A trio of tenebrals fluttered overhead. They circled rapidly, began to descend and, seeming to sense the presence of the lantern, dodged its light and warmth in a blind rush back into the darkness toward the far end of the cavern. Off in the dark, the large room filled with the rustle of innumerable wings.
Through the frayed cloth of the pouch in which I had placed it, I saw a faint light as the brooch began to glow.
Chapter XVII
By following the waxing light of the brooch, we found our way over stalagmites across the dark, vaulted chamber. This cavernous world was chaotic, grotesque, as if patched together by formations of rock.
Shardos walked beside me, Dannelle and Oliver directly behind us, and Ramiro tailing them, straddling the stalagmites perilously and squeezing and finagling past cornet and rock formation. The dog Birgis brought up the rear; snorting and whuffling merrily.
Ahead of us, the tenebrals fluttered and dove, glowing with an unearthly light like huge, darting fireflies. Soon their presence became a part of the environs, beneath our notice or beyond it, so that when Shardos cried out and pointed above us, 1 had almost forgotten them.
Above us, a host of the small creatures-ten, perhaps, or even as many as fifteen-circled away from us and poured into a wide tunnel twenty feet up the wall of the cavern, losing themselves once more in the dark.
"That's it," Dannelle said calmly, confidently. "A way out of here foretold by the stones in your hand."
She moved against me for warmth in the cold, cavernous room, and for a moment, I was greatly afraid for all of us.
It was not heartening, following the godseyes, when following them before had led us on a trail into ambush-an ambush that had cost me my brother Alfric. It was all I had to go by, though, the strange and ominous directions of the light in the gems, for I had burrowed us to a crucial point in our journey.
The prospects were not cheerful when it became obvious that there was still some rugged climbing to do before we put this underground chamber behind us. The large room we had crossed ended in a sheet of yellowing limestone, wet and glistening in the torchlight, as though a waterfall had frozen in midplunge before us. Atop the cascade, some twenty feet or so above our heads, lay the black, gaping mouth of yet another tunnel. Through it the tenebrals swarmed like a river of unhealthy light.The stone in front of as had a certain beauty, but it was a beauty that only a mountain goat could have stopped to appreciate.
Resignedly, I held out my hand for whatever passed for climbing gear in this group.
Suddenly, inexplicably, Birgis growled low and menacingly, the rumble beginning deep in his chest and passing swiftly through his bared teeth.
The juggler was moving before the dog's hackles rose. Deftly he slipped a rock in his sling and pivoted, sending the stone hurtling to the margins of light, where it struck the first of the seven creatures emerging from the darkness. The thing whined, staggered, and kept coming. The others came after it. Uncanny, unnaturally white, as swift as illusion, they darted into the light, cluttering and snapping the air.
Ramiro, Oliver, and I drew swords.
"Vespertiles!" Shardos breathed.
And they were on us.
The first of them surged by the juggler with a brief, high- pitched cry and barreled into Ramiro. There was a dull, leathery sound as the two collided and tumbled into the stone cascade. I turned back to face the vespertiles and saw nothing but teeth and hot red glittering eyes as several rose from below me, one climbing up under my tunic, thrashing its way to my throat.
I cried out and tried to push it down, but it scrabbled up my chest, its claws scraping and tearing through my shirt, and then we were fighting under the same ragged skin.
I looked up, and Oliver was rushing toward me, knife glinting in his hand.
"Don't move, Galen!" he cried as the dagger plunged into the front of my tunic, and the vespertile spasmed, stiffened, and softly fell out of my clothing. A blue spot widened around the place Oliver's blade had torn my shirt.
I had time to raise my sword. In a stride, I was next to Shardos, who was grappling with another of the creatures. I slipped my arm between them, shielding Shardos's face, and sunk my sword into the thorax of the vespertile. The blade wrenched in my hand, and I brought it up through bone and gristle and entrail as the monster on the end of my weapon writhed and shrieked, its scream ascending into shrill, barely audible sounds and finally into silence.
I set my foot to its neck and pulled my sword from its body in a swift, grating movement, bringing a course of thin blue fluid up the blood gutter.
I turned to see one of them envelop Dannelle's head, the outline of her face faintly visible through the veins and translucency of its enfolded wings. Swiftly she brought up her dagger, splitting the wing's leather. The creature shrieked and fluttered from her grasp, and Birgis leapt onto its back, grabbing its neck in those long, badger-breaking jaws and worrying it back and forth until it was limp and still.
Oliver and Ramiro drew their swords out of the third vespertile as blood streamed from the ragged cut on the big Knight's forehead. Their companions put to dagger and sword, the remaining monsters turned and scurried back into the darkness, some of them dragging ruined wings.
By the time I had caught my breath, Dannelle was already walking confidently to the foot of the formation as though someone had appointed her mountaineer. She tested its surface for holes, for shelves, for purchase.
"Just what do you have in mind, Dannelle?" I asked in my most commanding voice. She did not heed me. Up the rock face she scrambled, and though she was no monkey, no goat, but still a dazzling girl brought up in luxury, in social grace, she had managed somehow to become a more than adequate climber.
What was more, the view from below was certainly fetching. I marveled as I watched her ascend, the view as round and perfect as distant fruit, and as desperately out of reach.
For a moment, there was peace amid all this tumult and darkness.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Ramiro raised the lantern to provide a better view for the both of us. It was as if he had intruded, had parted a veil with his thick, meaty hands.
"You bring up the rear, Ramiro," I said coldly as I grasped the line Dannelle cast over the edge of the stone cascade. Staggering up the slippery rock, I left the intruder fuming behind me.
The corridor at the top extended endlessly into the darkness and rock, or so it seemed from a quick sweep of the lantern I carried up the rock face.
At first, there was no time to investigate nook and cranny as the two of us helped first a puffing Shardos to the mouth of the tunnel, and next Oliver, who was wrestling with a nervous and wriggling Birgis, wrapped quite securely and safely in a makeshift litter of cloth and rope.
Ramiro himself came last. We lowered the rope for him and steadied him as he swung frantically over the chamber below us. Finally his feet touched solid ground. He knelt, recovering breath and balance.
"I refuse to do that again," he announced, leaning against the tunnel wall.
Three or four tenebrals rushed by us on their way to the chamber we had just left behind.
As we stood between dangers, figuring the odds and the options, all of a sudden the passage ahead of us filled with light and noise. A dozen Plainsmen approached, Que-Tana from their markings, bearing torches and bows and spears. In the midst of them walked their leader, a tall dark-haired man, a diamond-shaped patch over his right eye.
He was older than any of the other Que-Tana I had seen, probably about Shardos's age, and he looked different from the others. His one good eye was smaller, lighter, and though he was pale by Plainsman standards, he was downright ruddy among this underground people. What was more, he had plentiful dark hair, beaded and locked like Longwalker's. Indeed, he looked like a very pale Plainsman-like a Que-Nara priest just recovering from a ghastly illness.