by Marc Secchia
“Fool’s errand?”
“That was just for effect,” said Azurelle, “so you can shut your gaping trap. I happen to agree a lot more with you than the General or the Princess. Although you are neck-deep in poo and getting deeper all the time–”
“Zi!”
“You stole the scroll, didn’t you?” The Fiuri made a cutting motion across her neck. Dramatic, Shioni thought with an inward gulp, and hopefully not too accurate! “I hope you’re right–as I’m helping you, that means I’ll be right next to you, literally swimming in the brown smelly stuff, if you’re wrong. By my wings, that’s a madcap grin. Are you feeling quite alright?”
Shioni kept right on grinning. It felt so good to have Zi aboard. She had been secretly dreading heading into the mountains on her own. Under the mountains, even. She hated confined spaces. But wasn’t it worth the discomfort if travelling through the caves could save her enough time to catch up with the Sheban warriors, before they walked straight into Kalcha’s trap? Maybe she was a bit mad. Sun-touched. But Zi seemed to be willing to share the madness with her. That was reason enough to curve her smile upward.
Even the thought of Annakiya waking up in the morning to find her precious scroll stolen did not straighten her lips one iota. She would know at once… she would be frantic. The Princess of West Sheba would know the meaning of helplessness when she discovered Shioni was gone. The metal of the necklet was cool to her fingertip touch. Just once, this slave-girl was going to rebel. Her smile widened. Oh yes, a truly elephant-sized rebellion was just the medicine she needed to taste on her tongue.
She also tasted apprehension, and the thrill of adventure.
Wrapped in the chill pre-dawn dark, hearing the river gurgling cheerfully to her left hand, sensing the heft of Azurelle in her tunic pocket and rocking to the rhythm of Thunder’s tireless canter speeding her down-valley, Shioni had never felt so alive.
“So… what are you going to tell the soldiers at the cave?”
“Watch and learn,” she grinned.
But even to herself, Shioni did not sound confident. Not at all.
Chapter 18: Into the Caves
“Hyenas?”
“In the valley!” Shioni cried. “The others went that way.”
And she watched in mild amazement as the last of the warriors melted away into the pungent juniper thicket.
“You’re a genius,” Zi said dryly. “And they are fools.”
“How encouraging–”
“Hurry. Before they work out there’s something wrong. And don’t worry–they’ve found the first few traps. It’s deeper in we’ll need to worry about.”
Shioni swallowed. “You’re reading the scroll, alright?”
“Sure, and your name’s ‘graceful fluffiness of the baby bird’,” Zi snickered, but without a trace of meanness in her voice. “You weren’t afraid of the lion, nor the mad giant…”
The cave mouth yawned before her, blacker even than the night. It smelled faintly of rancid meat, making Shioni think that she might as well be staring down a lion’s throat, and taking her first steps toward a messy end. Who knew what other traps the Wasabi might have set in there? Traps not recorded on any scroll…
“I’m not that brave, Zi. Look at my hands, they’re shaking…”
“Being brave and being reckless are two different things,” said Thunder, moving beneath the overhang. “The difference is that a brave person knows when to be scared. Now, take care you don’t bump your head.”
“Ouch! My knee, you mean.”
But once Thunder had squeezed through the entrance, the tunnel widened and Shioni’s knees were no longer in danger of being scraped off. She fumbled a while with the lamp before getting it lit.
“The scroll,” whispered Zi.
“Did they ever find the warrior who was lost in here?”
“No.”
“Here. Why are we whispering?”
“Because I’m nervous. Aren’t you? Right. It says to keep against the left wall.” She prodded Shioni with her pinprick of a finger. “Tell that lump of a horse you’re sitting on! Then take the right tunnel when it forks, and–hold the light steady, will you–we will need to step over a trap twenty paces down. It’s marked with an arrow on the wall. Got that?”
“I’ll handle Thunder. Are you sure you want to go through these caves, Thunder?”
“Ask me again and I’ll prove to you I don’t just eat grass.”
And that was no joke. Shioni gulped down a chuckle.
It soon became clear that the caves were no highway for troops. While the tunnels showed many signs of having been widened or smoothed for easier passage, there was nothing easy or straightforward about the route they were forced to take. Rather, it seemed designed to confuse. There was no pattern to the lefts and rights, ups and downs, nor was there any shortage of dead ends, hidden turns, subtle bends, and drop offs–and that was assuming one avoided the deadly traps, having decoded the meandering, oftentimes unclear text.
The bobbing lantern was their ever-present helper, their guide, and numerous times their saviour. It kept the yawning darkness at bay–a darkness that preyed on Shioni’s nerves, and had Zi patting her arm murmuring ‘calm down’ and ‘your heart’s going to explode if you don’t relax’. Their progress was measured by that bobbing pool of light. But after four hours, according to Zi, who always knew exactly where the sun was, even deep underground, the path seemed to abandon its torturous ways.
As they paused over a few bites of bread for Shioni, honey for Zi, and nothing at all for Thunder, the Fiuri threw up her hands and complained, “This is ridiculous! I’d rather fly headlong into a spider’s web!”
“What is?” asked Shioni, leaning over the offending scroll.
“Hold the light steady. No, put it on that rock. Thanks!”
Shioni complained, “Don’t you ever cut those claws of yours? They’re so sharp!”
“Baby!” The Fiuri’s feet danced across the open scroll. “Listen, ‘Of the three take thee the path that leadeth pleasantly, not the high and rocky road, nor the tunnel shaped like a toad’.” Zi stamped her foot. Even that was not enough to dent the parchment. “What sadistic madman writes such obscure instructions? Or, ‘Beside the four a rocky door, rest for the footsore, a gallery of beauty before thee’. At least we haven’t come to the part where the stele was damaged... yet.”
“There’s a part missing?” Shioni realised she had just squeaked like a field mouse frightened by a hunting owl, and lowered her voice self-consciously. “Which part?”
Zi stepped delicately over the parchment and put her hand on Shioni’s knee. “Don’t you worry about nothing, girl.”
“Don’t you be imitating Mama Nomuula, Fiuri.” Shioni raised an eyebrow, making Azurelle laugh. “I’ll tan your hide till you’s black and blue, I will!”
“We made it past three breaks in the text already,” said Zi, raising her finger to her lips. “Small ones. The big break comes just after the toad.”
“There’s a toad?”
“For heaven’s sake, girl!” said Zi, lapsing into Mama-Nomuula-imitation again. “Just you be still.”
“I can’t help it, Zi. I feels as though the walls are crushing down–”
Zi interrupted quickly, “Did I ever tell you about Fiuriel–my world? Let’s move on, and I’ll describe it to you.”
Shioni threw her a nod, grateful at the prospect of distraction.
“Fiuriel is made up of caves, much like these,” said Azurelle, striking a dramatic pose upon Thunder’s back. Her jade eyes gleamed like mysterious jewels in the lamplight. “A whole world of caves, interconnected with each other, slowly growing and changing as the years pass by.”
“No wonder you’re so at home here.”
They were walking along a long, fairly straight tunnel, with a sandy floor and water-smoothed walls. Perhaps it had once been an underground river. “I’m not,” said Zi. “Fiuriel–well, how can I best describe it to you? Everythin
g is light. Everything gives off light. Every plant, every wall and floor, even the Fiuri and the cave animals themselves: everything glows in a million hues and subtle colours that delight the senses. Everything is crystal. Even my blood is dissimilar to yours, Shioni. Here my flesh is warm, but in the realms of the butterfly-people–well, no, I was warm too. But not flesh like you. Crystal flesh.”
“Ooh!” she cried crossly, throwing up her hands in disgust. Shioni quickly grabbed her before she toppled off Thunder’s back. “Words are not my strength. I’m doing a rotten job!”
“Don’t stop.”
“Well… it’s beautiful, as I was saying. Your world has its splendours too–like the mountains and rivers, and the great vistas that open before your eyes–I mean, imagine being able to see to a horizon? You couldn’t do that in the Fiuri world. Only on the surface, and that’s far too dangerous. You’d be killed. On the surface there is wild magic, and creatures of wild magic, that would tear a Fiuri apart in the blink of an eye. Not that the caves are much safer. That’s why the Fiuri had to band together in clans and build their castles and fortresses, sealing off whole areas, protecting them with magical wards and powerful spells created by hundreds of Fiuri magicians working in concert.”
“There are carnivorous plants with names like Pitchers and Sticky-Eyes and Bolt-Tongues that, having snared a Fiuri, would eat them or worse, digest them slowly.” Zi shuddered. “And animals, slow and fast, flying and crawling and burrowing, strong of tooth and claw, many times the size of a Fiuri; animals that hunt in packs or alone; animals that sneak and ambush the unwary. Oh, the curse of being so small! It is a dangerous, dangerous world, Shioni. But oh! The wonders it holds! Exquisite mysteries beyond imagination! I miss it so…”
“I’m sorry, Zi.”
“Nothing for it,” she said, bravely dashing away a tear. “Now, here comes the problem. Hold that lantern high, would you?”
“Well, this must be the ‘high and rocky road’.”
“So which is the toad?”
After some disagreement they tried the middle of three tunnels that split off at that point. But they quickly came up against a rock fall which had sealed the route. They were forced to return to the fork.
“This is the fat tunnel,” Shioni realised. “Look, and the entrance is zigzag; a toad’s hind leg.”
“We should have taken the right.”
“Right.”
Chapter 19: Garnet Glory
“We’re lost.”
Zi’s voice echoed plaintively in the great gallery that had opened before them, a cave of such breathtaking magnitude, a thick and far-reaching forest of stalagmites and stalactites, that the light they carried with them seemed but a puddle cast adrift in a vast underground ocean. Water was plinking and plopping here and there, in no discernible hurry. The lamplight winked cunningly off a thousand moist surfaces all around them. But it only served to impress on them how lost they were. In this place, the hours they had been wandering through tunnel after tunnel and cave upon cave for nearly two days, came crashing home with deadly certitude.
They had run out of food and the lamp oil was running dangerously low too. Shioni berated herself silently for not stealing another gourd–but she had never expected to be underground for so long.
Zi’s voice quivered as she added, “There must be fifty tunnels out of here. And no mention of this in Annakiya’s scroll. It’s hopeless. Shioni, I’m sorry. That break in the text… we must have taken a wrong turn–”
“Thunder says you should follow you instincts.”
“Oh he does, does he?”
“He wishes to add that you are the most beautiful Fiuri he has ever seen.”
Zi touched her left antenna–a sure sign of irritation, Shioni had learned. “Tell that great lump of horseflesh he’s only ever seen one Fiuri, and that’s me.”
Shioni laughed. “He says you only need to see one jewel to know it for what it is.”
“Ooh, what a nice compliment! You lovely horsy.”
Thunder took a semi-playful snap at the air just above her head. Zi affected complete nonchalance.
“Well, you are the best option we have.”
“The only option, you mean. Oh, very well, I’ll stop arguing.” Azurelle’s bright green eyes fluttered closed. She breathed deeply, twice, three times, and after a lingering pause, said, “Well, I don’t know. We should be heading over that way, but I feel something more… more interesting this way. More of a pull.”
Shioni stroked an imaginary beard right down to her stomach as she aped her most befuddled expression. “Mmm… the push or the pull… let me think…”
“If I were your size, I’d slap you silly!”
It was hard to know whether to take Zi’s hot response at face value, or if there was an element of joking beneath that she had not heard. “Sorry… er, lead on, brave friend.”
Shioni dismounted and, following Azurelle’s whispered instructions, led Thunder deeper into the great cavern. They wound steadily between the great stone columns, now and again finding the way blocked; having to detour to find a route wide enough to allow the horse passage.
After a time, she frowned. “Is it my imagination, or is it a bit lighter here?”
“It is,” said Thunder.
“Here,” said Zi, pointing excitedly. “This is what I felt!”
A strange, reddish radiance was emanating from between two squat columns, which formed a kind of natural entryway to a short passage beyond. And further still? The tunnel seemed to have been cut through by a knife. “Careful,” cautioned the Fiuri as they pressed forward. Shioni held the lantern high, although she hardly needed to. There was enough light to see that they had stepped into a wonderland.
Instinctively, they fell into a long, reverential silence.
The explorers found themselves teetering on the lip of a huge, vertical tube. From somewhere high above their heads, light filtered down through the lenses and facets of myriad gemstones that thickly encrusted the inner surface of the tube like a growth of strangely orderly, sharp-edged plants. The light bathed the travellers in slowly shifting rainbows and ruddy refractions somehow conducted from the world above into the very bowels of the mountain. The tube continued downward an unknown distance. There it twisted and vanished from sight. But as far as the eye could see, a king’s ransom of gemstones surrounded them, in every conceivable hue and tint of red, crimson, rose and ruby; a crystal garden painted by a master artist who had limited herself to but a single theme colour and uncountable subtle variations.
“I’ve read about these,” Azurelle said eventually. “It’s a volcanic pipe, but how magnificent! Those gemstones are called garnets. Look–see–someone has mined here in times past. They must have descended into the pipe on ropes, attached to those rusty old rings.”
“You could sell all of West Sheba for this,” said Shioni.
“Many times over,” agreed Azurelle.
“Is this what your Fiuri realms are like?”
Zi’s eyes grew suddenly moist. “In places...”
Her position on Shioni’s shoulder meant that the Fiuri had to hold her slave-necklet in order to keep her balance. Shioni heard several muffled sobs next to her ear. Something icy splashed on her neck. She pushed back her hair and found Zi’s free hand with her thumb and forefinger. “You’ll get back there one day, you’ll see.”
“Really?”
But she had noticed something else on the far side–separated from their perch by an enormous leap over nothingness. “Look, Zi! Could that be the rocky door the scroll was talking about?”
“‘A rocky door… a gallery of beauty before thee’?” Azurelle’s voice rose to an impossible pitch, “You’re right! That’s definitely a rocky door! Look, the old timbers have rotted… oh, Shioni! We’re saved! Saved!”
“We’re not saved, Zi. Stop scratching my neck. How do you propose to get over there–fly?” The moment the words left her lips, Shioni recognised how cruel she sounded. “S
orry… I mean, that was awful of me. Zi–”
“I know what you mean. But do you think Thunder could jump–”
“Zi–no, don’t you dare!” Shioni heard her voice thicken with emotion. “It’s too far! I lost one pony already! I couldn’t stand to lose Thunder too.”
“Nobody is losing anybody,” said Thunder, nudging Shioni’s shoulder with his nose to give his words added force. “But I for one am not game for wandering about this maze until we perish from hunger, or run out of lamp oil and fall prey to one of those traps. I yearn for open skies and green grass.”
“No, Thunder.”
“Yes, Thunder. If he thinks he can do it–”
“NO!”
Instead of becoming angry, Thunder completely undermined her protests by nuzzling the back of her neck and whispering, “Dear one, you once rescued me and restored me to life. That debt can never be repaid. I am ever grateful, as you well know. So please, allow me to do this small thing for you. And–don’t forget those Sheban warriors who are hourly marching closer to Kalcha’s ambush. We must not delay.”
“Stubborn horse… oh! Honestly!” Shioni pressed her cheek against his side, shuddering, fighting to regain her composure. “You make me madder than a wasp! Be careful–you will be careful, won’t you? No, I can’t let you, I just can’t!”
“It is not for you to decide,” replied the horse, resolutely. “Now, unburden me, and tie a rope to my saddle. I will leap that gap, and then you will climb across.”
Shioni measured the gap with her eyes. She tried not to look down. She forced herself to think about the space on the far side, the upslope on which Thunder would land; the thirty or forty feet of clear space on the far side. It was loose and pebbly, but clear of any obvious dangers. The issue was the gap.
But, after a time, she pursed her lips and fell to unloading Thunder. Nothing she could add would change his mind, would it? Stubborn son of a donkey!
She wanted to turn away, but could not. She wanted to close her eyes, but they seemed to be held open by invisible pins. She played out the rope between cold, numb fingers. She was about to be one friend less in the world, she knew it.
