“No. What care is it of mine if the elves erase you? It would restore the world. Humans have always been a blight, like the Ba Ran Ghazel, only with the Ghazel you know where you stand. They don’t pretend to accept you when they want something, then shove you out in the cold when they’re done with you. No, the Ghazels’ hatred is up front and honest, not like the lies of the humans.”
“I’d listen to him, Princess. He is an expert on betrayals.”
The voice, low and threatening, came out of the darkness and Magnus jumped up, scrambling toward her, as if for protection. A moment later Royce appeared at the edge of the fire’s light.
“I just wanted the dagger,” Magnus replied, a hint of desperation in his voice, which rose an octave higher than normal.
“I understand, and I promise that the moment this business is done, I will make a present of it to you,” Royce told him with a hungry look in his eyes that gave even Arista’s heart pause. “Be sure to keep me informed of his usefulness, won’t you, Your Highness?”
“He’s actually being very helpful—so far,” she replied.
“Too bad,” Royce said. “Still, I have every confidence that will change. Won’t it, Magnus?” He glared at the dwarf for several minutes as if expecting an answer; then the thief looked at her. “Better get everyone up. It’s time we got moving.”
Royce turned and disappeared silently into the cave’s gloom. When she looked back at the dwarf, Magnus was staring at her with a surprised, almost shocked, expression, as if something about her suddenly mystified him. He turned away and grumbled something she did not catch before returning to his pile of burning rocks.
Magnus’s campfire made the process of getting up and having breakfast almost cheerful and lent a sense of normality to their queer surroundings. The bright yellow flicker reminded Arista of her days traveling with Royce and Hadrian, and of her trip to Aquesta. It was shocking to think of those days as better times. Her life since the death of her father had been one long cascading fall that had left her tripping over ever greater troubles.
She could hardly imagine a more desperate state than the one she faced now. There wasn’t much that could top the extinction of mankind. She was certain, however, that it would never come to that. Even should the elves prevail, even if they sought to eradicate humans, she suspected there would be pockets that survived. It would be like trying to kill all the mice in the world. A few would always survive. She looked around the cave as she sat tying up her hair for the day’s journey. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, could live down there alone. Like her father, she was not an overly religious person, and yet she could not believe that Maribor would let his people vanish from the face of Elan. He had saved them before. He had sent Novron to snatch them from the brink, and she suspected he would do so again.
Myron ate breakfast with Elden much as he had dinner. The two communicated in silence while Wyatt rolled up blankets. She had no idea what to make of Wyatt. He and Elden kept mostly to themselves, rarely speaking, and usually only to each other. They did not seem a bad sort, not like Gaunt. Degan bothered her like a splinter in her skin. How he could be the descendant of Novron was bewildering, and not for the first time she wondered if perhaps Esrahaddon had gotten it wrong.
They lit lanterns from the dying flames of the campfire, and after packing up, Royce roamed about the cavern, disappearing from view occasionally. Only the glow of his lantern showed his position.
“Wrong way,” she heard Magnus mutter, his arms folded, his foot tapping the stone. “Better… better… now up… up—yes!”
From across the cavern they could see Royce swinging his light and they marched forward. They climbed a sheer cliff to a crack in the rock and sliced through to another chamber. Then they climbed down into another long passage into yet another cavity. Each looked the same as the ones before, smooth walls and wet, pool-scattered floors.
“I thought caverns were supposed to have long cone-shaped stones hanging down from the ceiling,” Alric mentioned as they entered yet another chamber.
“Not old enough,” Magnus said.
“What’s that?” the king asked.
“These caves, they’re not old enough for dripstones to form. It takes tens of thousands of years. These…” He looked around, pursing his pudgy lips. “These tunnels are young. I doubt they have existed for more than a few thousand years and most of that time this was underwater from a powerful river. That’s what carved the walls and rounded the rocks. You also need limestone and this isn’t that kind of cave. Actually…” He paused, then stopped to pick up a rock. As he weighed it in his hand, a puzzled look came over his face.
“What is it?” Mauvin asked.
“The rocks here are from the surface.” He shrugged. “Perhaps the river carried them.” He continued to stare, licking his teeth, for several seconds before dropping it and moving on.
They entered another narrow space but not nearly so tight as before. This was an irregular passage about the size of a typical second-story castle corridor. Low ceilings caused them to duck and rough ridges made them step around, but the way was considerably easier and more comfortable than those previously encountered. The passage was in a constant descent, growing more pronounced with each step. They followed the glow of Royce’s lantern and kept track of the back of their procession by the bob of Hadrian’s. As on the previous day, Arista walked in the middle, her robe glowing softly.
They heard a rush, as if someone far away was beating a drum. The sound echoed, making it hard to determine what direction it was coming from. They all paused, looking around nervously. Arista felt a slight breeze forming and realized what was coming. At the same instant, she knew that outside, the sun had just risen.
“Here they come,” Hadrian called out.
Arista crouched down, pulling the hood of her robe up over her head as through the corridor swept the same multitude of bats that had frightened her in the shaft the evening before. The world around her filled with squeaks and flutters; then the wind passed and the sound moved away. She stood up and peeked out and saw the others lowering their arms as well. A few slow strays continued to fly by when one not far from Myron was snatched from the air. The monk staggered backward with a gasp and fell in front of Elden, who picked the monk up as if he were a doll.
“Snake,” Wyatt announced. “A big black one.”
“There’s dozens of them,” Royce explained.
“Where?” Alric asked.
“Mostly behind you on the walls.”
“What?” the king said, aghast. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Knowing would only make traveling slower.”
“Are they poisonous?” Mauvin asked.
They could all see the silhouetted shoulders of Royce’s shadow on the far wall shrug.
“I demand you inform me of such things in future!” Alric declared.
“Do you want to know about the giant millipedes, then too?”
“Are you joking?”
“Royce doesn’t make jokes,” Arista told him as she looked around, anxiously hugging herself. Immediately her robe brightened and she spotted two snakes on the walls, but they were a safe distance away.
“He must be joking,” Alric muttered quietly. “I don’t see any.”
“You aren’t looking up,” the thief said.
Arista did not want to. Some instinct, a tiny voice, warned her to fight the impulse, but in the end she just could not help herself. On the low ceiling, illuminated brightly by the robe, slithered a mass of wormlike bugs with an uncountable number of hairlike feet. Each was nearly five inches in length and close to the width of a man’s finger. There were so many that they swarmed over each other until it was hard to tell if the ceiling was rock at all. Arista felt a chill run down her back. She clenched her teeth, forced her eyes to the floor, and focused on walking forward as quickly as possible.
She promptly passed Alric and Mauvin, both moving quicker than normal. She reached Royce, who stood ou
tside the corridor on a boulder at the entrance to a larger passage.
“I guess I was wrong. Looks like I should have told you earlier,” Royce said, watching them race forward.
“Are there…?” she asked, pointing upward without looking.
Royce glanced up and shook his head.
“Good,” she replied. “And please, if Alric wants to know these things, fine, but don’t tell me. I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing they were there.” She shivered.
Everyone scurried out of the corridor except Myron, who lingered, staring up at the ceiling and smiling in fascination. “There are millions.”
They entered another chamber, a smaller cavern of dramatic boulders that thrust up and out. Arista thought they appeared how the timbers of a house might look if a giant stepped on it. As soon as they entered, they faced a mystery on the far wall, where three darkened passages awaited, one large, one small, and one narrow. The party waited as Royce disappeared briefly into each one. When he returned, he did not look pleased.
“Dwarf!” he snapped. “Which one?”
Magnus stepped forward and poked his head into each. He placed his hands on the stone, groping over the surface as if he were a blind man. He pressed his ear to the rock, sniffed the air in each opening, and stepped back with a perplexed look. “They all go deep, but in separate directions.”
Royce continued to stare at him.
“The stone doesn’t know where we want to go, so it can’t tell me.”
“We can’t afford to pick the wrong path,” Arista said.
“I say we choose the largest,” Alric stated confidently. “Wouldn’t that be the most sensible?”
“Why is that sensible?” Arista asked.
“Well—because it is the biggest, so it ought to go the farthest and, you know—get us there.”
“The largest might not remain that way,” Magnus replied. “Cracks in rock aren’t like rivers. They don’t taper evenly.”
Alric looked irritated. “Okay, what about you?” he asked Arista. “Can you do anything to—well—you know—find which is the right one?”
“Like what?”
“Do I need to spell it out? Like…” He waved his hands in the air in a mysterious fashion that she thought made him look silly. “Magic.”
“I knew what you meant, but what exactly do you expect me to do? Summon Novron’s ghost to point us in the right direction?”
“Can you do that?” the king asked, sounding both impressed and apprehensive.
“No!”
Alric frowned and slapped his thighs with his hands as if to indicate how horribly she had let him down. It irritated her how everyone seemed so disgusted by her talent and yet was even more upset when they found her ability lacking.
“Myron?” Hadrian said softly to the monk, who stood silently, staring at the passages.
“Three openings. What to do?” Myron said eerily.
“Myron, yes!” Alric smiled. “Tell us, which way did Hall go?”
“That’s what I am reciting to you,” he replied, trying to hide a little smile. “ ‘Three openings. What to do? I sat for an hour before I gave up trying to reason it out and just picked. I chose the closest.’ ”
Myron stopped, and when he failed to say more, Alric spoke. “The closest? What does that mean? Closest to what?”
“Is that all Hall wrote?” Arista asked. “What came next?”
Everyone crowded around the little man as he cleared his throat.
“ ‘Down, down, down, always down, never up. Slept in the corridor again. Miserable night. Food running low. Big-eyed fish looking better all the time. This is hopeless. I will die in here. I miss Sadie. I miss Ebot and Dram. I should never have come. This was a mistake. I have placed myself in my own grave. Feet are always wet. Want to sleep, but don’t want to lie in water.
“ ‘A pounding. Pounding up ahead. A way out maybe!
“ ‘Pounding stopped. I don’t think it was from the outside. I think someone else is down here—something else. I hear them—not human.
“ ‘Ba Ran Ghazel. Sea goblins. A whole patrol. Nearly found me. Lost my shoe.
“ ‘Bread moldy, salted ham nearly gone. At least there is water. Tastes bad, brackish. Slept poorly again. Bad dreams.
“ ‘I found it.’ ”
“The shoe?” Wyatt asked.
“No,” Myron replied, smiling, “the city.”
“Interesting,” Gaunt said. “But that doesn’t help us with the passages, does it? By the sound of things he traveled for days and never listed any landmark. It’s pointless.”
“We could split up,” Alric said, considering. “Two groups of three and one of four. One group is bound to reach Percepliquis.”
Arista shook her head. “That only works if we can divide up Mr. Gaunt in three parts. He is the one who has to reach the city.”
“So you keep reminding me,” Gaunt said. “But you refuse to tell me exactly what you expect me to do. I am not a man of many talents. There is nothing I can do that someone else in this party can’t. I hope to Maribor you don’t expect me to slay one of those Gilly-bran things. I’m not much of a fighter.”
“I suppose you have to—I don’t know—blow the horn.”
“Couldn’t I have done that after you returned with it?”
Arista sighed. “There’s something else. I don’t know what. I just know you have to be here.”
“And yet we have no idea where here is,” he said indignantly.
Arista sighed and sat down on a rock, staring at the entrances. As she did, Alric stared at her.
“What?” she asked.
Alric smiled and glanced back at the passages. “I was wrong. Hall went in the narrow passage on the right.”
He sounded so certain that everyone looked at him.
“Care to tell us how you know that?” Arista asked.
He grinned, obviously very pleased with himself. “Sure, but first you have to tell me why you sat there,” he said to her.
“I don’t know. I was tired of standing and this might take a while.”
“Exactly,” Alric said. “What did you say, Myron? It took an hour for Hall to decide which passage?”
“Close. ‘I sat for an hour before I gave up trying to reason it out and just picked,’ ” the monk corrected.
“He sat for an hour trying to decide,” Alric replied. “He sat right where you are.”
“How do you know?” Gaunt asked. “How do you know it was on that rock and not someplace else?”
“Ask Arista,” the king replied. “Why did you sit there and not someplace else?”
She shrugged and looked around. “I didn’t really think about it. I just sat. I guess because it looked like the most comfortable place.”
“Of course it is. Look around. That rock is perfect for sitting. All the others are sharp on the top or at steep angles or too big or small. That is the perfect sitting rock for looking at those passages! And that’s the same reason Hall chose that spot, and the closest passage is the narrow one. Hall went in there. I’m positive.”
Arista looked at Royce, who looked at Hadrian, who shrugged. “I think he might be right.”
“Sounds good to me,” Royce said.
Arista nodded. “I think so too.”
Everyone seemed pleased except for Gaunt, who frowned but said nothing.
Alric adjusted his pack and, taking the lantern from Royce, promptly led the way.
“That lad might amount to something yet,” Mauvin said, chuckling, as he followed his king.
CHAPTER 11
THE PATRIARCH
Monsignor Merton shuffled along the dark snowy road, his black hood up, his freezing fingers gripping the neck of his frock. He shuffled for fear of falling on the ice he could not feel. The tip of his nose and the tops of his cheeks had gone from feeling cold to burning unpleasantly.
Maybe I have frostbite, he thought. What a sight I will be without a nose. The thought did not bother
him much; he could get along fine without one.
The hour was late. The shop windows were all black, dull sightless eyes reflecting his image. He had passed fewer than a dozen people since leaving the palace and all of them were soldiers. He felt sorry for the men who guarded the streets. The shopkeepers complained when they collected taxes, the vagrants wailed when they drove them off, and the criminals cursed them. They were half-shaven, blunt-nosed, loud, and always seen as bullies, but no one saw them on nights like this. The shopkeepers were all asleep in their beds, the vagrants and thieves tucked in their holes, but the soldiers of the empress remained. They felt the cold, suffered the wind, and endured exhaustion, but they bore their burdens quietly. As he shuffled on, Merton said a quiet prayer to Novron to give them strength and make their night rounds easier. He felt foolish doing so. Surely Novron knows the plight of his own. He does not need me reminding him. What an utter annoyance I must be, what a bother. It’s little wonder that I should lose my nose. Perhaps both feet should be taken as well.
“Without feet, Lord, how will I serve?” He spoke softly. His voice came out in clouds that drifted by as he walked. “For I am not fit for much else these days beyond carrying messages.”
He stopped. He listened. There was no answer.
Then he nodded. “I see, I see. Stop being a fool and walk faster and I will keep my feet. Very wise, my lord.”
On he trudged, and reaching the top of the hill, he turned off Majestic Avenue and entered Church Square. At the center of the dark void glowed the clerestory lights of the great cathedral, the Imperial Basilica of Aquesta. Now that Ervanon was no more—crushed and defiled by the elven horde—this was the seat of power of the Nyphron Church. Here emperors would be crowned, married, and laid to rest. Here Wintertide services would be performed. Here the Patriarch and his bishops would administer to the children of Maribor. While it had nowhere close to the majesty of the Basilica of Ervanon, it had something Ervanon had never had—the Heir of Novron, their earthly god returned. And not a moment too soon, was how Merton saw it, but gods had a flair for dramatic timing. He considered himself blessed to be granted life in such a wondrous time. He would be a living witness to the fulfillment of the promise and the return of Novron’s Empire, and in some small way he might even be allowed to contribute.
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