“Fine. We’ll track back and find another way,” he said, acceding.
They moved away slowly, eyes swaying through the gloom all the while, searching for movement. The beetles seemed satisfied to let them go, quieting down as they reached the mouth of the cave and stepped back into the tunnel. Once there, Gerrin turned around to lead them hastily on, Jonik behind him, Sir Owen watching their rear should the bugs mount a sortie and seek vengeance for their fallen kin. They went like that in silence, snaking back up the passageway, ducking where the ceiling narrowed, climbing when the way grew too steep. Ten minutes later, they emerged back into the large chamber above it.
They took stock there, considering their next course. There was a little more light in this cavern. On one wall a curtain of vines draped down, peppered with growths of glowing fungus, and that gave illumination enough for them to see. “What were they?” Sir Owen asked, peering back down the tunnel. His voice was thick with disgust; Sir Owen Armdall had no great fondness for things that crept and crawled. “I never knew insects could grow that large.”
“They are creatures of the old world,” Gerrin told him, giving his blade another wipe on his cloak. “Everything was bigger back then. They…” He cut himself off with a curse. “Damn this sticky blood. It’s ruining my cloak.” He turned his eyes around, spotting a trickle of water leaking down one wall, and walked over to wash both blade and cloak clean.
Jonik went to follow; Mother’s Mercy needed a shower as well. Through the walls, he could hear the water moving, rushing like blood through this boundless body of an underworld. Gerrin said it had all seeped down from above, through stone and soil, due to all the rains, and everywhere the walls were dripping and wet, glistening darkly against the glowing moss and fungi.
Sir Owen came over to join them, wetting the hem of his cloak to wipe his sword clean. He cringed at the foul smell of black blood and innards. “So, where now?”
“Up,” Gerrin said at once. His voice was a weary grunt. “It’s past time we go back. We told Harden three days.”
Jonik could care less what they told Harden, in truth, much as he liked the old sellsword. They had gone much too deep and much too far to go all the way back now. “We keep going,” he said, in a voice that brooked no dissent on the matter. “If Harden wants to go for help, let him. We have a duty to fulfil and going back will only waste time. And we don’t know how long we’ve been down here. It’s probably been longer than three days already.”
Down in this maze beneath the earth, it was impossible to say when the sun set and moon rose, whether it was dusk or dawn, noon or night. They only had their instincts to guide them, and Jonik’s told him that three-day window had elapsed some time ago.
“Harden is not our concern, Gerrin,” he went on, misliking the old knight’s sullen silence. “If he’s got any sense, he’ll give us more time. Three days was never going to be enough.”
“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?”
