The Howling Delve

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kall felt the weight of the demon come down and knew the battle was over. He prayed the spines would impale him and end his life quickly. If they did not—panic rose sickeningly in his throat—he would burn to death from the demon’s flesh.

A silver light filled the cavern, blinding him, but the killing weight did not follow. Kall blinked the brightness out of his eyes and strained to see. Running feet came across the bridge toward him. Dantane’s wall had come down. The wizard and Aazen were coming to him, but neither wore looks of fear or alarm. If anything, their expressions were confused.

Kall rolled onto his side, still shocked at his ability to do so. A few feet away, his sword lay on the walkway.

The jarilith was gone. There was only a small puddle of blood left on the bridge. Either the demon had fallen from the bridge, or Kall had truly severed his link to this place.

“He’s gone,” said Dantane, echoing Kall’s thoughts. He knelt beside Kall to examine his wounds. “You need healing, or you’re going to die,” he said.

Kall laughed. Pain flared in his abdomen. “No need to spare my delicate feelings. Tell me the truth.”

“Kall! Dantane!” cried Meisha from above them. “It’s Garavin!”

Garavin—his voice had cut off sometime during the flash of silver light. Kall used Dantane’s arm to haul himself to his feet. Light-headed from wounds and the terror gripping his heart, he flew unsteadily to the upper bridge. Dantane flew beside him.

Out of the corner of his vision, Kall saw Aazen looking past them, up to the double doors Kall and Garavin had come through. Green portal light spilled out through the doorway. Aazen motioned to his man on the opposite bridge.

Let them go, Kall thought. Dantane was right. He wasn’t in any condition to fight.

He crested the stone lip, and all thoughts of Aazen deserted him.

Garavin lay prone on the bridge. Meisha and Talal crouched beside him. The dwarf clutched his holy symbol in his hand, his eyes fixed and staring at nothing.

Kall bent, trying to pry the symbol loose, but stopped when he felt the latent heat. “What happened?” he demanded.

“It was the ghost,” said Talal. “The one from the room, where we found Braedrin’s body. Meisha’s messenger. I saw it touch him. I don’t think he’s breathin’ at all.”

“Garavin,” Kall said, taking his friend by the shoulders. There were no visible wounds on the dwarf’s body. “Wake up. Wherever you are, we need you back here.” He held his maimed hands in front of the dwarf’s vacant eyes. “Look at this. See what a wreck I make of myself when you’re not here?” His voice cracked. “By the gods, you’d better not be dead.” He leaned close and spoke in the dwarf’s ear. “There are too many ghosts down here already, old friend. Please.”

Kall thought he heard a shallow push of air fill his friend’s chest. Garavin’s bloodshot eyes slid closed, then opened again, and something of a presence returned. Kall breathed a quiet prayer of thanks. “Can you hear me, old friend?” he asked.

“He’s gone,” said the dwarf, looking beyond Kall to something unseen. His voice held a sadness Kall had never heard before.

“Who’s gone?” Kall asked quietly.

“Dumathoin,” replied the dwarf. Beside him, Meisha drew a startled breath, but Garavin’s attention was on Kall. “He’s gone, and so are the Howlings. Their penance is done.”

“Is it safe to go now?”

Garavin nodded. “Best to leave it all to the dust, lad.” This time he did look at Meisha. “And take the warning to other secret keepers. This Shanatar doesn’t exist.”

The Harper nodded, and Kall stood up. Garavin touched his hands and stomach and began a healing prayer.

“As soon as we can move, we’re getting out of here,” Kall said, feeling the pain of his wounds diminish. When Garavin would have tended other hurts, he gently pushed the dwarf away. “I’m all right, old friend. Save your strength.”

“To what fate are we escaping?” spoke up Dantane. When Kall turned, he pointed to the double doors. “Your friend is gone through the portal.”

“Could be an ambush waiting for us up top,” said Morgan. He sounded as if he did not care either way.

“Or the portal malfunctioned again, and they could be sitting anywhere in the Delve,” said Kall. He thought of Cesira, back at the estate. “We don’t have any other way out.”

While the others gathered themselves, Kall went to Morgan, but the thief remained subdued. He would not meet Kall’s eyes.

Kall tried to speak, to confirm what he hadn’t been able to acknowledge when Morgan had run onto the bridge without Laerin, when he’d seen the fresh blood on the demon’s claws.

“Is there …” Kall cleared his throat and tried again. “Is there a body?” Morgan paled, but it was Talal who answered.

“There’s nothing you’d recognize,” he said, shuddering at a memory he could never be rid of “Your friend’s gone.”

Kall nodded, but inwardly, the rage was so profound he thought he might burn from it. Was this what it was like for Meisha, he wondered, to be filled with fire and anger so consuming it swallowed his thoughts? To think that his friend, who loved the light, the road, the open air—that this should be his tomb… .

“Kall.”

Kall blinked. For a breath, he’d thought it was Cesira’s voice—impatient, always commanding, but with an underlying softness she tried to hide. He looked up, but it was Meisha who addressed him.

“There might be another way out,” the Harper said. “The Climb. It should lead all the way to the portal room.”

Kall met her eyes and saw the reluctance there. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“We might all die in the attempt.”

“Of course.” Kall looked around the group and received answering nods of assent. They were with him. “Let’s go,” he said. Cesira’s face was still bright in his mind.

I’m coming.

Marguin slid around the corner, using a mirror the size of her thumb to see that the way was clear. Elsis came behind her with an arrow nestled in the curve of a fully drawn bow.

“We know you’re here, Lady,” Elsis sang out mockingly. He tipped a silver candelabra off a side table onto the floor. Flames licked at the expensive woven rugs, sending up charred fumes. “The longer you hide, the more painful it will be when we catch you.”

Movement from one of the doorways caught his eye. Elsis trained his bow on the spot, but it was only Marguin’s reflection in a mirror on the opposite wall.

The house was too damn quiet. There were so many rooms that connected to other rooms without spilling back into the main hallways. The bitch could be leading them around the house, and they’d never know it.

Catch this, breathed a voice at his ear.

Elsis swept the bow in an arc and released. The arrow did not have far to travel. Less than two feet away, it splintered through Marguin’s armor near the base of her spine. The woman made a small, pitiful cry and dropped in front of him. Elsis fumbled another arrow from his quiver and nocked it, but he did not hear the voice again. He was alone in the hallway with Marguin’s body curled at his feet.

Cesira watched the man with the bow scour the hallway. She didn’t have enough spells to run him out of arrows, but she was more than willing to disquiet his search. Murmuring a word, she cast the ghostly whisper again. This time, his arrow shattered a mirror.

Crouching low, Cesira crept back to the servants’ stair. Two down—more if any from the downstairs trap were still incapacitated. Still too many, she thought, plenty enough to box her in, and there was no sign of Balram. He must still be in the main hall. He wasn’t going to make it easy by coming for her himself. Going to him would be beyond foolish.

Cesira tried to recall how many weapons and traps remained. Not enough to take out all of them at once, but if she could get a clear path to the garden—yes, it might work. Or she might die carrying out her plan.

“You were right,” she said, holding Kall’s emerald to her breast. “I’m an arrogant, stubborn fool.” She’d underestimated Balram and the Shadow Thieves, and now she was hopelessly outnumbered. “Time to even the odds.”

Aazen came through the portal, appearing on the rocky rim of the cavern floor before a circle of drawn weapons. The thieves saw Tarthet’s body clutched in Aazen’s arms but did not lower their steel. If anything, suspicion grew in their eyes.

“Where is Morel?” The man who addressed him was Geroll, one of Daen’s men.

“Food for a demon, when I left him,” Aazen lied. He settled the dead man on the floor and drew Morgan’s dagger from his back. He’d picked it up on the bridge just before they’d entered the portal room. Tarthet might have corroborated his story. Aazen would never know. “Does the wizard live?” he asked.

“If you can call it that.” Geroll nudged the unconscious Varan with his leg. The wizard did not stir. “He’s been like that ever since he lost his eye.”

“His eye?” Aazen echoed, then he saw Varan’s empty socket. So that was the link. “Perhaps it’s best. Now we can safely remove him from the Delve.”

Geroll nodded carefully. “Call the others back,” he said to the man nearest him. “We have what we came for.” He looked at Aazen, clearly reluctant to relinquish the authority he’d thought would be assured by Aazen’s treachery. But he had no proof, and to accuse Balram’s son without it would mean his death. “Balram will be expecting your report,” he said finally.

“Of course.” Before Aazen could issue an order, the portal in the shaft above his head flared green, and Tershus dropped through, wounded but alive. The halfling saw Aazen and ran right up to him, ignoring Daen’s men completely.

“You’d better come,” he said breathlessly. “It’s your father.”

Aazen stiffened. “What about my father?”

“He took a group of men to Morel house. They haven’t returned, and there’ve been reports of fire in that section of the city.”

Aazen grabbed Tershus by the arm, digging in until the small man yelped. “Bring the wizard,” he said.

“What about the portals?” demanded Geroll. “We can’t leave them open.”

“My men and I were separated,” said Aazen. “If you wish to eliminate any hope of them returning alive, by all means, close the gates. I’ll be happy to explain your decision, and the manpower lost, to Daen.”

He didn’t wait for the man to formulate a reply. He shook the halfling in his grip. “Bring the wizard,” he repeated. “Now.”

Tershus pulled away, his eyes wide at the alteration in Aazen’s demeanor. But for Aazen, the feelings that coursed through him were familiar, shameful, and completely unsurprising to him.

His father was in danger. His father—who’d sent these Shadow Thieves to kill him—needed his son. And Aazen ran to answer that need, as he had always done, as he would always do, for as long as Balram was alive.

Cesira knelt on the floor by the stairway, preparing to change form, when the bolt struck her. Her leg gave out, and she sprawled. Twisting, she pressed her back to the meager protection of the pillar at the landing.

Below her, Balram lowered his crossbow, a weapon he hadn’t been carrying when he’d entered the house. “You are far more fetching in that shape than any other, my dear,” he called up to her. “And you are not the only person outside the Morel family who knows where the master of the house kept his toys. Come down, and perhaps I’ll show you a few Kall doesn’t know about.”

A generous offer, my lord, Cesira replied. She bit her lip against the pain in her leg. But I’m afraid I must decline. Shadows stirred in the upper hallway, and Cesira heard footsteps coming, running toward their voices.

She risked a glance down to the hall. She couldn’t see Balram, but there was, as she’d hoped, an unobstructed path to the garden. The question remained, how many crossbow bolts would she take getting there?

Elsis’s shout from the hallway decided her. She could not outrun arrows and bolts.

Elsis came around the corner, his eyes widening in surprise when he saw her just sitting, exposed, at the top of the stairs. Cesira grabbed a knife from her belt and threw it, forcing him to duck back around the corner.

Standing unsteadily, she found her balance and flipped forward over the stair rail, hanging from her fingers. She swung out feet first and let go, landing in a painful crouch on the first floor. Her eyes tracked the room for Balram—corner pillar; there you are.

She jumped before she heard the twang of the crossbow. Her feet left the floor at the same time her hands came down. She pushed off, into a forward roll, and the bolt struck wood somewhere above her head. Free in that breath, she sprang up and ran, ran as she used to run with the mist stags in the deepest parts of Mir. Her leg was on fire, but she ignored the pain.

She hit the doors to the garden, flung them open, and the third bolt slammed into her back, driving her forward. She felt the tip scrape a rib and resisted the urge to scream. She would not give Balram, a man who reveled in pain, the satisfaction of seeing hers.

Cesira stumbled into the garden, breathing night air and taking in her first—and possibly last—glimpse of the cloudy sky since her vigil on the tower. She ran through the gardens heart, calling silently as she went. In her mind, she screamed their names with her true voice, a voice only the wild beasts could hear.

Sparks flew as an arrow skittered off the stone fountain. Distracted, Cesira tripped and fell to the walkway, striking her head against the ground. To the side, she saw Elsis and another man with a lantern step into the garden alongside Balram.

“So many memories from Esmeltaran,” Balram remarked idly. He reloaded his weapon as he approached. “An empty garden, a dry fountain, and finally an end to the Morel family.”

He stepped onto the walkway. “What form would you care to die in, my lady?” he inquired politely. He raised the crossbow. “The woman … the beast?” His lips curved. “Or are they all the same?”

All, my lord, the druid gasped as a rush of wind filled the garden. We are all bitches with sharp claws.

Balram felt the wind and looked up in time to see the birds—Morel’s hunting raptors—descend on the garden. Balram snapped his crossbow up, aiming for Cesira’s heart, but the flock absorbed the bolt. The night filled with wings, talons, and the high, shrill cries of incensed animals.

Balram took a step forward, but the swarm only increased the closer he got to the druid. A sharp pain burst from his ear, ripping up into his head. He touched the side of his face and found the earlobe gone. Blood dripped down his neck.

“Back inside!” Elsis cried. “Get back!”

“No, damn you!” Balram grabbed the lantern from the other man’s hand. He waved it in the air, batting aside the large bodies. The lantern broke, sending birds up into the sky aflame. Balram threw up his other arm to protect his eyes, but he felt scratches and bites all over his body.

Through the violence, he saw Cesira—once helpless at his feet—now with her eyes changing shape and color. Her arms joined the mass of wings, and for a bizarre breath she was a hybrid of woman and bird. Balram swung the lantern again, charging forward, but she was already gone, transformed and carried away by the flock.

Meisha had never seen the bottom end of the Climb, but her research since she’d left the Delve told her it should be there. Still, it took her a while to find it. She’d only traversed a portion of it in her search for Shaera—a search that had ended in tragedy. Now she had to lead an entire group to safety through the treacherous passage to the surface—if it still led all the way to the surface. Damn the Howlings anyway.

Kall stood at the base of a tunnel that slanted upward until it was almost vertical. Stone platforms jutted from the walls to form uneven rungs.

“I’ll lead,” Kall said. “Meisha and Talal come behind me, then Dantane and Garavin. Morgan, take Borl and bring up the rear.”

“Slow going,” Dantane commented, “with a dog and an injured dwarf.”

“Then we go as slowly as necessary,” Kall said. He pulled himself up onto the first stone ledge.

Meisha floated globes of shimmering fire ahead and behind them, so they would be unencumbered by torches. She could see nothing of Kall beyond his boots and the tail of his cloak, but she could sense the urgency in his movements.

“What will you do once we reach the surface?” Meisha asked. “Aazen and the Shadow Thieves will be long gone.”

“Cesira,” Kall said, hauling himself up another rung. “They’ll be going for the house. I have to be there.”

“And Varan?” Meisha asked.

“The Shadow Thieves will have him,” Kall said. “They won’t give him up easily.”

Neither will I, Meisha thought.

Below them, Garavin succumbed to a fit of coughing that echoed through the shaft. Kall stopped the group.

“How are you doing, old friend,” he called down.

Morgan answered him. “He’s spitting some blood, Kall. That silver light messed him up bad.”

“Hang on just a little longer,” Kall said. “We’re almost out of this shaft.” He closed his eyes and murmured a prayer to Dumathoin.

Don’t forsake your servant now.

Kall looked up. He could see an obstacle ahead. He motioned for Meisha to send a fire globe up so he could see.

“Son of a god’s cursed whore,” he hissed under his breath.

Staring him in the face was a rusty shield floating in a cloud of viscous fluid. The fire globe drifted higher. Kall could make out the edges of a gelatinous cube suctioned to the walls of the shaft.

“Is it alive?” Meisha asked. She touched the oozing substance dribbling down the walls.

“Alive or dead, it can still suffocate us, depending on how far up the shaft it reaches,” Dantane said.

Kall leaned closer to the cube. The slime distorted the objects within—relics of the creature’s last victims—but he could make out enough of the stone handholds inside the cube to pull himself through.

“Morgan, I need your rope,” he called down.

Morgan unhooked an end of silk cord from his belt and tossed it up to Kall. Tying one end of the rope around his waist, Kall handed the other to Meisha.

“When I pull the cord in three quick jerks, it means I’ve reached the other side,” he said. “The next person uses the rope to climb up. We pull Garavin and Borl up last.” He looked at Talal. “Big breath,” he told the boy.

Talal muttered, “Already drowned once today, why not twice?”

“Hold it in tight,” said Kall, “You don’t want a lungful of what’s up there. You won’t come back from it.”

Secured by the rope, Kall positioned himself in a crouch on the stone ledge and thrust up from the knees, into the gelatinous cube.

Sound and light instantly disappeared. Kall tried to lift his arms, but it was as if someone had attached sandbags to his muscles. His muscles burning and stretching with the effort, he gripped the next rung and climbed.

His face brushed something hard that felt vaguely like fingers—a lost gauntlet, perhaps, all that was left of one of the cube’s victims. Kall would have shuddered, if his muscles could have responded to the impulse.

His lungs burned. The rough stone grated against his injured hands. They would be raw and bleeding again soon. With a desperate shove, he broke through the slimy surface and hit his chest against a stone platform.

Coughing and spitting slime, Kall hauled his lower body out of the cube and onto the stone platform. He lay on his back gasping for a moment. His entire body was saturated with slime, but at least he could breathe air again.

Kall wiped his eyes clear and saw darkness, illuminated faintly by Meisha’s fire globes drifting below. The light filtering through the cube cast eerie green glows on the walls.

Gathering the rope about his waist, Kall pulled until it came taut three times. He hoped Meisha’s slighter weight would make the climb easier.

A tense moment later, a cap of black hair broke the surface, and Meisha crawled up beside him onto the stone ledge.

“What a wonderful experience,” the Harper said, flicking the substance off her fingers. Slime plastered her hair to her forehead, and her eyelashes stuck together in dark clumps.

The others followed slowly, until only Garavin and Borl remained. It took the combined strength of Kall, Morgan, and Dantane to haul the pair through the cube, Borl with his muzzle and nose tied shut with cloth. By the time the dwarf was clear of the creature, he barely breathed. Kall quickly unfastened the cloth that kept the dog from breathing in the slime, then turned to Garavin.

“Help me clean him off,” Kall ordered. “The slime will corrode his skin if it’s left alone.”

They laid the gasping dwarf down onto the stone platform. Garavin dredged up a grin for Morgan as the thief tried to wipe away the slime.

“Laerin would be chuckling if he could see ye playing nursemaid,” the dwarf said.

Morgan offered one of his halfhearted grunts. “Don’t get used to it,” he said.

“All right, finish up,” Kall said. “We have to keep moving.” He pointed to a tunnel angling away from the shaft. “Level ground, Garavin,” he said. “Easy going.”

“If it lasts.” Dantane said, always the voice of dissension. He nodded to the dwarf. “He won’t make another climb like this.”

“I’ll be looking after myself just fine, young one,” said Garavin sharply. He got to his feet unaided, but leaned heavily against the tunnel wall.

Kall exchanged a glance with Morgan. Garavin never lost patience with anyone. For the taciturn dwarf to do so now frightened Kall more than a little.

“We’ll rest here,” Kall said. “Dantane’s right. We don’t know how long any of us will last if we encounter another long climb.”

The others moved away to give the dwarf some room. Kall guided his friend back to a sitting position and settled beside him.

Garavin leaned heavily on him for support. When he looked at Kall, his pupils had dilated to two piercing black holes surrounded by a mound of wrinkles. He seemed to have aged a decade in the space of a moment.

“What happened, Garavin?” Kall asked, keeping his voice low. “Was it really Dumathoin on the bridge?”

The dwarf closed his eyes and breathed. The rough wheeze was barely audible. “It was … a power I’ve never felt before, lad—or could ever hope to feel again.”

“Did the power consume you from the inside?” Kall asked urgently. “Can you recover?”

“I think so,” said Garavin. “To live on—feels like Dumathoin s plan for me.” He looked at Kall. “But we—none of us, have the guarantee of living through this passage.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll see to that,” said Kall.

Across the tunnel, Meisha listened with half an ear to their conversation, and used her remaining attention to direct the light globes down the tunnel to scout ahead.

“Stay back here, Talal,” she called out to the boy, who’d wandered halfheartedly to follow the globes. She heard the scrape of feet on stone and Talal’s voice, echoing back to them.

“The tunnel slants down!” he called out. “Spikes on the walls, but the bottom’s clear.”

Through her exhaustion, the words came to Meisha sluggishly. Spikes on the walls.

Memories of her own trek through the caverns came rushing back from a buried place in her mind.

With an incoherent shout of warning, Meisha came to her feet. She ran in the direction Talal had wandered, knowing even as she skidded down the slant that she would be too late.

The boy’s foot touched a pressure plate identical to the one Shaera had encountered on her ill-fated journey farther up the Climb. Meisha heard Morgan shout as the thief recognized the danger, but her eyes were only on Talal.

She pushed off, using the slanted stone for leverage, hurling herself into the boy. They crashed together to the floor as rocks rained down on them.

“Meisha!” Kall shouted, but his voice was lost in the hail of battering stones.

Meisha heard Talal screaming in her ear. She felt the impact of the stones against her back, smashing ribs and bruising flesh.

“No,” she whimpered, when Talal’s screams abruptly cut off. She felt the boy go limp in her arms. In Meisha’s mind, all she could see were Shaera’s dead eyes, all she could hear was the prayer to an unknown god the girl had whispered in the dark. Talal had no one to watch over him. He was alone in the dark.

Shaera’s blood-covered visage … Varan’s ruined eye … Laerin’s blood on a demon’s claws.

Something inside Meisha broke. Without thought or hope, she called the fire.

Flame blazed from her eyes, her mouth, from every wound torn open by the falling stones. Meisha’s pain disappeared, replaced by raw burning—a heat that should have incinerated her body but did not. The fire did not even singe her clothes. Instead the flames shielded her, casting away the falling stones or burning them to smoking blisters before her eyes.

Meisha had never experienced this kind of release. The power within her swelled, and for the first time in her life, she felt nothing could harm her. The fire consumed all, taking thought and emotion and turning the world black inside her mind. Safe in the flaming cocoon, she could exist as one with her element and never have to feel the pain of the world again.

Is that what you want?

Dantane’s words echoed in her mind. “Yes, oh yes!” she screamed, crying tears of black flame.

Let me stay this way, always.

“Meisha!”

She heard the voice near her ear, frightened but insistent, distracting her from her paradise. Meisha tried to ignore it. The fire beckoned her, seductive and soft, a lovers touch that banished all her memories. She did not even recognize the voice calling her.

“Meisha.”

Hands gripped her shoulders, shaking her and sending waves of cold through the inferno. Meisha shuddered at the icy touch.

“Go away,” she snarled, hearing the flames in her own voice. “Leave me be!”

The hands shrank back, and for a moment Meisha thought they would retreat. Then she felt the slap across her cheek, sharp and brutal. The hands shook her again, harder.

Meisha reared back, prepared to burn her attacker to cinders, when she heard the choked cry of pain. The voice spoke her name again, this time in anger.

“Meisha—stupid, flame-kissing Harper—have done!”

Meisha opened her eyes. The flames drained out of her body, leaving her weak and quivering. She collapsed on top of Talal, who squeaked in fresh agony.

“How many ways are you trying to kill me!” the boy screeched, pushing her off and scrambling away.

“You’re alive,” Meisha said wonderingly. “The cave-in … I thought it had killed you. It killed her—Shaera.”

“Is she all right?” came Kall’s voice from somewhere above her head.

“Babbling something, but I always knew her mind was addled,” Talal said. The boy snorted, but his eyes were filled with concern when he looked down at her.

“How?” Meisha asked.

“Your fat bulk shielded me from the worst of it,” the boy said, grinning. “Got a nasty bump, though.” He touched his head and winced. “Your back’s going to have some pretty scars on it.”

He reached under her arms and felt for broken bones as Kall and the others approached.

Meisha caught Talal’s wrist and saw the blistering burns on his palm. Her eyes filled with misery. “I burned you,” she said bleakly. “I could have killed you.”

“You could have killed us all,” said Kall, as Garavin knelt beside her and muttered a prayer. “But you didn’t.”

Meisha looked at Dantane. She felt the dwarf’s healing wash over her, closing the worst of her injuries. Talal was right, she thought. Some of the scars would never heal.

“I felt the power,” she told the wizard. “The element. I was fire. I wanted it so badly.”

Dantane nodded, understanding, but Talal scoffed. “Showing off was what she did,” he said. “Boom! That’s all you sorcerers are about.”

Meisha touched the boy’s wrist. “Thank you for telling me when to stop,” she whispered. This time, moisture trailed down her cheeks rather than fire.

Talal’s face scrunched up at the sight of the tears. He looked more panicked than he had when she was on fire. “Get me out of here, Lady, and we’re even. Sune’s teats, I swear this is the last time I’ll ask.”

“Can you continue?” Kall asked her.

With Talal’s aid, Meisha got to her feet. “I can,” she said.

He nodded. “Let’s go, then. There’s still a long climb, and the Shadow Thieves are waiting.”