fall.’
‘Please, Raimund.’ It was almost a scream.
Abruptly, he ceased trying to gain a foothold. He stared down into the black pit and then turned sad eyes to her.
‘Thank you, Doctor Walker. For all you have done.’
She blinked at the tears scalding her eyes. ‘No. No. You’re not doing this. I won’t let you.’
He looked down again, then up and smiled—a heroic, heart-wrenching smile of pure feeling that sliced through her soul like a razor blade.
‘Le temps est venu,’ he whispered. The time has come.
‘No!’
Without thinking, she lunged forward, flat on her stomach and as close to the pit edge as she could manage without tipping in. She reached out with both arms and caught the shoulder straps of his webbing yoke in her fingers, then dug them under the harness until they were gripped tight in her palms. His eyes were wide with fear, but she had none. Only desperation to save him.
‘Let go!’
‘Go to hell!’
She wriggled backwards
, the toes of her boots dug hard in the ground, and hauled on the straps. The muscles in her forearms and shoulders protested, but she kept her grip. At first he remained a dead weight, yelling at her to release him. Terror for her made his voice crack. She ignored him, her mind on a test of strength she couldn’t fail.
‘I’m not letting go, Raimund. Either you help, or I fall with you. The choice is yours.’
The orders stopped. His right arm swung up and clawed at the edge. His body jerked as he searched for anchor on the pit’s wall. Olivia’s elbows grated against the cave floor as she slipped forward. She panted and sobbed with the strain but her hold didn’t falter. She would never let him go. She would not let Durendal claim another victim. She would not lose the man she loved to a legend that should have died a thousand years ago.
Summoning everything she had, every scrap of strength she possessed, she heaved on the straps. An animal roar filled the chamber. She didn’t know if it was from her or Raimund and nor did she care because as she dragged she saw his head begin to rise. His left elbow dug into the ground, then his right. His chest rose and slapped against the cave floor. His gasps and grunts sounded beautiful.
He crawled forward, coughing and laughing, his eyes glittering. Olivia rolled onto her back, her chest rising and falling like bellows, her arms aching from strain. A lightly torn muscle stabbed pain into her right shoulder, but all she could do was laugh and pant and gasp with him.
He pulled himself up and leaned over her, his face close to hers. The brush of his breath against her skin felt magical.
‘Why do you never obey orders? You could have killed yourself.’
The laughs stopped. All at once she wanted to cry, overwhelmed by the terrifying realisation of how close she had come to losing him. She closed her eyes. Hot tears seeped from beneath the lids.
‘You were going to leave me.’
He stroked his knuckles over her cheek. ‘I did not want to put you in danger.’
She opened her eyes. ‘You know I could never have let you fall.’
‘And I could never have allowed you to suffer the same tragedy.’ His mouth pressed against hers. ‘Thank you, Olivia. For saving me.’
And as he kissed and cradled her, his hold close and almost trembling in its fierceness, she wondered if there could be more to his words. That she had saved him not just from the pit, but at last from himself.
When calm had settled over them, he helped her to her feet and then retrieved the torch. A crack curved across the lens but it was otherwise undamaged. Taking care to keep a safe distance, he examined the edges of the pit where he had broken through the decayed timber cover. He kept an arm held out, preventing Olivia from coming any closer.
The two main thick timber struts were still in place, their ends slotted into two custom-dug grooves. Over them, rotten and loose, were the remains of the thinner panels that had once comprised the lid. The vaguely ovoid pit stretched to almost either side of the cave, with only half a metre between it and the wall at its widest point. Past the far side, the passage continued into blackness.
He delved into a pouch on his webbing and pulled out what looked like a small plastic stick. He pressed one end against his leg. The stick made a sound like cracking glass, then miraculously began to emit a fluorescent-green glow. He gave the stick a quick shake. The glow brightened, illuminating the cave with phantasmic incandescence.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, reaching for it.
His hand pressed against her chest. ‘Please, Olivia. Stay back.’ He moved down the tunnel and handed the glowstick to her. ‘This is a Cyalume stick. The tube contains two chemicals held in separate capsules. When you break the capsules, they blend and form a light-emitting chemical.’
She stared at it in amazement. No heat came from the stick, just that steady greenish light. ‘How long do they last for?’
‘This one will emit light for up to twelve hours. There are others which do not last as long or emit a higher-intensity light.’
She handed it back to him. ‘You’re going to throw it in the pit, aren’t you?’
He nodded.
‘Well?’ she said, grinning at him. ‘What are you waiting for?’
He tossed her an exasperated look, then advanced warily towards the pit perimeter, torch in one hand, Cyalume stick in the other. With another glance at her, he dropped the stick over the edge. Disobeying his order to stay back, Olivia crept forward.
As it fell, the green light cast its strange glow over sheer walls. There were no footholds she could see, only the steep, unscaleable edges of a fathomless well.
‘It’s so deep,’ she whispered.
‘Yes.’
She watched mesmerised as the stick tumbled, panting shallowly, her heart thudding, waiting for the moment when she would finally see the object that had held her entranced since childhood.
Suddenly, the glow stopped moving. The light remained steady, but the pit was so deep that despite the Cyalume stick Olivia found it impossible to see what lay at the bottom. She squinted, her eyes straining in the green-tinged gloom, but nothing materialised, only amorphous shadows.
A slab of disappointment sat lumpen in her stomach. In her fantasies, she had hoped for something spectacular, something befitting a legend. Not this austere, sunken grave.
Assuming this was where Durendal lay.
Unable to look any longer, her fatigued eyes aching, she raised her head to stare unseeing at the wall, fighting another pathetic urge to cry. The lack of evidence left her deflated. The pit could simply be a booby trap, or perhaps just the hole into which the Honourables had thrown King Louis’ traitors. She needed a sign, something from the Grey Knight to make her believe that this was where Durendal had been hidden for so long.
She blinked, bringing her vision back into focus. From the shadows, her subconscious had registered something her eyes could not. She frowned at the wall above the pit. Something about it seemed unnatural.
Excitement fizzed through her veins, resuscitating her flagging hope. She shook Raimund’s arm and pointed. She wanted to bounce up and down but was too afraid of the pit’s crumbling edges.
‘Look!’
Raimund shifted the torch beam. He tracked it over the surface, moving slowly from the near to the far side, and back again before tracing it carefully over the image Olivia’s mind had picked out. Carved huge over the wall, so big it had at first appeared as fissures and water lines in the rock, was the symbol.
‘This is it. This is really it, Raimund,’ said Olivia, taking another step towards the hole that had almost claimed Raimund’s life. ‘Durendal is down there. The Grey Knight hid it in this pit. It’s probably the same place the Honourables hid the bodies of the traitors they killed.’
She remembered the inscription that had left her so baffled. Take the Honourables’ path but beware. What you seek is hidden in eternal night. Underground, just as the inscription intimated. In a place where the sun would never rise.
They really had found it.
Forgetting the danger, she took another step closer. In an instant she was dragged backwards. Raimund glared at her, his hand tight on her sore shoulder.
‘I don’t care if it’s there or not. You are to stay behind me. Understand?’
But she was too ecstatic to be cowed. Grinning, she clicked her heels and saluted. ‘Yes, Captain.’
‘This is not funny.’
‘I know, but oh, God.’ She clutched at his face. ‘We did it, Raimund. We found the resting place of Durendal!’
He didn’t appear to share her enthusiasm. He released her shoulder and pulled his head from her hands then stared at the pit. ‘Yes. And now our journey is almost at an end.’
‘It’s okay.’ She took his hand, needing to let him know that she understood.
‘Is it?’ He turned to look at her. ‘This is your dream.’
She shook her head. ‘No, Raimund. You are.’
He stared at her as if he wanted to believe her words bu
t couldn’t.
‘It’s true. I love you. You’re all that matters.’
His eyes closed for a brief moment. ‘I don’t deserve you.’
‘Yes, you do.’ Smiling, she pulled him towards her. ‘I saved your life, remember? That means you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not.’
His arms folded around her, holding her pressed against his chest.
‘You should add “stubborn” to your list of charms.’
‘Hang around and I’ll show you even more.’
The comment earned her a chuckle but nothing further. She wasn’t sure what she’d hoped for after she’d revealed her feelings, but in that moment the softness of his laugh, the feel of his lips against her hair, seemed enough.
‘Come,’ he said, releasing her. ‘We cannot descend into the pit without proper equipment. We’ll return to Rognes.’
‘And Durendal?’
‘It has lain here for a very long time. I’m sure it will survive one more day.’ He pressed his hand against her back, steering her down the passage.
The return leg seemed to take only a quarter of the time to negotiate compared to their descent. This time, Raimund let her walk alongside him, only letting go of her hand whenever the path became too narrow.
Twenty metres from the entrance, the torch dimmed. By the time they reached the cavity, the torch battery had failed, but there was enough light from the gap in the rocks for them to see that their backpacks were where they left them. Raimund lifted Olivia’s onto her shoulders and then gave her a hoist up to the ledge.
Inelegantly but effectively, she scrambled through the hole and balanced on the rock, waiting for Raimund. The sun felt brilliant and hot on her skin, the landscape more vibrant than it had ever appeared. To the south, the sky was still tarnished with the rusty colour of African sand, but to Olivia, it no longer held any menace. Dust storm or not, finding Durendal had made the day glorious.
She stepped out of the way to make room for him. His eyes appeared almost milk-chocolate brown in the daylight, lightened by the bright sun, and she suspected, a combination of happiness and relief. He smiled up at her and then climbed through the hole and stood beside her.
