Ahead, the torches swarmed and separated, growing more distant. The sound of baying had ceased. It was hard to breathe, and harder to see. Speros fought back a spasm of panic. How many branchings had he taken? He hadn't kept track. If the Gulnagel left him, he wasn't sure he could find his way back.
"Hold up, lads!" he shouted.
To his relief, a pair of torches lingered unmoving. He made his way down the tunnel, forced to walk bent and doubled under the sloping ceiling. The Gulnagel were crouching, resting their weight on the knuckles of one hand, torches held awkward in the other. As Speros arrived, other Fjel were returning from farther tunnels, some nearly crawling. The narrow space was crammed with flesh and hide, rife with the acrid tang of smoke, the musty odor of Fjel, and something faint and sweet beneath it.
"Any luck?" Speros asked grimly.
"Sorry, boss.'" It was Krolgun who answered, blinking. His eyes looked bleary. "Our mistake. Thought we scented Man-prey close at hand, but it's gone."
"You're sure?" Craning his bent neck, Speros tried to peer past the hulking forms. There was nothing but tunnels and more tunnels, a maze of tunnels, each one narrowing like a funnel into the darkness beneath the mountains.
"Sure enough." Krolgun shrugged. "Can't smell prey, and the tunnels are too small to go farther." He chuckled low in his throat. "Maybe it was you we caught a whiff of."
"What
is
that smell?" Speros sniffed the air, trying to identify the underlying odor. It reminded him of his boyhood, long ago; before he had ever filched a coin or borrowed an untended horse, before his father had disavowed his name. A heady odor, like ripe, sun-warm strawberries in the fields of Haimhault.
Krolgun gave another shrug. "Sheep?"
"No, not sheep." Speros frowned, then shook himself. The torches were guttering for lack of air and his thoughts were doing the same "Never mind. Let's get out of here before we suffocate, lads. We'll double back, retrace our steps. Maybe it was a trick."
If it was a trick, it was well-played. The Fjel searched every turn and blind alley and found nothing. Speros made his way back through the smoke-wreathed air to where Ghost stood awaiting him with unnatural patience, baring her teeth at his return. He took care to avoid them as he mounted. There was no room to turn her and he had to back her down the tunnel, watching uneasily as the dark maze before him receded.
Surely, no living thing could survive in such a place.
The remainder of their search was uneventful. They traveled at a more moderate pace until they reached the massive rock-pile that blocked the Vesdarlig Passage. The Gulnagel glanced at one another and shrugged.
Speros sighed. "Back toward Darkhaven, lads. Slow and careful, eyes and ears! Aye, and noses, too."
There was nothing to be found. Hours later they emerged to murky daylight in the Vale of Gorgantum. Speros relayed orders regarding doubled patrolling of the tunnels, then rode toward the fortress to stable Ghost before reporting to General Tanaros. Despite the futility of his mission, open air and Ghost's smooth, gliding pace cheered him. He wished the news were better, but perhaps it had been a fool's errand after all, chasing after something a raven had not quite seen. A plaited rope? It may have been, or it may have been the wind in the tall grass. Like as not, it had been. At least he could set the General's mind at ease. Soon, battle would be upon them and there would be no more need for mucking about after bits and pieces of Haomane's cursed Prophecy.
Riding toward Darkhaven, Speros of Haimhault smiled and dismissed from his memory the scent of strawberries ripening on the sun-warmed earth.
"Go!" Thulu hissed between his teeth. "Go, lad.
go
!"
On his hands and knees, Dani scrambled as fast as he could, heedless of the rocks bruising and tearing his skin, horribly aware of the pounding feet and baying voices of the Fjeltroll that pursued them.
Attempting to navigate the Vesdarlig Passage in darkness had been a fearful task, hut they had worked out a system. He had taken one wall, and Uncle Thulu the other. As long as each of them kept one hand on their respective walls, they could warn the other of gaps and confer, pooling their knowledge to avoid straying into the side tunnels.
Ominous though the darkness had been, it had saved their lives; or at least prolonged them. With their dark-accustomed eyes, they had seen the torches of the oncoming Fjel in enough time to hide deep in the very side tunnels they had been avoiding.
But the Fjel had caught their scent, and there was nothing for it but to flee and flee and flee, racing ahead of the pursuing torches, the howling Fjel, twisting and turning, deeper into the narrowing maze, running bent, then doubled, then forced to crawl in single file as the tunnels closed in upon them, too small to allow the Fjel to enter.
It was the chance fate afforded them, and they took it.
For what seemed like hours, Dani crawled blindly, scurrying. Terror fueled his flight. He chose at random unseen branches, head lowered and shoulders hunched, protecting the clay vial hanging from his throat, never certain when he would collide headfirst with a wall. Sometimes it happened. His head throbbed, his knees ached, and his hands were slick with blood.
And then there was silence, broken only by the sound of their ragged breathing. There was no sign of pursuit. They had entered a blackness so absolute, it seemed all the light in the world—every candle, every spark, every distant, glimmering star—had been extinguished. Dani slowed, then halted. Like a hunted animal, he crouched in his burrow.
"Do you hear anything?" he whispered.
"No," his uncle whispered back. "I think we've lost them."
"I think we've lost
us
." The words were not as frightening as they should have been. Wriggling. Dani maneuvered his body into a sitting position. If he drew his knees up tight to his chest and scrunched low, he could rest his back against the tunnel wall. Just a rest to catch his breath, he thought. It was a relief to have his weight oft his bruised knees. The enfolding blackness was reassuring, warm and familiar. And why not? Dying was like being born, after all; so the Song of Being told. Inside the womb there was perfect blackness, although Dani did not remember it.
He remembered his mother, who had died before he was two years old. He remembered warm flesh, soft and dusky, smelling sweetly of milk. In the darkness, Dani smiled. Mothers milk, the odor of
love
. She had loved him very much. He remembered his father telling him so and afterward, after his father was gone, Warabi and old Ngurra, who had raised him, the scent of mother's milk and warmed flesh, the sharp tang of a wad of well-chewed
gamal
.
Truly, the blackness was not so terrible.
"Do you smell that, lad?" Uncle Thulu said dreamily. "It's like the scent of baari-wood, newly peeled, slick with morning dew. Nothing like it, is there?" He laughed softly. "I must have been about your age when I cut my first digging-stick. 'Learn to follow the veins of the earth,' old Ngurra told me. 'The Bearer will have need of your skills.'" Another soft laugh. "'Even the wise are wrong sometimes."
A faint sense of alarm stirred in Dani. "Baari-wood?"
"Peeled clean as a whistle, sweet as dawn." Uncle Thulu squirmed into place and slumped back against the wall beside him, their shoulders brushing companionably in the darkness. "You'll see, we'll go to the grove together, and you'll see." He inhaled deeply, then yawned. "You can almost see it now, if you try."
It was wrong, all wrong. There was no scent of baari-wood in the tunnels, only mother's milk and desert-warm flesh, and that was wrong, too, because his mother was long dead and his father, too, and there was nothing here save stone and darkness.
"Uncle." Dani shook Thulu's unresponsive shoulder. "Something's not right. We've got to keep moving. Please, Uncle!"
"To where, lad?" Thulu asked, peaceable and sleepy. "Back where the Fjel are waiting? That path is gone. Onward to starve in darkness? There's no way out of here. Better to rest, and dream."
"
No
." Gritting his teeth, Dani wiped the blood from his sticky hands and fumbled for the clay flask, trying to work the cork loose. It was tight; he had made sure of it after his fall had jarred it loose on the plains. His palms burned, his fingers felt thick and clumsy, and it was hard to get a grip on the cork. For a moment he thought, why not rest? Uncle is right, we are lost forever, it's better to rest and dream.
Then the cork gave way and the scent of the Water of Life arose, and it was clear and clean and potent, heavy with minerals, almost a weight on the tongue, shredding the veils that clouded his mind. With his head heavy and low. Dani took a deep breath, tasting life, verdant and alive, and understood anew how precious and precarious it was, and how tenuous their grasp upon it here in the bow els of the earth.
"Here." He thrust blindly into the blackness, shoving the flask in the vicinity of his uncle's nose. "Breathe, Uncle. Breathe deep."
Thulu did, and shuddered as though awaking from a dream. "Dani?" he murmured. "Dani, lad?"
"I'm here, Uncle." Retracting the flask. Dani felt for the lip and replaced the cork, banging it in tight with the heel of his wounded palm, repressing a wince. All around them was blackness, and there was no longer any comfort in it. "It's time."
"Time?"
"Time to follow the veins of the earth," Dani said gently. He felt for Thulu's arm and squeezed it. "We're under the mountains. Uncle; at least, I think we are. You're right, there's no going back, but there's still forward. Somewhere, these tunnels must emerge, and somewhere there is a river, the Gorgantus River."
"Yes." In the blackness, Thulu's voice was muffled, hands pressed to his face. "Perhaps. Ah. Dani! It's hard, so hard, buried alive beneath the earth. I wish I had my digging-stick to sense the way. Maybe then…"
"You don't need it." Beneath his fingertips, Dani felt the sinews of his uncle's arm shifting, the blood pulsing steadily under his skin. "Please, Uncle! You can do it. I know. It is what you trained all your life to do. Guide us."
For a time, an endless time, there was only silence. And then, faint and ragged, a tuneless song. It rose from his belly, rumbling deep in his lungs. In the black bowels of the earth, Thulu of the Yarruyami sang of water, closing his blind eyes and tracing the veins of the earth, singing the song of its course through the stony flesh of the World God, Uru-Alat. And his voice, at first uncertain and desperate, slowly grew in strength, syllables rolling from his lips like cataracts leaping from a mountain ledge.
"Forward," he said at last. "You'll have to lead, lad; there's not enough room for me to pass you. Forward, and when the path forks, bear to the right."
Eyes open onto utter blackness. Dani got back onto his hands and knees and began to crawl.
"His Lordship wishes to see you."
In the doorway of her chambers, Cerelinde took a step backward but having delivered his message, the Havenguard remained waiting in silence, huge and impassive, three of his fellows behind him. Cerelinde glanced behind her at the tapestry with its hidden door.
"It is his Lordship's custom to send a madling at such times," she said, temporizing. The prospect of being accompanied solely by the Fjel filled her with deep unease. Damaged and unpredictable though the madlings were, they were not without reverence for the Lady of the Ellylon.
The Havenguard's features creased, his leathery upper lip drew back to reveal the tips of his eyetusks. "No more since one tried to kill you. Lady."
On another race, the expression might have passed for a smile. Cerelinde studied him, wondering if it was possible that the Fjeltroll was amused. "What does his Lordship desire?"
The Havenguard shrugged, indicating the irrelevance of the question. He was
Mørkhar Fjel, with a dark, bristling hide beneath the gleaming black armor. Whatever his Lordship ordered, he would do. "You."
Cerelinde fought back a surge of fear and inclined her head. "As he commands."
They led her through the halls of Darkhaven, along corridors of gleaming black marble, laced with the blue-white veins of the marrow-fire. Their heavy weapons, polished to a bright shine, rattled against their armor. She found herself wishing Tanaros was there, for the Fjel respected and obeyed him. They had no reverence for the Lady of the Ellylon, no awe. Other races among the Lesser Shapers held the Ellylon in high regard. Not so the Fjel, for whom they held little interest.
It was not that she felt it her clue, but it was familiar; understood. There was a measure of comfort was in it.
What a terrible thing it was, Cerelinde thought, to be deprived of Haomane's Gift, the gift of thought. She pitied the Fjel insofar as she was able. It was difficult to pity the pitiless, and the fierce Fjel seemed to her lacking in all sympathy, even for their own plight. It was Satoris' doing, she supposed, but it made the Fjel no easier to comprehend.
Envy, she understood. All of the Lesser Shapers envied Haomane's Children, for the Chain of Being bound them but loosely and the light of the Souma was their birthright.
Disinterest was another matter, and incomprehensible.
She walked amid the Havenguard, feeling uncommonly small and insignificant. The least among them topped her by head and shoulders, and the Ellylon were a tall folk. Why had Neheris-of-the-Leaping-Waters seen fit to make her children so huge?
Such thoughts, while not comforting, were a welcome distraction, for altogether too soon they emerged through the middle of the threefold doors and descended the spiral stair into the Chamber of the Font. There it was, close and hot, reeking of ichor: the glittering Font, the beating ruby heart of Godslayer, the shadows crowding the corners. There
he
was, a shadow among shadows, speaking to the Fjel in their own guttural tongue, in a voice so low and resonant it lent a harsh beauty to the words. There were the Fjel, saluting and withdrawing. And then there was only Cerelinde and the Shaper.
"Cerelinde." He said her name; only that. The shadows sighed.