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CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

After the ledge bored back into the side of the cavern, it seemed to take them farther away from the city. Cerven offered a somewhat consoling explanation. Since they were just beneath the high spine of the long cavern, any tunnel would necessarily have to track outward to stay within the widening curvature of the walls until it came out level with the ruins of Zatsakkaz. So even though they seemed to be getting farther from their destination, they were probably on the shortest path to it. Cold comfort given that it meant more hours of walking in darkness.

Or, rather, near darkness: the cavern’s ubiquitous glowing moss had sent colonies into connecting tunnels. Infrequent at first, they eventually became a sufficiently reliable source of light that the group no longer needed torches: arguably the surest way to warn potential adversaries of their approach.

Attempts to get more information from their captive proved even more frustrating than the long march. He did reveal that his people gleaned most of their arms and armor, that their two-handed swords were both heirlooms and the minimum sign of wealth that a named family was expected to display, and that going much lower than the chamber in which they had fought was considered a deed of great daring. However, those deep places were also the only reliable source of old tools and weapons that were reworked to serve the needs of the dry-men. How they fed themselves in such a comparative barren underground, and how that might limit their population, were topics he managed to deflect, often by hastening their descent. Whether his exhortations to do so were a means of keeping them so active that there was no breath to be spared on more questions, or because he was genuinely convinced that they’d be hotly pursued was impossible to discern.

About an hour after the group had been able to douse their torches, the tunnel leveled off and, two turns later, opened into a true cave, the ceiling and walls verging away from them. At the end of it, there was the faintest hint of the same glow that had illuminated the ruins of Zatsakkaz.

Their prisoner breathed a deep sigh, pointed to the distant light. “There. We have arrived. I have done as you asked.”

“You will have, once we get to that light,” Ahearn answered. “Assuming the ruins are just beyond. Besides, doesn’t your path lie with ours for a little longer, yet?”

“I cannot be sure. I only know that none of the tales associated with the passage to the south mentions going through the ruins. So I may need to go back to one of the fissures we passed during the past few hours.”

“They’re hardly wide enough to fit a man going sideways!”

“True, but that does not mean they do not lead to where I must go.” He paused. “When we part, I ask that you return what is left of my garment.”

Ahearn felt a momentary prick of regret. The dry-man was arrogant, rude, and a right bastard, but that didn’t warrant sending him into the unknown without even a stitch of cloth to cover himself. The swordsman rustled around in this ready-sack, held out the sliced shift. “Here. No reason not to have it now.” The dry-man bowed his thanks and began arranging the torn garment into a makeshift kirtle. As he did, Ahearn stepped closer to Varcaxtan. “I’m thinking our boy might have earned the right to walk along with us,” he whispered, “rather than out in front like a staked goat.”

Varcaxtan shrugged. “I suppose so.”

Ahearn stared at the older Dunarran’s utterly emotionless tone. “Yer mighty hard on this fellow.”

Varcaxtan returned his stare. “He and his kind have been mighty hard to our kind, over the years.”

Ahearn raised an eyebrow and stepped back to their captive, who was starting to move toward the front of the group as they prepared for what they hoped was the final leg of the march. “No need to blaze the trail, from here. Stay in the middle rank.”

The dry-man’s surprise was evident as he nodded. Perhaps with a hint of gratitude, Ahearn thought. Or perhaps I’m just seein’ what I’d like to, rather than what’s there. Tract knows, it wouldn’t be the first time.

He took the lead with Umkhira; the dragon and S’ythreni were the rearguard. The mosses and bright end of the cavern made it easier to assess the way forward, but the light was so diffuse that it tended to obscure details. So later, when Umkhira signaled for a halt, she could not immediately be sure what she was seeing ahead.

She stepped closer to a wide depression that stretched across the width of the cavern.

“An obstacle?” Cerven asked from the middle rank.

“That remains to be seen,” the Lightstrider answered.

Ahearn joined her and realized why her reply had been so cryptic.

The depression was littered with bones. Not just picked clean, but bleached. His time in the Under having given him a practiced eye for such remains, Ahearn knew them to be a mix of four-legged and two-legged creatures. But there was one typical detail that was strangely absent: no damage to the bones themselves. No teeth marks. No weapon cuts or scrapes. No splintering. It was almost as if they’d been swallowed whole, just like…

He spun. “Circle! Weapons pointing out!”

But there was already motion in the group. The dry-man had managed to drift backward out of the middle rank, was slipping between the momentarily distracted R’aonsun and S’ythreni. Moving past them, his eyes remained fixed on the kill pit to the front, wide with terror.

Which is why he did not see what Ahearn glimpsed over the captive’s shoulder: the floor rising up soundlessly behind him as he turned to flee.

“The rear!” Ahearn shouted as he ran in that direction, sword out, eyes catching sight of a strange glistening streak on the wall. It started someplace among the rough angles and protuberances of the ceiling and ended at the point where the floor was still rising, even as the now sprinting dry-man turned toward it—and gasped.

With terrible abruptness, the chameleon color of the creature bled away, revealing its true color—a mottling of mauve and gray—and its true form. Almost four feet high and at least twenty long, it had the shape of an elongated pancake that tapered to less than half its height around its margins. There, stubby tentacles—or polyps?—were unfolding from its sluglike skirt, and just above them, small black dots—primitive eyes—ringed the creature’s body. Which slid forward.

“Stay here!” Ahearn shouted as he passed Elweyr. His friend’s unguent had become inert hours ago, and while the thaumancer was no slouch as a swordsman, that was not likely to be the role in which he might make his decisive contribution.

The dry-man turned to run to the front, eyes backcast at the horror—and bounced off the dragon-avatar’s broad back. Even as he scrambled to his feet, the creature humped its back forward until that gathering mass erupted upward. It unfolded into a thick, tentacular stalk—the end of which opened to reveal an enormous eye. The dry-man’s attempt to flee had frozen in mid-step, his two eyes locked upon that of the creature.

Ahearn pushed Cerven hard to the side, yelling, “Flanks, flanks!” as he grabbed the still-recovering R’aonsun and tugged him out of the creature’s path. And as he maneuvered around it—

The cyclopean eye began flashing like a watchtower’s signal fire. Multiple layered irises opened and closed, glowing and then fading as they did, each a different color, faster and faster, until—

All at once, they went still—and collapsed inward, all the light appearing to rush down into a black pinprick—that instantly burgeoned to become the whole eye.

The dry-man spasmed hard, his joints cracking—and then fell lifeless.

Ahearn looked over as he got round the monstrosity’s flank, saw the cyclopean protrusion shiver through a long, ecstatic blink—as if that was how it swallowed. “Flanks!” he yelled again. “Rear! Don’t look into its eye!” He hacked at the polyps that reached out toward him, but a hand-and-a-half sword was awkward at such close quarters.

R’aonsun had reached the rear and delivered a two-handed cut from a high guard; it slashed a shallow seam in the rubbery flesh. S’ythreni had fallen further back and to the side of the cavern, from where she fired her ironpith crossbow. The quarrel—tipped with venom—disappeared into the flexible mass of the creature, which merely rippled like impossibly thick mud.

Varcaxtan had gone to the other flank with Umkhira who, following his lead, did not attack the body of the creature but hacked at the polyps; half a dozen had been sheared away, spraying ichor as they squirmed, but too many remained.

Ahearn had less room—the creature was closer to his side of the tunnel—but was busy cutting back the ones that were close enough to attempt to enfold him in their thick, writhing mass. And Elweyr—

Elweyr had just handed two vials to Cerven, who darted to the side. Averting his eyes and still five yards from the creature, he shouted, “Dragon?”

R’aonsun hacked again and shouted back. “Yes?”

“When it turns, show me.”

“What do you mean?” The dragon stepped back: whether in surprise or to give himself enough room to comply with Elweyr’s mad-sounding request, Ahearn could not tell. Not as if the polyps were giving him much chance to puzzle it out.

“You know of this beast, mantic?” R’aonsun roared, taking another step back.

“I think so. Stay to the side and show me what you see.”

“You want me to—?”

But the creature, sensing attacks from all directions but the front, twisted the heavy tentacle around until it resembled a half-screw, the deadly eye sweeping across its rear. If it really had a rear; without changing facing, it flowed in that direction, swiftly orienting on the attackers there, the closest being the dragon.

R’aonsun’s two surrogate eyes met the widening one of the creature. “I shall master it,” he announced calmly.

“No!” Elweyr yelled. “Don’t look straight into its eye! Just show me from the side!” But the dragon and the creature were motionless, staring at each other. Elweyr groaned, holding his head. “No, it will—”

“Do not fear; I shall not show you the last moment,” the dragon shouted as the massive eye-extrusion reared back like a comically stubby cobra. The eye started spinning, glowing.

Gods, they’re both mad! Ahearn hacked wildly at the polyps, but they were either insensate or of no individual consequence to the beast. The swordsman swung as fast and hard as he ever had, sometimes severing two at a blow, but it was like trying to cut through a waving thicket of rubbery worms, always stretching and retracting.

The monster’s eye was a flashing pinwheel of bright colors—which plummeted to black.

But instead of that lightless pinprick expanding, the eye shuddered and blinked repeatedly, as if it had been hit with a dusting of salt.

The dragon staggered back, fell to a knee, steadied himself with one hand. The eye snapped open again—streaked with pulsing yellow-green veins—and slid toward him, raising its front skirt in an attempt to flow over the stunned avatar. The edges rippled upward and a nostril-biting smell filled the air as its underside was revealed: a fleshy sphincter dripping acid, lined by smaller, hooked polyps—all seeking blindly, hungrily. Varcaxtan leaped forward toward the dragon in a desperate running tackle to pull him aside—

A thunder clap—so loud it seemed to be a physical blow—brought everyone to a halt. Except Varcaxtan who, in that instant, managed to knock the dragon out of the path of the suddenly motionless creature.

Except, that is, for the eye, which turned back to the front, its multiple irises already starting to brighten, to spin.

Varcaxtan hauled the dragon to his feet, ran him over against the wall, moved to take his place at the rear of the creature, mowing down the polyps.

Ahearn glanced desperately at the Dunarran’s progress—not fast enough—before swiveling his head back toward the front.

Elweyr, who had not moved, was half wreathed in smoke and lowering his arm. He’d thrown a vial of storm fluid just a few feet in front of him; unfortunately its flash and thunderclap lacked any electric discharge. But Ahearn’s friend obviously hadn’t intended to wound the creature; he’d intended to get its attention. As the mist of the discharge began wafting away from his face, the thaumantic’s eyes were hard on the monster’s own.

Elweyr! No! was the thought behind Ahearn’s wordless roar of warning. He sprang forward in an attempt to get on the creature’s back, hew at the thick protrusion that held the eye aloft… but before his feet cleared its skirt, they were clutched by more than a dozen of the polyps. He fell on his elbows, only half on the top of the beast, unable to help as he watched his oldest and dearest friend face its utterly annihilating gaze.

But Elweyr was smiling and… counting? As the speed of the eye’s flashing cycles reached its peak, the thaumancer’s arms traced a great circle in the air before him, and with a sigh and a shimmer, a mirror appeared there: an utterly, impossibly, perfect mirror. From the side, Ahearn saw it reflect the creature’s eye as it imploded to a single dark point—which instantly exploded into absolute blackness.

The eye, staring into itself, quaked like jelly. A spasm surged through the monster’s body, throwing Ahearn clear. As it did, a noise that was partly the hoarse roar of an alligator and partly the squeal of a gored pig rose up from beneath it. The eye blinked, was suddenly still—and then burst. The entire creature collapsed, flattening into a low heap of viscous meat that began to stink and fume as if its acids were slowly consuming it from within.

As Ahearn scrambled back to the floor of the cavern, he heard the unflappable “Uncle Varcaxtan” roar—actually roar—“You killed it? How?”

I didn’t kill it,” Elweyr muttered. “It killed it.”

“What?”

“For lack of a better explanation, I believe it just ate itself.”

“Well, its own anima,” Cerven added.

“You know what this is?” S’ythreni asked, impressed but also a little bit aghast.

“I believe we both do,” he replied, glancing at Elweyr.

The thaumantic nodded. “There are stories of cryptigants created to suck the life out of thinking beings. And there are as many speculations about how they did that as tales of them.” He looked at their already deliquescing attacker. “Frankly, I never believed a word of those tales. After all, how could such a thing be possible?” He smiled. “Now I’ve got something else to figure out. Unless, you can shed some light on it,” he added, glancing at the dragon.

R’aonsun shook his head. “I cannot. At least, not yet. That was yet another, er, unique experience. I did not master the beast, but nor could it reach my mind. Or as young Master Cerven says, my anima. Mind you, I always considered that term—and concept—highly suspect. But now? Well, as with our thaumantic, I may have to revisit that conclusion. Not as enjoyable as the prospect of walking out into that city ahead of us, but stimulating, nonetheless.”

Umkhira looked around the group. “So, do you think the dry-man meant to lead us here? He mentioned a soul-eating monster. Maybe this was his way to free—or even avenge—himself?”

Varcaxtan frowned, chin in hand. “We’ll never know for sure, Lightstrider, but he was drifting back in the ranks even before you realized what was in that kill pit. And even before Ahearn here knew that we’d be facing anything but a typical denizen of the Unders.”

“The bones were the giveaway,” Ahearn nodded. “No way to be that clean without kerf- or teeth-marks. Like some of the horrors that dwelt beneath the Underblack.” He turned on Elweyr. “But you! Where in all the hells did you learn to do that?” He imitated the circling motion with which his friend had summoned the perfectly reflective surface.

“Like I said earlier,” the thaumancer replied with a sly, sideways smile, “long sea voyages give me a lot of time for study.”

“Well, we have traveled on the ocean before,” Umkhira pointed out, “but it has never resulted in such a change.”

He nodded. “This is the first time I’ve had copies of the books from Imvish’al. They’ve shown me things I’ve never seen in any other codices… couldn’t have seen in any other codices.”

“‘Couldn’t’?” Ahearn echoed.

The dragon folded his tree-trunk arms. “Unless I am much mistaken, our increasingly formidable thaumantic has discovered parts of his art that were as long lost as the library itself.”

Elweyr nodded. “Sometimes I find whole thaumates I’ve never even read about in the most obscure tracts… and believe me, I’ve read a lot of obscure tracts. But just as often, I find the missing pieces of constructs that did not come down through history intact. There’s a whole class of these—called Lost Thaumates—which I’ve been completing. And then there are the theoretical and experimental treatises of the thaumancers of the pre-Cataclysm: books that are just names or are completely unknown, now.” He shook his head. “It’s been—well, I don’t really have a word for it.”

S’ythreni smiled. “Sounds like you’re in the middle of discoveries as sweeping—and important—as Druadaen’s.”

“Aye, which got him disappeared to the great beyond, I’ll remind yeh all!” Ahearn was only partly jesting. He wasn’t about to lose any more mates to the problems that arose when folk uncovered what had been forgotten—or hidden—and was supposed to stay that way. “So don’t you go flinging off these new, eh, thaumates right and left, now! Yer likely to attract all the wrong sorts of attention that way.”

Elweyr’s answering smile was crooked. “No worries, there, old friend. I may understand these new thaumantic constructs, but that doesn’t mean I can keep them active for very long.”

Varcaxtan nodded. “Your knowledge has proceeded beyond your manas. At least, I think that’s the mantic axiom.”

Elweyr nodded. “It is. And that’s one reason why you won’t see me use most of this knowledge frequently, not for a very long time.”

“Ah, so you have to grow into your sorcerous britches, then!” Ahearn was able to sound lighthearted enough to conceal the relief behind it. Or so he hoped. “Well, there’s no point standing around here watching as that mystic death slug—”

“It’s an Eye of Oblivion, I believe,” Cerven interrupted softly.

“—as that Eye of Oblivion finishes turning into a pool of malodorous goo. I’d much rather visit that garden we saw from on high. Who’s with me?”


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