“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?”
“There’s a cavern,” he answered. The rift wall ends about seventy metres below where you are now. Sir Owen, you’d best hammer in another horseshoe or two on the way down to secure the rope.”
“I will,” Sir Owen called out.
“Can you see the bottom below you?” Gerrin asked.
“It’s a hundred metres, Gerrin. What do you think?” He glanced down. “I see some luminous lichen and moss, some trailing vines and growth on the ceiling and walls. But not much else. When I reach the floor, I’ll call out again. Hopefully you’ll be able to hear me.”
There was a short pause. Then Gerrin spoke. He sounded uncertain. “A hundred metres is a long way, Jonik. Down is one thing, up another. That’s not an easy climb without a wall to steady you.”
He wasn’t wrong, but Jonik was not about to turn back now. “No one ever said this was going to be easy, Gerrin. I’m going to slide down now. I’ll shout when I reach the bottom.” He did not want to linger here, above the abyss, thinking about it too much. Without further delay, he clutched a little more tightly at the rope, let his legs swing back off the wall, and slowly…ever so slowly…eased his grip and slid down.
The air changed almost at once as he escaped the narrow space between the chasm walls. He could feel it, the way it opened out, the way the sound spread and echoed. His leather glove ran smoothly along the hempen rope, warm from the friction, his pace steady. The mist thinned as he went, and the darkness began to recede. Less than halfway down, he could see the faint outline of the chamber beneath him, vast and open, given shape by the light of the moss. More of it grew in patches on the floor, and he saw glow worms too, and the flicker of fireflies, drifting in red and purple and blue. It was beautiful, otherworldly. Further off, he could hear the echo of rushing water, and on the floor of the cavern he saw darker scars and pits where it went deeper, down into the very bowels of the earth.
Many rocks lay scattered across the cavern floor and there were some large outcrops too, jutting up in distorted shapes, their bases and walls clothed in bioluminescent fungi. The rope trailed down onto one of them, a large, flat-topped block of rough stone, and that was where Jonik landed, on a perch some six metres above the ground.
He let out a breath as his feet reached solid earth; they felt a little shaky, tremulous from the descent. He turned a full circle, awestruck, searching for where the cavern ended, but not all of the walls were visible. On one side it bled into darkness beyond his sight, stretching away in a field of broken rock. Some formations were colossal, as big as tumbled towers. One looked like the peak of some huge mountain, poking up from somewhere lower, and he could see a thin waterfall hissing down out there, appearing from the mists above and vanishing through a pit.
How big is this place? he wondered, astonished. Through vents and shafts warmer gusts of air blew up from below, coming from places much further down. He could see almost directly down one of them from atop the rock. Down it went, down and down to darkness. If the Mistblade fell down one of those…
