“Then you should have said so,” Gerrin came back. “This place is too large. We need more men.”

“We don’t need more men. We only need me.” Jonik was convinced of that now. His written fate, the one seen and recorded by Thala, had ended at the Shadowfort, but that did not mean he had no destiny to fulfil. He had told his cousin Amilia that they could forge their own fate now, and this was his. Finding that blade and bringing it back to the refuge. “The Mistblade is down here, I know it,” he said. “I can hear it, Gerrin. We’re getting closer.”

His old mentor did not much like those words. “That’s what worries me. It’s already in your head, Jonik. Working its deceptions and tricks. I’m afraid of what will happen if we find it.”

Jonik gave him a hard frown. “We have to find it. Why else are we here?” The old man was aggravating him now. “I’m not going to let the blade corrupt me, Gerrin. I’ve been through that. It won’t happen again.”

The former Shadowmaster gave him a long look, searching deep into his eyes. “I hope so, Jonik, I do. But if it does…”

“It won’t.”

“If it does..”

“It won’t,” Jonik said again, firmer. “But if you’re so worried about it, perhaps you should carry it instead? You have the strength, we know that. You be the guardian, Gerrin. I’d be more than happy to spare myself the burden.”

The man’s eyes were uncertain. That was not a responsibility he wanted, Jonik knew, and it wasn’t one he wished to foist on him either. This was his task, his duty, and he would see it done.

“We have to go further down,” he said, putting the debate to one side. “We can decide on all that once we find it. But we have to find it first.”

He turned away from his mentor, looking around the cave. There were two further passages aside from the one they had taken to get here, and the one that led down to the beetle lair. One was tight and narrow, a squeeze to get through. The other was broad and low, and would require that they duck, perhaps even crawl. Either could take them to a dead end…or a plunging drop too perilous to climb…or grow too tight that they must turn back…or open out into another of these larger caverns…or lead to some other peril that had not yet faced. In the end they would not know until they tried, and oft as not selecting one passage from another had become no more than a lottery.

All Jonik knew was that the Mistblade was lower. Where, he could not say. Just somewhere lower than here. “This one,” he said, looking at the tunnel with the low ceiling. “We’ll have to walk in a crouch. I’ll lead.” He stepped forward.

He knew the others would follow, and duly they did, moving to his heel as he bent his back and ducked inside. The space was cramped, and he could feel the rock ceiling brushing the top of his hair as he went. Within twenty short paces it got worse. “We’ll have to crawl,” he called back. He went down onto all fours and peered into the darkness. He could see no glow ahead, the way was dark as pitch and unnerving. “Owen. Light a torch and hand it forward.”

He waited for the knight to see it done, cutting a spark with flint and steel and setting the top of the torch ablaze. Jonik reached back and took it from his grasp, holding it forward to light the way as he crawled. The tunnel snaked back and forward, almost too uniformly, as though some great serpent had gouged it out, and its walls were smooth. Jonik had heard tales of great worms that wriggled through the depths of the Wings, creating tunnels and passages beneath the fiery mountains that took root upon those islands. Some were colossal, the singers said, and had burrowed all the way to the north during the War of the Gods, forging tunnels a thousand leagues long through which Agarath’s armies could march to war. Jonik wondered now if some of them had remained when they got here. Not the giant worms, perhaps, but some lesser offspring. Had they made these tunnels? Were they still alive down here, lurking in these depths?

The thought drew a shudder up his spine, and suddenly he was peering forward, worried that some great fleshy worm might come sliding around the corner, its open mouth ringed in razor-sharp teeth, ready to devour him. The thought even made him pause for a moment, long enough for Gerrin to call, “What’s the trouble?” from behind him. “Is it too tight up ahead?”

“It’s tight enough as it is,” Sir Owen said, squirming along. “If we have to turn around…”

“We won’t,” Jonik declared. He did not know if that was true or not, but he said it anyway, hoping. His good faith was rewarded another fifty metres later, as he came around another bend and sighted an opening a little way ahead. He breathed out in relief. “I can see the exit. We’re close.” For a moment he’d feared the tunnel might go on and on, narrowing so much that they’d be forced down onto their bellies like those worms he was afraid to meet, but no, the end was near. He shuffled awkwardly, armour scraping on stone, until at last the tunnel widened at the mouth, enough for him to crouch, exiting into a much larger cavern.

There was a short drop to reach the floor, no more than three metres. Jonik communicated that to the others and then clambered out, dropping to the ground with an echoing thud. Some bits of grit and loose rock came falling from the ceiling, clattering as they landed. Once Gerrin and Owen had followed him down, Jonik instructed the Oak to leave a leaf so they remembered which tunnel it was.

“We’re not likely to forget,” Gerrin muttered. “Most tunnels don’t come out twelve feet above the ground.”

“It’s good practice,” Jonik replied. Every time they exited a tunnel, or took a turning at some fork, they always left a large maple leaf on the ground, weighed down by a stone to make sure it did not blow away in a draught, so they knew the way back. By now there must be a hundred or more leaves scattered about this maze.

Jonik stepped forward to look around, holding the torch high before him. Its flickering orange light danced on the walls, throwing shadows from tumbles of rock. The cavern was roughly circular in shape, its walls weeping with moisture. Creeping vines fell from a ceiling thirty feet high, and up there he could see a narrow shaft, a hole that led to some upper level. Jonik could not say how deep they were. The main cavern had been over two hundred metres beneath the surface, but by now they might be four or five times deeper than that. The heat suggested so, rising through the vents. On the surface the days had turned bitter cold, but down here the air was muggy and close. Somewhere below them, he could hear the sound of rushing water.

“You might want to put out the torch, Jonik,” Gerrin told him. “There’s moss enough here to see.”

He had the right of that. The glare of the flame only caused the bio-glow of the moss to shy away. It was better to douse the fire and let and their eyes adjust.

He saw a small pool of standing water ahead, its surface rippling as moisture dripped from above to a sound of tap tap tapping, a sound heard everywhere here. He stepped forward and plunged the torch into the pool, and the cavern fell abruptly dark. Gradually, the moss came alive, filling the air with its ethereal glow, chasing away the gloom. On the far wall, Jonik saw some strange creature skitter away, half spider and half lizard, moving inhumanly fast. The hair rose on the back of his neck. There was more movement elsewhere, more spider-lizards scuttling away into the shadows.

“Ghekantulas,” Gerrin said, behind him. “I’ve read about them before. They’re harmless.”

“Tell my eyes,” Sir Owen Armdall said. “Those things send a shiver up my spine. The way they move…” He gave a shudder.

Gerrin only laughed. “Most people mislike insects and arachnids. We all share that psychological aversion. It’s because they’re so different from us.”

“Alien,” Jonik said. Like this place. That they were so large only made them all the more disturbing. “So…ghekantulas. Let me guess…a cross between geckos and tarantulas? What genius thought that up?”

“Some old explorer,” Gerrin said, shrugging. “Forget his name. He saw them in the old iron mines beneath the Three Peaks, I recall.”

Sir Owen had a troubled look on his face. “You don’t imagine there are any creatures down here that eat maple leaves, do you? These bugs…what do they eat, exactly?”

“Moss and vines and cave shrubs,” Gerrin answered. “Perhaps smaller bugs and insects as well, and the droppings of larger creatures.” He rubbed his stubbly jaw. “Let’s hope maple’s off the menu.”

“We have the stones if not,” Jonik said. The stones they used to weigh down the leaves were always big ones, and they always placed them right at the heart of the tunnel entrance, brushing all others aside, to make certain they stood out. “Even if some bug munches on our leaves, they’re not like to gorge themselves on chunks of rock. We’ll be fine. Stop fretting. And come, it’s this way.”

He began walking across the heart of the chamber, toward the opposite wall. There was another opening there, a scar no more than a metre wide, that would take them on from here. He could not see any other way, and not for a moment did the notion of squirming back through that tunnel appeal to him. He would have to later, when they came back this way, but not yet. When he reached the opening, he glanced back to make sure the others were following. Dutifully, they did so, though not without a measure of reluctance. He could almost hear Gerrin’s rugged old jaw grinding from here.

Let him brood, he thought. He’ll thank me later when we reach our quarry.

The tunnel was tight. The metre width soon narrowed to half that, and they were forced to crab along sideways to squeeze through. He could feel the tension in the others as the world gave a shiver, and gritty dust cascaded from the low rock roof above him. The earth was growing less stable as they went deeper, shifting and settling, and Jonik did not imagine all those rains were helping. They seeped into the lands, softening them, nibbling away at rock and stone and soil, forcing great subterranean lakes and rivers to form. He could feel one now, a powerful flow thrashing wildly along beneath him. The earth was quivering from its motion, and it only grew stronger the further along they went.

At last Gerrin vented his fears. “This is folly, Jonik. We’ll end up like your grandfather if we keep going like this. Is that how you want this to go? All three of us crushed and trapped?”

“We have our blades,” Jonik came back. “We can cut through if we have to.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You cut at one rock, and another will collapse in its place. That’s how displacement works.”

“I know how displacement works.” Jonik could not listen to reason, because it was duty that drove him, not logic. I swore an oath to Ilith, he told himself. I swore to him I would bring him the blades, and I will. He could not stop, despite the dangers. For the sake of the world and all the people in it, he had no choice but to keep on going.

The passage grew tighter. The rock was scraping at him, front and back, but he was not a fool, no matter what Gerrin thought. He would not lead them needlessly to their deaths if the way became too cramped. Many times they had been forced to turn back and find another way, and the same was true here.

“My lord…” Sir Owen said. Jonik could hear the worry in his voice. “The earth does not feel stable here. If the tunnel collapses…”

“It won’t.” Jonik crabbed doggedly on, stubbornly refusing to listen. Small pebbles rattled down on him, and he could hear them falling ahead and behind as well. For all he knew, there had been cave-ins and collapses at a dozen other tunnels they’d passed, blocking their way back, but he decided not to voice that concern.

The passage remained tight for a long while, before at last it began to widen, broadening until they could walk along shoulder to shoulder if they wanted. Another thirty paces on it yawned open into a capacious chamber, heavy with greenery, bright with bioluminescent. Nets of tangled plant life had taken root on the rock floor, thriving in this strange and hostile world, and above them the ceiling surged up high into the gloom, its glistening rock only partially glimpsed beyond a shroud of coloured mist. Jonik paused a moment to take a breath. The wonders down here never ceased to amaze him.

“Search for ways out,” he said to the others. “Find a passage that will take us down.”

“Still down?” Gerrin grunted. “How much deeper must we go?”

Not much, Jonik hoped. But deeper it still must be. “We’ll know when we get there,” he only said. His eyes roamed the space, seeking enemies, unknown creatures lurking in cracks and shadows. His eyes detected no movement, though above him he could hear flapping, twittering, see swirls and eddies in the coloured mist. Bats, he thought. They had seen those often enough, most of them of common size and species, but that did not mean some other larger and older variety had not made its lair down here.

“Eyes up,” he said. “We’re not alone.” Harmless as most bats were, some were fond of blood rather than fruit and bugs and might see them as prey. And if one of Brexatron’s brood is here…

He did not imagine so, not down so deep. The spawn of the giant bat did not care for heat, he knew, though their father had been born to it. That was thousands upon thousands of years ago, a time before time began, when Agarath had forged the colossal black-winged nightmare during his early days of life-creation. Brexatron was his first attempt at creating what would become his dragons, men said, and predated even Drulgar, an ancient horror, hated and reviled by all those who looked upon him.

Centuries after the bat’s birth, when Drulgar was forged of fire and rock and rage, Agarath marvelled upon the mastery of his art, and scorned Brexatron as an aberration, casting him from his sight in disgust, so the story went. In his shame and anger, the giant bat fled north, to forge a lair in the northernmost peaks of the Hammersongs, far from his father’s disdain. There he brooded on his vengeance, hiding in the mists and the cold and the darkness, biding his time to strike. When next war stirred between the gods, he saw his chance. Flying south in a shroud of black rage and storm clouds he descended upon his father as he sat his fiery throne, piercing the night with his echoing call. Such was the force of the blast from the bat’s lungs that Agarath was momentarily deafened, and Brexatron descended. Down he flew, raking at the All-Father’s face with his ravening claws, biting with elongated needles for teeth, savaging and scarring him as fire and smoke poured from the wounds.

But it was not enough. From Agarath’s lips bellowed a roar, and from the shadows Drulgar came. The dragon god had grown monstrous by then, an untamed power of volcanic rage, and he beat the bat back with fire and fang. Brexatron knew his chance was gone. With another shrill call to cover his retreat, he flew in fear of his younger, bigger brother, returning to his northern lair, and from that day on Drulgar swore that he would hunt and kill him in vengeance.