They walked in silence into the darkness. The only light Alain could distinguish was that of the shiny surface of Two Fingers’ coat, the lighter stripes almost luminous. Yet it was not the cloth that glowed; it was another light, insubstantial and yet unwavering, as though the sun’s rays penetrated the stone to cast a diffuse net deep into the underworld. Patches of a luminescent growth stippled the walls of the tunnel, almost as if a creature formed out of pale fire had left a trail marking its passage.
He licked moisture off his lips. Was that heat radiating off the glowing patches that dappled the walls, or were they approaching something very very hot?
The tunnel took a hard rightward turn and dipped down, sharply up again, and now heat blasted them. Two Fingers drew out from a sleeve a gold feather that gleamed so brightly each least blemish on his hands—the white scar sealing off the stumps of his missing fingers, the topography of the skin wrinkled up over his knuckles, a callus on his forefinger, the faience ring on his right middle finger—was thrown into relief.
He set the quill lightly against his lips and blew. The melody that rose from that feather was not music, or even the hiss of a human’s breath across the vane, but an unearthly sound that, like the whisper of the sun’s rays across a hillside at dawn, could never be caught. An answering whisper came from the halls ahead. A deafening cry resounded around them. Sorrow and Rage whimpered and hid their heads against Alain’s legs.
The cry was not repeated. A great beast rustled up ahead, slowing, settling, quieting, until all was silent.
Two Fingers led them forward.
They emerged into a narrow cavern. Pillars thrust up from the floor like racks of javelins and hung down from the roof as numerous as the spears of the great host. Silver and fool’s gold glistened, seams of orange and green, and long patches of crystalline froth like the trail of petrified waterfalls. The cavern glittered by the light that shone from a phoenix, lost now to sleep, roosting on its nest.
Maybe it only seemed as big as a house because of the confined space. It had the head, beak, and body of a gigantic eagle. All its feathers gleamed gold except its emerald-green tail feathers, peeping out in a half-closed fan and marked with eyes: all of them closed in sleep. It roosted on a nest built of grasses and reeds, scraps of cloth, and whitened bones, some of which appeared human. A slithering bed of eyeless snakes writhed, hissing, under its body.
They had to walk past it to get through the chamber.
Alain tugged gently on the hounds’ ears, pressing his face right up against them. “Go with Adica,” he voiced, too low to be heard over the hissing snakes.
He moved cautiously forward among the stone pillars. A jumble of items lay strewn across the cavern floor: stones, broken sticks, a fragment of a plank, a spear, a singed leather helmet, a deflated leather pouch, dry and withered, and fine necklaces and wristbands gleaming with the dull fervor of gold. When he stood close enough to fend off the phoenix’s first snap, should it wake, he waved the others forward. The undertone of hissing from the snakes increased, and although the phoenix’s eyes stayed shut, its tail feathers fanned out slightly. A half dozen of the eyes on its tail snapped open.
Those eyes actually moved, watching the intruders pass behind him. Although his back was to them, he could mark each of his companions crossing by the motion of those uncanny eyes, tracking first one, then the second, then the third. The phoenix muttered in its sleep. Its tail fanned out farther until green-gold feathers brushed the roof. Two Fingers blew gently on his feather a second time. As the breath of that sound echoed through the cavern, silence descended again except for the hissing snakes.
As Alain shifted back, making ready to follow the others, gold winked, a gleam half hidden by rubbish. He stooped, and rose with a gold feather.
A dozen feather eyes popped open at once. He actually started back, so surprised was he by that sudden wakening. A snake wriggled free of the fetid nest and fell, slithering, to the floor, tongue tasting the air. Seeking him.
He lifted the feather to his mouth and blew. The gold shaft breathed a low moan. Half the open feather eyes hooded, drooping, falling to sleep.
But there was still that damned snake. He had lost sight of it among the rubbish. A broken cup, disturbed, rolled sideways.
Edging backward, staff held so that he could strike down, he stepped back through the pillared columns until he ran up against Two Fingers’ steadying hand.
“Now, go we quick.” Two Fingers sounded like he was about to start laughing.
Laugh they did, once they had gotten farther down the tunnel and found a narrow cleft half blocked by rockfall where they could stop and sit. Alain actually laughed enough, trying to stifle it so that it didn’t echo through the rock passageway, that he had to wipe away tears.
“You are brave,” said Laoina admiringly.
“Or foolish,” agreed Two Fingers. He brought out flint and a shred of dried mushroom for tinder.
Adica said nothing. She did not need to, with the hounds on either side of her, the ones who knew how much he loved her. All she needed to do was smile at him. A wan light emanating from the gold feather illuminated her face. Oddly, the way the light shaded her face made her old burn scar stand out starkly. She reached to touch his cheek, smoothing a finger over that place where, as she had shown him once in her mirror, he had a red blemish shaped like a rose.
Maybe it wasn’t the rush of overpowering love he felt for her at that moment that caused the tinder to spark and burn. Probably it was the flint. But the torch couldn’t have burned any brighter. He leaned over and swiftly kissed Adica on the cheek before following Two Fingers.
The smoke from the torch made the narrow passages seem even smaller, but as they walked on, the air became moist, the walls dripped, and the sound or running water grew louder. Eventually they entered a long cavern filled with water except for a narrow walk along the cave wall. This underground stream flowed from the far end of the grotto where a fall cascaded out of an opening, along the cavern, and into a natural culvert nearby them. The hounds sidled up to the water, drank their fill, and settled down on the ledge while the others drank. The water had a rich almost salty taste but was so cool and refreshing that mead could not have satisfied him more.
With a sigh, Alain leaned against cold stone and surveyed the cave. It glistened with moisture. Patches of blue-green moss gave a soft glow throughout the room. Two tunnels entered on the other side of the water. The water itself was clear, but shallow, perhaps only an arm’s length deep. Slimy yellows, browns, and whites encrusted the bottom, and small pale white fish, salamanders, and eels thrashed wildly when the torch was held high to view them more carefully.
“Hrm huum,” hummed Two Fingers thoughtfully, considering Alain. He had evidently exhausted his entire store of the language of the White Deer people, because he spoke in his own tongue and let Laoina translate. The noise of the cataract meant they had to yell in order to be heard. “How did you come by the gold feather?”
“I saw it on the ground. I picked it up.”
Rage stood suddenly and let out a single “woof” that pierced through the tumble of water. Sorrow rose groggily from a nap, but his attention quickly sharpened as he focused on the tunnel across from them. Two Fingers quenched the torch in the water.
“Hsst!” They retreated into the tunnel from which they had emerged just as two figures appeared in the other entrance, illuminated by torchlight, spear points leading their cautious advance.
The Cursed Ones.
Rage barked threateningly. Alerted, the two scouts slipped back into their cave, and their shouts calling for aid blended with the roar of the cascade.
“Come.” Two Fingers spoke urgently.
“Quick quick,” Laoina echoed.
An arrow shattered against stone. Laoina clawed at her eye, stumbling, as Two Fingers pulled her down the tunnel. Alain called in the dogs as a group of Cursed Ones burst out into the cavern, spears and swords in hand. The leader leaped in
to the water, splashing quickly across the stream, and lunged forward to thrust at Sorrow. Alain deflected the spear’s thrust with his staff, countering, but he was too far away to actually hit the warrior. As the Cursed One jerked back from the blow, he slipped in the water. Sorrow pressed forward, but Alain shouted sharply, catching him across the chest with his staff.
“Back!”
Cursed Ones screamed triumph as they charged into the water, brandishing their weapons.
“Alain!” cried Adica behind him.
“Go, Adica!”
Alain held them back, striking toward their heads, knocking a spear thrust off course, as Rage retreated in Adica’s wake and Sorrow took one last bite at the foot of the struggling leader who, righting himself in the slippery stream, thought he could get a last kick in for free. In the confusion, Alain retreated with Sorrow. They cut into the tunnel as another arrow thudded against stone.
“We go back to the phoenix,” called Laoina, ahead of them.
“Are you hurt?” Alain kept his balance in the blackness by keeping one hand in constant contact with the wall.
“Dust in my eye, nothing more.”
But it was more than dust that pursued them. Shouts and ululating cries rebounded off the walls. A light flickered behind as the Cursed Ones brought torches forward to light their pursuit. Alain saw Adica running before him and farther, almost a stone’s throw on, the faint figure of Laoina. The hounds had gotten ahead and were now trying to push past Two Fingers, who was leading them through the dark. They rounded a bend, and the light faded.
Alain paused long enough to turn and shout. “Haililili!” Then he rushed onward after the rest. Every score of steps he would yell back again, hoping to give their pursuers pause, believing he meant to charge out of the dark at them. But after the third time they began to yell taunts back at him. Even with Two Fingers’ knowledge of the tunnels, the Cursed Ones with their torches were gaining ground.
A glow rose ahead. Golden phosphorescence striped the walls. Two Fingers halted in that jumble of fallen rocks where they had stopped to laugh so short a time before. Here the tunnel narrowed until only one person could squeeze through at a time. After the others crowded through behind him and Alain stationed himself to guard the cleft, Two Fingers lifted the gold feather to his lips and blew.
Adica’s fingers brushed Alain’s back, a reassuring caress on his neck. The hounds pressed up beside her, tails thumping lightly on rock. Two Fingers lowered the feather and retreated cautiously toward the phoenix’s lair, Laoina at his heels.
“Go on,” Alain murmured, afraid to speak more loudly for fear of alerting the Cursed Ones, but Adica didn’t move.
Torchlight lit the rock face and made sharp angles stand out in relief. A spear point probed around the cleft. With his staff held vertically, Alain shoved the point aside and, using the rocks to protect himself, twisted within the cleft, striking the leading warrior so hard in the face that he staggered backward into the others.
“Run!” Pushing Adica forcibly before him, Alain fled with her and the hounds toward the phoenix’s cave. They stumbled over bones and debris in time to see Two Fingers and Laoina escaping out the far passage down which they had first come. The tail-feather eyes had woken, all of them, searching the cavern. Snakes slid from the nest to fall in among rubbish and bones. The debris on the floor shifted, rocking, tipping, tumbling as black shapes writhed through the heaps of refuse. The Cursed Ones advanced from behind, voices ringing as they called out in triumph.
Recklessly, he shoved Adica forward into the cavern. Beyond, Two Fingers lingered at the far passageway. He lifted the feather to his lips as the phoenix stirred, cracking open one golden eye.
“Let it wake!” cried Alain. He shoved Adica hard onto the ground and fell on top of her just as a spear passed through the space where he had been. Sorrow and Rage raced toward Two Fingers, fleeing in terror as a wave of heat filled the room, the restless phoenix opening its wings.
A snake slithered over his hand, cold and smooth. It had no eyes, but its tongue flickered ceaselessly, probing his skin with a stinging touch. A second, and third and fourth, followed; he felt a dozen or more writhing over his legs and the flicking darts of their forked tongues as they investigated him. Adica whimpered softly. He had never seen her truly scared before. Yet when a snake touched the skrolin armband, it hissed, spasming wildly, and at once the blind snakes scattered, leaving them alone.
Alain scrambled up, grabbed Adica by the arm, and they dashed after the hounds just as a volley of arrows and thrown spears clattered into the cavern, accompanied by cries and shouts.
Light rose as the phoenix woke fully, screaming its fury. Two Fingers yanked Adica into the safety of the far passage, tugging her into an alcove cut into the rock. The glare of the beast’s uncanny feathers made the stone walls shudder, and where Alain crouched at the mouth of the narrow alcove, sheltering the others with his body, he could pick out every least sparkling granule in the ancient walls carved so long ago from the stone. The hiss of its breath steamed on his calves. It trumpeted frustration.
An instant later, shouts of alarm echoed weirdly along the rock as the pursuing Cursed Ones, emerging into the cavern, discovered the source of the light. The phoenix trumpeted again. Cries shattered everywhere.
“Where the phoenix nests, there can be no attack,” said Two Fingers cryptically, hard to hear over the panic that had broken out among their pursuers.
It was terrible to hear and worse, in a way, when the screams and noises had faded, and the light fled, as the phoenix pursued the pursuers down the tunnel.
After a while, when all they could hear was a steady hissing undertone, Two Fingers relit the torch. Alain ventured uneasily into the cavern, only to find its surface boiling like water. All the snakes had tumbled out of the nest to make a seething sea. There was no way across except to wade through them.
“Ai, mercy!” muttered Laoina, wiping her injured eye. “I think I must die now.”
“They are poison,” said Two Fingers. “This is very bad.”
“I have an idea.” Alain slipped off his armband and fastened it to his staff. “Light all the torches, one for each of you, and walk closely behind me. I’ll clear a path.”
So they went, he in the lead and Adica immediately behind him, then the hounds with Two Fingers right behind and Laoina—brave Laoina!—bringing up the rear. The snakes writhed away from the touch of the armband, and he shoved it among them mercilessly as he broke a path through their ranks. Slender tongues flickered, tasting the air. The hissing of the agitated snakes rose in volume to become like a flood’s roar. Behind, the others thrust and thrust again with the torches, cutting swathes of fire to keep the snakes away. Smoke hazed the cavern.
The boldest of their pursuers had been caught by the phoenix’s first attack. Falling, gut ripped open, he had succumbed to the snakes, dusky skin purpling everywhere and swelling most horribly from their poison. He was a difficult obstacle to cross, because he was already beginning to stink.
Not quickly enough the far tunnel opened before them. Alain shoved Adica past him, then slapped the hounds along after. Two Fingers almost swiped him with his torch as the man leaped past, Laoina at his heels, coughing as she took in a lungful of pitchy smoke. Alain backed after them, poking at the slithering mass, which had already swarmed over the corpse, hiding it.
“Watch out!” cried Laoina, behind him.
His heel hit a soft obstacle. He stumbled, tripped, and fell hard into the grotesque embrace of a mutilated corpse that half blocked the tunnel’s opening.
“Hei!” cried Laoina, stepping up next to him and thrusting her torch forward.
He groped for the haft of his staff, fallen over his knees. His other hand slipped on something cool and wet as he tried to push himself up.
A snake had found shelter in the opened chest cavity of the dead man. It curled free, out of the spume and blood, just as Alain set his hand in its way, trying to get purchase on
the bloody ground.
Bit.
Unspeakable pain lanced up his stricken arm.
Laoina tossed the torch to land at Alain’s feet. Snakes writhed away from the flames as she jabbed with her spear, catching the snake midway down its length. With a furious oath, she flung it off the point and back into the darkness of the cavern.
Alain scrambled to his feet, grabbing his staff. They retreated hastily, brought up short at the narrow cleft, where their companions waited beside two more gruesomely-torn corpses.
“The snake has bitten him,” said Laoina curtly.
Two Fingers grabbed Alain’s hand at the wrist. An ugly red swelling had already begun to deform the hand. “For this I have no cure,” he said mournfully.
“Let me see.” Adica raised the bitten hand to her mouth, but Two Fingers grabbed her arm and yanked her away.
“Do not! In the mouth, it will kill. In the hand, maybe he can live. Quickly we must go. If the phoenix returns, then are we all dead.”
“Let’s go,” said Alain, biting hard at his lower lip. That small pain alone allowed him to stay standing. The pain had thrust all the way up to his head. Maybe he might split in half from the agony. But Two Fingers was right. Shaking so hard he could barely get his fingers to work, he untied the armband and shoved it up his injured arm. At once, strangely, the pain eased enough that he could think again. His little finger, below the bite, was beginning to puff up. “I will live.”
“Quick quick,” said Laoina, taking him at his word. Behind, they heard hissing, as though the eyeless snakes had come to investigate down the tunnel, guiding themselves along their trail with flicks of their forked tongues. One of the corpses was actually blocking the cleft. Laoina shoved it out of the way.
“Follow me,” said Two Fingers.
They doused two torches and by a single light retraced their original path. They found another dead Cursed One afloat in the underground pool, his arms and leg leaking blood in rivulets that flowed toward the culvert. It wasn’t easy to wade across that water, its clarity polluted by bits of flesh and innards drifting free of the cavity ripped into his stomach. All the pale fish and salamanders had vanished. Faint gold streaks made the walls glow, the sign of the phoenix’s passage.