by Ian Irvine
Flydd’s and Nish’s muttering was like a harsh lullaby, and her eyelids drooped. She would snatch a few minutes’ sleep while they worked out what to do. Maelys felt herself drifting, all her cares retreating …
The suppressed nightmare jerked her awake, reviving those paralysed minutes she’d spent on the slab with the cursed flame licking at her, and Phrune looming over her, preparing to take her skin and spill her blood into the flame, so as to revive his dreadful master.
The scene played over and over, until she was shuddering with the horror of it: the blade, the blood; Phrune’s mutilated, leering face and Vivimord’s groans issuing from beneath the slab; the heat of the cursed flame and the bouquet of precious amber-wood. The high, shadowed ceiling covered in the mucus crusts of swamp creepers, webbed by the corded nets of some unknown scuttling beast, all the way across that pyramidal opening –
Maelys’s eyes flew open. ‘Xervish!’
‘Yes?’ he said dully.
‘There may be another way into the chamber of the cursed flame.’
She heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Where?’
‘When I was on the slab and the flame flared, I saw a hole high above. It may be an old chimney, and if anyone has some rope, you might be able to get down it.’
‘I’ve got rope,’ said Colm. ‘Can you find the top of the chimney, Flydd?’
‘I think I know where to look.’
He led them up a broken slope, over a blade-like hump and around a twisting bend which felt as though water had once flowed down it. There were no droppings here, though Maelys could still smell them. Flydd stopped so suddenly that she ran into him and Nish into her.
‘Hush!’ Flydd said softly.
‘What is it, Gorderz?’ A slurred voice issued through a fissure in the rock to Maelys’s left.
‘Thought I heard footsteps, Snegg,’ said another voice, sounding rather strained. ‘Hold up.’
‘This place makes my mind reel. Where are we?’
‘No idea. What’s happened to the others?’
‘I thought they were with you,’ said Snegg.
Gorderz cursed. ‘The master won’t be pleased.’
The intruders were only spans away through the rock; they would hear the slightest sound. Maelys steadied herself against the wall. Nish’s shoulder touched her and she could feel him shuddering as he fought the pain. If he let out a squeak, they were lost.
The soldiers did not speak again, though Maelys was afraid they were still there, waiting for someone to move. Nish’s breathing grew ever more laboured but she wasn’t game to try and comfort him.
Finally the first man spoke again, much further away.
‘Wait another minute,’ said Flydd quietly. ‘They’re lost and afraid; if we go the other way we should be safe.’
There’s no safety anywhere inside Mistmurk Mountain, Maelys thought.
They went on, feeling their way around a hairpin corner and along a passage so low that even Maelys had to negotiate it bent double. She could hear Colm’s muffled curses as his backbone struck the knobbly roof.
‘There’s a crack ahead of me,’ said Flydd when they emerged at the other end where there was room to stand upright, ‘and it smells faintly of smoke. I think we can dare a little light here. Maelys, if you would open your taphloid.’
She did so, gingerly. Flame swirled within the shard, revealing a vertical, soot-stained crack a couple of spans high, though less than two hand-spans wide. ‘The crystal is brighter here.’
‘No wonder,’ said Flydd. ‘We’re directly above the cursed flame. Close the lid to just a sliver of light. That’s better. Go through, Maelys, and step with care.’
She squeezed sideways through the crack, at the risk of her remaining coat buttons, and felt around with her foot. ‘I’m on a narrow rock shelf running around the inside of the chimney,’ she whispered. Its walls were smoke-stained and criss-crossed with crusted mucus tracks, some of which were fresh, judging by the shine. ‘The chimney hole is practically blocked. Come inside; don’t step in the centre or you’ll fall through.’
Below, the chimney was a clotted mess of slime and droppings caught in corded cobwebs. Maelys felt her skin creeping. She didn’t want to meet whatever made such thick webs, especially not in the dark.
The others worked their way through, and she moved around the ledge to give them space. Colm, who was tallest, blocked the crack with his body and Maelys opened the lid of the taphloid all the way. The chimney flared out around and above them but narrowed below the shelf.
Colm thrust his sword into its sheath, leaned the rapier that had killed Zham against the corner, then pulled a hank of fine rope from his pack and tugged on it, testing its strength.
‘Down there?’ said Flydd.
‘That’s where the smoky smell is coming from …’ Swamp creepers gave Maelys the shudders, and though she wasn’t afraid of ordinary spiders, the creature that had made those cord webs could be as big as she was. ‘If you and Nish go down, I’ll watch the way out with Colm.’
‘Nish can’t use his left hand.’ Flydd frowned at the crusted mess blocking the chimney. ‘Give that a poke with your blade, Colm. It doesn’t look very wide.’
‘Chimneys rarely are,’ said Colm. ‘That’s why they use little kids as chimney sweeps.’ He was looking coldly at Maelys, as if she were a stranger.
Not me, she thought. Haven’t I done enough?
Colm ran the tip of his sword around the four sides of the chimney hole, then carefully lifted out the web and its clinging droppings, flicking them into a corner and wiping his hands on his pants. A warm spicy smell wafted up, of swamp-creeper slime, ordure and smoke. The exposed hole was no wider than her shoulders.
‘It seems to narrow further down,’ said Flydd, with the faintest of smiles. ‘You’re the only one who’ll fit, Maelys.’
‘You’re pleased it’s not you.’ She felt petulant saying it, but she’d sooner fight a stink-snapper in the swamp than go down there.
‘I certainly am, but if I had to go down, I would, and so will you.’
Not for the first time, Maelys cursed herself for being so little; she cursed her companions too, and her whole life. She’d been brought up to marry well and manage her manor and estate, and there had been a clear division between men’s work and women’s. Men did the hard, backbreaking labour, and most of the really dirty work. Climbing down this chimney was definitely men’s work.
She heard a squelching slurp from the depths that had to be one giant swamp creeper crawling over another. ‘You’re not that big, Xervish,’ she said desperately. ‘I’m sure you’d fit – at a pinch.’
‘Nope,’ said Flydd. ‘The renewed me has broad shoulders.’
‘And I’ve got a big bottom,’ she said recklessly. ‘Huge, in fact.’
‘Indeed you have.’ Flydd gave her an appraising grin. ‘Turn around; I’d better make sure. Don’t want you getting stuck halfway.’
She did so, flushing, yet praying for once that it would be too big.
‘It’s large all right,’ said Nish, grinning despite his pain.
Even Colm, who had been grim-faced ever since her lie about being pregnant, gave a faint twitch of the lips. Men!
Flydd measured her hips with his outstretched hands, then the chimney hole. ‘Your bottom, while certainly of a traditional size, isn’t large enough to get you out of trouble. Take your coat off and down you go.’
She might have refused, but Maelys felt she had to prove herself.
‘I’ll go down!’ she said savagely. ‘But you’re going to pay for this.’
‘I’ll add it to the list,’ said Flydd. ‘I’ve a whole lifetime of villainy to atone for.’
She didn’t budge. ‘What am I’m supposed to do?’
‘Ah!’ He frowned. ‘This is where it gets tricky. Your shard still retains the spells I wove into the fifth crystal years ago, and it should be able to open the shadow realm if you can recharge it. Take it to the cursed fla
me –’
‘But when I touched the flame last time, it paralysed me.’
He felt in his pockets. ‘Hold the shard in this.’ He handed her a coil of fine wire.
She quickly formed a loop in one end and put the coil in her pocket, again reliving how close she’d come to being skinned alive by Phrune. Her stomach muscles tightened. He was dead, thankfully.
Colm fashioned a rope harness around her middle, avoiding her eyes and being careful not to touch her, as if she were tainted. He checked the knots and tied the other end of the rope around himself.
‘We’ll lower you until you’re directly above the slab,’ said Flydd. ‘You won’t need to set foot on the floor. Give three jerks on the rope once you’re in place, then two and two more when you want to be hauled up again.’
‘What if there are guards?’
‘Give the second signal before they see you. We’ll pull you up and try again later.’
Going down and up once would be bad enough. She couldn’t bear to do it twice.
‘There’s one more problem,’ said Flydd, ‘though I don’t see what we can do about it.’
‘What’s that?’ she said gloomily.
‘I don’t know how much power your shard can absorb from the flame. It may not be much at all.’
‘How will I know when it’s got all it can take?’
‘It’ll burst.’
‘So how do I know when to stop?’ she cried.
‘I haven’t regained that memory.’
‘Wonderful!’ Maelys said sourly. ‘Are there any other ways this can go disastrously wrong?’
‘I’ll give you a list when I think of them. If you fail, just come up. Have you got a knife? You’ll need one if you get tangled up in a web, or …’
‘Yes.’ The huge blade Zham had given her up in the mires was still strapped to her lower leg, under her trousers. She unsheathed it.
‘Go now.’
She took a deep breath, then went to her hands and knees and lowered her head into the hole, conscious that her bottom was facing them.
‘Make sure the rope is tight, Colm. If I’m going down head-first, I’d hate it to slip over my hips.’
‘As if that’s going to happen,’ Nish smirked.
She wanted to smack him. Colm pulled the harness so tightly around her small waist that it hurt. Maelys closed her taphloid and the chimney was plunged into darkness. She went down head first, arms outstretched below her, and as her feet scraped over the edge she felt him take up the slack. Colm might hold her in deepest contempt, but she was safe while he was holding the rope.
About half a span down she encountered a thick web clotted with droppings, though fortunately it was so old and dusty that it was no longer sticky. Zham’s knife cut through the strands like a razor. She stretched out her free hand, and froze, for her fingertips were touching something round, cool and slippery.
It was a giant swamp creeper – the most disgusting thing she could possibly have encountered in the darkness – and she had to feel her way around it. She dared not open the taphloid for light in case the precious crystal fell out.
The chimney was wider here, not narrower. Even Colm could have come down it, she thought resentfully, and swamp creepers didn’t bother him at all. On their first day on the plateau he’d killed one and carried it back to the camp over his shoulder.
Maelys tried to stop but her slippery fingers couldn’t get a grip on the wall, and Colm kept lowering her on the rope. She dropped sharply; her right cheek glided across the swamp creeper’s skin, coating her in sickly smelling, slimy gunk.
She tried to push herself back up but the swamp creeper moved under her weight and she fell headfirst into the gap between it and another. The chimney was blocked with a great mass of them, one upon the next. She kept sliding down between the loathsome, squirming creatures.
Her forehead was coated in slime; it clogged her eyes, and with every breath sticky bubbles formed at her nostrils; her mouth was blocked with a clot of ooze the size of a lyrinx’s bogey. She spat it out explosively, shuddering with disgust, then twisted sideways and managed to get another breath, but her weight kept pushing her down and there was nothing she could do but go with it.
She slipped further; now all but her legs were surrounded by giant swamp creatures, all stirring and creeping over each other on their mucus tracks, making disgusting slurpings and squelchings which, this close, were deafeningly loud.
Maelys squirmed, trying to clear a space so she could get a decent breath, for she could feel herself starting to panic. She slipped all the way down into another great cluster of swamp creepers, enclosing her from head to knee. Her shirt had slipped up and a small creeper oozed its way across her bare belly. Another crawled over her mouth and nose. She desperately, frantically tried to batter it out of the way but her blows just skidded off.
Panic burst over her; she couldn’t control it. Maelys thrashed wildly, shaking her head from side to side until she was dizzy, and a little space opened up in front of her nose. She spat out another mouthful of ooze, which reminded her unpleasantly of the barbed slurchie Colm had removed from her belly in the rainforest. Maelys sucked in a breath of smelly air and screamed her lungs out.
Colm couldn’t have heard, for he kept lowering her. She continued to flail and scream until her throat hurt and she was so exhausted that she couldn’t move her arms or legs. She slumped in the middle of the cluster, ever so slowly sliding down between the swamp creepers, too exhausted to do any more. The panic was gone. She no longer had the energy for it. She had given up.
Until that reminded her of Tulitine, the old seer who had helped raise the Defiance in Nish’s name, months ago. Though Tulitine must have been nearly eighty, she had a lover not a third her age and a zest for life unmatched in anyone Maelys had ever met. Tulitine had helped and protected her, though she’d been disappointed in Maelys when she’d fled the Defiance camp after Phrune had identified her.
Maelys’s courage had failed her then, but she was stronger now. She could not, would not give up. She was going to fight Jal-Nish until there was no breath left in her body – but fight cleverly.
If there was anyone in the cavern below, she must have given herself away. Or maybe not. She’d slid through a couple of spans of swamp creepers, which completely blocked the chimney here. If they formed as thick a cluster below her, her screams might not have penetrated it.
Surely there couldn’t be far to go? Maelys wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, but it didn’t help; every part of her was thickly enslimed. The swamp creepers didn’t feel quite so bad now; their skin was no more slippery than hers. And they were harmless, she reminded herself; entirely vegetarian. She slid another arm’s length, then stopped, for they were so tightly packed here that her weight wouldn’t carry her any further.
Maelys realised that she was breathing heavily, the panic rising again at the idea of being trapped in this slimy darkness. What if she cut her way through? The thought was revolting; besides, she would have to work head-down in a puddle of swamp-creeper blood and body fluids, and might drown before she got through.
She couldn’t do it, and sheathed the knife, but could she force a path through them? Maelys twisted left, then right, but a space didn’t open up. Harmless the creepers might be, yet she might easily suffocate before Colm realised that something was wrong.
She pushed harder but couldn’t exert enough force to move them. Got to have something to push against, she thought. She wriggled and jerked but couldn’t get the tiniest breath. The panic was swelling, almost overwhelming her. Her lungs were heaving; she only had air enough for another few moments.
She couldn’t stand this; she had to get out. Maelys tried to punch the closest swamp creeper out of the way, but her fist sank into it as if it were a fat man’s belly, forcing a gust of cool air out of an opening below its head, prrrp. It had a humid smell of chewed-up vegetation somewhat like a cow’s belch, but it was breathable, life-sustaining air.
Wriggling her legs and sliding her weary arms this way and that, she managed to slip one foot to the side of the chimney, then another. The stone, though slick, was rough enough for her to get a grip. She pushed against it, forced with her arms until she broke the suction between the swamp creepers, and a cluster fell away. She shot through the obstruction like a cork popped from a bottle, into an open space, and dropped a good span before the rope caught her. Maelys hung there, slowly revolving, gasping at the cold, spicy air.
She went lower as Colm continued to pay out the rope, and her down-stretched palms skidded across another clot of swamp creepers. They didn’t feel any better than the ones above, but the sooner she began, the sooner it would be over. Maelys formed an arrowhead with her hands, wedged the swamp creepers apart, and began to wriggle through like a human tadpole.
This passage was just as unpleasant as the previous one, but she continued, keeping her head bent towards her armpit so as to protect her nose with her angled arm. It worked, mostly; after several more panting minutes her hands popped free and in place of the sickly swamp creeper odour she caught a faint, gassy warmth that she remembered from her previous visit. She was out of the chimney and suspended above the huge, coffin-shaped slab up through which the cursed flame issued.
Maelys scraped muck out of her eyes and wiped it off on her saturated shirt. Clots of muck splattered on the stone far below. After blinking furiously, she managed to ungum her eyelids and made out the flicker of the cursed flame at least eight spans down. It was no longer blue; the flame looked purple-black now. She couldn’t see anyone in the cavern, though most of its expanse lay in shadow. Besides, if Jal-Nish’s scriers had found a way in, they might have set up a wisp-watcher anywhere.
She couldn’t afford to worry about that. If she were discovered, she would give the signal and pray that Colm could heave her up in time. Maelys closed her mind to everything except what she had to do.
