Called to Darkness Read online

"Are you all right?" Holg called.

  Sighing, wishing he'd held his peace for another moment, she rose up on her hands and knees, hitched herself around, and looked back over the edge. Holg was small with distance, but even so, it was odd how the climb didn't look as long now that she'd already made it.

  "I'm fine," she yelled. "I'll drop the rope as soon as I catch my breath." But first, she wanted to see if she could spot any sign of what she'd just risked her life to attain.

  She didn't expect to. As she waded through snow to the other side of the notch, doubt welled up in her again, whispering that there was no such place as the Earthnavel. As addled as Ganef had suggested, Holg had simply latched onto her description of Eovath's raving and incorporated it into his own delusions.

  But the view beyond the notch stunned her. As she'd told the shaman she must, she caught her breath.

  Chapter Seven

  The Earthnavel

  Beyond the notch, the trail resumed, switchbacking its way down into a valley. Kagur kept reminding herself that the steep, snowy descent was dangerous. Otherwise, she might have succumbed to the temptation to rush.

  As it was, she and Holg reached the foot of the trail around midafternoon. From there, it was only a short hike to what she assumed to be the Earthnavel itself.

  As they peered over the rim, Holg said, "Please, tell me what you see."

  Not sure she could do the sight justice, Kagur took a moment to consider her words. Then: "The pit is round and several javelin tosses across here at the top. It narrows as it goes down, like the mark of a giant fang except that the sides aren't smooth. There are tiers going down like stair steps."

  "Thirteen of them, if the account I heard is correct. Can you see anything else?"

  "Yes. Skulls and other bones set in niches along the walkways. The ones on the top couple levels belong to cave bears, saber-toothed cats, mastodons, and such, but the ones farther down ..."

  "Yes?"

  "I don't recognize them. I can only tell you they get bigger the deeper you go. I see a skull with five curved horns that's bigger than a mammoth all by itself."

  Holg sighed. "I know I said I was content with the gifts the spirits gave me. But this is one of the times when I wish I could see as others do."

  "Who made this?" she asked. For plainly, even if it had started out as a natural feature, someone had shaped the descending rings and emplaced the bony relics.

  "No one remembers. It wasn't Kellids, certainly, nor frost giants, either, unless they were once very different than they are today."

  She grunted. "I don't suppose it matters anymore. We just need to find a way down."

  That turned out to be easy enough. The builders had dug out stairs leading from the surface to the first tier and from one level to the next. In some places, time had worn the steps smooth, but the sloping surfaces that remained still allowed a person to clamber safely.

  The one real inconvenience was that the various sets of stairs didn't line up, and so Holg and Kagur couldn't go straight from the top to the bottom. They had to walk past dozens of the skeletal displays.

  Kagur did so with sword and shield at the ready. She doubted Eovath was lying in wait in one of the recesses. But he could be, nor was it beyond the realm of possibility that a wild beast—a living one—had made its lair in one of the artificial caves.

  But her caution still didn't make her as slow as Holg, who paused repeatedly to squint at an enormous bone or a grotesque skull with the wrong number of eye sockets or jagged, crooked tusks jutting up from a jaw that stuck out farther than the rest of it. Eventually, sensing Kagur's growing impatience, he said, "I understand our task is urgent. But your father won't hold it against you if you take a few moments to drink in one of the marvels of the world."

  "Don't talk about my father," she replied.

  On first inspection, the circular patch of ground at the bottom of the pit had nothing to show them but the layer of snow that had fallen on top of it. But, stepping warily, Holg tapped with his staff, and Kagur did the same with the end of her bow, until the probing dislodged the snow at the center of the space. With a hiss, it spilled down into the hole it had covered over.

  "Behold the actual Earthnavel," said Holg.

  Kagur stared at it in dismay, which then clenched into anger. She rounded on Holg. "You blind, doddering ...look how tight the hole is! A human being could slip through, but a frost giant, never!"

  "Then Eovath must have found a different entrance into the cave under the hole. This is our path. It has to be."

  Well, perhaps that was true. After all, Eovath had told her he meant to descend via the Earthnavel. "Give me the rope," she said.

  She moved to belay the line to a yellowed skull like two heads fused together, with double sets of fanged jaws protruding side by side from the central mass. The mass of bone was far too huge for the dangling weight of a human to shift it.

  The question was how to secure the rope. If she rigged it to pull free afterward, she and Holg would have it to use in the caves. But then it wouldn't still be hanging here to allow them to climb back out the same way they'd come in.

  She realized it was an easy choice. Finding and killing Eovath was all that mattered. She didn't care what happened afterward.

  She sent Holg down the rope first, then followed. Shining in at an angle, the afternoon sun cast a hazy diagonal across the darkness, but without revealing anything of the walls. Intuition told her she'd climbed down into a space at least as long and wide as the ceiling was high, but unless she groped her way around, there was no way to truly know.

  "We need torches," she said. Her voice sounded hollow, like it had almost echoed.

  "No," Holg replied. Though standing just a pace or two away, he was merely a shadow in the gloom. "We could never carry enough. But I have something better." He chanted, and the curling, crisscrossing lines incised in his staff glowed red. He touched it to Kagur's shield, and the steel burst into flame.

  She gasped and started to fling the shield away, then realized the rippling yellow fire wasn't burning her. It wasn't putting forth any heat at all, just light.

  "Next time," she growled, "warn me before you do something like that." She hesitated. "But this should be all right."

  He smiled wryly. "For you. For just a moment, I saw everything around me clearly, without straining, and now it's all foggy once again."

  "You see better in the dark?"

  "Much. The darker, the better. But since you absolutely have to have light to find your way, your needs take precedence."

  She pondered that as they prowled through the caves that opened endlessly before them, one after another, a number with crude carvings—representations of men or a race resembling men—hacked into the walls. In some chambers, the floors were slippery and foul with guano, and masses of bats hung overhead. At other points, the walls pinched together, and she had to divest herself of much of her gear and turn sideways to squeeze through.

  It was all unfamiliar and unsettling, but she told herself she could cope with it. What should concern her was whether she and Holg were going the right way.

  Eventually, she said, "We keep coming to places where we have a choice of paths. But you aren't casting any more spells."

  He snorted. "You didn't seem all that pleased at the way the last divination worked out."

  She grunted. "It got us here."

  "That it did. But I can't ask the spirits for guidance every time the path forks. It would slow us to a crawl, and I'd run out of magic quickly."

  "So we still have to proceed like any hunters on the trail of their quarry. We have to watch for sign."

  In other words, the search might be even more difficult than she'd imagined, but the realization had the paradoxical effect of making her feel a little more at ease. It was somehow reassuring that her own skills were still necessary even in this alien, dark, and claustrophobic place.

  Sometime later, she caught a whiff of decay from somewhere off to the le
ft. She crept in that direction, and the flickering light of her fiery shield flowed out ahead of her to reveal three motionless forms, each the size of a wolf.

  She stalked closer. The bodies were unlike any she'd ever seen: brown, cricket-like things mottled with mushrooms and fungus. Curiously, the growths appeared to be withering, not flourishing in rotting flesh like she might have expected. But the important thing was that, smashed and split with pieces of needle-toothed mandible, feeler, and leg lopped off, the insects had been hacked apart by a giant's axe.

  Kagur smiled. I truly am on your trail, foster brother, and you'll never shake me, no matter what.

  Not far beyond the crickets, she and Holg came to the largest chamber they'd seen so far. Along its walls capered an abundance of the graven stick figures they'd noticed before, and black spots, the stains of ancient fires, dirtied bits of the floor.

  At the far end, the floor and lofty ceiling both angled downward. The walls drew in, but only a little.

  In fact, all in all, it looked like the beginning of a particularly promising tunnel for descending deeper into the earth. Here at the mouth, at least, even a frost giant could traverse it without having to worry about bumping his head or getting stuck. Kagur started toward it.

  In the darkness, something whispered.

  Chapter Eight

  The Dead

  Kagur whipped out her sword and turned. The light cast by her shield flowed over the stick figures on the nearest wall. The carvings almost seemed to twitch and shift in the wavering yellow glow. But they were all she saw.

  "What's wrong?" asked Holg, hefting his staff with both hands.

  "I heard a whisper," Kagur replied, keeping her own voice low. "But I don't see anything."

  "Noises can carry a long way underground," the shaman said. "If you truly heard anything—"

  "I did."

  "—it may be in a different chamber altogether. Still, stay alert."

  She scowled. "I don't need you to tell me that."

  They prowled onward. For several steps, everything was quiet. Then another whisper made her halt.

  "I heard that one, too," said Holg. "But I'm not sure how much we're hearing with our ears. The whispers may be all inside our heads."

  "What does that mean?"

  "That we should be quiet and move. Don't run, though. Running might provoke it."

  They didn't run, but they did quicken their pace. Kagur caught more whispers. Although she still couldn't make out the words, she somehow discerned the tone—malice as cold as the bitterest winter night.

  She could also tell she wasn't just overhearing one mad, spiteful voice muttering to itself. She could distinguish several different voices. How could there be so many foes stalking her without her catching so much as a glimpse of any of them?

  An answer of a sort came when she and Holg reached the middle of the chamber. Murky figures with foxfire eyes appeared around them, not emerging from cover, just clotting from the ambient darkness. The light of the shield dimmed like it was shrinking from them, and the air grew colder.

  Her hackles rising, Kagur reminded herself that she was a Blacklion warrior, and a Blacklion showed no fear to any foe. She still had to swallow away a sudden dryness in her throat before she could ask, "Are these ghosts?"

  "Ghosts or something like them," Holg answered. "Something dead. This is where they lived, and apparently they resent intruders."

  "So we have to fight?"

  "I hope not. Let's try talking to them." He squinted out at the circle of shadows. "I'm Holg, shaman of the Fivespears tribe. My friend is Kagur of the Blacklion tribe. Who speaks for your tribe?"

  A smoky figure either stepped forth into the firelight or simply thickened out of the gloom. It was taller than any living man or any of its fellows, and for an instant, Kagur wondered if it was Eovath, slain and reborn into undeath. It wasn't, though. Its build was nowhere near bulky enough, and the head was too narrow as well.

  Holg inclined his head to the tall wraith. "We don't mean any harm," he said, "nor do we wish to linger. Please, let us pass, and you'll be rid of us in a matter of moments."

  Kagur waited to see if the ring of shadows would part before them. It didn't.

  "I told you I'm a shaman," Holg persisted. "If any of you crave rest, I may be able to help."

  The spirits just glared.

  "Do they even understand you?" Kagur whispered from the side of their mouth.

  "The big one revealed itself when I asked for their leader," Holg replied. "Still, who knows? I have a prayer that should ensure they understand, but I hesitate to spend the power. I may need it if we have to fight."

  "Then don't cast it. You aren't going to talk our way out of this. These things hate us. But they haven't attacked, so maybe they're leery of us, too. Let's go forward. Maybe they'll clear a path. If not ..." She shrugged.

  The old man turned his milky eyes in her direction. "It isn't easy to make yourself walk right up to things like that, especially if you've never done it before."

  "They're in my way." She strode forward, and Holg followed.

  She did find it hard to approach the phantoms, less because of the danger they presented than the sheer, palpable wrongness of them. They felt like festering sores in the substance of the world itself.

  Better not to dwell on that. Better to make sure she kept her eyes shifting so she'd catch it if one of the spirits made a move.

  Four paces. Five. Six. Then, with the ghost of a war cry, faint as the whispers that came before it but somehow jolting as well, several of the phantoms sprang into motion at once. They rushed Holg and Kagur with shadowy spears leveled and the murky hints of hatchets and knives upraised.

  The two travelers pivoted to fight back to back, and something throbbed through the air like the note of a horn. The sensation made Kagur feel strong and fresh, but the onrushing phantoms staggered, and one simply frayed away to nothing. Holg had blasted them with magic.

  Kagur advanced a step and slashed at a wraith while it was still doubled over in pain. Striking it was like cutting fog, and yet her blade whizzed through its target without resistance. She must have hurt it, though, for the dark form broke apart.

  Evidently recovered from Holg's attack, a different wraith jabbed at her with its spear. She blocked with her shield, and the triangular blur of the spearhead plunged through the burning steel as easily as her sword had sheared through the substance of a ghost. The incorporeal weapon slid into her biceps, and a wave of dizziness and weakness swept through her. As she stumbled backward, the wraith gave a whispered cry of satisfaction.

  It would surely press the attack as well. Shaking off the sickness that had assailed her, or at least refusing to succumb to it, Kagur covered up with her shield just as though she had yet to understand it was no protection.

  The phantom took the bait and tried a second thrust through the shield. Spinning out of the way of the attack, she whirled her sword through the wraith's neck. The spirit crumbled into nothingness.

  Another dark figure rushed her, and a second burst of Holg's power tore streamers of darkness from its head and torso. The wounds looked like tongues of black fire. Kagur sidestepped the spirit's spring and hatchet strike and drove her blade into its middle. That didn't finish it, but a follow-up cut to the head did.

  Taking a chance, she lunged right through it before it had quite finished dissolving. She felt a pang of cold but nothing worse, and the reckless action seemed to catch one of its fellows by surprise. It faltered, she cut into its torso, and it burst apart into scraps and vapor.

  So far, so good, especially considering that Kagur's shield and armor provided no defense. But where was the big phantom? If she could slay it, maybe its followers would flee. She looked around for it, then cursed.

  The tall wraith was still standing back from the two mortal intruders, and now it was swirling its murky hands through mystic passes like the shaman it had likely been in life. Apparently, it retained at least a portion of
its magic.

  Kagur charged in to destroy or at least distract it before it could finish casting its spell. Unfortunately, two of the lesser phantoms pounced between them and cut her off.

  She and her shadowy opponents traded attacks that everyone ducked or dodged. Behind its defenders, the tall wraith swept its arms wide, then clasped its murky hands together in a final dramatic gesture.

  The cool flame rippling across Kagur's shield blinked out abruptly. Darkness as profound as it was unexpected nearly shocked her into immobility.

  Nearly, but not quite. Her father had once told her how to fight while blind—a useful trick in one of the tundra's white-out blizzards, or perhaps with a gashed scalp bleeding into one's eyes. Strike hard and fast from side to side, so no adversary can safely slip in close enough to attack.

  The defense kept her alive for the moment, long enough to notice pale spots floating in the blackness. Was she truly seeing the spirits' phosphorescent eyes, or were the bits of luminous blur just tricks her desperate mind was playing on itself? She decided it scarcely mattered when there was nothing else to aim at.

  She cut at one pair of spots, and they disappeared. An instant later, a surge of cold and sickness made her stagger. Her foot caught on something, and she fell.

  She imagined the wraith that had just struck her standing over her and poising its insubstantial weapon for the deathblow. She flung herself sideways, her shield clanking on the stone floor as she rolled.

  Then—thanks surely to more of Holg's magic—light burned away the darkness. Dazzled, Kagur nonetheless spotted the wraith scuttling after her. She heaved herself up on one knee and thrust her sword at its midsection. The phantom couldn't stop in time to avoid impaling itself, and its form smoked away to nothing around the blade.

  The violent action cost her, though. She felt faint, and the floor seemed to tilt beneath her.

  She'd shaken off the effects of one blow from a spirit weapon, but weathering the second was more difficult. The ghostly spears, knives, and hatchets didn't cleave flesh or spill blood, but they plainly poisoned a person somehow.