CHAPTER 15: That Which Lies Beneath
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Aiyan. “He wouldn’t be keeping the rudders down in the sewer. Certainly it is only in that direction.”
Pitbull removed his spectacles and wiped them with his shirt tail. “We can drive over and see how it feels from there. But I tell you, Aiyan, that is the way.”
Pitbull drove them upstream to the nearest bridge. Thunder growled in the sky behind them as a line of dark clouds swept over the headland southwest of the harbor, and the city fell under a grey twilight as the storm blotted out the setting sun. As they followed the riverside drive along the left bank, Aiyan pointed down an avenue.
“There is where we should find them, in one of those upscale townhouses in the Lawyer’s Quarter.”
A few minutes later they all stood at a low wall, gazing down on the opening in the steep stonework embankment.
Pitbull turned to Aiyan. “Do not ask me why, because I don’t know. But that is the way.”
Jazul sniffed the air cautiously. “I don’t smell anything.”
“It’s a storm sewer,” Teodor said. “The, uh, other sewers empty beyond the harbor. Speaking of storms, I figure you have about half an hour before the rain strikes. You don’t want to be in there when that happens.”
Lightning flickered inside the towering clouds as the storm bore down upon the city.
“Then we go at once,” Aiyan said. “It is the moment of the arrow.”
He assigned weapons to each of them, his own pocket pistol for himself, and the other two for Kyric, along with the two big pistols. He emptied Kyric’s knapsack and stuffed the little keg of gunpowder into it, giving it to Jazul to wear on his back. Jazul would also carry the axe. He handed the blunderbuss to Pitbull.
Kyric dug through his things and found his bow sling. He was taking his bow. At least he could hit something with it.
“I suppose I’ll wait for you here,” Teodor said, removing one of the lanterns from the wagon and handing it to Kyric.
Aiyan managed a thin smile. “You are the laziest ne’er-do-well I have ever seen.”
Teodor shrugged. “Someone has to stay with the wagon.”
Aiyan took his hand. Each gave a nod to the other and Aiyan turned away.
They scooted down the embankment to stand on the brick apron at the opening. It was tall as a man and wide as an arm span, enclosed by a gate of rust-encrusted iron bars held with a large padlock. Pitbull produced what Kyric first thought was a big steel key. Looking at it more closely he saw that it was actually an ornament, shaped in a fine filigree of silver wire.
Pitbull touched the key to the padlock. “Magic won’t help this,” he said. “It’s rusted shut.”
“Step back,” said Jazul as he squared up to the grating. Taking a bar in each of his massive hands, he ripped the gate off its hinges and threw it aside.
The tunnel was brick lined and arched at the top, and Pitbull lead the way, Aiyan next, and then Kyric with the lantern. He held it high to give them light, but it helped only a little and produced a jumble of shadows. He heard a faint metallic scrape as Aiyan drew his sword and the blue flame erupted, shining coldly against the light of the lantern.
They walked for a time, passing a few side tunnels before coming to a Y split. Pitbull choose the left tunnel without hesitation. The floor was moist but not slick, and he moved on quickly, almost at the trot. Another split and they went right, into a long straightaway, then another and left, always with a slight uphill grade. They entered a curving section that narrowed at the end, turning into a series of elbows. A handful of rats scuttled away into the dark.
A four-way intersection lay beyond. Kyric had lost all sense of direction with the elbow turns, but Pitbull pushed on into the right-hand tunnel, excited now, breathing harder, a trickle of water now running down the middle of the passage. A hundred strides brought them to the hole.
A collapsed patch of brickwork at the shoulder of the tunnel had opened a hole big enough for even Jazul to climb through. A hole leading into a larger space.
Aiyan sheathed his sword and scrambled through. A moment later the blue light of the flame appeared.
“It’s alright,” he said, “come ahead.”
With a leg up from Jazul, Pitbull and Kyric pulled themselves through and into a tunnel many times larger than the sewer. The floor was thick with dirt and other filth, and made uneven by protruding rocks. The side walls and ceiling were formed by a shallow arch of smooth stonework, with rectangular openings clogged with earth, the remnants of cut stone steps spiraling the length of the tunnel. Kyric suddenly realized what it was. They were inside an old tower or turret that lay on its side.
“Aiyan,” Pitbull said softly, suppressing a nervous giggle, “the magical Essa is strong here. Surprisingly strong.” He clinched his teeth.
“Will you be able to control yourself?”
“I think so. The book isn’t far from here.”
“What is the matter?” whispered Jazul.
“Simply put,” said Aiyan, “when Pitbull uses magic, or even comes close to a powerful Essa, he gets a little . . . inebriated.”
Grinning stupidly, Pitbull said, “Just a little.”
Kyric shook his head. So that’s why all the hilarity at the archery tournament. And I took it for meanness. “We’re in the ruins of Derndra’s palace,” he said.
“I believe we are,” said Pitbull, a musical ring to his voice.
They crept forward, Kyric expecting any moment to see the eyes of the Wirmen reflecting at the edge of the lantern light. Then he remembered that their flat black eyes reflected no light.
After a short way, this passage opened into a larger space. The ceiling was low, and Kyric had to stoop a little. He ran his hand over the rough, weathered stonework. It had been an exterior wall at one time, having fallen over and crushed the upper part of this room. The floor ran smooth and level before them, but off to the right it was cracked, and it canted down sharply. A tangle of rusty equipment lay there — coiled metal tubing suggested a distilling apparatus, and in the corner something like a blacksmith’s forge.
“There,” Pitbull said, pointing to the left where a roughly square tunnel broke through the plaster. It sloped upward. “That’s where it is.”
It looked recently and hastily dug, shored crudely with scrap lumber. Pitbull rubbed his nose. “One good sneeze and this will come down on us.”
Aiyan shushed him. “We must go quietly,” he whispered, taking the lead.
They followed the tunnel a few dozen steps to a sharp bend, then upward a few dozen more to where it ended in a small square space dug and shored like the tunnel, except that the opposite wall was made of stone blocks. A heavy wooden door stood behind an iron gate of crisscrossed bars, much like the one at the sewer opening, only this one was clean and new and oiled, the hinges set into the blocks with steel bolts. A huge keyhole lock held the gate fast.
“This is it,” Pitbull whispered. “We’re so close I can almost taste it.” A short belch escaped him. “Oh yes,” he giggled, “I can taste it.”
He took out the filigree key, turning it over in his hands and rolling it between his fingers. He shook it hard, one time, and it hummed faintly like a tuning fork. He touched it to the lock and there was a click. The gate silently swung open. He placed his hand on the wooden door.
“This one isn’t locked,” he said. He stepped back and cocked the blunderbuss.
Aiyan cracked the door the width of a hair, and a dim light outlined the frame. He signaled Kyric to place the lantern on the floor.
“Make ready,” he whispered.
Jazul shifted the axe to one hand — against his bulk it looked more like a hatchet — and he drew Sedlik’s shortsword with the other. Kyric pulled the wheel-lock and engaged the dogs, the grip smooth against his palm. The weight of the two barrels felt good.
Aiyan pushed through the door, rushing into a
n open basement. Two men in shirtsleeves sat at a table, one of them in the motion of throwing dice. The dicer started with a yell, the dice caroming wildly off the table top, but the other man reached for a pistol.
Aiyan’s slash caught him just above the ear, killing him instantly. The dicer stood and fumbled for his sabre, only to discover that Aiyan’s sword had thrust all the way through his chest. He dropped to his knees, then fell forward and was quiet.
Kyric ran to the wide staircase leading upward, Aiyan handing him the dead man’s pistol as he joined him. They hurried up the steps side by side. A landing, open to the left, and they entered a room that was not so much a kitchen as a pantry with a cookstove in one corner. Harpsichord music bled through the pair of doors in the right hand wall.
They kicked the doors open and the four of them rushed into a common room with a high ceiling. Three men sat at a big round table, two of them wearing the uniform of Lekon’s troops, officer’s braids at their shoulders. They had just finished eating and the dirty plates lay in front of them. Another, holding an empty wine decanter, was frozen in midstride as he headed to the pantry.
Screeching like a bird of prey, Kyric fired both barrels into his stomach. He fell, and the decanter shattered, sending glass shards skittering across the floor. Pitbull raised the blunderbuss to the men at the table, shooting as they stood. The blast was deafening and smoke filled the room. Jazul lunged at the harpsichord player. The fellow stood and grabbed his sword arm with both hands, holding it briefly until Jazul buried his axe in the man’s ribs.
A bald man dressed in hunting leathers came out of an adjoining room, a sleek longsword in his hands. His eyes were grim, his face scarred and expressionless, and he looked fast and strong as he came en-garde.
Aiyan leapt past the wounded men at the table, running full force at him, raising the flaming blade. The bald man took position to block the overhand slash, ready to return a deadly counterblow after he had diverted Aiyan’s attack. Aiyan didn’t try to stop. He threw himself into it, roaring as he swung with all his might.
With a ringing snap, he cut through the bald man’s sword and cut deep into his shoulder at the base of the neck, shattering his collar bone and severing his spine.
One of the men at the table was down, but the other two, bleeding and in shock, somehow scrambled for the swords hanging over the backs of their chairs. Kyric stepped up to one of them and shot him in the face at a range of inches. Part of his skull flew away. Pitbull stabbed the other one in the groin with his machete.
The front door swung open, another soldier in Lekon’s livery sticking his head in and withdrawing it immediately. A bell began to ring, sharp and loud. Kyric threw down his spent pistols and drew another, running to the open door.
It was almost dark outside, and it had begun to rain. At the far side of a cobbled courtyard, soldiers poured out of a long low building. Pitbull had brought them out of the underground into some sort of barracks.
The trooper ringing the bell in the courtyard turned and leveled his musket as Kyric stopped in the doorway. He pulled the trigger but got no spark as the rain fell harder. Kyric fired, hitting him in the arm, then slammed the door closed and slid the bolt.
Despite the rainy evening, two windows stood open to the courtyard. “Get them closed,” shouted Jazul. He ran to the nearest and threw and barred the shutters. Pitbull closed the shutters on the other window, but couldn’t reach the bar, and as Jazul came to help him they flew open again, several bayonets jabbing, driving the two of them back while one soldier tried to climb through. Pitbull staggered away and sat hard on the floor near the table, a deep gash above one eye.
Jazul reached past the bayonet of the one climbing over the windowsill and took hold of the barrel, pulling him in by his own musket, tearing it from his grasp and clubbing him in the head with the stock. Kyric readied his two pocket pistols, firing them out the window as the soldiers outside ducked away. Jazul pushed the shutters closed again and held them against the pounding of muskets while Kyric tried to get the bar into place. The window at last secure, he turned back.
Five smaller rooms and a hallway opened to the common room. Aiyan dashed from one door to the next, making sure they were empty. The entire place lay thick with gun smoke. Kyric’s eyes watered, and he felt a choking stab at the back of his throat. Having no more loaded pistols, he slipped his bow out of its sling and drew an arrow. It felt big and clumsy even in a tall room. When he looked up everyone stood motionless, staring at the entry to the hallway.
Vaust was there, standing perfectly still as well, sighting down the barrel of a flintlock carabine. He held a steady bead on Aiyan’s heart.
“All of you lay your weapons down,” he said levelly.
His view of Pitbull seemed blocked by the table. Gingerly, Pitbull picked up Kyric’s spent pistol. He pointed at it, whispering a word, then pointed toward Vaust and whispered another.
“Now,” Vaust commanded, and Aiyan lowered his sword. Jazul placed his shortsword on the floor. Kyric was torn in half, raging with anger and horror. He wanted very badly to lunge for Vaust and jab the arrow into his neck, but a look from Aiyan convinced him to toss it aside.
The banging on the shutter came more rapidly now, the wooden bar creaking with each blow. Pitbull began a chant low in his chest, harsh rasping words in the Essian tongue, his face twisted into a mask of malevolence. Kyric could barely make out the words.
“Come dragon come dragon come dragon come dragon.“
“Don’t sheath it,” Vaust said to Aiyan. “Drop it.”
Aiyan did as he commanded and the flame went out.
“Now,” said Vaust, nodding to Kyric, “go and open the door for them.”
“Don’t do it,” Aiyan said.
A cracking sound came from the window, but it still held. Vaust’s lips pressed together. If he could hold them for another minute it would be over anyway.
Pitbull’s face turned green, and he heaved a little, like he would vomit. All of a sudden he spit a narrow spray of green fluid on the cock of the flintlock. It hissed and foamed, a white vapor rising. It dug into the metal. A moment later there was a rattle, and the cock simply broke away and fell to the floor.
As it did on Vaust’s flintlock.
Vaust blinked and looked at his gun. It was useless. When Aiyan snatched his sword from the floor, Vaust threw away the carabine and ran back down the hall. Aiyan ran after him.
Pitbull flopped onto his back, ill or exhausted. Jazul quickly dragged the harpsichord bench to the window and held it against the splintering shutters. “I can hold them,” he said to Kyric. “Go.”
Kyric sprinted down to the hall to an open door, into a room with a stairway up. He heard Vaust’s muffled voice. He nocked an arrow and crept up the stairs, bowstring against his cheek.
“I swear it,” Vaust was saying. “I have no doubt you can kill me, but you’ll have to pay for it with this boy’s life. You can have the book. It’s in that chest there — take it and go. But I will live or the prince will die.”
Aiyan stood to the side in a large bedchamber, his blade once again aflame. Vaust knelt behind Prince Eren, a long dagger across the child’s throat. And Kyric knew it had been him. He had cut Jela’s throat with that very knife.
“Either way,” said Aiyan, “Morae will be very displeased with you.”
“So be it. Make your decision.”
Vaust held Eren directly in front of him. Very little of him was exposed: A small part of his face, his right eye, a shoulder, his arm, his knife hand. If Kyric shot him in the hand, would he drop the dagger? Would he switch hands and kill the prince anyway? He didn’t know.
He was too angry not to take the shot, but he was too angry to make it.
For a true warrior, all battles are battles of the spirit.
And then Kyric burned.
It is the moment of the arrow.
Vaust somehow sen
sed it. He began to move the blade across Eren’s throat.
There was no time to breathe deep and step into the field of spirit. There was no time to feel the wind of power that would carry his arrow. There was no time . . . and without time, there was only the moment, indefinite, eternal. Anger could no longer exist there, because within the moment, the self could not exist. He couldn’t tell his eye, his arrow, or his spirit from one another. They blurred into one.
He loosed the arrow. It hit Vaust in the eye. His head snapped back, the arrow lodging deep in his brain. The knife fell from his hand. Rain drummed against the roof.
With a long cry, Eren ran to Aiyan, taking no notice of the flaming blade in his hands.
“It’s all right, boy. We have you now.”
Kyric couldn’t move. A single tear slid down his cheek. A single tear for Jela, that’s all he would ever have.
Aiyan looked at the wound on Eren’s neck. It bled freely. “That’s only a scratch,” he said, smiling for the child. “Kyric,” he called, “are you with us? I need you here.”
Kyric wiped his face on his sleeve and turned away, leaving his arrow in Vaust’s eye socket. Let them find him that way.
He bandaged Eren’s cut with a handkerchief. A few arcane symbols had been drawn on his face and hands in some sort of ash or charcoal. Aiyan went to the ornate Baskillian sea chest Vaust had pointed to and cut the lock off with one blow from his sword.
Thump! Something heavy struck the door downstairs. Aiyan tossed the book of rudders to Kyric, and looking deeper into the chest found a letter bearing a strange seal. He slipped it under his vest, took Eren by the hand, and they hurried back to the common room. A trail of six bodies lay across the floor, and there was blood everywhere. Kyric retrieved his wheel-lock.
Another thump, and the door shook with the impact.
Pitbull had made it to his feet. His color was returning. “Can we go home now?” he asked Aiyan.
Jazul continued to hold the window until they made it back to the basement, then joined them at the head of the tunnel. Pitbull closed the gate, spat into the key hole, and touched the lock with his filigree key.
“They won’t get through that way,” he said between chuckles. “That lock will never open again.”
“What is this written on Eren’s face and hands?” said Aiyan.
Pitbull frowned. “Part of the ritual spell that kept me from finding him. It means that they do have a magician working for them.”
Aiyan knelt in front of Eren. “Who drew this on you?”
“The tall man with the dark eyes.”
“Morae.”
“Yes. That’s what they call him.”
Aiyan turned to Pitbull. “How can that be?”
Pitbull shook his head. “A man has only one essence. But if he has the sympathy and some training, the magical Essa is strong below. It might be possible.”
“Eren, where were you when he drew these, down this tunnel?”
“Yes, down below.”
“We’ll worry over it later,” Aiyan said. “Jazul, I’d like you to carry the prince, in the event we need to move quickly.”
Jazul hoisted the boy into one arm. Kyric picked up the lantern he had left there, and Aiyan led them into the low-ceiling chamber. He backtracked their footprints though the sideways tower to the opening above the storm sewer.
Water ran swiftly through the sewer, a little too deep, Kyric thought, to be able to wade in it. Maybe they could slide along. But then he thought about the elbows — you could break something, get knocked out, drown.
Pitbull cleared his throat. “You know, I’m not a big swimmer.”
“There’s another way out,” said Prince Eren. “Back in the chamber with the broken floor.”
The water in the sewer grew deeper. They made their way back, and on the opposite wall of the chamber, near the break in the floor, hung a flap of dirty canvas. It rustled slightly in a gentle flow of air. Behind it stood an arched portal and stone steps leading down.
Aiyan looked back at Eren. “This is the way out?”
“Yes.”
They started down. A foul odor rose from below, a rotting smell. The stairwell turned left and then right before it came to a landing. It continued straight and a set of branching steps led down to the right.
“Which way?” Aiyan asked the boy.
He pointed straight ahead. “Keep going.”
Something troubled Kyric about the way Eren had spoken. With his heart still racing and his nerves on the edge of their limits, he couldn’t think clearly. The stench grew stronger as they descended, the steps getting moist and black with mold.
Kyric stopped and turned to face Eren where he sat in Jazul’s arms. He leaned in and held the lantern close.
“Are you sure this is the way?”
“Yes,” the prince said, “keep going.”
Then Kyric saw, and the disgust nearly made him wretch.
“Aiyan. He’s lying. He’s lying — they made him take the blood.”
Erin suddenly twisted, trying to jump free of Jazul’s grasp. “I want my father. My true father.” He writhed violently, but Jazul was able to hold him. “Father!” he screamed, “Father, where are you?”
“We’ll have to gag him,” Kyric said as they all retreated back up to the landing, Eren still screaming and trying to bite Jazul.
Pitbull took something from his satchel. A furry little desiccated thing. It was a cat’s paw. He made a growling humming sound deep in his throat and touched the cat’s paw to Eren’s lips. The boy fell silent.
“Sorry kid,” Pitbull said.
Erin made a few muffled sounds. His struggling grew weaker and at last stopped.
“Good Goddess,” said Kyric. “How could they do such a thing to a child?”
“It’s even worse than you think,” Aiyan said. “There’s a reason they don’t take the very young. The same reason Cauldin didn’t give his blood to the lepers.”
He peered into the boy’s eyes. “Let’s try the other way.”
The branching steps only went a short way down. They saw a dim light coming through an archway, and Aiyan crept forward into another open space.
The chamber was much taller, much wider than the one above. The floor lay covered with paving stones, and an open hole, too wide to jump across, plunged into unseen depths just ahead of them. The yellow-green light came from a dozen melon-sized bubbles that drifted at random, bouncing lightly off the ceiling of compressed earth and stone. At second glance Kyric saw that they weren’t simply bubbles. They were filled with fine silt suspended in a viscous fluid. They seemed thick and heavy, and logic rebelled against the way they hung in the air.
They skirted the hole and saw that it was a well. It was perfectly round, and the paving stones continued down its insides to be lost in darkness. There was nothing to keep someone from falling in.
“Aiyan,” said Pitbull. He took quick shallow breaths. The light made his eyes glow greenly and his pupils were enormous. “The Essa is even stronger here. Stronger than I’ve ever felt it. I could do magic here with no effort.” He spoke distractedly, intent on watching the floating glowing balls. Kyric had to grab him by the arm to keep him from falling into the well.
The far side of the chamber opened into an even larger cavern, a natural cave with magnificent crystal formations and stalagmites nearly touching the stalactites above them.
A voice echoed from the back of the cave, three words in an ancient tongue. Kyric recognized the voice. It was Morae.
At once the air turned misty and coalesced into a thick fog. Kyric could barely see Jazul standing next to him. Aiyan was only a dark shape holding a pale flame.
Everyone stopped. Pitbull began to giggle.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s only an illusion. I can see right through it.”
“Well the rest of us can’t,” Aiyan snapped. “Can you do s
omething to help? Dispel it perhaps?”
Pitbull exploded with laughter. “Are you kidding? I don’t even know how it’s done. No one’s been able to conjure true illusions since the War of Mages.”
Pitbull fell silent then. Kyric heard him weeping. “All this power. All this power and I haven’t the skill for it. Pity me for a fool. I’ve wasted my life pursuing an art that has no use for me.”
Aiyan struck Pitbull across the face with the flat of his flaming blade. “Ano!” he said in the Essian tongue. “Take hold of your essence and center yourself. We need you, Orius. Tell me what you see.”
Pitbull looked up and imitated a laughing sound, but this time it was irony. “I see a man with a sword coming at us. I think he can see through the fog as well.”
Aiyan waved his sword back and forth like a dowsing rod. He took a few steps and Kyric could no longer see him.
“That’s right,” Pitbull said. “That’s where he is. Now he’s circling to your left.”
Kyric heard the shuffle of boot leather, then a metallic sound, a clash of blades and a grunt.
“No,” winced Pitbull, “he’s cut Aiyan on the shoulder. He stays out of sight, and then rushes in. Aiyan can barely dodge him.” He called out, “Aiyan! He’s backing you into the well.”
Kyric reached for Pitbull in the fog. “You have the power. Do something. Anything.”
Pitbull tore the lantern from his grasp and pulled the cover off. He thrust his hand into the flame and screamed through the pain in the Essian tongue. In one of the nearby globes of light, the liquid began to ripple, then bubble. It churned in a roiling boil. Pitbull screamed again and smashed his hand down onto the wick. The floating ball of light exploded, the glowing liquid raining down on all of them. It was sticky and scalding and it painted them in light. Suddenly Kyric saw Aiyan and Morae clearly outlined in a yellow-green glow.
Morae had raised his sabre high, and slashed down at Aiyan’s head. Aiyan parried, holding Ivestra with one hand, his other hand seizing Morae by the wrist.
All in an instant: He stepped inside, pommel blow shattering the chin, slid under his arm, cutting his triceps, pulling him off balance, a slash to the back of the skull, and Morae lay dead on the floor, much like they had found Sedlik.
The fog vanished. Black blood pooled beneath Morae’s body.
Eren opened his mouth in wordless agony. He twitched in Jazul’s arms, convulsing rapidly before suddenly going limp.
“What was he doing down here?” Kyric said.
Pitbull looked up from his blackened hand. “I think I know. Come this way.”
They went deeper into the cave, weaving through the maze of natural columns, only Aiyan’s sword and the glow of their own bodies for light. Aiyan bled from the shoulder but didn’t seem to notice.
The cavern narrowed to a man-sized opening. Beyond lay another cave that ended in a wide crevasse. An altar of sorts sat at the edge of the crevasse. A shallow reflecting pool stood on end, like a mirror, in front of a platform made of alternating plates of metal and clay, the water resting calmly there as if sideways were down, disregarding gravity as easily as the floating balls of light. A sparkling mandala was inscribed in the floor of the platform. No, not inscribed. It was laid in diamonds.
Pitbull gave a low whistle. “Elistar’s breath. Do you know what this is? It’s Derndra’s Mirror. He created this to focus the most powerful Essa ever conceived. It is written that he could see his enemies in this and cast hideous spells upon them.”
A row of alcoves had been carved in one wall of the cave. Some contained books and dusty scrolls. One scroll lay on the floor, halfway open.
“This is how he did it,” Pitbull continued, “he read directly from Derndra’s original grammaries. In a place of power like this, one need only have the sympathy to make magic.” He swayed a little, and Kyric thought he would faint. “I feel that I can invoke magic simply by thinking of it.”
Pitbull’s eyes shone with a feral light, and his mouth was askew with a mischievous grin. He leapt onto the platform and stood in the center of the mandala. He stared into Derndra’s Mirror.
“What do you see?” Aiyan said.
“I see many things.” He fought down a giggle. “I can see my house.”
“Pitbull,” Aiyan said sharply, “do you see a way out of here?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“Wait,” said Jazul. “One handful of those diamonds would make us all wealthy.”
Pitbull turned to him. “How can you think of the material when so much power flows from this spot. Diamonds are nothing. If you wish for something truly rare, I could summon the essence of the Aerth itself.”
At once they felt a vibration beneath their feet. The walls of the cave began to tremble.
Aiyan stiffened. “Pitbull, what have you done?”
Pitbull looked at each of them, shocked and suddenly terrified. “I’ve called forth golden mercury from the center of the Aerth,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to. I only thought about it.”
Aiyan dragged him from the platform as a crack opened beneath his feet. “Come on. Show us the way out.”
A shiny golden substance flowed from the crack, bright with heat and magic.
“No,” Pitbull said, rummaging in his satchel. “I’m not leaving without golden mercury. It’s unattainable — you don’t know what it means to a magician. I need to find my magic jar.”
Outside, in the cavern, they heard the crash of a falling stalactite. The floor of the cave shook.
Aiyan spun him around. “It is the moment of the hand. If we do not leave now we will die.”
Pitbull froze. “So it is,” he said quietly.
He led them back through the cavern. Kyric no longer felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. One of the glowing balls drifted close to his face, making him blink with the afterimage after it passed. When they reached the chamber, a dozen silent figures crouched at the edge of the well. Dozens more were climbing over the lip. The Wirmen had come up from their pit.
Pitbull pointed to the wall opposite where they had come in. “See? There’s a tunnel leading to another cave.”
Aiyan sheathed his sword and drew his pocket pistol. His face glowed with luminescent splatters.
“Jazul, give the prince to Kyric and take out the keg of gunpowder. We will walk slowly to the tunnel, Kyric and Pitbull going first. If they move to attack us, throw the gunpowder into their midst and everyone run. I’ll shoot the keg and hope that it goes off.”
They started across the floor, the Wirmen packing together and growing restless. Kyric and Pitbull had just crossed under the great stone lintel at the entrance to the tunnel, Jazul next and Aiyan covering the rear, when the Wirmen broke and charged.
Jazul tossed the gunpowder over Aiyan’s head, and it arced towards the middle of the pack. Aiyan fired while it was still in midair.
The explosion knocked Jazul backward and threw Aiyan to the floor. Chunks of the ceiling rained down all around them. Most of the Wirmen lay dead or had scattered.
Kyric looked back through the tunnel. The ceiling of the chamber had begun to give way. The supports holding the lintel at the head of the tunnel crumbled, and the great stone came loose. Then Jazul was there, holding it up, his muscles bulging like knotted cables. Aiyan staggered to his feet.
“Hurry,” Jazul called to him over his shoulder. “I can’t hold it forever.”
Aiyan lurched toward him. “It’s not too heavy,” Jazul chanted between clenched teeth. “It’s not too heavy.”
Aiyan squeezed past him. Jazul shifted his weight, preparing to drop the stone block, but a Wirman lunged from out of the darkness, sinking its teeth into the back of Jazul’s thigh. He fell, and the huge stone fell with him. He was crushed beneath it.
The tunnel collapsed in a cascade of earth and stone. Aiyan threw himself forward in a headlong dive, landing sprawled in the
little cave beyond.
He pushed himself up. “Jazul!” he called, “Jazul!” He clawed at the debris filling the tunnel.
Pitbull gently pulled him away. “It’s no use, Aiyan.”
The far end of the cave ended in a wall of ancient stonework. There was a vertical crack, wide enough for a man to pass. The odor was foul but somewhat familiar.
“Another sewer tunnel,” Pitbull said. “The sanitary sewers this time.”
They shuffled through and followed the flow of sewage. Aiyan drew his sword across the essence of the flame and led the way. These tunnels were much older than the storm sewers. The mortar had crumbled in many places, and some of the stonework had fallen away here and there. In one spot the floor stones had long ago sank into the earth, and they had to wade through a pool of muck, Pitbull up to his chest.
Eren lay limp in Kyric’s arms, his breaths coming more ragged as they went. “There’s something wrong with the prince.”
They stopped and Pitbull felt his forehead, sniffed his breath. “We have to get him to my house. Soon.”
They entered a section where the rain leaked in through a score of cracks, soaking them to the skin. The yellow glow ran from their clothing in little rivulets. The level of the sewer water grew higher, and they waded on laboriously, Kyric up to his knees in water and filth, Pitbull up to his waist. Kyric’s skin stung where the magic fluid had scalded him.
“How are you doing, Pitbull?” said Aiyan.
“I’m nearly spent. Feeling pain now.” He held up his burnt black hand.
“How much farther?”
“Miles. These sewers empty outside the city.”
They waded on, steadily following the slight downhill grade. They looked for passages up to the street, but those that they found were slick with filth, and too steep to climb. There was no place to stop and rest. It became a hell of timeless labor. Many times Kyric thought he saw the tunnel come to an opening, only to find that it intersected another sewer, or was a trick of the dark.
At last the tunnel joined a larger artery with a raised sidewalk along one wall, and they climbed out of the sewage to lay wet and exhausted on the concrete shelf. Suddenly Eren was wracked with a coughing fit. He seemed unable to breathe. Aiyan massaged his chest while Pitbull whispered into his ear. The fit ended, and Eren’s lungs made a horrible scratching sound as he took another breath.
“We should be near the end,” Aiyan said.
Pitbull threw himself back down. “I’m done. I can’t get up. Just leave me here.”
Aiyan held out his hand. Pitbull took it and was hauled to his feet. Kyric managed to stand, and Aiyan helped him gather Eren into his arms. They had walked only a few minutes when he saw the flash of lightning at the sewer’s opening.
“We’ve made it.”
They came to the end, a ledge overhanging a churning sea. The night was black and the rain fell in sheets. There was no shoreline below them. The mouth of the sewer rested in a vertical bank of earth, too muddy to climb. There was nowhere to go.
Aiyan stood facing the storm and shook his flaming blade at it. “What would you have of me?” he shouted to the wind. All of a sudden, he fell to his knees.
“What is it?” said Pitbull.
“Stung once again by Morae’s poisoned sword,” Aiyan said, showing him the wound on his shoulder. “Bear’s bane.”
Lightning flashed again. There was something on the water. A pair of bright eyes in the dark, then another pair — the lamps of a fishing boat. Then Teodor’s voice, almost lost in the storm.
“We’re coming to you. We can see your light.”