Called to Darkness Page 8

  "For a holy man, you don't know much."

  Holg chuckled. "Believe me, I agree." The glow in the air dimmed, and the darkness flowed back like reaching hands, until the flames dancing on the shield were the only light remaining. "Well, that's that." He planted his staff and heaved himself up from his seat. One of his joints popped. "Are you ready to move on?"

  Sometime thereafter, they came upon the remains of a colossal snail. Most of the slimy flesh was gone, likely eaten by scavengers, but Kagur could still make out two wounds that looked like they could have been chopped by a giant's axe.

  She moved closer for a better look and was only a couple paces away when she noticed that the glistening grease on the putrid carcass was flowing. It was alive, albeit a revolting, liquid kind of life such as she'd never imagined.

  She backed away and was pleased the slime-thing paid her no attention. It already had its meal.

  Later, Holg worked his magic with the fetishes to choose a path when the tunnel split into three. The way he picked brought the travelers to the mouth of a side passage that ran off to the left. The barest hint of red light gleamed from that direction, and water was splashing there as well.

  Kagur frowned. The branching tunnel was level and too low for a frost giant to stand up straight inside it. The primary passage sloped downward and had a high ceiling. It seemed reasonably obvious which way Eovath had gone.

  But her hesitation only lasted a moment. If she could finally obtain some of the glowing fungus she'd noticed before, and if using that to light her way kept hungry beasts from sighting her from afar, then a brief detour would be worthwhile.

  "Come on," she said. She prowled down the side passage, and Holg followed.

  The red glow grew stronger, and the splashing louder, until the way opened out into a large cave. Patches of the phosphorescent crimson fungus flourished in profusion, and so did a variety of other molds. Mushrooms grew in the muck on the floor, some normal-sized and others tall as mammoths with caps wide enough to shelter a family like a tent. The water gushed from cracks in the right-hand wall and spilled down to form pools and rivulets twisting through the chamber. The moist air smelled of loam and vegetative growth and decay.

  Holg smiled. "You can make your fungus light, and we can refill our waterskins."

  Kagur grunted. "We can pick mushrooms, too. I recognize some kinds that are good to eat."

  "Excellent. Mind you, I'm grateful for the provender the spirits provide, but it doesn't have a lot of flavor."

  "Gather what we can carry, but stay alert."

  It would be reckless not to. Nowhere else in the underworld had they come upon such an abundance of plant life. It would be peculiar if no animals dwelled here to eat it, or to prey on the creatures that did.

  But the only thing she saw moving in the dim red light were the spores drifting upward as fungus squished and crunched beneath her boots. They tickled her nose and made her want to sneeze.

  Relaxing a little but still cautious, she headed for an outcropping furred with shining red. Holg proceeded toward one of the miniature waterfalls.

  She studied the phosphorescent fungus and pondered how best to make use of it. If she had a stick, she could jam a piece of it on the end and have a light resembling a conventional torch. But she didn't want to foul her longbow or sword with—

  Something whispered, the sound nearly lost amid the constant hiss and gurgle of water. Kagur whipped out her blade, pivoted, and failed to spot anything she hadn't before, except for a plant with pale flowers mostly hidden among mushrooms as tall as she was.

  "Did you hear that?" she asked, turning toward Holg. When she got a good look at him, she felt a pang of alarm.

  By now, she'd seen the old man strong and eager, and also weary and dogged. She'd seen him resolute in battle, smug as he pontificated and philosophized, and more irritating still when he presumed to offer sympathy or advice. In every humor and situation, his face bespoke intelligence. He even frowned in his sleep, like he was still mulling over the riddles of life.

  That wasn't the case anymore. His jaw hung slack, and he didn't respond to her question.

  Scanning the dim cavern, she started toward him. Despite her vigilance, she still missed seeing what made the hiss when the faint noise came again.

  Suddenly the air around her was thick with spores. They stuck to her face and tingled all the way down into her lungs when she breathed them in.

  With that, she realized she didn't need to worry about Holg or herself, either. Everything was fine. Or it would be, once she turned to the right.

  So she did, to find her father and Eovath smiling at her.

  "What is this?" she asked, stepping toward them.

  "It's us," Eovath said. "We came to fetch you back to camp."

  "There is no camp anymore," she replied. "You murdered everybody."

  "Don't talk crazy," the giant said. "I could never do anything like that."

  She wanted it to be true so badly that knowing it wasn't enraged her. Whatever was playing tricks, how dare it use this against her?

  "Blacklion!" she bellowed, and her vision cleared. Two figures were standing between her and the plant with the pale blossoms, but they weren't Jorn and Eovath. By the putrid look and stench of them, they were dead, but had been freakish and ugly even while alive. One had a pinhead with a single eye, and the other, three arms and a face like a bear. Tendrils like coarse grass grew through their gray, mottled skin.

  They shambled toward Kagur with hands outstretched. Taking advantage of her superior reach and quickness, she didn't find it too difficult to stay away from them while she slashed at their flesh. But they were hardy. She had to cut one twice and the other three times before they fell down.

  She pivoted to check on Holg. He wasn't where she'd seen him last, but after a moment, she located him. He was supine and bleeding from a gashed forehead, and four more creatures were dragging him toward the back of the cave.

  The new creatures looked alive, not dead like the things she'd just dispatched, but in some respects, their appearance was similar. Short and skinny as starving children, they had dangling masses of mold growing out of holes in their skins.

  Kagur ran toward them. From the corner of her eye, she saw pale flowers twisting on their stems. Tracking her.

  She tried to sprint even faster. Spores or pollen hissed out of the centers of the flowers, and one such spray washed over her.

  She stumbled. Her head swam. Her anger and determination faded as a kind of stupefied euphoria welled up to supplant them. Nothing looked threatening anymore.

  But everything was. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, and the burst of pain cleared her head.

  She whirled and bolted from the cave.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Face and the Altar

  Kagur ran a few strides down the connecting tunnel to make sure no flower could spray her again. Then she poured the remaining lukewarm water in her waterskin onto a fold of her cloak and used it to scrub her face.

  It helped. Her thoughts sharpened into focus, and everything looked real. Shapes and shadows no longer appeared on the verge of squirming and flowing into something else. She still had pollen stuck to her clothing, but it wasn't addling her.

  And now that it wasn't, she had to reach Holg. Gorum only knew what the small creatures wanted him for, but it couldn't be anything pleasant, not when they'd taken such care to lay a trap for anyone who happened by.

  For now that it was too late, she could see that the cave was exactly that. The glow, the splash of flowing water, and the edible mushrooms were all bait, while the profusion of mold hid the pale flowers, the walking corpses that appeared to be their servants, and the stunted fungus men, too.

  When the blossoms stunned their prey, the small creatures allowed them to keep some of the victims, but hauled others away. The travelers' dazed condition made them easy to subdue.

  Kagur had no way of knowing if she'd already spotted all the flowers
or their dead, rotting slaves, but she suspected not. She also had to assume the fungus men realized she'd escaped the cave and were keeping watch lest she return.

  In the world where she belonged, she might have tried circling and getting to Holg from another direction, and for all she knew, there might actually be a different way into the cave. But even if so, she'd never find it in time. She was just going to have to enter via the same opening as before.

  She tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of her cloak and tied it so as to mask her nose and mouth, then pulled up her hood and tugged it tight around her face in an effort to expose as little bare skin as possible. She took a deep breath, dashed back into the cave, and ran toward the spot where she'd last seen Holg and his captors.

  This time, she knew what to look for. Still, a corpse surprised her. Its jaw fallen away, it heaved itself up from inside a boulder-like mound of fungus amid a burst of spores. She bellowed and cut deep into its lopsided skull, and it fell down.

  By then, steaming flowers, their color a sickly yellow in the fiery glow of her shield, were twisting in her direction. She lunged, dodging most of the hissing jets of pollen, and what did brush her had no effect.

  She slashed the flowering plant as she raced by, and it convulsed. She felt a flash of satisfaction.

  Another dead thing stumbled toward her but was too slow to intercept her. Pollen spurted at her but fell short.

  An arched opening appeared in the far wall. As she approached, fungus men leveled their spears to defend it.

  She was surprised there were only two, but maybe they hadn't believed anyone who escaped the cave would dare to come back. Or that a single foe could make it past the yellow flowers and the shambling dead.

  The guards' hides were dark green in the glow of the shield. They thrust at her in unison. Without breaking stride, she blocked one attack with the shield and knocked the other out of line with a downward sweep of her longsword.

  Plunging on into striking distance, she cut right, then left, and each stroke bit deep. Both sentries staggered and collapsed.

  She ran on down a tunnel that doglegged to the left. Instinct warned her that at least one more guard must be waiting beyond the bend. She positioned her shield to catch a thrust to the midsection and kept running.

  As expected, a spearhead rasped off the shield. Clawed hands extended to rip flesh, a second sentry tried to dive under the shield.

  She snapped the rim of the shield down on the creature. Something snapped, and the guard sprawled on its belly. She simultaneously stamped on its head and sliced the other fungus man across its snarling face.

  Another arch opened on a chamber nearly as spacious as the one she'd just exited, everything once again red, gray, or black where the light of Holg's conjured fire didn't reach. Kagur inferred it was the fungus men's home. She saw no arrangements for cooking, sanitation, or privacy, but many of the sheets of mold on the walls formed recognizable shapes. The inhabitants had sculpted them.

  The largest of the fungus carvings had the form of a scowling face. The stuff composing it was a darker red than the growths Kagur had seen hitherto, and seemingly not phosphorescent.

  A rocky shelf extended below the face at about the height of Kagur's shoulders. The fungus men had lifted a flat block of stone on top of it, and, still insensible, Holg sprawled on the crude altar. Standing between him and the mold sculpture, alternately turning to each, a creature that was apparently the tribal shaman whirled its hands through complex passes.

  Its fellows stood clustered beneath the ledge. Some were still watching the sacrificial ritual. Others had caught the sounds of struggle in the passage and were turning in Kagur's direction.

  Hoping to drive through them before they could gather themselves to resist her, she charged. She cut repeatedly with her sword and bashed living obstructions out of her way with her shield. The steel clanked.

  Something raked down the lower portion of her back. She knew it must be claws, but her leather armor kept them out her flesh, and now the ledge was right in front of her. She bounded up one of the two natural ramps that led to the altar while the little green shaman scurried down the other.

  Unfortunately, the other fungus men were braver. Some rushed for the ramps. Scrabbling with their talons, others swarmed up the nearly vertical surface directly below the altar itself.

  Pivoting, lunging, slashing and thrusting, Kagur somehow flung back the first wave. Dead and wounded fungus men toppled back into their comrades, hindering them for an instant.

  But only that. Furious and determined though she was, Kagur knew she couldn't hold out for long against them all, especially since, standing at the back of the mob beyond her reach, his clawed hands tearing at the air, their shaman was starting a spell.

  Kagur could only think of one ploy that might serve her need. She made a backward hop toward the rust-colored face.

  A cloud of spores burst from it. Despite the protection of her makeshift mask and hood, her head throbbed.

  But she couldn't let on that the burst had hurt her, not when she was attempting a bluff. She raised her arm and held her shield a finger's length away from the carved face, just as though Holg's cool fire had the power to sear and profane it.

  The shaman clapped its hands twice, the first noise Kagur had heard any of the fungus men make. The others hesitated.

  But what now? The creatures would resume the attack as soon as Kagur stepped away from their sacred image. They might do it in any case when they simply tired of the standoff.

  "Holg!" she said. "Wake up!"

  He didn't stir. On the floor of the cavern, a fungus man armed with a javelin sidled to the left. It plainly hoped to throw when she was looking right. Another creature stooped and picked up a stone.

  "You said this hunt was the point of your whole life," Kagur continued. "You said your patron spirits tasked you with it. Curse you and them both if you fail me now!"

  Holg groaned and raised a shaking hand to the bloody gash in his forehead.

  "Do something," Kagur said. "Now. We're out of time!"

  Holg turned his head in the direction of the fungus men. Kagur wondered just how much of the scene before him his ruined eyes could actually discern. She hoped that, looking in the opposite direction from the flaming shield, he could make out enough of the details to grasp what was going on.

  Holg whispered, then sat up suddenly. At the same instant, his form burned white. The blaze put both the light of the fiery shield and the phosphorescence of the red fungus to shame, like he hadn't merely set himself aglow but turned into a thunderbolt or a star.

  The fungus men were as surprised as Kagur felt. Even the shaman backed away from the shelf.

  "Thank all those who rose at the beginning," Holg murmured, an edge of strain in his voice. "Let's get out of here. Walk confidently, but don't provoke the creatures."

  Kagur found it took an effort of will to move away from the huge russet face and descend from the shelf. But the fungus men didn't rush her and Holg. Instead, they made way and allowed the humans to retreat back down the tunnel.

  As soon as Holg stepped back out into the first cave, the light in his flesh went out. He gasped and clutched at the wall.

  "Are you all right?" Kagur asked. Turing her head, she tried to assess his condition and watch for pursuing fungus men, yellow flowers, and corpse slaves all at the same time.

  The old man wheezed in a couple more breaths, then managed to straighten up and answer.

  "Yes. It's just that with age, that trick has grown particularly taxing." He snorted. "I didn't expect I'd ever use it again, certainly not to cow opponents it wouldn't even have hurt. Fortunately, they didn't know that, and I'm told it looks impressive."

  "Why not daze them like you did Ganef's men?"

  "You can't enthrall a plant. There wasn't anything I could do that would get us out except stack another bluff on the one you were already running."

  Kagur shook her head. She and Holg had been lucky,
beyond a doubt.

  "Thank you for coming after me," the old man continued.

  Though she didn't know why, the simple gratitude in his voice—and the assumption of camaraderie that underlay it—rankled.

  "I had no choice," she snapped. "I need you."

  Holg simply nodded, but as he turned away, she thought she saw his lips twist into a smile.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sekamina

  Illuminated by the glow of a chunk of red mold jammed on the end of a dead man's femur, the stone floor rose and fell like oversized snowdrifts. Kagur and Holg stood at the bottom of one such swell while something padded around on the other side.

  Kagur felt a thrill of excitement. Could it possibly be that she and Holg had at last caught up with their quarry?

  The sensible part of her said no, not if Holg was correct. He believed Eovath was bound for the very deepest caverns and was still far ahead of them. But the shaman didn't know everything.

  She pressed her finger to her lips, and Holg nodded. They crept up the rise. Unfortunately, despite their attempt at stealth, the red glow of the fungus torch was still likely to give them away to whatever was moving on the other side.

  But Kagur had to be able to see. The only alternative was to hang back while Holg, with his ability to sense things in the dark, scouted ahead, and she wasn't willing to let the scrawny old man stumble into trouble by himself.

  Crouching, they peered over the top of the rise and down into the next depression. An instant later, she reached for her sword. By the Lord in Iron, her intuition had been correct! There was Eovath right in front—

  No. Frustration twisted her guts. Vaguely revealed by the red phosphorescence, the creature below her wasn't Eovath.

  It was taller than any human, yet manlike in the crudest sense. That and desire accounted for her momentary confusion. But the thing was no frost giant, nor anything else she'd ever seen before. Gray fur grew all over its body, and its arms forked at the elbow to allow for four clawed hands. A vertically aligned mouth ran up what passed for a face and over the top of its head.