The Southern Trail (Book 4)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  But it was the only way he had to go, mysterious and inexplicable as it was. He happened to look down and saw that the prints from several pairs of boots were evident in the muddy floor, and that sealed the deal. He began to move forward, each step taking him into a slightly lower part of the tunnel, and an imperceptibly darker area.

  Marco waited until he was several yards into the cave, when its opening had become only a pinprick of light behind him.

  He stopped walking, and called loudly, shouting down the tunnel. “Ellersbine!

  “I’m on my way!” he shouted. He knew it was very unlikely that the princess would hear him shout, and he knew that if her captors heard him he was putting himself at a disadvantage. Yet he wanted to do it, and felt better for having done it.

  He continued on, and stopped five minutes later to light his hand. It produced a surprising profusion of light, much more than he had expected. He looked at the appendage and saw that the entire surface was glowing with the warm golden color that it naturally held. All the covering that Iasco had placed around it to hide it had disappeared, presumably blown away by the explosion of power that he had unleashed in his tempestuous outburst in the forest at the start of the day.

  That would present a problem in the future, he knew. He’d have to resort to wearing gloves constantly once again, but for now it made his trip through the cave easier.

  The tunnel was growing larger as he walked through it, he realized. It was both wider and taller than it had been at the opening. He had a real distaste for tunnels, he decided, a distaste that he hadn’t held before he had fought the Echidna and traveled through the underworld. He hoped the tunnel would come to an end quickly, and provide an exit back out into the world above the surface. Even if it was a rainy, dreary day outside, it would be preferable to traveling underground.

  He walked a few more steps when it struck him as odd that there not only would be a tunnel built for such a small, seemingly insignificant trail, but that it would be such a long tunnel as well. A typical traveler would almost have to have a lantern and candles to be able to travel through such a lengthy excursion underground.

  As he began to ponder the nature of the tunnel, there was a sudden creaking and rumbling noise overhead. He looked upwards and saw that the ceiling was a whirling mass of darkly glowing, colored seams of stone. It was shocking; just moments before he thought the stones overhead had been a uniform mass of dark gray.

  It was the sign of a volcano, he realized. “Gawail, I need you,” he said softly, remembering the pixie’s conversation with the volcano they had encountered on the trip back from the Echidna. Even without the need to address the threat of a volcano, Marco wished he had the pixie as a companion on the long journey he was slogging through; Gawail had been loyal, companionable, and fearless when he had joined Marco and the others in the pursuit of the Echidna.

  There was no Gawail there to help him though, and the roof’s seams of colors, deep yellows and oranges and brownish reds, were beginning to move faster. He needed to get through as quickly as possible, he realized, and he started sprinting before the roof fell down and blocked his way through.

  Marco ran as fast as he could, hoping to find the end to the area of the threatening roof. There seemed to be no end, however. After a long, frantic sprint, the roof suddenly sagged downward several feet, paused, and then began to descend again.

  Knowing that he was about to be crushed to death, Marco desperately raised his hand and created a protective dome. He had seen how futile such a dome could prove to be against superior force, as in the case of the sorceress at the Lion City palace, whose dome had been crushed by his own emotional efforts. But there were no other options for the moment.

  He kept running, the dome hovering overhead as the ceiling settled lower and lower above him and in front of him. Twenty yards further down the road, the ceiling fell far enough to graze across the top of his dome. He felt the impact of the contact; it felt as though he personally was holding up the weight. In some unknown fashion his sorcery magic was transferring the stress of the situation to him.

  Marco kept running, and the ceiling kept lowering. He was slowing as he had to crouch while feeling the weight of the rocks overhead. His dome was changing color, wavering between blue and yellow, orange and even red. He had only seconds left before he would be ground to death, he could tell.

  In desperation, he stopped running and looked down at the floor of the tunnel, then focused all his attention on boring a hole in the floor, a safe spot he could jump into. The light from his hand faded due to his double focus on the dome and the digging, so that he could barely see as the soil at his feet began to fly upward, while he managed to somehow keep the dome overhead; the lurid light of the dome and the ceiling were the only source of light, presenting a ghastly coloration to his confined scene. He was down on his knees from the pressure above, and the hole was spewing dirt upward, into his face and over his shoulders and onto the tunnel floor all around him.

  Marco bowed forward and tumbled head first into the hole. It was already deep enough to accommodate him, he was thankful to note, and he allowed the dome to dissolve while the burrowing energy kept going. He turned the aim of the hole so that it began to go straight forward as well as downward; it was his hope that he would be able to move forward and then come back up to rejoin the tunnel at a place beyond where the ceiling had collapsed.

  He kept his eyes closed as the dirt from his excavations flew from in front of him to behind him. He had only a small bubble of air and space around him in the stony interior of the mountain he was beneath. It was a cramped space, and he felt his dislike of tunnels grow rapidly as he crawled ahead while dirt flew past him.

  His energy was starting to wane, he realized. He felt weakness from all the sorcery power he was expending – the dome, the light, and now the burrowing. He needed to rest, but he had to finish the task at hand. And the small bubble of air he relied upon was full of choking dust, and starting to feel stale.

  He was going to have to rest, he decided. Then, just as he started to disengage his energy and stop, the floor beneath him crumbled away, and he found himself falling through darkness.

  His threw his arms and legs out wildly, thrashing and extending them in panic at the shocking change in his circumstances. Before he could bring them together, he abruptly struck a surface. The sudden contact knocked the wind from his chest and inflicted terrible pain in his ribs.

  He felt as though he were choking, trying to inhale air, while his chest refused to cooperate. He made gurgling noises for several seconds, then finally felt the first breath of air return, and he said a prayer of thanks. Even though every breath was painful, he was thankful for the simple feeling of air moving through his system once again.

  He rolled over onto his back and took one more deep breath. Gingerly, he sat up, with a wince, then raised his right hand and produced a faint light that didn’t glow brightly enough to show the walls of the space around him. It was large, wherever it was, and it had air to breathe, though the air had a putrid scent that made him wrinkle his nose.

  He was still underground, now in pain, and had no idea of how to find his way back to the surface. He rubbed his eyes and his face to try to relieve the weariness and discouragement he felt tensing up his muscles.

  Marco heard a rumbling noise somewhere in the darkness behind him, and then the sound of rocks rolling and tumbling upon one another. He turned and looked in that direction, then held his hand up high, and focused his attention on trying to produce more energy to produce more light.

  His hand flared up with brighter illumination for two seconds, then dimmed again, and in the time that he drew his breath in horror, Marco realized that he was about to face death. His light had revealed the Echidna breaking its way free from a tomb of stony encasement.

  Chapter 16

  “I remember you,” the monster’s voice spoke in a raspy tone. “There will be no mercy this time.

  “Are you alon
e? Are there others here who will be able to witness the pain you’re about to suffer?” she asked as she lashed her tail free from the hardened rock that surrounded it.

  Marco stared in shock and consternation. He was hundreds if not thousands of miles from the location of the Echidna’s cave in northern Arima, and it seemed impossible to imagine that he faced the monster in an unknown cavern far, far to the south. And with his weakness from over-use of his energies already, he knew he could be no match for the monster that held a grudge against him.

  He took a breath, or started to, until the pain in his ribs stopped him. He shook his head as some fog seemed to clear, and he remembered the spring water of Diotima, available to heal him in his left hand. If only he had a day to drink and heal before facing an unwinnable challenge, he thought to himself as he hurriedly sucked the water and swallowed it.

  The sweet taste of the water calmed him slightly. He dimmed his hand’s light and watched as Echidna finished freeing herself from the encasement that Marco had thought would last for decades.

  The monster herself seemed to glow with a ruddy color. Marco extinguished the light from his hand, and saw her visibly moving about in the darkness. He gingerly moved away from his location, wondering if there was a way to hide and then escape; he had no illusions about the possibility of winning a battle.

  The Echidna began to move towards Marco, and as it approached its glow increased, adding an unworldly element to its already disturbing appearance. “Are you going to be soft Marco, or stringy? I’m hungry after such a long time entombed in the stonework, so I’m ready to eat you in either case, one bite of living flesh at a time.”

  She pounced suddenly as she spoke the last word. Her extraordinarily quick movement caught Marco off-guard, as she seemed too far away from him to be able to reach him, but as she threw her torso towards him and stretched her arms out to grasp him in her claws, he shouted in fright and swung his sword wildly.

  She had misjudged her attack. Too vengefully eager to reach him after her long captivity, she had launched herself while still just a few inches too far away. Marco’s sword came down, and the keen edge of his blade sliced through the knuckles of two fingers on one hand, spurting droplets of her burning black blood across the front of his chest and his face.

  Marco shouted in pain and grabbed a handful of soil that he smeared upon his face and his chest as he backpedaled away from her. He then sucked on his finger and spit into the palm of his hand, and spread the moisture further around on his wounds.

  The Echidna in the meantime also screamed in agony and pulled her injured fingers away from him. She reared up and back, gripping the one hand in the other as she stared up at the ceiling and howled in pain, a terrible keening sound that pierced Marco’s ears painfully.

  “How dare you?” Echidna shouted as she looked down at Marco. “You have maimed me!”

  She suddenly launched herself at him again, from a closer proximity, and she swept her massive uninjured hand across the floor surface, smacking Marco’s hips and legs with a rapid blow that sent him tumbling up over a pile of debris.

  He landed as he stopped rolling, and groggily waved his sword. He heard the sound of her scales thrashing across the floor as she came in pursuit of him, and he raised a weak protective dome while he struggled to rise from his knees to his feet.

  Echidna’s hand slammed down on the top of his dome, and he heard it sizzle with stress from the blow, turning a sickly yellow color momentarily. Marco stood up, then went running directly towards the monster, trying to get inside her reach to find momentary sanctuary there as he released his sorcery power, dissolved the dome, then stabbed his sword into her flesh, in the narrow band between the upper end of her scales and the swelling of her breasts. It was a stab that struck the bottom-most of her ribs and angled upward, the momentum of his passing strike pulling the tip of the sword out and leaving a dark gash in her torso.

  The monster screamed, and whipped its tail around in a curling motion that captured Marco and started to squeeze him relentlessly.

  He engaged his protective dome again, and imagined it spreading outward as it had in the forest, when it had knocked down scores of trees. So weak was his effort that it could only pry her scales a few feet apart, but with that narrow margin available, Marco leapt out and rolled over the top of her tail, then landed on the ground and stumbled away.

  Echidna was screaming; she had her hands pressed over her torn flesh. When she turned to look for Marco her gaze was murderous. She spotted him and screamed again. “I’m not going to bother to eat you! When I’m done with you there won’t be enough left to make a mouthful.”

  She reached down and picked up a stone on the ground, a small boulder larger than Marco’s head, and heaved it at him. He jerked aside and the missile flew past him by the smallest of margins. She picked up another one and started to move towards Marco, then flung the next boulder as she rapidly moved.

  The stone hit the ground in front of him, then skipped up and struck his shin, causing a sickening snapping sound and an overwhelming wave of pain.

  He was in trouble he knew, grave trouble, and he could not fight his way out of it. Nor, with his bad leg, could he run away, even if he thought he was faster than the monster. There was only one desperate gambit left for him to try if he was going to safely escape, and that was for him to depart the same way he had arrived.

  Still clutching his wounded leg, he stuffed his sword in his belt, then set his right hand against the ground and frantically called upon his waning powers to dig a new tunnel for him, one that delved deeply and quickly away from the Echidna.

  His powers responded sluggishly, sending a spray of dirt and stone up into the air, and he squirmed quickly into the narrow shaft.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he heard Echidna shout after him, and then she grabbed his right foot and pulled him up out of the hole just before he could escape.

  The monster started to raise him up into the air, and he pulled his sword free, then sliced it across her wrist.

  She screamed again and released her hold on him, dropping him to the ground next to the hole that was still spewing loose stones into the air as Marco’s powers continued to excavate an escape route for him.

  His foot hurt on one leg, and his shin was a shattered mass of pain on the other leg, but Marco managed to roll himself over and drop down into the lengthening tunnel. He reached forward with his hands and pulled himself over the stony edges to quicken his descent beyond the monster’s reach.

  “Come back and fight, you cowardly little man!” Echidna screamed shrilly. “Come back out here!”

  He ignored her, and willed his powers to continue to dig. He followed his narrow shaft down and then along a level stretch, until he had no energy left. He stopped the digging, and lay on his back. He placed his left finger in his mouth, and started to suck on the magical spring water as he fell into a state of exhausted sleep.

  Chapter 17

  Marco didn’t know how long he slept. When he awoke he was in darkness, and both legs were lashing him with incredible pain. He felt a desperate hunger as well, and he was completely befuddled initially as to where he was and why he was in such tight quarters.

  His memories slowly returned, and he heaved an involuntary sob at the memory of the hopeless fight against the Echidna. He had been lucky to have such strong and valuable friends to assist him the first time he had fought the monster, he realized. Even with their help, he had won the first encounter only by the trick of causing her to become entombed so that he had escaped. And this time too he had won only if one counted it as a victory by managing to flee while still alive.

  Logically, the encounter with the monster still struck him as impossible, even while he had just departed from the battlefield. It made no sense. Yet despite what his intellect insisted, his injuries and horrors were graphic evidence that he had fought the creature.

  And the fight with the Echidna had come immediately after his episo
de in the original tunnel, when he had evaded the crushing roof. The two misadventures were both re-enactments of desperate episodes from his past adventure. His eyes opened wide and his mind started spinning recklessly as that realization struck home. There was no chance that he had randomly lived through the two struggles; they must have been orchestrated deliberately to punish him.

  But he couldn’t imagine there was anyone who knew of his adventures, let alone had the unfathomable power to recreate them. Only God himself would be able to do such things, he realized and pondered. Could the Creator be punishing him for something he’d done? It was possible, but as hard as he tried to remember what he’d done, he couldn’t recollect anything he’d done that merited such treatment.

  Marco took another sip of water from his finger, and spit it onto his injuries, then took another sip and swallowed it. His legs were still painful, and his ribcage was also tender. He closed his eyes and rested, falling asleep as an escape from the pain and uncertainty, and providing his body with more time to heal.

  When he re-awoke, his body felt better, though his stomach growled with hunger. He idly wondered if the children in Nestor’s village were doing better, perhaps even starting to walk without crutches. He hoped so for their sakes.

  He needed to start moving again, to find some means of returning to the surface of the earth, first and foremost. His sorcery powers felt refreshed and ready. He took another sip of spring water, then started burrowing his way upward.

  He was like a human mole, he told himself, with all his digging and sleeping underground.

  He adopted a spiraling pattern, one that rose at an angle, taking him closer to the surface with each foot of stone that crumbled before him and fell down into the darkness below. He worked ceaselessly, always moving upward. After a long spell of digging he stopped to rest and drink. He was sure that he had risen far enough to have passed the Echidna’s cavern without striking it, and he was glad if it was true. His next possible known target was the tunnel he had originally entered, but he had little care if he found it or not. And beyond that, sooner or later, he was bound to strike the surface of the earth and see the sky overhead.