Called to Darkness Read online

  But she mustn't succumb to it. She tried to brace herself with battle cries: "Blacklion! Blacklion! Blacklion!" The first was only a gasp, but the second came out as a snarl, and the third, a roar.

  She leaped to her feet and charged the tall wraith. One of its fellows moved to intercept her, and she slashed it into nothingness. Magic vibrated through the air, and another phantom crumbled.

  As she neared the hulking spirit, a shadowy war club appeared in its hands. Eyes gleaming in its blur of a face, it brandished the weapon like it expected that to daunt her.

  She sneered up at it. "You're nothing to me. Just practice." She advanced.

  As she'd intended, that provoked the wraith into striking down at her. She sidestepped, and the insubstantial club hurtled down beside her and right into the floor. Before her foe could lift the weapon up again, she slashed through its wrist. Then she rushed in, sliced it across the belly, scrambled behind it, and kept on cutting at its spine and knees.

  Her heart hammered, and her breath rasped. The stamina on which she'd always unthinkingly depended was gone, stolen by the weapons of the phantoms. Yet for that very reason, she judged that she mustn't stop attacking for a moment. She had to dispatch her opponent before her strength gave out.

  Such relentless aggression made her vulnerable to counterattacks, and she suspected a single blow from the war club would obliterate all that remained of her vitality. But she kept on the move, circling, shifting, dodging, ducking, and the oversized weapon kept missing her, albeit sometimes by no more than the length of her little finger.

  Faking right, then darting left, she managed to get behind the tall wraith again. She cut into the small of its back. She'd landed strokes to the same spot before, but evidently this was the one that counted.

  The war club slipped from the spirit's grasp, started to drop, but melted away to nothing before it reached the floor. The phantom itself staggered a step, half lifted its hands, and then it too dissolved.

  Kagur looked around for lesser wraiths. She didn't see any, only Holg, panting and dripping sweat like she was, leaning heavily on his staff, but alive.

  "We should rest," she said, "but not here."

  "I agree," Holg wheezed. "We need to get farther down the trail. Let's hope we can find a good resting place before something else finds us."

  Chapter Nine

  Patterns

  Kagur looked around and found herself at a muster of the following, one of the rare meetings in which the Blacklions came together with the other tribes sworn to their Mammoth Lord. At least this time, she realized she was dreaming of times past. She wondered if Gorum, or perhaps Desna, understood her so little as to imagine such dreams were necessary to keep her need for vengeance burning hot.

  Resplendent in a long ermine mantle closed at the throat with golden chain, Lord Varnug walked by with four stern-looking frost giants striding behind him, prompting Jorn to grin up at the foster son who had by now grown a head taller than he was. "You see what a proud thing it is for a Mammoth Lord or a chieftain to have giants," the Blacklion leader said. "And though our tribe is smaller than most, we have you."

  Eovath didn't answer, and when another chieftain wandered up to trade humorous insults with Jorn and ask if there were any Blacklion maidens who couldn't find husbands within the tribe, the boy slipped away.

  In real life, eager to join an archery competition, Kagur hadn't thought anything about it. But in the dream, she followed and caught up with him a little way removed from the raucous chatter, singing, dickering, carousing, wrestling, javelin throwing, and other amusements.

  "Was this the start of it?" she asked. "Seeing giants for the first time since Father captured you? Did it make you miss your old family?"

  "He has me," Eovath replied. "Like he has a dog, a drinking horn, or a pair of boots."

  "He didn't mean it like that."

  "He said it."

  "We all have each other. You have me. What about that?"

  Eovath sighed. "It's what makes me happy. But it doesn't matter."

  Kagur's eyes popped open. She felt a twinge of embarrassment to realize they were damp. She rolled over onto her side, thus averting her face from Holg, and knuckled them.

  As she finished brushing the tears away, she realized the sickness and grinding exhaustion she'd suffered before falling asleep were gone. Except for hunger pangs, she felt all right.

  Perhaps discerning the tenor of her thoughts, Holg said, "I cleansed you of the taint of the spirits' touch."

  Covered in heatless flame once more, Kagur's shield lay on the tunnel floor between them like a campfire. In its wavering yellow light, Holg looked even skinnier than before, and his wrinkles deeper.

  "Maybe you should pray for yourself, too."

  He smiled a crooked smile. "It wouldn't help. The dead never managed to touch me. I'm tired is all. I like to think my soul and mind are as strong as they ever were. But when I channel the might of the spirits, particularly when I do it many times in succession, the vigor of the body comes into it, too, and that ...well, as you've noticed, I'm not a sturdy young cub of sixty anymore."

  She frowned. "You didn't have to cure me while I slept. You could have waited and rested."

  "I didn't want you to wake up weak and sick if anything unfriendly came wandering through the passage."

  She looked back the way they'd come, for the little distance she could before the firelight failed. "Has there been any sign of trouble?"

  "No. Killing the dead is often an uncertain business, but we may actually have done it. If not, perhaps the wraiths can't pursue anyone beyond the boundaries of their territory. Or maybe once somebody cuts her way through them, it takes them a while to reconstitute themselves."

  Kagur took a pull from her waterskin. "That would explain how Eovath made it through the cave, and yet the dead were there again to bother us."

  "You may be right," Holg replied. "Although not even a giant could have hacked his way through the wraiths unless his axe was enchanted like your sword."

  Midway through a second drink, Kagur choked and sputtered. "What?"

  "Didn't you know?" the old man asked. "It's why you were able to hurt them."

  "But ...the blade has been in my family forever!"

  Holg chuckled. "With each passing generation apparently oblivious to the fact that it owes its exceptionally keen edge and resistance to rust to a wizard's arts. Or else the clever ones who suspected didn't let on."

  Kagur eyed the sword lying ready to hand beside her. Naturally, it looked the same as ever.

  Holg cleared his throat in the manner of one who realizes too late that perhaps he should have kept something to himself. "I, uh, hope I haven't made you mistrust the blade. As best I can tell, there's no curse or geas bound up in the steel."

  She scowled. "I know that! It's my father's sword, and I'm proud to bear it! It's just ...one more surprise. First, my brother runs mad. Then, it turns out there's enough truth in his madness to lead us both underground. Now, it seems that Jorn Blacklion, who spat and made the sign against the evil eye whenever anyone mentioned wizardry, wore it on his hip every day of his life. What's next?"

  His clouded eyes catching and splintering the firelight, Holg smiled. "Everyone asks that from time to time. In these days of failed prophecy, at least, no one can ever know the answer."

  "Maybe that's better if it means we're free to choose our own fates."

  "Learned men say we always were. It's a paradox, I know."

  Kagur unbuckled her pack and rummaged through it for the jerky. "You're fond of strange words, storyteller."

  Holg laughed. Not particularly loudly, but the sound still echoed away in the dark.

  "Then let me try to say something you might find more meaningful. We can never truly know the future, but we can recognize the patterns and cycles in life."

  Kagur twisted a piece of jerky until it snapped, then handed him half. "Like the changing of the seasons? Geese flying south in the fall
and coming back with the spring?"

  "Well, yes." He bit off a chunk of jerky, chewed, and swallowed. Unlike some of the old people Kagur had known, he still had strong teeth. "Partly. But there are other rhythms and repetitions than the ones we see in nature, subtler ones that play out in human life."

  "Like what?"

  "Well ...the Blacklions killed Eovath's tribe. He in turn killed all the Blacklions but you. And here you are, tracking him so you can kill him."

  Kagur glared at the shaman. He was lucky he was old and blind and that she needed him. Otherwise, she would have driven her fist into his wizened face.

  "My father and his men slew enemies honorably in battle," she gritted. "They weren't betraying folk who loved and trusted them, and they didn't use poison."

  "I know," Holg said, "and I didn't mean—"

  "My father was nothing like Eovath! I'm nothing like him!"

  "I didn't say you are. I was simply ..." He took a breath. "If I've given offense, I apologize. It's been a long time since I had to fight the dead. Perhaps the excitement loosened my tongue."

  "Perhaps." She was still angry, and it was as close as she could make herself come to accepting his apology.

  They finished their meal in silence save for the tiny chewing, smacking sounds they were making themselves. Noise might carry long distances underground, but it wasn't doing so at the moment, and the cool flame rippling on the face of her shield did so with nary a crackle.

  Finally, she said, "It's my turn to stand watch while you sleep. You'll need your strength for the last leg of the journey."

  He cocked his head. "The which?"

  "The last leg. We've come so deep. Eovath can't be too far ahead."

  "I wish that were so. But if I'm not mistaken, we're still in the caves that lie just beneath the surface. We haven't even reached the true Darklands yet."

  Kagur scowled. "I don't understand. Caves are caves, aren't they?"

  "From what I've heard, yes and no. Supposedly, there are three layers to the Darklands: Nar-Voth, Sekamina, and Orv, each in some ways different than the common caverns we've traversed so far, and likewise different from the other two."

  She grunted. "Fine. I'll go as far as I have to."

  "Good. Because from what Eovath told you, I suspect that's all the way to the bottom."

  Chapter Ten

  Nar-Voth

  Something's following us," Kagur murmured.

  It was many days later—how many was already difficult to recall. Kagur didn't bother keeping track.

  "Are you sure?" Holg replied. "I didn't hear anything."

  "I did. The click of claws on stone, maybe." She pulled the fiery shield off her arm. "Take this and keep walking. Slowly."

  It was hard to guess how anyone or anything hunted in these naturally lightless depths. But if the creature behind them was following the fire, maybe Holg would draw it forward until Kagur could both see it and take it by surprise.

  She pulled her longbow off her back, strung it, and nocked an arrow. Then she waited while Holg headed on down the passage. With every passing moment, the ambient amber glow seemed to dim, and she scowled away the impulse to scurry after the receding source of the light.

  A bone-pale something appeared in the gloom before her. She felt a twinge of surprise even though she was waiting for it. It wasn't creeping on the floor. Rather, it was clinging to the ceiling.

  She drew and loosed. The arrow pierced the white creature. In response, still upside down, it charged as fast as a man could sprint right-side up.

  The closer it came, the more of it she could make out. It was a ten-legged spidery thing the size of a wolf, with jagged pincers extended to seize her and the double set of vertically aligned mouth parts behind them already gnashing with greed for her flesh.

  She drove another shaft into it and still didn't kill or even balk it. She laid a third on her bow, drew it, started to release it, and then the pale creature dropped from the ceiling, twisted in midair, landed on its feet, and continued its charge.

  Somehow, she held onto the arrow and adjusted her aim. The spider-thing leaped at her. She shot the shaft into the wet maw behind the scissoring mandibles, then leaped aside, dropping the bow and drawing her father's longsword.

  But she didn't need it. The pale creature lay thrashing for a moment, and then the convulsions subsided with a final shudder. It didn't move again even when she gave it a cautious jab.

  Holg came back up the tunnel and squinted down at the carcass. "I was hoping for something we could eat, but I wouldn't care to try my luck with that thing's flesh."

  As he'd demonstrated when the jerky ran out, his prayers could create food and water, too. But every such exercise of his gifts was an expenditure of power he could otherwise have used for something else, like keeping them on Eovath's trail when nothing else would serve.

  Kagur switched her sword for Eovath's dagger, knelt, and dug her arrows out of the pallid thing's body. Two were all right, but one had bent and blunted its steel point stabbing through the creature's shell. She cursed. This was the fifth one ruined, and she had no way of obtaining more.

  "It's unfortunate," Holg said, somehow recognizing what had provoked the oath, "but when something tries to kill us, we have to fight back as best we can."

  "It's the shield," she said, rising and wiping gore off her knife. "Our torch. The light draws the cave beasts to us, and then ..." Something occurred to her, and she swore again, this time disgusted not with her bad luck but her lack of wit.

  But maybe the underground was actually to blame.

  At times, the way became difficult. Chasms split tunnels and chambers, and she and Holg had to clamber down one side and up the other. They'd needed to ford a frigid, roaring stream, too, and it had nearly swept the old man off his feet and into the hole through which it vanished. On another occasion, a shuddering in the stone itself shook rock from the ceiling and nearly bashed her brains out.

  But a part of her actually welcomed the obstacles and hazards. They gave her something to focus on. When the going was easy, the smothering darkness weighed on her.

  Then, a thought she didn't want to think nagged at her: that Holg had no idea what he was doing. Though he claimed they'd reached Nar-Voth, his so-called Darklands didn't look any different from the caverns above them. He'd gotten them lost, lost and buried forever, and her fists clenched with the urge to beat him until he admitted it.

  At other moments, the dark spaces numbed her, and she had difficulty holding any thoughts at all. Bereft of the sky and open vistas, of day and night and any clear sense of the passage of time, she caught herself drifting through the perilous depths in a daze.

  Then she bent her thoughts on Eovath and what he'd done, and the resulting surge of rage and grief steadied her. Still, her head wasn't as clear as it ought to be. The fact that she'd only just now thought of her new idea proved it.

  "What?" Holg asked.

  "Do you remember the glowing red mold?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "The shine was enough to light up the space around it for a few paces, anyway. But I couldn't see it from far away like any beast with eyes can see this firelight."

  Holg nodded. "That's a good thought. Unfortunately, we haven't run across any since before we last slept."

  "I know. But maybe we'll find some more."

  She kept an eye out as they continued their descent. They camped three more times, and lost what felt like at least half a day when, despite their certainty that they were on the right path, they fetched up against a blank wall of stone.

  At one point, black rats with bristling fur and beady red eyes started trailing them, first one, then four, and then, startlingly, at least two dozen. Belatedly realizing the vermin might truly be dangerous, Kagur gave an echoing shout that failed to scare them away.

  She was still wondering if killing one with an arrow would do the trick when Holg turned and brandished his staff. Light flowed through the carved, curling lin
es and blazed forth from the end. The rodents fled.

  The burst dazzled Kagur, too, but afterward, she felt her body relax in the light lingering in the air as it might have after a thirst-quenching drink of water. The glow wasn't the blue dome of the heavens, or tundra stretching out for mile after mile before her, but it was something.

  "That might have been an overreaction," said Holg. "But now that I've spent the power, shall we rest here for a while?"

  She clenched her will to say no. She and Holg had taken a rest not long ago. She had no business indulging in another so soon, not while the heart still beat in Eovath's chest. In fact, she bristled at the implication that the dark had so worn away at her nerves that she needed the comfort of the light.

  Then she took another look at Holg, at the slumping way he leaned on his staff and the bruised-looking bags under his eyes, and felt a vague sense of shame. His magical sight notwithstanding, maybe he was the one who needed a respite from the perpetual and omnipresent dark.

  "All right," she said, "for a little while." She took another look around for potential dangers, then sat down on a place where the floor humped upward.

  She and Holg were quiet for a time. Then she asked, "Why would Rovagug—or any god or spirit—speak to Eovath?"

  Holg smiled. "Are you finally persuaded that one did?"

  "Just answer the question."

  "Well, actually, it's a bit of a puzzle. Generally, the Rough Beast's worshipers are out-and-out madmen who want to slaughter all living creatures indiscriminately. Eovath just wants to kill humans. Still, Rovagug does want our kind to die, and spirits have to treat with people who can help them accomplish their ends in the mortal world. The god likely judged that your foster brother was the right person in the right place to do grievous harm."

  She mulled that over. Then: "I wonder ...did the Rough Beast rot his soul, or was he always full of hate on the inside?"

  "Are you searching for a reason not to hate him?"

  Kagur glowered. "No!"

  "Well, my guess is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. There was already a seed inside Eovath, but it might not have grown if Rovagug hadn't watered it. But obviously, I can't know that for certain, either."