The Caves of Night
They all three watched the great gaunt flap away into the night, Gytherik a black silhouette humped upon its shoulders, and then they turned to each other in a sort of controlled panic. Any normal sort of panic was unthinkable in their present predicament; the sides of the cone, inside and out, were sharp and sheer, and the mountains reached dark and unyielding down to the plain far below. The two adventurers threw themselves flat on the rim of the volcano and peered over the outer lip into sheer, unmitigated blackness.
“What are you doing?” Limnar questioned. “Surely you’re not seeking a way down?”
“What else?” growled Eldin. “Would you like to help us, or are you here merely to observe and advise?”
“You just stay put, Limnar,” said Hero, face down, his head far out over the abyss. “We’ve done this sort of thing before, me and Eldin. Climbing at night is not new to us.” He paused. “But on the other hand … it’s damned dark, and these mountains are totally unknown to us.”
“Nor do we have a lot of time,” growled Eldin from a similar position. “If only we had a good rope, then—”
“But we don’t have,” Limnar frustratedly cut in. Then, in rising excitement, he added: “We do have our clothes, though! My shirt is made of fine, strong, supple leather. What about yours, Eldin?”
“Mine too,” answered Eldin, sitting up straight. “How about you, lad?”
“I … I don’t have a shirt,” Hero ruefully answered, opening his jacket to show a naked chest. “I think I left it in Zura’s cabin.”
Eldin snorted disgustedly but Limnar said: “Very well, if we tear these two shirts into strips—” and he pulled off his shirt and began to demonstrate. “See, we should be able to make ourselves a decent rope—albeit a short one.”
Eldin needed no further urging but immediately followed suit. The moon was riding higher now, and by its silvery light they quickly knotted together some forty feet of leather strips, testing the knots as they tied them. When they were satisfied with their makeshift rope, Hero was given the task of choosing a place to lower it down the outside wall of the cone. This was sheer intuition on Hero’s part, for in the moonlight every reflective surface of the near perpendicular face looked the same—yellow splotches on black velvet—but in the end he felt that he had made the best choice.
Then, tying one end of the rope to a knob of rock and tossing the other into space, he said: “Me first.”
“No way,” said Limnar. “I’m smallest and lightest by far—and I’m no mean climber in my own right. And don’t worry, boys, for I’m not all afraid. You don’t live all your life in Serannian without developing a head for heights, be sure. If there’s a way down at the end of the rope, I’ll find it. If not—” he shrugged. “Also, once I’m down so far, I’ll be able to call directions up to you. Here we go—” And without allowing further argument
he swung himself down over the sharp lip of the ledge and was gone from sight.
“Climbs like a monkey,” grunted Hero in appreciation, stretching himself out flat on the ledge once more to watch Limnar shinning down the rope.
“Aye,” growled Eldin, “so he does. You know, lad, I’ve grown to like Captain Dass. I mean, I really
like
him. If we were a trio instead of a duo—”
“You’d like him to sing tenor to your bass and my baritone, eh?” guessed Hero.
Eldin nodded. “He’s a good man,” he gruffly answered—at which juncture there came a twanging, snapping sound from below, then a short cry cut off by a dull thump, followed by the receding clatter of falling rocks, pebbles and loose shale.
“Or at least he was,” Hero sighed.
The two peered over the rim into the abyss, a black emptiness shot with featureless gold, and slowly Hero pulled up the rope. He counted eighteen knots instead of twenty three. “Nearly reached the end of it,” he said. “Damn me, Eldin, I feel rotten.”
“Me too,” said the other. “But let’s face it, he wouldn’t have stood a chance on his own. And in any case, we don’t have the time right now for mourning. Listen—”
Hero listened, and sure enough he could hear the flap and throb of wings beating in the night. The sounds drew closer by the second, and there could be no doubting their source.
“Do you remember the way they hit our little boat?” asked Eldin as they climbed to their feet. “I reckon we’re in bad trouble.”
“Today,” answered Hero, almost as if he hadn’t heard, “I’ve been made to walk a plank two miles high over the Southern Sea, and I’m still alive! I don’t intend
to die now—not easily, anyway.” And as he spoke a wild idea occurred to him. Eldin felt Hero’s sudden tension and said:
“What is it, lad?”
“Listen,” said Hero, “and do as I tell you. I think I know how we may yet come out of this.”
He quickly outlined his plan, with Eldin nodding every now and then, and was just finished when the first black shadow came winging out of the night. The gaunt circled, was joined by a second, a third and a fourth. Eldin pointed at one with his sword. It was bigger than the others, with a thin body and vastly arching wings.
“Yes, that’s the one, all right,” Hero grimly agreed. “And because he’s the biggest of the bunch, he might just be brave enough to attack first. In fact—”
“
Here he comes now!
” Eldin finished it for him.
Hero’s plan was a simple one, but not a little dangerous. He intended that he and Eldin should use the largest of their attackers as a parachute. The danger lay in the fact that ordinary parachutes do not attempt to shake off their passengers, or otherwise deliberately do them harm …
Now the gaunt was almost upon them; but even as they ducked and prepared to fling themselves each upon a grasping paw, so the creature swerved and they saw its near-fatal subterfuge. From behind, skimming in low over the cone at the end of a whistling, flattening dive, one of the smaller gaunts seemed bent upon a kamikaze-style suicide. And indeed, if the adventurers’ reactions had been but a fraction slower, they would surely have been swept to their deaths.
As it was they leapt away from each other, leaving a gap through which the small gaunt sped with mere inches to spare. And doubtless the rubbery creature would have lived to try again—had the pair been other
than Eldin the Wanderer and Hero of Dreams. For as it shot between them over the extinct vent they simultaneously whipped up their swords and braced their arms—and wingless the gaunt went tumbling soundlessly into darkness, while a pair of fluttering membranous rags spun dizzily on the chill night wind.
And only then, while the two were off guard and caught up in the excitement of first blood, did the larger gaunt launch its true attack. In he came, faceless (and strangely furious for a gaunt), beating at the air with wings which would have flattened the adventurers if they had struck them. But quick as twin flashes Hero and Eldin grabbed at the gaunt’s dangling, wildly thrashing limbs, wrapping their legs about its paws. Immediately the creature’s wings began to beat faster as it took their weight, and for a moment it seemed that it might win against the greater pull of gravity. All was a blur of leathery body, vibrating bat wings and jerking, kicking limbs—until Eldin struck upward with his straight sword.
The idea was that wounded, the huge gaunt would flutter down to the plain to die. With luck the two would survive the landing and from then on they could fight on their own terms, undaunted by precipitous heights and the fear of falling from narrow, volcanic lava rims. Thus Eldin’s stroke was not meant to kill but to wound, and then not too severely. Eldin had done the job for the simple reason that Hero’s curved blade was too sharp—literally sharp as a razor—and he had judged his thrust just right. His timing, however, could not possibly have been worse.
For even the best laid plans are subject to the unpredictable, and nothing is less predictable than a night-gaunt. Neither one of the adventurers had reckoned on
the wounded creature descending directly
into
the crater!
“Hell and damnation!” Eldin roared as the light was quickly shut out by the upward reaching sides of the vent. “Who’s guiding the beast? I might have known that if
you
planned something, Hero, it would go all to cock!”
Hero, desperately trying to get a better hold on his chosen gaunt-limb, gasped: “I’ll remember that, Mouth Almighty, when next we need some quick thinking done. Meanwhile, hang on for all you’re worth—and whatever you do
don’t
stab him again—
umph
!” And he sank his teeth into the rubbery, violently thrashing limb where it shook him like a pea in a whistle.
Their voices, mingled with the now erratic throb of wings and the amplified clatter of loosened debris from the walls, echoed and rolled in the confines of the vent. And so narrow that volcanic flue, and so dizzy their descent, that the adventurers were made to feel weightless, sick, and full of sensations of disaster as they plummeted in stygian blackness. The gaunt, incapacitated by its crushing cargo, by Eldin’s thrust, and by the vent’s claustrophobic confines, was hard pressed to do much more than fall, and for two or three minutes the two feared that indeed this was the end. If they struck bottom at this rate of descent, with the gaunt on top of them …
Then the great wings began to beat once more, however feebly, and after a while they arched into huge air-traps. The adventurers, where they clung to the gaunt’s legs, felt their weight returning as the speed of their descent rapidly decreased and a cool but noxious breeze began to blow in their faces.
“He’s gliding!” Hero coughed out the words. “How the hell can he see where he’s going?”
“Just so long as he keeps on gliding, I’m not bothered,” Eldin chokingly answered. “How do gaunts see anyway? No, right now I’m more interested in this night-black underworld.”
“This great cavern, you mean?”
“This underworld,” the Wanderer repeated. “These Caves of Night, as I’ve heard them called. Oh, I’ve heard tell of ‘em, myths and legends and all—I know a little something about ’em—but I’ve never visited ‘em. It’s no place to visit, the underworld. Come to think of it, I don’t know of anyone, except perhaps Randolph Carter, who
has
been here and lived to tell about it. I suppose there must have been some, though, else how did the tales get started in the first place? One thing’s certain: this isn’t a healthy place.”
“Yes, well, I’d guessed that much,” said Hero dryly. “For one thing it smells like a damned great tomb!” He eased his position a little on the gaunt’s now limp leg. “Go on—what do you know about this … this underworld?”
“That it extends in burrows and caves and vast vaults under most of the dreamlands,” Eldin replied. “Also, that in certain places it connects with the lands above. Oriab’s mountains must be one such place.”
“And there are others?”
“I’ve said so.”
“Then we might possibly find a way out?”
“Possibly, if we could ‘see’ like our leathery chum here.” Eldin waited for further questions and when none came added, “But we can’t.”
“Still,” Hero eventually said, “if we survive our landing, and if—”
“If, if, if!” snarled Eldin. “Listen, lad, I hate to sound pessimistic, but surviving the landing could well be our biggest mistake! One: we’ll be lost and good as blind.
Two: we’ll very quickly exhaust ourselves groping about in the dark and bumping into things. And three: we’ll soon become very hungry and thirsty. With luck we’ll last a week—if we don’t bump into any of the locals, that is.”
“Locals?” Hero’s voice was quieter. “You mean people live down here?”
“Who said anything about people?” Eldin answered and his voice carried a warning that Hero should ask no more …