This Broken World, page 24
“Shifters, you mean?” Elweyr answered. “No. Shifters won’t associate with the Bent. And vice versa.”
Druadaen kept looking at the strange faces, which from some angles looked almost like a short-muzzled canine, and from others like a weasel or hyena. “And these are—Bent?”
“Yes…although not one of the ur species. They’re called hyek. Not usually found in the Under, but during winter, anything is possible.” He saw that Druadaen was edging toward the largest of the small-headed, immense-bodied monstrosities that had barely succumbed to two poisoned arrows. “Don’t bother with the blugners; they won’t have anything you want.”
“Is blugner another term for…er, a giant?”
Elweyr stifled a laugh. “A giant? Gods, no. According to what I’ve been told, they aren’t big enough. And no, they aren’t Bent.”
“Why?”
Elweyr shrugged. “Well, they don’t consider themselves Bent, and the Bent feel similarly. You can call them underkin; that refers to any race that lives down here and walks on two legs.”
He pulled a ring off another blugner’s bloody finger, which was shaped more like a stump than a digit, yet furnished with a nail the length and shape of a talon. He glanced back at the body. “But blugner are more often referred to as Deepkin.” He smiled at Druadaen’s quizzical look. “They’re the most dangerous and mysterious of the underkin. No one knows much about them. They’re not even related to the Bent, so far as anyone can tell. Take a closer look at your blugner, there where the kirtle has separated, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Druadaen did, and was confused for a moment, distracted by the exposed chest. He wondered why any creature with just two arms would have multiple sets of pectorals—until he realized they were teats. Bile rushed up; he swallowed it back down.
Elweyr nodded at the barrellike torso. “Those dugs mark it as a sow. Which is an apt term for how they whelp and raise their young. No, keep your questions for later; we have to get back to work. I doubt we have much time left.”
Druadaen worked for another five minutes, turning over bodies, rifling through pockets and pouches, trying not to feel like a bandit…but quite aware that, from the perspective of the Bent, that was exactly what he was. Of course, it was no different than what the urzh did to each other—as Kaakhag pointed out every time they had bodies to search—but that hardly mattered: each being’s context was their own. And Druadaen’s kept telling him that since entering the Under, he had not just traveled far down into the earth but might have sunk even further than that as a person.
He returned to the door with his meager findings: mostly pie-sliced pieces of copper coins and inferior billon: too much copper, too little silver. Elweyr had done a little better, but not much.
Ahearn smirked at both their palmfuls of coin fragments, glanced at the room behind them. “I remember when all those weapons, all that gear, was pure treasure. Now, we just turn our noses up at it.”
“Well,” S’ythreni said as she emerged from the crevice in the back wall, “you won’t turn your nose up at this.” She was cradling a shield filled with a wild variety of objects and coins.
“Or this,” added Umkhira, who followed her, one hand grasping several weapons, the other steadying her fellow Lightstrider, who appeared to be a young teenager with unusually sleek, muscular limbs. She was rubbing her wrists, which were badly abraded; whoever had tied them had used very tight knots.
Ahearn spared a glance away from the entry. “She can travel, then?”
“Yes, and warns us that we should leave quickly.”
“Aye, we know that the rest will—”
“No: we are in a battleground.”
Ahearn gawked at the bodies they were standing among. “This is news?”
“Do not be dense, human. She means that we have walked into the middle of a war.”
Elweyr pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and rubbed intensely. “A war? Between whom?”
“She—Zhuklu’a—does not know. She only heard parts of conversations and does not understand Undercant any better than she does Commerce. But on both sides, prisoners have been taken and many executed. Trophies and treasure have clearly been seized—or offered as tribute—from other parts of the Under. And there is much movement.”
“Then why didn’t we detect any?”
“I have not had the time to question her in detail, but it sounds as if the war paused when the ur gurur—those you call blugners—arrived about a month ago. Since then, no other tribes dare approach the tunnels to the Underblack.”
Druadaen glanced at Umkhira. “Didn’t Kaakhag say that when the killing among the Bent becomes routine, they are at the cusp of hordeing?”
“I think you can ask him yourself in a moment,” whispered Ahearn, listening at the entry.
S’ythreni rolled her eyes, drifted to his side, listened, then said, “We know it’s you, Kaakhag. Hurry in.”
“Can you teach me how to do that?” Ahearn asked with a smile.
She touched her narrow but high ears. “Come back when you have a pair of these.”
Kaakhag limped in, helped by another Rot, whose stare was simultaneously desperate, fearful, and hostile. Kaakhag signed at him. The fellow signed back and seemed to relax. Slightly.
Ahearn stood directly in front of Kaakhag. “This stripling of a Lightstrider says we’re in the middle of a war. Is that—?” He didn’t bother to finish: Kaakhag’s hand signs were emphatically affirmative and kept adding details.
Umkhira may have gone slightly pale. “According to his get-brother, the shaman has already started negotiating with powers in the Underblack. The blugners were, ah, resettled here to ensure he remains in power while final terms were agreed upon.”
S’ythreni nodded, cocked her head in the direction of the crevice. “I am no expert at such things, but I’d say this shaman was preparing to build an army, too.”
Umkhira sighed. “The aeosti speaks truth. Behind the back wall, there is a second, smaller chamber that you might call a storehouse or maybe an armory. Weapons have been stacked there, along with shields and armor. About half still bear the marks of the tribes that made them.”
Elweyr frowned. “So: taken in battle, not given as tribute.”
Kaakhag nodded as Umkhira continued. “Other weapons have been broken apart. Much of the iron and bronze has been reduced to raw stock, possibly for reworking into new weapons.”
“So,” Ahearn sighed, “we were in time to rescue these two lovelies but too late to finish the job safely.”
“What do you mean?” Druadaen asked.
Ahearn jerked a thumb at the passage through which they had entered. “Well, there’s no going back that way, is there?” He glanced at the two Rot brothers, who shook their heads so hard that drops of sweat flew. “So that leaves us the back door. Which I’m guessing you lasses found straight away?”
“We didn’t have to,” Umkhira explained, with a gesture toward Zhuklu’a. “She showed us. He kept her close, so she saw things that only a few in his own tribe know about.”
“Does she happen to know if that passage leads back into the Undergloom, or down to the Black?”
“Black,” Zhuklu’a said without hesitation, but with a thick accent.
“Of course it does,” Ahearn nodded sardonically. “Wouldn’t be much good as an escape route, otherwise. Meaning we’re pretty much caught between a tribe whose shaman-chief we’ve just decapitated, and his new underkin allies. And that,” he finished, turning back to Druadaen, “is what I meant by saying it’s too late to finish this job safely. Because as it turns out, getting into the Under wasn’t the problem; it will be getting out that may undo us.”
But Kaakhag was gesturing again, as wildly as if he had been having a fit.
Zhuklu’a surprised everyone by translating even more easily than Umkhira. “He says we will have no chance getting out if we stand here talking. We must flee. Now.”
“And we will, although I think the Bent we fought in here are still running in the other direction.”
But Kaakhag was not mollified. Instead, he became more agitated, limping over to the second largest of the blugners, gesticulating.
Druadaen followed him, studying the huge body.
“What’s he on about with that blugner sow?” Ahearn muttered, holding a pair of crude urzhen rucksacks steady as S’ythreni and Umkhira loaded them with the valuables they had found.
Zhuklu’a frowned. “He says the blugner sows travel with at least one other female. Always.”
“And so? Maybe the other was killed earlier, not in this chamber.”
This time it was the brother who made desperate motions. “No, because then this one would not still be here. He says the sows ensure their safety through alliance with each other. And when one of an allied pair dies, the other goes in search of a new Sister Sow.”
Elweyr spoke from where he was applying a salve to Kaakhag’s leg. “Well, then maybe the other sow will get the word and look for her new Sister.”
“He says no, that is not what the other sow will do.”
Druadaen stepped closer. “Explain.”
Zhuklu’a looked back and forth as she conveyed the brother’s rapid gestures. “The Sister who still lives was here to help keep the shaman alive. She has failed. And she lost her Sister. She needs to find us before she returns to the Underblack. If she does not, um, pay that, um—‘debt of duty’?—then she will lose her position here and become an outcast in the Black. But if she succeeds in making good her failures, she will be allowed to search for a new Sister Sow and to return here as matriarch.”
“Well,” muttered Ahearn, starting to tighten his gear for fast travel, “I see why the two green brothers are so eager to leave. We’d best steal a march on the other sow and frustrate her plans.”
Zhuklu’a shook her head. “Leaving now, even moving as quickly as we may, will not be enough. This I know as well as they do. The blugners have a sense of smell unlike any other creature. Imagine that scents are like voices in a crowded room. Now imagine what it would be like if you could hear all of them clearly, no matter how many there were. Hear each word, understand each speaking.”
She looked around the group. “That is how the noses of blugners work. Particularly the sows. So the sow will be able to follow wherever we go. Unless we can somehow run far enough and fast enough that our scent will fade faster than she—and the tribe—can follow.”
Ahearn and Elweyr exchanged glances. That latter looked away and shook his head: not in negation, but resignation.
Ahearn just sighed. “So we’ll have to go down into the tangliest part of the Black,” he muttered, suppressing what might have been a shiver. “Just like we did the last time we had to run for our lives in this gods-forsaken place. So let’s step lively.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They ran without caution, wads of glowing lichen held aloft to light their way. Long weapons were too cumbersome for running in the tight passage, so they held only shortswords or daggers in their other hands. Besides, if they did encounter anything, it would be so sudden and at such short range, that only a short stabbing weapon was sure to be useful.
The passage led into what Druadaen first perceived as a dark tunnel with a very distant opposite wall, but the eyes of the urzh and the aeosti quickly discerned that they were, in fact, on the ledge of a precipice. Safety and speed required proceeding in single file, staying close against the wall, two urzh at the front and two at the rear. Ahearn asked how far the drop was. Umkhira answered that she did not know. Well, Ahearn wondered, maybe she should take a look and find out. She shook her head and explained that she had looked; she just couldn’t see the bottom.
Silenced by that dire report, they hurried as best they could along the ledge. Even the dog seemed to stay unnaturally close to the wall.
After almost two miles, the ledge bored back into solid rock. In this tunnel, the stone underfoot was much rougher: not often used, the Rot explained. At the first intersection, though, all the urzhen started sniffing. A moment later, Druadaen detected the odor: the sour, rotting-eggs smell of sulfur.
Ahearn and Elweyr exchanged glances. “You think we’re close?” asked the swordsman.
The thaumantic shrugged. “Could be. But we need better light if we hope to recognize a familiar tunnel.”
“A light may be our death,” Umkhira muttered.
“Could be,” Ahearn agreed, signaling for a halt while he rummaged in his pack and produced a very small bull’s-eye lantern. “But it could also be what saves us. By following that smell, there’s a good chance—if we come across tunnels we recognize—we’ll find the way to a safe place we know. One that will throw the blugner sow off our scent.”
“How?” Druadaen asked.
Ahearn kindled a small flame in the lamp. “You’ll see.”
“If underkin don’t see us first,” Umkhira added.
Ahearn grinned and shrugged. “No perfect answers in the Under, Lightstrider.” Playing the lantern’s beam from one wall to the other, he started forward at a quick jog. Muttering darkly, Umkhira followed, gesturing for the others to stay close.
* * *
It was impossible to even guess at the passing of time after that. Druadaen couldn’t measure it by the limits of his own endurance because they weren’t always running. The two other humans made frequent stops to examine their surroundings, particularly when the smell of sulfur either grew fainter or stronger.
And then there were the moments when someone—often the urzhen, but usually S’ythreni—reported distant sounds. That meant covering the lamp and lichens as they crouched flat against the roughest part of the nearest wall. The time spent in the black silence could have been ten hours as easily as ten minutes, but whatever they heard ultimately did not come their way.
On one occasion, Druadaen asked if it was the sound of their pursuers.
Umkhira met his eyes with a baleful stare. “No. Worse.”
“By which you mean…?”
“The sound was from in front and below. So, underkin.”
“Or Deepkin,” Zhuklu’a added, her voice hushed not against fear of detection, but in dread.
Eventually, Druadaen stopped trying to keep track of time. The dark, the sweat, the constant need to pay attention to the rough footing, and the constant threat of sudden attack made it far easier to suspend consciousness in a state of what one of his docents had called an “eternal present”: no past or future, just immediate experience.
Until the tone in Elweyr’s sudden “Wait!” snapped him back into the present.
Ahearn had seen whatever the mantic had. “Yes! No doubt about it. This is where we fought that band of Red kosh. Nasty business.”
“So, we are close to this hiding place you spoke of?” Umkhira asked in a low tone.
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s close, exactly,” Ahearn temporized. “But we know the way from here.”
Whether it was, in fact, fairly close, or because they had no more pathfinding interruptions, or simply because there was a promised end to their desperate journey, Druadaen did not feel much time passed before Ahearn called for a halt and went forward with Kaakhag and Umkhira to scout the chamber that was their destination.
They came back quickly. “All clear,” Ahearn announced almost cheerily. “Quick now; boots off and follow me.”
“Won’t that leave a stronger trail for the sow?” Druadaen asked.
“That’s the idea. You’ll see. Now, come on!”
They followed Ahearn past a craggy opening from which the distant sound of running—or was it falling?—water emerged, along with a pungent surge of the sulfur scent. Two hundred yards past that, they came to a six-way intersection where a swarm of rats approached, then scurried away when Ahearn and Kaakhag ran toward them. Without breaking stride, Ahearn led them down each of the other five passages for about thirty yards.
At the end of the last, he stopped to pull his boots back on, gestured for them to do the same. “Back we go,” he explained. “And long steps, now. Less of a trail, that way.”
Reaching the opening again, he made hand gestures indicating that they should relieve themselves near the entry before following him single file.
Umkhira stared. “That is not so easily done for my sex!”
“Aye, just be as quick as you can,” he muttered, taking almost comically long steps inside, Elweyr and Raun following just behind.
After finishing Ahearn’s physically and socially awkward instructions, they followed his steps to the far end of the cavern. A wide sheet of sulfur-reeking water fell ten feet from a cleft along the back wall. It sent up a vaporous spray as it splashed into a shallow pool. That, in turn, ran off into a crevice that spilled into an apparently bottomless fissure.
With one hand firmly holding Raun’s collar, Ahearn stuck a glowing patch of lichen on the tip of his shortsword and walked straight into the solid sheet of water—and disappeared through it. Elweyr followed immediately.
“Well,” Ahearn called through the rush and splash of the dully glimmering curtain, “what are you waiting for?”
* * *
The chamber beyond the waterfall was a breeding ground for snails, which supported a small population of rats with freakishly large and luminous eyes. By the time Druadaen entered, the last of them were hurrying to the rear of the small cave, doing their best to become invisible.
Ahearn shrugged out of his gear, arranged it in the careful fashion he did when bedding down in the dark; all his weapons and other needful objects were in precise locations, and all in arm’s reach. Druadaen had adopted a version of that for himself; if he had no way to react until there was light, it was unlikely he’d last long enough to react at all.
S’ythreni seemed to pout. “So now we have to sit in the dark.”
Ahearn nodded. “Unless you want to become somebody’s—well, something’s—dinner.”
“But we can talk?”
