Hand-in-hand, the two broke into a careful jog, almost too fast to discern any danger that might have lain in wait ahead of them. Then suddenly the tunnel opened up below them and to the left and right, and they both managed just barely to stop at the edge of a cutoff diving perhaps twenty feet straight down.
Deran sighed and took a step back from the edge, but Alik stood petrified. The light of the torch in his hand wavered back and forth across the rippling, impenetrable murk of the waters below. A fleck of light strobed them from a drop of water falling from the crevassed ceiling. “Ah—there’s a ledge leading across,” Deran declared....
But at that moment a wisp of black haze hissed and lunged over the ledge at Alik’s bare feet. He cried out and leapt away, dropping the torch in his surprise. For a brief moment Deran saw the chasm of the pool below glow with the reflections of the torch, caught the shadows of uncountable snakes seething on every wall, and then the torch went dark with a watery splort.
Alik ran back up the trail. Deran shouted, “No!” and ran after him. A light flashed, a pair of makeshift torches lit up...and the two came face to face with a flock of drakes and the grand general of the North himself, General Krythar.
The grand general of the emperor of the North was a tall man of gangly proportions with a scrub of dark hair and an infertile stubble of beard. In the narrow tunnel he was slightly stooped over although he could have stood up unimpeded. The uneven light of the torches, which were held on either side of him by two of his drakes, wavered on his stark features from below and shone here and there from more reflective places in the vacant blackness of his cloak and uniform, giving him the false appearance of a vampire. He smiled ingenuously and a squad of his drakes surrounded Alik and Deran each. Alik slunk back against the wall.
“Well-e,” Grand General Krythar spoke, “so ‘ittle Deran the rock elf comes to appearing...and with a friend of his’n.” When he spoke, his voice was like an affected and corrupted version of the same accent Alik spoke in—and Deran was at once aware that he would have to keep Alik from speaking a word before him.
“This kid’s no concern of yours,” said Deran nervously. “I thought I would make use of your untimely bludgeoning of Anthirion to make a friend of a poor handicapped orphan of that locale. One needs an extra pair of eyes helping one in this part of the world, and I in particular needed a child, of course.”
“Of course,” Krythar echoed.
“Oh, and speaking of Anthirion, I suppose congratulations are due.”
Krythar smiled skeptically and gestured to Alik with one finger. “’e ‘as what ‘andicap?”
“He’s mute,” Deran said definitely, cutting off Alik, who had been about to reply on his own behalf.
Krythar nodded. “I suppose you have stories about why you are tromping the swamps a’so.”
“The whole world knows what’s down here somewhere,” Deran replied. “I happen to think I’m in a good position to find it.” He paused. “I see Kerreijj and Pydran are thriving.”
“You know very so Pydran is deceased,” Krythar answered coldly. “Ah, but you maybe do not. You were at the time so fast’y f’eeing. We never recovered his body from the Taparus Shaft. This you see is his son, Svann.”
“I am so disappointed to hear that,” Deran said disingenuously. “And Pydran was my favorite of all these scale-heads.”
One of the drakes near Deran hissed but Krythar held up his hand. “Now we a’ must be civi’ea. If we a’ cooperate’n we a’ succeed.”
Deran scowled knowingly. “But you succeed the most, don’t you, Krythar?”
“I do not mind if I do, thank you,” Krythar answered. He extended his hand toward the passage before them. “You and’e boy’e show us the way. Not too fast, e?”
The drakes parted to allow this, and Deran turned toward Alik. Alik had understood the words of this conversation but the meaning seemed to evade him. They seemed to bear some relation to one another, but whether as enemies, rivals, or old friends, he couldn’t tell. Deran didn’t seem to like Krythar, Alik was terrified by him, and Krythar obviously thought them both expendable: that seemed to be the main thing. He knew instinctively that what Deran referred to as both their reasons for being down here was the same thing he was looking for: the shard of power over plant life. But he hadn’t told Deran that. If he could trust Miraea—and he was by no means sure he could—he had to keep Krythar at least from getting it. If he could trust Deran—and he was not sure of that either—then Deran had come from Arran Delossan, the island scribe. Jevan he knew he could trust, even if he didn’t like him. Jevan.
Alik did not move forward. Deran wasn’t excited to go, either. “Listen, Gen,” he said to Krythar after a short pause. “There’s no point in your wasting us here. We’ve already seen what’s ahead. We’ll be dead and you’ll be none the better off. You see that water ahead? That cave is swarming with serpents.”
“Serpents can be dealt with,” Krythar replied.
“Shadowserpents,” Deran replied.
“Shadowserpents,” echoed Krythar.
At that moment both the drakes bearing the torches were yanked backwards out of the circle of the group shrieking and dragged down the tunnel. The torches clattered to the wet ground and one of them sputtered out. “Light them, ‘ightem!” Krythar barked. Alik leapt away from the walls, crying out. Shadows crawled along the walls everywhere. Deran lit one of his own torches and grabbed Alik by the shoulder. Shadows crawled into the shadows.
“That kid is no mute,” Krythar scowled.
“I hardly think it matters right now,” Deran retorted. “Here, take this,” he said, thrusting his torch at one of Krythar’s drakes and pulling another from his belt.
“Kerreijj, send two drakes back to bring tinder and fue’ for torches,” Krythar ordered. “How many torches you carry, Deran?”
Two of the drakes departed, and Deran lit the new torch. “The one I just gave you, this one, and two more after that. We have enough to escape. Not enough to make an attack.”
“We wi’ need to excavate a route around,” the general decided.
“You are so stubborn,” Deran muttered. “Look out!”
The drake with the torch took off just as a shadowserpent crept steadily up in her shadow. The serpent darted into a coil behind a rock and Deran swung his torch around the rock, trapping it in the light. It screamed and flew for his foot, and he slammed the torch straight down on its head.
The serpent shriveled up into a heap of ashes, and the torch-head broke and flickered on the dank tunnel floor.
“Veae yofaa!” Alik cried, trying to reach the cinders of the burned-out torch-head but being driven away by the serpents. Before anyone could realize the meaning of his warning a stalactite hanging from the ceiling crashed down on the drake with the last lit torch and the shadowserpents swarmed at them all together. The drake was only winged and spiraled to the ground out of the way of the shattering stalactite, but the torch was immediately extinguished. Deran pulled both his last torches out and struggled to light them.
“Deran, you miscrimina’ snake!” Krythar shouted, “Your boy is a....” Krythar drew his sword and swung it at Alik’s head, but Alik dodged and ran down the tunnel away from him. “After him!” Krythar barked, slicing his sword through the vapor of a shadowserpent and retreating himself. A wing of drakes poured after Alik, but at that moment a black, slithering cloud of shadowserpents, black against the blackness of the cavern behind them, broke out over them, swallowing them whole and forcing both Krythar and his drakes to flee.
Alik reached the edge of the shadowserpents’ pool and fell through the pitch blackness to plunge feet-first into the cold water. The choking water rushed up past his head. He felt the shard slipping free from his pocket and caught it, holding it to his lips as though to guard his stifling air. His feet hit the bottom and he began to rise. He prayed the shadowthings would not be able to swim. He struggled not to come up but was running out of air. He could not go up
: he could not stay down. He panicked...the darkness strangled him...the darkness....
He burst into the air, crying out, “Halai’ia! Halai’ia!” The cave was filled with blinding light; the roof and walls were scorched black. Deran was thrown to the ground and both his torches snuffed out in an instant. Then there was only shifting ash descending through the fading air in serpentine curves and a few serpents that had escaped and were regrouping in the shadows. Alik dragged himself onto the farther shore.
Deran ran across the ledge over the pool, shouting a parting jab at Krythar, “Better luck next time, drake-brains!” and was gone.
III.iii.
When the Wizardess Xanthia, the mother of Miraea, had finally been tracked down by Morin’s agents, he had immediately dispatched every minion of his he could after her to kill her and recapture the shard, Floris. He himself was embattled at every turn by Travvis, the first-son and heir of his old rival, the Wizard Kirion. The drake armies leveled Ladrion, razing every city to the ground, but Xanthia herself fled into the waste with the shard and with her child, at last being pursued into the labyrinth beneath the falls of the South Tower by the bloodthirsty shadowserpents. These serpents were the beasts of the Wizard Thaurim, created by the combined power of the fire shard, Solaris, and the shard of animal life, Zoris. They had been created for war, but had been too uncontrollable even for that purpose. Insubstantial shadows, they could only be killed by being trapped in the light, and their venom was certain death. But when they followed Xanthia into the labyrinth, they met a challenge even they could not overcome. In her desperation, and perhaps already feeling the effects of their virulent toxin within her despite all she could do to counter it with the shard she carried, she commanded the shard to lay a bed of opulent golden and fluorescent flowers which, being disturbed, produced a rich mist of such a quality as to suspend the appetite, confound the senses of taste and smell, and induce in the lower mind a sleep deeper than death. The toxin was neither as fast nor as deadly as that of the shadowserpents, but nor could they surpass it: and so she had effectively rescued her daughter and hope from their bloodthirsty souls.
Alik woke up, aching and numb, upon the hard limestone floor of a narrow passageway—in the dark. His head tingled and his ears were ringing. He felt sick to his stomach. By the faintest of glows he could see things in outline: the arch of the tunnel, the cracks and edges of the uneven floor, Deran stirring awake beside him, the shard laying on the ground between them with the bagged creature Miraea had given him crawling about it, curiously. In the tunnel behind them there was the ghostly waving of silky frond-like flowers, and then darkness.
He grabbed the shard and the bag creature and shoved them in his pockets. He vaguely remembered stumbling through a tunnel filled with something like the most wonderful flowers, but he didn’t remember having reached the end. Deran groaned and sat up.
“Ugh, my head feels like it’s been soaked in lamp-oil,” Deran chuckled. “How are you, boy?”
Alik formulated the question. “What happening, has?”
“You showed Krythar, that’s what,” said Deran, feeling himself for injuries. “Blam! Flash! Shining like a star. I say, you’ve got to teach me that trick.” He paused. “Krythar knows you’re a threat now. He won’t stop till you’re dead; you’ve got him scared.”
“Then? After?” Alik asked.
“Then you crawled out onto the bank and ran, and I ran after you, but the light was already gone and the shadowserpents were coming back, so Krythar and his drakes were stranded on the opposite side. But he’ll think of something, don’t you worry. Maybe he really will dig his way around.” He stood up, stretching. “Then I saw you ahead in the tunnel, stumbling and choking through these flowers, looking about ready to die, and so I covered my face with my cloak and carried you out. But evidently I breathed in a little too much, too. So we both collapsed here. And that’s all I know.”
“Kyiv aowev...when...length ago?” Alik asked.
Deran shrugged. “My head’s not up to that problem. Evidently not long enough for us to have died of thirst. We’d better be going, though.” He was suddenly nervous: sleeping with Krythar on their trail? How long would it take to die of thirst, anyway?
Alik nodded in agreement and the two set off slowly down the tunnel, away from Xanthia’s flower patch, toward the pale light that so faintly was illuminating the hall.
“’No’ was ‘do,’ right?” Deran asked. Alik nodded. “What’s ‘yes,’ then?”
“Al,” answered Alik.
“And how do I say, ‘I and you?’”
“Ce ae te,” replied Alik.
“There’s a very large space up ahead,” said Deran. He could see the tunnel up ahead opened onto a cave of some sort.
“Day?” asked Alik.
“No,” said Deran. “A cavern. Perhaps lit by fluorescence.”
“Fl...uo...,” Alik tried to say it. “Kyir vea sa?”
“Pardon?” asked Deran. He gathered Alik was asking what fluorescence was, so he replied, “Sometimes algae or other creatures that live in caves produce light naturally. They call it fluorescence. Does ‘kyir’ mean ‘what?’”
“Al,” Alik replied. “Kyir—what; vea—it; s’v’n—being.”
“Aha,” said Deran. “So I could say, ‘S’v’n Deran,’ right?”
“Dol...not...really,” Alik replied.
Deran shrugged. Echoes of their words reached them as they neared the entrance to the cavern.
For what he saw next nothing could have prepared Alik. As they entered the cavern, the walls and ceiling fell away in every direction, and the light of the fluorescent algae became as bright as though they’d stepped into the free air. Stalagmites and stalactites rose up out of the verdant floor and descended from the lofty ceiling, thicker around than Alik could have reached with both arms and twenty times his height or more to the top. Veins of crystal and calcite ribboned the floor and walls, spilling back light in every direction. Angel wings and soda straws mapped out the ceiling, and a massive calcite dome rose like an altar at the head of the cavern. High pillars framed the mouths of tunnels and alcoves radiating outward from the cavern into an imponderable labyrinth. Everywhere there was vegetation.
The great cavern was filled from height to depth with flowering, growing, vital flora of every color. Masses of vines hung tendrils from alcoves in the arching walls and wrapped themselves about nearby pillars in intricate curls. Giant fronds of thorny ferns sprang up around the brackish pools of mineral water around the cavern floor. In places the smooth limestone floor had been worn down and crushed into a meager soil and burgeoned thick bluish-white burr grass almost as tall as Alik’s head. Blue and violet and pale white flowers as large as his head peered out from amongst tall bushes of rusty golden sedge with tiny pellet-like red berries. There was not a single species he had ever seen before. A spider-like creature with clawed feet like those of the bag creature in his pocket crawled across the bushes and into a patch of crimson flowers.
He wandered toward the middle of the cavern, taken in by the awesomeness of it all, trying to record every detail in his mind and wishing he had something to draw it all on. The cavern seemed to moan with life. On one side a trickling waterfall had percolated down from the thundering falls above and formed about itself a tall bank covered with by high, green foliage. A thin trickle of a brook seeped through the banks of the waterfall pool and slipped along gaily out of the cavern through a curtain of green.
“Well, we don’t know where we are or how long we have till Krythar catches up,” said Deran, interrupting his reverie, “so we’d better be figuring out which way to go.”
“Yof,” Alik replied, instinctively pointing to the passage where the brook disappeared. He knelt down, just to be sure, and pulled out the bag creature. For a while it seemed disoriented, but then suddenly crawled straight toward the passage Alik had guessed. He pulled it back on its string and stuffed it in his pocket.
As they crossed the cent
er of the cavern in that direction, however, Alik stopped. What he had before mistaken for the moaning of the living cavern became louder, more distinct. Became grinding, burrowing. “Something?” Deran asked.
“Do,” Alik responded shortly. But he started back up for the exit tunnel faster than before.
Grand General Krythar was a man with very many resources at his hands—nay, at his fingertips. Four hundred years ago the wizards, including Morin I and Kirion, had arrived by their arts, coming through a controlled rift in the continuity of space and bringing the Stone with them. But they had never understood their own powers or their ramifications—not fully. They had started a downward spiral in the continuity of space they could neither foresee nor control, and only a dozen or so years later an uncontrolled rift had blown open in the snowy northern wastes. It had taken a coarse commoner, a native of the land, Krythar’s father, Katar, to learn how to control it. He it was who had inspired the allegiance of certain travelers of the universe, the rifters, who had been caught up by the Rift and hurled out on the snowy plains in their incomprehensible vehicles and with their incomprehensible utensils. He it was who had inspired the allegiance of the drake armies Morin and Thaurim were so able to generate but so little able to control. All this he had left to his son on his death. Krythar had taken his arts and powers and perfected them. Now he was able to move whole armies at once, instantly, through little rifts he could control. He could fetch supplies, outmaneuver any enemy, and if ever it were necessary, escape at will.
Alik and Deran were reaching the place where the brook trickled beneath the curtained mouth of the exit tunnel when through the upper edges of the cavern wall burst the nose of a great steel drilling machine. “Come on—wait,” said Deran, turning. “What in all the earth?”
Alik was in no mood to wait and poked the curtain of hanging creepers covering the tunnel mouth. It didn’t try to eat him or sting him or poison him, so he ducked into it and crawled.
A drake’s head popped out of the hole in the wall above and spotted Deran. “Sh...,” he cursed. “Alik? Oh well,” he declared, and thrust his way into the tunnel after Alik.
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