“How long do you expect me to wait if you don’t come back?” he asked.

“We will come back,” Jonik said.

Harden gave a sigh. “I appreciate the optimism, lad, but that’s not an answer. How long?”

“You be the judge.”

“Give it three days,” Gerrin said. “If we’re not back by then, then you might want to consider going for help.”

Harden grunted. They stepped out to the edge of the chasm Jonik had chosen, picking past the many rifts and scars into which they’d already spelunked. Some were shallow, barely four or five metres in depth, savagely gouged open by the claws of the Dread. Those had not required a proper searching; even from the side, you only had to glance down into them to see that there was no dead king lying down there, no misting blue blade resting among the rocks.

Others were much deeper, opened not by the titan’s claws, but his weight, the earth shattering and ripping apart as he landed and moved, fighting off the gruloks. The force of it had been beyond Sir Owen’s capabilities to describe. “Like a mountain had fallen over,” was his best effort, when telling them how the entire world had shuddered beneath him. It had caused the entire landscape to break apart, like a block of stone struck by a hammer, fracturing into a hundred cracks and fissures. It was a job for a much larger company of men, in that Harden was not wrong, and Gerrin had suggested that as well the day they’d arrived…but Jonik didn’t want to. This was his mission, his duty. If I can’t find that blade, no one can, he told himself.

And something was telling him to go deeper…much deeper. Was it just his gut instinct? A feeling? Or something more? In the quiet of night, when all was silent and still, Jonik might have sworn he’d heard a whisper, somewhere in the back of his head…the whisper of a voice he recognised, different but somehow the same…calling out to be saved. He could not say if that was just a dream, or desire, or the echo of a memory, but it nagged at him all the same. And it frightened him a little as well, he had to admit. Ilith had drawn him back from the precipice when he was about to plunge into the abyss, but Ilith wasn’t here. What if he should find the Mistblade, and be consumed by it as he was the Nightblade? What if he could not resist the lure?

He turned away from such concerns. Gerrin was at the edge of the chasm, stamping down at the earth with his feet, making sure it was steady and secure. Behind, Sir Owen waited with the stake, three or so metres back. “Is this a good spot, Sir Gerrin?” the younger knight asked him.

Gerrin nodded. “It seems secure enough to me. Go ahead, Owen.”

The Oak lifted the thick wooden stake above his head and drove it hard down into the ground, its sharpened end stabbing down through a foot or so of soil. Then he drew out his godsteel dagger, spun it around in his grasp, reached up and began hammering at the stake’s flattened top with the pommel. The weight of the godsteel, and the strength it gave him, made the rest of it simple enough. When the stake had been driven some five or so feet into the earth, the knight set about fastening the rope, then tested it, pulling and tugging with all his strength to make sure it would not yield. Jonik joined in for good measure; even with their combined strength, the stake did not budge.

“Should hold,” Jonik said. “Though probably best we don’t all go down at once.” He looked at Gerrin. “How’s the climb?”

“Sheer for about fifty feet. Then there’s a ledge wide enough to stand on. Looks secure. Beyond that the hand and footholds are plentiful, as far as I can see. There’s another platform below, but after that the dark takes over.”

Such as it was with the deeper chasms; the darkness that pooled down there, and the mists and fogs that still lingered, made it impossible to know their true depths. Sometimes they had dropped stones and rocks and listened for them to hit solid earth, hearing them crash and echo up from below, but they never knew if they’d hit the bottom or just landed on some ledge instead. When they did hear any sound, they would count out the time, and that would give them an estimate of the depth, which Gerrin would scribble on his map. Some of the rifts had no such estimate. The ones where they’d dropped stones and heard nothing at all. No echo far beneath them. No distant splash of water. Nothing. And this was one of them.

“What if the rope’s not long enough?” Harden asked. He peered over the edge, as the rope tumbled into the abyss.

“Then we’ll figure something out,” Jonik said. They had brought half a dozen long coils of rope with them from the Undercloak, and for this particular descent several of them had been lashed together, creating a rope almost two hundred metres long. If that didn’t serve, they had one last coil that they could use to lengthen it. “Best bring the other roll down with us as well,” Jonik said to Sir Owen. “We can tie it to the bottom if we need to.”

“And if that’s still not enough?”

“I don’t know, Harden. We’ll have to climb back up and choose another rift. Or just climb the wall without the rope if it’s doable.”

Harden shook his head. “Too risky. Perhaps you save yourself the trouble, and choose a shallower one? Why this one?”

“Because it’s deep.”

“Too deep. There are others that…”

Jonik was done with the man’s complaints. “I’ll go first. Test that ledge and what’s below. When I find sure footing further down, I’ll call up. You can follow me after.”

“Should be me going first,” Gerrin protested. “You’re more important…”

“And younger, stronger, and a better climber,” Jonik came in. He would hear no arguments about it. He stepped to the edge, peering to the ledge fifty feet below. Then without thinking further, he picked up the rope, closed his grip about it, and swung himself right over the side, abseiling down the wall.

The godsteel gave him strength, imbuing him with the necessary power and agility to make light work of the climb. With one hand clutched about the rope, he eased his grip just enough to slide gracefully down toward the platform. A tightening of the pressure brought him to a gentle stop, and he pushed his legs off the wall, landing on the ledge with a hollow thud. It was broad, narrow, but strong, and quite capable of bearing their weight.

“How is it?” he heard Gerrin call. The men above were peering over the edge, their faces framed by the wan light of the grey morning skies. A trickle of rain pattered into Joink’s face as he looked up at them. “Strong enough for us to follow?”

“I’d say so,” Jonik called. Further down, through wisps of fog, he could see the other landing Gerrin mentioned some hundred feet beneath him, barely visible in the darkness, half shrouded by the eddying mist. Between the two ledges, the face of the chasm was rough and craggy and uneven, with many cracks and crevices wrinkling it like the face of some ancient crone. The rope dangled down to bundle on that landing below, where it coiled about itself several times like a snake before disappearing away over the side. What lay beyond, Jonik couldn’t see from here. “Just wait until I’ve gone a bit further down,” he went on. “I’ll shout up when I make the second ledge and tell you what I see.”

He gave the rope a tug, just to test the strain, and then continued on his way down. By now, after long days of this, he had the tension just right. He slid down the rope, feet tapping along the wall, the hemp gliding easily against the crisp leather of his glove. Beneath gloves and cloak and boots, he wore armour; gauntlets, greaves, gorget, breastplate, sabatons, and in his pack he carried his helm. Not quite a full suit, but plenty enough to protect him should he find himself in a fight, without overly weighing him down and putting too much strain on the rope. All the same, he could feel the hemp groaning and complaining as he went. Play nice now, he thought. The last thing he needed was the rope snapping.

He reached the next ledge without incident. Above him now, the others were barely visible, coming and going from behind the swirls of fog. He took a moment to check the ledge, stamping a foot, feeling out its strength, before confirming that it was solid and secure. Then he called that up to the others and told them to join him. As he waited, he looked over the edge…down into the blackness of the void.

Gerrin arrived first. When he landed he called up for Sir Owen to come, then took a knee at Jonik’s side. “No bottom, then?”

Jonik shook his head. They were about fifty metres down, and he could see no ledges beneath him. The light here was too thin, the fog too thick. If they continued from here, it would be a plunge to the unknown. “What do you think? Just slide down, and hope for the best?”

“Either that or go back up,” Gerrin said.

“We can’t do that. Harden will only gloat.”

A gruff smile split Gerrin’s lips. “Better to die down here than allow that.”

“He’d gloat about that as well,” Jonik said dryly. “Might be no winning here, Gerrin.”

The old knight gave a laugh, as Sir Owen came sliding smoothly down to join them, landing with a rustle of leather on the rock. He stepped over, peering into the abyss. “Anything?”

Jonik shook his head. “Just mist and darkness.” He turned his eyes across the ledge; it was roughly rectangular in shape, three metres by two. He saw a suitably sized stone, picked it up, told the others to be silent, and then tossed it over the edge, between the two rock walls. It pierced the fog, swallowed from sight, and Jonik counted, One, two, three, four, five, six, se… He cut himself off. There was a faint clattering echo coming up from below. “Six seconds,” he said.

The others nodded. “I counted the same,” said Sir Owen.

Both of them looked at Gerrin, who frowned in thought, performing his calculation. He was their resident expert in the field of motion and acceleration. “Be about a hundred and seventy metres,” he said, after a short moment. “Though impossible to say if it hit another ledge or the bottom of the chasm.”

“We can throw more stones,” Sir Owen suggested. “If they all hit at six, we’ll know it’s the bottom.”

They all thought that a good idea, so picked up what stones they could find on the ledge, and set about tossing them away at different angles, counting them out each time. The experiment confirmed that there was solid ground less than two hundred metres below them…though whether the bottom of the rift or not, they could not say for certain. One stone, alas, made not a sound, which suggested there might be a rift within a rift down there, shafts and tunnels that plunged much further down.

“The rope won’t take us to the bottom,” Gerrin pointed out. “We’d best pull it up and tie on the other coil, to be safe.”

It took a few minutes to drag the rope up to their ledge and lash the length that Sir Owen had brought onto the end, extending it by another forty metres. Then they threw the bundle over and let it tumble into the darkness. All that rope made for a significant weight, and when they added their own, it would put the anchor on the surface under significant strain. “Best hammer in a horseshoe,” Jonik said.

Sir Owen saw to it, and indeed it had been his idea in the first place, these horseshoe anchors. From his pack he drew out a spare shoe, filed and sharpened at the points, pressed the rope up against the rock wall, and hammered the horseshoe over it using his godsteel dagger. The rift wall was solid stone here, and the anchor held fast. Sir Owen gave it a strong tug to make sure, then nodded.

“Good,” Jonik said. “Gerrin, call up to Harden and tell him what’s going on. I’ll shout out if I find a footing further down. Listen for me.” He took the rope and went to the side of the ledge, pressed his feet against the wall, and slid down into the abyss.

The smog swallowed him up almost at once. It souped heavily, wet and cold against his skin, and a shiver ran down his spine as he entered a strange and eerie place, of shifting mists and unsettling shapes, of sounds echoing oddly through the gloom. The daylight faded as he descended, the dark deepening until there was almost no light at all. Some thirty metres down from the ledge, teeth of sharp stone protruded out of the chasm walls, as though the rift was no rift at all, but the jaws of some monstrous beast, ready to snap shut and devour him. He hastened through the field of fangs, sliding deeper. Another twenty metres down, he saw a faint glow peppering the rock, of lichen and moss, radiating a soft green and white light. Here and there long vines sprouted and hung down, and he heard the faintest sound of dripping water, tapping far beneath him.

A chill wind rose from below, stirring the hem of his cloak as it whispered by. He could feel the airflow broadening beneath him, moving through a much larger space. He continued down the rock face, another five metres, eight, ten, and then all of a sudden the rift wall gave way beneath him, curving sharply inward as the rope fell away, dangling into the abyss.

He stopped above the void, peering down. A cavern, he realised. A great open cavern. The dripping water was coming from the ceiling, leaking from cracks in the stone. Across on the other side of the chasm, he could see more vines trailing from the rocky roof, drooping and swaying into the shifting fog. He found a wide crack in the wall and drove the toe of his boot forward, to take the weight off his arms. How far have I gone? Another seventy metres or so he would guess and that meant there was still a hundred to go. A hundred metres…he thought…with nothing but the rope to hold onto. Where the wall ended, empty space reigned. And if the rope should snap or come loose…

No. It was securely fastened at the surface, and Sir Owen had hammered another anchor in above them. If they could add another one or two, there would be no reason why the rope should come loose. He filled his lungs and called up. “Gerrin, Owen…can you hear me?” His voice sounded strangely muted, strangled by the fog.

He waited for their reply. It came a moment later. “We hear you, Jonik,” came Gerrin’s small voice. “What do you see?”