Descent Into Underearth

by Susan Bianculli

  I gaped in shock at Ragar. “What happened?”

  “Bascom came riding out on a dranth with Heather draped across his saddle like a sack of flour,” the mountain-cat-elf snarled bitterly.

  Ouch. I’d been pretty sure that Ragar had feelings for Heather since the poison dart trap, so seeing her helpless in Bascom’s hands had to have enraged him.

  Ragar continued, “I was not going to let him get away with her, and since you and Arghen were not with her, Auraus and I knew something had gone wrong. She, and I, and Stalker tried to rescue Heather by attacking him. I tried to leap on him from above, but some sort of magical blast caught me in the ribs and blew me backwards and upwards, and I was stunned when I fell to the floor. Then Bascom blasted me upright against that spire and webbed me there. Auraus and he traded a couple of spells after that while Stalker harried his mount, but she is only a young practitioner of her Divine art, whereas he is a full mage.” Ragar shrugged helplessly, some of the fight in him draining out as he looked at their unmoving bodies.

  Jason’s expression was sad and angry as he raised a hand to trail it along the cold stone of the Wind-rider’s upraised arm.

  Emalai, who’d been despondent since we’d left the city-state gates, looked horrified. “This was a living being?”

  “She is a living being—and she is a brave scout, a priestess of Caelestis, and my friend,” growled Ragar, turning on her.

  The black-haired Surface-elf shrank back much like the Kobold Harerah had when I’d glared at her back in Chirasniv.

  “Finish your story,” I said to Ragar, re-directing him towards me.

  “There is not much more to tell,” he shrugged. “Auraus and Stalker were turned to stone, I could not move, and Bascom laughed as he left with Heather still across his saddle. He did tell me that he would come back to collect us again once he was done with his experiment, and that he was angry at us for making him expend ‘precious magical energy’ that he needed.”

  “Did he say for what?” I asked urgently. “Because he described Heather as his prize when he captured her, which means to me that he has something specific in mind for her.”

  His face went even angrier, if possible. “No, he did not. We need to get after her now.”

  “In a moment,” I soothed. “We need to take care of Auraus and Stalker before we can do that.”

  “How?!” he roared. “None of the items I just saw could reverse this,” he spun to face the other Surfacers, “or are any of you secret Magelings?”

  Headshakes and mutters of denial were all that he got back. He turned on me. “So how can you possibly fix her?! We will have to take her as she is, and that will slow us down!”

  “Like this,” I said, with a confidence that I didn’t feel. I pointed my finger at Auraus and said the words that Heather had accidentally discovered back in Bascom’s tower when we’d freed the stone statues, “Hey, you, come here!”

  I was relieved when the flesh tones of life seeped throughout her body, and she took her first breath since I’d laid eyes on her. I quickly did the same to Stalker.

  Ragar’s jaw dropped open. “How?” he started to ask, as the members of the caravan murmured in surprise and awe of me.

  I just grinned. “Something I learned about from when I was looking for you a few days ago.”

  Auraus jumped back, wings half opening in reflex and her hands coming up to a spell casting position, and then she stopped short as she realized she was no longer in a battle. When she saw Jason and me, she blinked and dropped her guard, wonder on her face. Stalker, on the other hand, charged forward with his fangs bared and snarling loudly. The caravan behind me screamed and dove for what cover they could, including the Ogres.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I cried, throwing myself to the side and yelling at the dranth to get his attention. “Stalker, stop! Stop!”

  Fortunately he recognized his name and came to a confused stop, head whipping around, probably looking for the other dranth that he’d—to him—just been fighting. Aurus hurriedly came over and did her claming trick on the dranth, and then she turned and grabbed us in for a hug.

  “Lise! Jason! You are all right!” she said with joy. She led us to the horses.

  “Yes—well mostly,” I replied. “Ragar has filled me in on what happened. We don’t have Arghen anymore, but we have a lot of Surfacers who need to get to the surface. We need to move out as quickly as possible. No time for explanations or delays. We don’t need to have the travel tunnels rearranged on us! But before we go, Jason, I have something for you,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “This,” I said.

  I took out one of the extra iron bars I’d packed just for him from my saddlebags. I heard expressions of wonder as some of the Surfacers noticed me casually holding iron. I passed it to him. “Jason, remember that knife Morsca had which burned Auraus?”

  He nodded, and then his eyes grew wide as the implications of what I’d just given him sank in.

  “I will make sure to be very careful with it,” he said, carefully wrapping it up in such a way he could still get access to it, to the sounds of more wonder that two beings could handle naked iron and still be fine. I turned around to face the Surfacers, startling a few of them, and waved my arm in a sweep.

  “Wagon train ho!” I called out.

  “What, no ‘ThunderCats, Ho!’?” asked Jason with a grin, his face finally lightening. “It took me a while to realize we have one of those with us, you know.”

  The mountain-cat-elf was momentarily surprised out of his simmering anger and anxiousness. “ThunderCats? Heather has mentioned this word before, too. You also know of beings like me?”

  I shook my head with a small smile for my original correct guess concerning Heather and 80’s animation. “No, Ragar, Jason and Heather are referring to an, umm, moving painting in our world, and not a race. Sorry. Let’s get going after Heather.”

  But Jason couldn’t resist whispering to me again as we reached our riding animals, “ThunderCats, Ho!”

  CHAPTER 27

  I hurriedly arranged everybody into some sort of travel order, mixing my traveling companions in among the ex-Exchangers, putting the pregnant Kobolds and Troglodytes onto our various horses, and handing out the few magical torches we had so that they would be spread out along the caravan line. I also made sure that Emalai, who was dragging her feet, was paired with one of the other Surface-elves. And while I was doing all that, I gave Ragar and Auraus the short version of why Arghen wasn’t with us, which led to a short but intense debate about whether to take along Arghen’s dranth, Stalker, or leave him behind in case Arghen was able to slip free of Chirasniv with Levahn.

  In the end I ruled that we should take Stalker with us on the grounds it would be cruel to leave him here if Arghen never returned. That thought made me both angry and sad to think, but Arghen was trapped inside the Under-elf city-state, despite Levahn waiting for him at the gate. Though I had faith that both Arghen and Levahn would eventually escape, it might take too long a time for them to do that for Stalker to endure alone without food. And if Arghen was caught out by someone with a higher rank before he and Levahn could get away—like by that Primus guy who’d claimed Arghen for the military exercise, for example—well, they wouldn’t be coming out at all.

  Auraus didn’t like my decision, but Ragar and Jason agreed reluctantly with it. I took control of Stalker. I did it because he and I had traveled together the longest; and I thought that if he would bear anybody’s touch, it would be mine. And I was right. The lizard-like dranth was uneasy as I climbed aboard, but though he kept flicking his tongue in and out and shifting nervously on his six legs, he responded to the commands I’d learned from observing Arghen. I sent up a prayer to Caelestis that Arghen and Levahn would work their way free of Chirasniv, and I received another weak mental twitch in return. That troubled me. My connection to my goddess hadn’t been as strong since coming down here, and I was concerned that I might lose it altoge
ther. I made note to myself to talk to Auraus about it later.

  The caravan started out at the best pace we could get everyone to do, with Ragar and his sensitive nose leading the way back to make sure we didn’t go down any of the false tunnels. The shorter legged Dwarves had to move somewhat faster, and the Ogres had to slow down a little, but in general everyone kept together. We all knew it was going to be a grueling push to get out of the tunnels that could be re-arranged in case the Council of Chirasniv was alerted to the fact that their city had been infiltrated and escaped from. Everyone was in good spirits, the Surfacers especially so, and we ran in short bursts as much as the walkers could handle. The further we got away from Chirasniv, the more I believed that we might just make it.

  We successfully passed through the other two kill caverns, and I smiled when we reached the home stretch of the tunnel that led out to the cavern where Auraus had brought the house down, so to speak. That reminded me that we were about to reach the iron lode section, so I called up the line to warn the Surfacers to not use their magical items in the cavern beyond, and likely all the way up to the Surface. Soon we could see the tunnel opening up ahead, with the rubble still left in a heap in front of the opening, and then I heard one of the things I’d been praying desperately to Caelestis off-and-on the entire trip to not hear: the sound of grinding rock.

  “Run!” I screamed. “Run for the cavern! The tunnels are being re-arranged! We’ve been discovered! Run!”

  But instead of following my own words, I whipped Stalker around and headed for the back of the caravan.

  “Lise! What are you doing!” cried Auraus above the bone-deep sound of moving rock.

  “I’m going to help as many of the ones who can’t run as fast to get on something! You just go on and get people re-grouped on the other side!” I yelled back to her.

  The pregnant Troglodytes and Kobolds were trying to pull up the smaller Surfacers onto their horses, but the horses were becoming skittish from the sounds in the air of rock being crunched all around us. I and the bigger beings helped get the smaller beings on board the animals with a lift here and a shove there, and I pulled a Surface-elf on behind me. The Ogres outright just picked up a couple of Surface-elves apiece, threw the elves over their shoulders, and booked it for the cavern. Glancing quickly at the tunnel mouth as I shoved the last Dwarf up by his bottom on Melka’s saddle, who was the last in line of the horses, I gulped as I saw that the entrance was definitely narrower than it had been. I sweated bullets. If the Council was behind the tunnel re-arrangement, then the bodies of Descora and Jodron had been found in the Parks and Recreation cavern. Or the deaths in the Exchange and the theft of some of the slaves there had been discovered. Or the Conductivus had spoken for some of the dead. Or Arghen had been tortured for information.

  I shook that last thought away as I screamed, “Go, go!” and slapped the horse’s rump to get him to catch up to the other horses already underway.

  Melka, already wild-eyed and barely under control by the Kobold who held the reins, broke for the cavern with its load with me not far behind on Stalker. It became a race, and one by one the other horses, who’d had a head start on Melka, made it out into the cavern. The tunnel entrance closing picked up speed, and I began to worry we wouldn’t make it out. Stalker pulled up, and I immediately saw why: Melka had stopped short of the closing tunnel entrance, too afraid to go through the reducing hole. I saw frost build-up on the boulder that would eventually seal off the tunnel, as if Jason had shot his magical ring at it in a failed attempt to jam it open with ice build-up. I was thankful that the iron ore in the walls hadn’t blown the frost ray up into an impassable ice jam. The Surface-elf behind me clenched his arms around my waist in sheer terror, but I didn’t even stop to think. I drew my saber in one smooth motion and pricked Melka’s flank. The horse jumped forward with a surprised neigh and bolted through the closing hole. Stalker followed him in a flash, and we made it out just before the opening closed on the tip of the dranth’s tail. A resounding ‘thunk’ filled the air behind us.

  I heaved a great sigh. I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer of thanksgiving to Caelestis, but I quickly opened them again at the sound of Emalai’s voice crying, “Arghen! Arghen!” as she threw herself at the newly-formed rock wall beside me and started beating on it with her fists.

  I reached over and pulled the black-haired Surface-elf back against Stalker and me. “Listen!” I said harshly. “Arghen is a practiced and cunning warrior. If anyone can get out of Chirasniv, it’s him. But don’t make his sacrifice be in vain! What if he gets loose and comes looking for you on the surface, but you stayed around down here banging on closed stone tunnels and being recaptured by the Chirasnivians? Do you want that?”

  I hated to play on her emotions that way, because I was pretty sure that she loved him, but I needed everyone to be as strong as they could be especially since I wasn’t feeling all that strong myself. Inside, I felt like she did. I wanted Arghen back, too, though not in the way she wanted him. Squaring my shoulders and putting on a show of leadership that I very much did not feel just then, I maneuvered Stalker forward around and through the rubble until I reached the rest of the caravan on the other side.

  “All right, everyone, this is where it becomes crucial to stick together! We have no idea what the new tunnel configuration looks like, or even if it now has exits into other parts of the regular travel tunnels.”

  I doubted that last even as I said it, because Arghen had never said anything about other possible entrances as we traveled. I, however, didn’t want anyone slacking off as we booked it for the Surface because they thought the Under-elves were sealed off behind the rock. But then, Arghen didn’t know everything about the Chirasnivians, so who knew if they did have another entrance? Erring on the side of caution wouldn’t be a bad thing either way.

  I blinked. Where had that thought come from? That could have come straight from my mother. I shrugged that away and reorganized everyone, except the pregnant females, to take turns riding the horses for short periods to rest. This was to help keep the caravan going as fast as it could. The Ogres volunteered to carry anyone who wanted a break from time to time as well, claiming they wouldn’t need much rest. I gratefully thanked them.

  “What if the Chirasnivians figure out that we made it out of the moving tunnels?” Harerah the Kobold asked me worriedly.

  But Jason had the answer to that. “That would be where we pull out our nifty little magic items and use them against the Under-elves!” he said with a ferocious grin not unlike one of Ragar’s.

  I nodded agreement but cautioned, “Although the magic may either work like it’s supposed to, not work at all, or do something completely unexpected. So no using the magical items in here or until we reach the surface, unless it’s to save your life!”

  I eyed Jason who ducked his head in embarrassment, because he knew I was referring to the frost ray he’d tried. I then saw the iron bar he had awkwardly stuck in his belt. It looked bent.

  Jason reddened as he explained, “I, err, tried to use the bar as a brace to keep the door from closing when the frost failed to keep it open. The iron didn’t work, either.”

  “You’re lucky that it didn’t get stuck or crushed!” I scolded him.

  “But if it had gotten stuck, maybe it would have held the door,” he said reasonably. “I had to try something to make sure you got out of there.”

  I smiled softly at him. “Thanks for trying,” I said.

  Auraus cleared her throat. “What if I were to run ahead, get Dusk and the Grey Riders, and bring them down into the tunnels in case the caravan is chased? I’m sure I can remember the way.”

  “But you cannot go much faster than the caravan is going now,” objected Ragar, coming over to join the conversation. “I, on the other hand, can. Plus, my tracking skills and my nose can lead me faster than your memory.”

  “Lise?” they both said as they turned to me.

  I had a flashback of Dusk and the two
valley elders coming to him for a decision and shook it away. “I think that if you can run fast, Ragar, for long periods of time, you should be the one to go get us help. Better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.”

  I clapped my hand over my mouth and widened my eyes. When had I turned into my mother?

  “Are you all right, Lise?” Auraus asked, looking at me with concern.

  “Nothing, it’s nothing,” I smiled as I waved her unease away. I turned to the mountain-cat-elf. “Go, Ragar. Be careful. Make sure to mark the path for us so we don’t get lost. And do not go after Heather by yourself after you’ve gotten the Grey Riders. Wait for us to join you,” I warned.

  I caught a small rueful smirk on his face at my admonishment as the mountain-cat-elf turned and loped away into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 28

  The rest of the caravan and I followed more slowly in Ragar’s wake. We pushed ourselves to keep up our best speed, not knowing how long it would take the Under-elves to figure out that we were not trapped inside their tunnels. Despite the fact that many of the caravan were getting close to exhaustion, no one complained about the grueling pace because no one wanted to get caught and be brought back to Chirasniv. But even with riders and walkers being regularly rotated on and off the mounts—including Stalker—by the time we reached the dead wyvern cavern, I knew we had to halt.

  “All right, let’s stop here,” I commanded.

  “Hey, Lise?” Jason said. “May I make a suggestion that we spread everybody out? That way, if the cabron Under-elves do come after us here there won’t be one tempting target. They’ll at least have to work at getting us. That’ll give us time to react.”

  “Good idea,” I replied. “You learn that from one of your war history books at the New York Library?”

  He smiled a little sadly. “Yep, and nope. I mean, I did read about it in the library, but it’s also learned from real life.”