He hated to give it.
“On your feet,” he snapped, assuming the tone of command. “Assemble single-file. Injured in the middle. We are pursuing the cultists. City Sergeant!”
The grizzled, green-tabarded guard that headed these city troops stood and crushed his cheroot under his boot. “Sir,” he said unenthusiastically.
“You and your men follow at our heels. Leave the dead, and set the injured to watch the horses. Reinforcements will arrive shortly to hold this area.”
“Yes sir.”
He scanned their faces once more, wondering who else he would lose on this nasty errand. But it did not matter. They all belonged to the Emperor, to be elevated or destroyed as he chose.
“Form up and follow me.”
*****
—the river embankment, his heels scudding through gravel, sliding, stumbling, running for the water that shone with reflected moons, while behind him, swift footsteps—
Cob's eyes snapped open but he was running still: pelting down a black rustling corridor with a hand gripped tightly around his wrist. The hand’s owner tugged him onward, her braids jostling against her shoulders with every lunging step. It was pitch dark but somehow he could see her anyway, in supernatural clarity. Every strand of hair, every fleck of sweat, every mistake in the weave of the back of her blouse.
He shook himself and the clarity faded. All went dark.
Then the stars came. Thousands of them, bursting behind his eyes in a glory of pain. He did not feel the hand lose his wrist, or the ground rise up to catch him.
For a time, there was no thought, only the writhing in his chest like a great snake of flame and the gargle of his failed attempts at breath. Eventually, through the fire, he sensed the hand patting his cheek and felt that the floor was not quite solid but constantly shifting, constantly rustling against his ear as if trying to speak. Whatever message it had, he could not decipher.
He dragged in a long, shaky gasp of air. The fire focused itself in his arm, his stomach, his head. His head felt the worst, as if someone had driven steel climbing spikes into his skull an inch above each eyebrow. Red and white stars spangled the corners of his vision, and he could barely open his eyes—not that it seemed to matter, because the corridor was still black.
“You alive in there?” said his guide. She sounded distorted, as if speaking through water.
Lark, he told himself. Her name’s Lark.
“M’all right,” he mumbled, but the act of speaking shot nauseating pain through him. He fumbled at his forehead. The other wounds, whatever they were, he could bear them. But if he had cracked his skull…
His fingers found unmarred skin. No injury, only the horrible pressure of the vise.
“C’mon, gotta get you out of here,” Lark said, and he felt her arm slip under him. She heaved him up and he tried to help, though it made the vise clamp down so bad he thought he would pass out. Then he was on his feet again, sickened but stable.
The dark rustling was everywhere. He felt its tiny fingers on his back.
“Walk slow if you have to, but walk,” said Lark, and tugged his arm again. With effort, he went. Every step added to the dance of stars behind his eyes, but slowly he fell into a rhythm. The vise receded to an ache and the fire in his arm and belly subsided. He touched his stomach and felt sticky warmth saturating his tunic, but no wound. The fabric was not even torn.
Someone else’s blood, he told himself. “Where are we?”
“Nowhere. That’s why we have to move. They can’t keep it open very long.”
“Who?”
“The shadowbloods. This isn’t a path; we couldn’t take you on that. But it’s the next best thing.”
Cob nodded in the darkness. The motion made him lightheaded but he kept his feet. That sensation of fingers still roamed his back, crawling along his shoulders and tickling his nape above the collar of his tunic. Patting at his scalp through his rough-cut hair. When his pace flagged, he felt them pushing him onward, always whispering.
Were he not so exhausted, he might have been afraid.
Eventually the darkness ahead began to thin. He saw Lark in silhouette, then clearly as an opening loomed ahead of them—a chamber illuminated by a faint greenish glow. She sped up and he stumbled into a jog, wincing as each step shot a fiery branch across his vision.
The whispers swelled until, right at the threshold, those tiny hands suddenly gripped him from scalp to heels. Startled, Cob planted his feet on the hissing path and felt their grip flex like a composite muscle, ready to yank him back screaming into the dark.
But Lark had his arm in both hands and pulled, her teeth bared whitely against her dark skin, her boots braced on the edge of the doorway, and the blackness peeled from him with a noise like tearing parchment. He stumbled forward and nearly fell over her, but she was ready for it and moved with him. His feet touched green-lit ground.
The whispering ceased.
“Almost too late,” she said as she stepped back, still holding onto his arms but looking past him. Her face scrunched up in thought. “Strange, it didn’t try very hard…”
“Y’don’t call that tryin’ hard?” Cob said, panting. He felt like he had fallen onto a colony of stinging ants. He shook free of her hands and pushed up his sleeve, not surprised to see dozens of marks on the back of his upper arm as if from small pinching fingers.
Lark planted her hands on her hips. “If they were trying hard, it would’ve taken ten of us to pull you out, if we didn’t get yanked in with you. I’m surprised it didn’t do that sooner. We were in there too long.”
Cob looked over his shoulder to where they had exited, and stared. It was a wall. No door, just smooth grey wall.
“I… I don’t think I wanna know,” he said, and glanced around the room. They had emerged into an odd chamber, roughly circular, with irregular protrusions jutting from the walls. Glass spheres embedded in the walls provided light via their swirling greenish-gold contents, casting strong shadows in the lee of those protrusions. A few Shadow Folk watched Cob and Lark from a distance, their faces weary, but aside from them, the room was empty. A single archway led out.
“Sure you do,” Lark said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Just like I’m burning to ask about you. But c’mon, we shouldn’t linger. Still got some distance to cover.”
“I jus’… I don’t…”
“Just ask. Say ‘where are we?’”
Cob sighed heavily. His skull was down to a dull throb and the pinches just ached a little, but he was tired—so tired he thought he could curl up and fall asleep right here, whispering-things or not.
Looking exasperated, Lark grabbed him by the arm and towed him toward the arch. “’Where we are’ is in the goblin depths,” she said. “They’ve made safe-rooms for us so we don’t have to travel all the way to Oretcht’ke to escape. What we were on is called an eiyenbridge. They go direct from shadow to shadow. It just takes some work.”
Beyond the chamber was a corridor, its low ceiling striped down the center with an endless row of metal rungs. Green-glowing spheres studded the walls and the occasional hole opened in the ceiling. They looked big enough for Cob’s head but not his shoulders. He glanced up one and saw it extend away into darkness, another row of rungs running up the inside.
“We’re deep underground,” she continued as they followed the curve and slight slope of the corridor. “And I mean deep. The goblins live down here. They’ve got whole cities in the caverns. I’m not sure how Bahlaer doesn’t just fall in on them, but they know what they’re doing, I guess.”
“Thought you were friends with ‘em,” Cob mumbled. Something about her chatter struck him as strange--too quick, too automatic, like a wall of noise--but he could not focus.
“I know their tongue, I know their diplomats and the ones they’ve assigned to work with us. But nobody’s allowed in their cities. Completely off-limits. And we don’t ask about their work anymore, we just let them do what they think is best.”
Diplomats, Cob thought dazedly. Monster diplomats.
“They do all this by themselves,” Lark continued, gesturing around. “Tunnels, vents, lights. They have their own guards too—weird things. You ever heard of metal elementals?”
Cob stumbled, then stopped in his tracks. Lark took a few more steps then looked back in puzzlement.
“Metal elementals,” he repeated slowly, aware of the sudden sweat that had sprung up on his brow.
“Yeah. What--?”
“Livin’ metal that shapes itself into people?”
“You know them?”
He knew them. They were another echo from his mountainous childhood. Kerrindryr was known for several things—its marble quarries, its goats, its stubborn high-country populace and weak-willed, money-grubbing low-countrymen—but it was legendary for its nonhumans.
The Muriae, the Silver Ones. A race of warriors, tall, graceful and deadly, formed entirely of metal. Long ago they had withdrawn into their stone cities, and by Imperial order they had been declared a myth, but all children of Kerrindryr knew of them. The High Country cults worshiped them.
“There’s some here? Wi’ the goblins?”
“Yeah,” Lark said, her dark brows crinkled. “Something wrong?”
“No.” He could not tell her about the sudden flood of nostalgia and hate. The Muriae had not come to his father’s aid, nor to anyone's. Kerrindryr was Imperial now because the Muriae were dead in their tomb cities.
If they weren’t, they should be.
“It’s fine, go on,” he said, and let himself be towed again. Immediately she picked up the thread of her chatter, but he tuned it out. He did not want to know about the Darkness or the Shadow Cult or whatever Oretcht’ke was. He just wanted to climb back to the surface, have a nap, and move on.
Darilan. Darilan was in the tavern.
He blinked. That was right--he had no recollection of arriving here. One moment Darilan was in his face and the next he had been running through the darkness, covered in blood.
There was…an ocean. Wreckage. Trees and rocks in the water…
No. Just my imagination. Some weird sort of dream.
“What happened in the tavern?” he said through the stream of Lark’s monologue.
She fell silent, for a moment just pulling him along. Then she glanced back, her expression drawn tight. “You don’t know?”
“I was in the booth, an’ now I’m here.”
Her eyes widened. “Shadow’s Heart, are you serious? You don’t remember any of it?”
“No. I saw— I saw—" My friend. "I dunno what I saw. What happened?"
So she told him.
Cob yanked his hand from hers after the first mention of black armor, but he did not stop walking. She dropped back beside him, watching his face, but he kept his eyes on the path as she described the fight: Darilan’s blade, Darilan’s injuries, his own. The mages, the roar. By the time she reached the end, he was shaking his head methodically as if he could dislodge everything he had just heard.
“Didn’t happen,” he muttered.
“It did,” she said, and prodded him in the side. “Look, that’s all your blood. You beat down soldiers and blew up a mage.”
“Didn’t happen.”
“All right, you stubborn ass, what did happen?”
“There was a fight. You dragged me out. That’s all. Someone else bled on me.”
“Look, I know you’re an Imperialist but there’s—“
“Shut up.”
“—obviously something going on inside you somehow and—“
“Shut up!”
“—it’s a lot more Dark than us!”
He rounded on her and she leapt back, bringing her hands up defensively. Her expression was strange. Frustration, fear, pity.
His hands fisted at his sides but he clenched his teeth and forced himself to stay still, though his shoulders shook with the effort of restraint. He hated everything suddenly. This strange place, the city, the Empire, himself, and whatever it was that lurked inside him. He knew she was right--had known it for too long--but saying it was more than he could stand.
After a moment in tableau, she lowered her hands slightly, her fine brows drawn down and her face tense. “All right, we won’t talk about that, though you’re passing up a great opportunity to work with us. I mean, the ability to rend magic-- But no. We’ll just go topside and find Jasper and you can be on your way.”
Cob let out the breath he had been holding. It did not diminish the miserable anger or the headache, but he knew he should behave. “All right,” he mumbled, and nodded for her to lead.
She slipped ahead with a last wary look at him, and they started moving again. Exhaustion weighed on him. Soon he was trailing behind and wondering just how far down they had to be to have walked this far. The shadowbloods from the chamber had not followed them up, and no other footsteps echoed along the spiraling passage. They were alone underground.
After some time, Lark said, “We’ll pass the windows soon. Don’t go climbing out or anything.”
“We’re at the surface?”
“No. Not yet.”
Cob frowned and hustled to catch up. Getting out of here would do great things for his mood, but her comment puzzled him. “Who puts a pikin’ window underground?”
“Goblins.”
“Are they stupid?”
“Coming from an Imperial—“
“Stop callin’ me that.”
“Now you’re denying it?”
“If you’re gonna keep callin’ me that, I’m gonna call you a cultist.”
“It’s Kheri if that’s all your little mind can handle. Imperial.”
“Cultist cultist cultist—“
“You know, you’re like a little boy.”
“—cultist cultist cultist cul—“
He stopped abruptly as Lark planted herself in front of a huge irregular gap in the wall of the curving passageway. The ‘window’. The mossy light from the spheres did nothing to dispel the blackness beyond.
“Well, come on,” she said, challenging him with a look. “Come over and tell me how stupid goblins are.”
Cob drifted over warily, but that wariness dispersed at his first glimpse of the lights below. He moved to the edge and peered down, fascinated.
The window at which they stood hung near the top of a massive subterranean cavern, its ceiling an inverted forest of stalactites and its floor glittering with water and wet stone. And structures. Glowing domes carpeted the ground like soap bubbles on black velvet, in all sizes and hues; from this distance Cob could not tell if the glow came from the domes themselves or from their contents. Tiny lights zigzagged up the larger stalactites as if illuminating paths, and against the glow he dimly saw the silhouettes of bridges and hanging ladders, ropes and chains and dangling cages. Small shapes moved among them, some with pinspot lanterns and some only visible when they passed before a light.
Poking his head through the gap, Cob caught faint noises from below: rhythmic whirrs and clanks that brought to mind the siege engines at Savinnor. Directly under the window—though perilously far down—was a huge, radiant peach-colored dome with a black skeleton of bracework marring its light. Under construction, he guessed. A channel of water flowed beneath it, in one direction and out another, and when he squinted he could just see huge cords trailing from it toward the nearby domes.
He had no idea what to make of it.
“So we can’t go down there?” he said, trying to gauge the length of the drop.
“Nope. Not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“They’d eat us.”
“Ah. So they’re goblins after all.”
She smacked his shoulder and he looked over, annoyed. The ugly anger on her face startled him. “You say one more nasty thing about them and I’ll push you over the edge myself,” she said, jabbing a finger in his face.
He leaned away, the edge of the window pressing against his hip, and pushed
her finger aside with one hand. “But y’said it yourself, they’ll eat us. Like the ferals.”
“It’s practicality. Any civilization would execute invaders, and since they don’t get a whole lot of meat down here—“
“What d'you do, feed them your enemies?”
Her face went flat and hard. He braced himself, ready for her to lunge, but instead she whirled around and stalked up the tunnel.
Surprised, Cob lowered his arm and watched her go. The drop at his back did not bother him—he was used to heights. Nor did the idea of a fight distress him, even if it was with a girl. But to have the enemy just walk away…
“Hoi!” he called and ran after her, sparing only a brief last glance for the undercity.
She kept walking even as he closed the distance. “Hoi, Lark,” he said, trying to bring his own temper down as he grabbed for her arm. “All I mean’s that they’re not so nice an’—“
Her hand connected with his face and he recoiled, eyes watering. He had never been slapped before. It was such a surprise that he did not even think of striking back. Her face had contorted again, but this time he realized that she was not just angry. She was trying not to cry.
“I don’t know why I saved you!” she said, her voice unsteady. “You’re not helpful; you’re not even nice! You’re an Imperialist asshole and you’re the reason they killed my friends! And I’m trying to help you but you just can’t keep your mouth shut! We don’t want anyone to die, we never have! We don’t even want to kill the Imperials, all right? We bribe them to stay away! But somehow they want you more than they want money, and they even have a Hunter with them, an Imperial abomination, and now people are dead! So shut up, just shut up about everything, you ignorant little prick!”
And then she burst into tears.
Cob stared, aghast. The last time he had seen a woman cry had been his mother, nine years ago. It felt like a knife in the chest. He was not even sure what she meant by abomination. She covered her face with her hands but that only muffled the sounds, made them worse, and in the dim-lit tunnel they seemed to echo in all directions.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 20
