Finally, the task complete, they lead the horses up to the half-exposed entrance. Brynn tugged on Jade’s arm, pointing up. Following his finger, she shivered. Above the curved tunnel opening a hideously life-like carving was etched deep into the black basalt rock: a snake: a rearing cobra, its hood spread wide; fangs bared. It seemed so real in the shifting half-light that she almost expected it to strike down at them.
What did it mean? Was it a warning or just some sort of street-sign saying “Snake Alley”? Maybe there were people living in these caves and this was their way of naming the tunnels. It was possible.
She glanced at the others and they exchanged rueful shrugs. It wasn’t like they had a choice. They either went down this tunnel or they sat here forever. At a nod from Phoenix, Jade sent five of her little witchlights floating ahead, down the tunnel.
They revealed a man-made structure slicing deep into the mountain. Chisel marks were clearly visible in the black walls. Here and there were crude carvings of snakes – poor copies of the masterpiece above the entrance; perhaps done by workers laboriously hacking out the passage. Water dripped from cracks in the roof, staining parts of the stone an ominous, rust-red. It looked as though walls were bleeding. Jade shivered.
As though catching her feeling of apprehension, the horses balked at the opening. She was obliged to command them again before they would walk into the darkness. Leading, Phoenix drew Blódbál and nodded to Marcus. As the group stepped into the passageway, Jade paused. Her vague anxiety deepened to a cold, heavy sense of foreboding; a feeling that some ancient, malevolent power had somehow been awakened and disturbed by their presence.
Her warning cry was lost in the roar of the waterfall. Before she could do anything, the horses panicked, rearing and striking out with sharp hooves. Around them, the earth trembled. Behind them, a new rockfall tumbled down in a cloud of dust, obliterating the tunnel entrance under tonnes of stone.
CHAPTER TWO
“No!”
It was the first clear word any of them had heard for awhile and the four looked at each other in surprise as Jade’s cry rang out in the sudden silence following the earthquake’s end. The waterfall’s roar was muted to a dull rumble by the mass of rock blocking the tunnel.
Phoenix coughed, raked a hand through his unruly, dark hair and eyed the tumbled pile of stones with regret and resignation. Several enormous chunks had fallen, making clearing the opening again impossible.
“It’s not like it makes much difference, really. We’d already decided to go this way, hadn’t we?” He spoke the first few words in a normal voice and then dropped instinctively to a whisper as the sounds echoed back at him.
The others glanced around, nodded and heaved a collective sigh.
“I just don’t like the idea that we’re stuck in here,” Jade voiced what they were all thinking.
For awhile, they stood, staring at the jumbled black rocks in silence. Then Brynn looked up at Phoenix, grinned and punched him lightly in the arm.
“I don’t think this counts – it’s an accident. Remember, too, that I got shoved into the cells of Set’s temple, so you and I are even now: five-five.”
Phoenix laughed, explaining to the others. “Brynn and I were comparing how many times we’d been stuck in prisons so far. We’re up to five each, apparently. You two are on…um… three each, I think.” He grinned at Jade who frowned up at him in bewilderment.
“Uh-huh,” she blinked and shook her head. “I’m sure the importance of that will hit me soon and I’ll be amazed. In the mean time, can we get on with it? Just before the earthquake, I was going to tell you that there’s something down this tunnel. Something awful. I can feel it.” She glanced into the darkness.
He sobered. He knew better than to ignore her ‘feelings’. In this world, Jade was a half-Elf; attuned to all things magical and natural. Her senses had warned them several times so far and he’d be stupid to dismiss them.
“Right, let’s stay on our toes then.” He faced the shadows and gripped Blódbál trying to ignore its insidious message. As always, the magic sword urged him to use it; to spill blood; to give in to its lust for battle. He was almost accustomed to it now but if he wasn’t careful, he’d get overconfident. If he did that, it would take over his body and turn him into a killing machine unable to distinguish friend from foe. He grimaced, remembering how near he had come to murdering Marcus. A wry smile twisted his mouth. Actually, Marcus had been well able to defend himself, even against Blódbál’s enchanted expertise. Still, he had to be on his guard. Next time he might pick on Brynn or Jade and their weapons skills weren’t nearly as good as Marcus’.
They paused for a moment as Jade insisted Brynn exchange his cumbersome monk’s robe for normal clothes and they all eat something. Whether it was from tiredness or uneasiness, Phoenix wasn’t sure but nobody protested the delay or her mothering. They ate quickly and sparingly from the supplies given to them by Heron’s housekeeper in Alexandria. Afterward, feeling a little refreshed, they once more turned toward the blackness.
“We need a torch,” Marcus peered along the dark tunnel.
“But we have Jade’s lights,” Brynn returned, defensive of her Spellweaver abilities.
The Roman raised an eyebrow at the youngster. “A flame will tell us which direction air is flowing through the caves. We can follow it to the outside.”
“Oh,” Brynn pulled down the corners of his mouth, considering. “Makes sense, I guess. I put some torches into the Hyllion Bagia back at Heron’s place.”
“Brynn!” Jade sounded scandalised. “Heron helped us. What else did you put in?”
The boy shrugged. “Nothing he’ll miss much: a few extra skins of wine; a couple of pillows; a spare toga or two for Marcus; a cloak for me; a nice little crystal prism; a hammer; a…”
“Enough!” Phoenix interrupted. “I can’t believe you did that. How could you steal from him?”
“Hey!” Brynn managed to look both offended and amused at the same time. “I traded stuff with him. I don’t steal from friends. I gave him some of my Egyptian treasure but it was probably wasted on him – he just wanted to study it, not spend it.”
Phoenix exchanged uncomfortable looks with Jade. They’d both assumed their little thief had stolen the goods. Face flaming, Jade apologised and pulled out the Bag. Sure enough, when Phoenix thrust his hand into its black maw and muttered ‘torch’, a long wooden shaft slapped into his palm.
Within a few moments, they had a smoky flame going and moved down the tunnel. Phoenix led, holding the torch out at chest height, trying to gauge air movement by its flickering. There was a faint but steady stream flowing toward them.
The tunnel went straight and slightly down for awhile before they reached a junction. A second shaft now branched to the right, its floor angling downward. The left-hand branch sloped up. Phoenix stopped, holding the torch toward each in turn. Surprisingly, the flame burnt strong and straight toward the left but was almost extinguished by a blast of air from the right.
Hesitating, he looked at the others. “Does it make sense to go downward to follow the airflow?”
Jade shrugged. “I’m not getting any more ‘feelings’ about either direction, so I can’t help.”
“The waterfall was quite high up,” Marcus reminded them.
“Let me send a few lights to the left, just in case,” she wafted three foxfires along the upper passage. They stopped about twenty metres along and danced uncertainly in front of a large cave-in. The tunnel was blocked.
“What is it with us and rockfalls?” Byrnn muttered.
“OK,” Phoenix pointed with the torch, “down it is.”
As they descended into the depths of the mountain, a strange, musky scent wafted up the tunnel. The horses reacted to it, jerking back on their reins and whuffling nervously. Jade had to again command them into obedience. She laid a hand on the side of her mare’s head and closed her eyes for a moment. Opening them, she shook her head.
“I
can’t understand what’s wrong. She’s afraid of something, I just can’t tell what.”
“And you don’t get any sense of anything big and nasty up ahead?” Phoenix tried to see beyond the circle of torch-light.
Jade hesitated then tapped her temple with one slender finger. “I…I don’t know. It’s like there’s something blocking me. It feels like my Elven senses are being smothered, somehow. Maybe it’s all this rock. I hate being so far inside a mountain.” She tugged her cloak closer about her shoulders and gazed upward as if imagining the bulk of the hill over her head.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t think about it or you’ll get claustrophobia. We have enough to worry about already. Let’s keep going.”
The musky smell got stronger until it made even the humans feel uneasy. It seemed to tweak some primitive instinct in their brains; an instinct that said ‘run away!’. Determination and desperation made them ignore it but their hearts raced and sweat began to bead on their foreheads as they strained to hear or see invisible dangers ahead.
Distance and time became difficult to judge. Black-and-blood walls slid past without any indication of how far they’d travelled. The tunnel sloped steadily downward. The torch guttered and sputtered in a musk-scented breeze. Hooves clopped on the smooth floor.
Brynn reached out and touched the basalt. “The walls are dry. We must be far enough away from the river.”
“The walls are also a lot closer than they were before,” Marcus pointed out with a nod.
Jade sent lights ahead. Sure enough, the walls, floor and ceiling were all approaching each other. Even worse, in a few more metres it narrowed to a slender opening through which the horses simply would not fit.
They were stuck.
Once more, it fell to Brynn to slip ahead, into the narrow passage, to scout. When he returned, he shrugged. “As far as I can tell, it keeps going but the horses are too big, even if we could get them through this.” He nodded at the constriction.
“Great,” Phoenix groaned. “We can’t take them back and we can’t take them on. What do we do, leave them here to die?”
“No!” Jade was outraged. Marcus frowned at him.
Phoenix waved them back. “It wasn’t a real suggestion. We need ideas. Don’t suppose you can transform them into something smaller can you, Jade?”
She shook her head. “You know my magic is limited. I could cast an illusion of smallness but there’s no way I could actually change them into something smaller.”
“Can you, maybe, wish them outside?” He waved his hands in the manner of a Las Vegas magician.
She sent him a scornful glance. “If I could teleport a horse, don’t you think I would have just teleported all of us outside?”
“The Bag!” Brynn snapped his fingers. “We survived for at least a day when Jade put us inside the Bag, remember? If we can, so can the horses. We’ll put them into the Hyllion Bagia and carry them out.”
Phoenix looked at him speculatively. “Will they fit into the opening? I didn’t think it was that big.”
Jade dragged it out of her pack again and tugged on the drawstring that held the shimmering black material closed. She pulled the cloth experimentally and nodded.
“It’s pretty stretchy. If you three hold it and I command the horses in, I think it’ll work.” She handed the Bag to Marcus. Brynn grabbed at one side and Phoenix a third. Slowly, they backed away from each other, pulling the mouth of the Bag wider and wider until it resembled a huge, black hole suspended horizontally between them. Light fell into it and showed nothing. Jade put a hand in and muttered, ‘torch’. Another wooden torch emerged as she withdrew her hand. It still worked.
“Just don’t tear it,” Brynn warned. “From what I hear about these things, if they get torn, everything inside comes out – all at once. We only know what we put into it. It could be hundreds of years old. There could be entire households in there.”
Phoenix swallowed and tried to hold the slippery material firmly but gently. “So how do we get the horses to jump in?”
“We don’t,” Jade made a tilting movement with her hand, “If you turn it vertical, they can walk straight in.”
So they did – carefully. Marcus and Phoenix stood on tiptoes to stretch the top as high as they could, while Brynn held the bottom against the floor. Jade firmly commanded the horses to walk and they did. Only a certain wildness in their eyes showed their animal instincts were fighting her magic every stiff step of the way. One by one, the horses and all their gear vanished into the gaping black maw of eerie nothingness.
When it was done, they gingerly turned the hole horizontal again and brought the mouth closed. Tying it shut, Marcus handed it to Jade. She hefted the small, silken thing in one hand, tucked it into her shirt and shook her head in amazement.
“It doesn’t even weigh any more than it did. Who would have thought? Good idea, Brynn,” she smiled at the boy.
He grinned back at her. “I just hope they don’t poop all over my treasure.”
Laughing, the four squeezed through the narrow tunnel mouth and continued their downward trek.
Without the unwilling horses, their progress was much faster. The musty scent grew more powerful, until their eyes were watering and they were coughing from the catch of it in their throats.
“What is that smell?” Phoenix demanded, not really expecting an answer. “Can you shield us from it like you did in the sewers in Alexandria, Jade?”
Jade smacked herself in the forehead. “Yes, of course I can. I’m sorry. Here.” She muttered a few Elvish words and outlined a circle in the air. Four shimmering, swirling globes of purple-blue light appeared around their heads before fading into a barely-visible distortion.
Brynn took a tentative breath and looked surprised when he realised the air was no longer tainted. “That’s amazing!”
Marcus poked gently at the globe, watching with interest as little sparks and swirls of purple-blue appeared at his fingertip. Brynn followed suit, delighted.
“Just a variation on the shield spell,” Jade shrugged but she was clearly pleased by their approval. “It won’t keep out weapons, just bad smells and poison gases. If you keep prodding at it, Brynn, it will collapse and I’ll have to do it all over again.”
He snatched his hand away and sent her a cheeky, guilty grin.
They continued walking and Jade fell in beside Phoenix. “I know I’ve smelled that scent before,” she said, “I just can’t think where.”
“What about your Elven senses,” he tapped the bubble next to his forehead. “Any luck there?”
She shook her head. “Still nothing. I don’t know what I sensed just before the rockfall. It was sort of….like something had just realised we are here and was really angry at us.”
“Sweet,” he said, mock-cheerfully, “because we needed someone else to be out to get us.”
She sighed. “Well, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? Beat up the badguys; the henchmen and then the big bad guy - Zhudai. May as well get on with it.”
“We’re certainly getting lots of practice,” he laughed, “You’d think the dudes who wrote this world would have run out of ideas for badguys by now, wouldn’t you? I mean, we’ve had Roman soldiers, Trolls, wolves, Gods, giants and walking-dead priests. What else can they think up?”
Beneath his feet, Phoenix felt the texture of the floor change. A strange, brittle crunching sound came from under his soles as he strode along the corridor. It felt like he was walking on potato crisps or autumn leaves. Surprised, he looked down.
Beside him, Jade gasped in horror. She turned wide, alarmed eyes on him and gulped. Marcus moved back a pace, his face pale. Brynn stepped up and slapped Phoenix on the shoulder.
“You had to ask, didn’t you? Well, there’s your answer,” he pointed at the withered, dried thing that stretched far beyond torchlight, into darkness. Crushed beneath their feet was an impossibly-wide, horrifyingly-long, twisted and desiccated snake skin.
CHAPTER THREE
“Oh,” Jade stared at the gruesome relic, “this is really, really not good, is it?”
“Y’think?” Phoenix’s sarcasm annoyed her but she ignored it.
“I must admit,” Marcus murmured, “I’m not fond of snakes.”
His three companions turned to look at their super-cool companion in amazement.
“Did I hear you confess to being afraid of something?” Brynn jibed.
Marcus raised his brows at the youngster. “Only a fool ignores fear. Of course I get scared. I just don’t let it paralyse me.”
Brynn screwed up his nose as he considered the words. “I’ll let you get away with that, I guess.” He flashed Marcus a grin and pulled out his sling and dagger. “Shall we keep going?”
Jade groaned. “Do we have a choice?”
“After you, oh great leader,” Brynn bowed mockingly toward Phoenix.
Phoenix didn’t respond but swatted the boy lightly on the back of the head as he passed by. Unfazed, Brynn snickered.
Behind them, Jade fell into step with Marcus, her staff held ready. They had gone perhaps another thirty or forty metres when she stopped and grabbed Marcus’ arm.
“Wait,” she called. Phoenix and Brynn turned back.
“I hear something,” she explained as they looked at her. Her half-Elven hearing was better than a human’s so they all waited as she concentrated on sorting out the faint noises.
“It’s echoing oddly but I think…I think it’s voices,” she finally said, surprised. “Oh!” A new noise spiked so loudly that the others heard it, too. “That was a sword hitting rock. Someone’s in trouble.”
“Let’s go then!” Phoenix turned on his heel and jogged away, carrying their torch like an Olympic runner.
The others exchanged looks and began to hurry after him, trusting in Jade’s dim lights to show the way.
The Sudarshana Page 2
