The Black Room

“BANDO!” LORN CRAWLED THROUGH THE SECRET PASSAGE, calling his name. “Where are you? Come back!”

There was no answer. When she came out at the other end, she stood up in the darkness and called again.

“Bando? Are you there?” The sounds echoed in her ears, mapping out the space around her. There was no sign of Bando’s huge, bulky figure, either to the left or to the right.

But she could smell him. His warm, distinctive scent hung faintly in the air to her left, and when she took a step in that direction, she could feel how his feet had roughened the earth of the floor. He had been moving quickly, running his hand along the side of the tunnel to keep some sense of where he was going.

Because he couldn’t sec. He thought he was following her, to save her from danger, but if anything happened, he would be helpless in the dark. For a second Lorn couldn’t bear the thought of that. It was all her fault, and she was paralyzed with guilt.

She forced it to the back of her mind. Feeling guilty wouldn’t help Bando now. What she had to do was think clearly so that she could find him as fast as possible. He’d gone off to the left, heading deeper into the earth. She had to go after him, even though she couldn’t work out where he was or why he wasn’t answering her calls.

As she started down the tunnel, her feet remembered the way. Around this bend, the ground rises slightly. Then left and right, with stones on one side and roots hanging down loosely on the other ... Automatically, her mind registered all the little messages that built up the picture, but she was hardly aware of those. She was concentrating on the marks that Bando’s feet had left and the way his scent grew stronger as she walked down the tunnel.

Then she picked up the strange slithering noise that she’d heard before. At first, it was nothing more than a disturbance in the air, a faint murmur coming through the earth. But it grew as she walked, swelling into a slow, slimy straining and gliding, like tentacles pulling at each other deep in the ground.

When she came to the place where the tunnel forked into two, she stopped and listened harder. The slithering was clear now, coming from the right-hand fork, and the air in there carried a new scent. Not the warm, rank animal smell that had been with her all the way, but a fleshy, rancid tang, coming down the tunnel in waves as the noises swelled and faded.

But she knew he had. The bare soles of her feet could feel his footprints leading directly into the right-hand tunnel.

She followed them, shivering as the chill settled into her bones. This was new territory. She should have been clicking her tongue and listening to the shape of the ground, but she was afraid to make any noise of her own, so she felt her way blindly, fumbling at the walls. Once or twice, her fingers slipped into the wide, clumsy dents that Bando had left when he went through before her.

The slithering sounds were even louder now. Her mind built them into nightmare patterns, visualizing monstrous, ridged tentacles that writhed against each other. Their tips twisted grotesquely, brushing at the earth, and their long shapes gathered inward, into a mass that was too intricate for her to picture from the sounds.

The creature was ten or twenty times her size. It was very close, but she had no sense of warmth from its body. That must mean that it was cold—like the wet, heavy earth around it. She had never heard of anything like that, not even in Zak’s wildest stories. All her instincts told her to turn and run.

She began to walk forward, creeping carefully now. Her senses told her that the creature was near, around the next bend in the tunnel. But it was occupied with its own movements and she was very small. If she slipped around quietly, maybe it wouldn’t notice her. Maybe she would have time to figure out what it was and whether Bando was really there. Her feet padded silently over the soft earth, going slowly, slowly around the bend, until she found—

At first, she didn’t believe it. She went from one side to the other, stretching out her arms to feel the space. But her first reaction was right. There was nothing in the tunnel, even though the noise of the monster was everywhere, filling her ear and shaking the air around her.

When she understood, she threw herself at the nearest wall, digging her fingers in so that she could claw her way up. As she went, her hand closed around a stone, and she worked it loose and took it with her, until she was as high as she could climb, with her head jammed up against the roof of the tunnel. Then she began to scrape away the earth above her, clinging on with one hand and stabbing the stone in with the other.

The first ten or dozen strokes were difficult. Then, without warning, the roof gave way, as though she had broken through some kind of crust. Loose earth began to fall all around her, and she turned her head away to keep it out of her eyes.

The shock broke her grip on the wall, and she went tumbling down in a rain of earth and stones, with her mind bombarded by images of another time and another place.

She knew them, she knew that slap against her cheek—the feel of cold, slimy flesh—hands that grabbed at her, wrenching her out into dazzling light—and words that stabbed at her ears.

That’s filthy! Look—in her hair: It’s disgusting!

She’s plaited them in!

Get the scissors! Quick!

The pattern moves by itself, making new shapes and slithering against the cheek and the neck and the ears, and it’s beautiful—but they’re cutting it all away, and it’s bad, bad, BAD—

It was there in her mind, real and sharp. All she had to do was concentrate, and she would remember, like the others. She would understand—

But she couldn’t do it. Not now. Because Bando was more important than that. She couldn’t think about anything except finding him.

Still falling, she wrenched herself back to now and here. High above her head, there was a small new opening where the earth had fallen away. It let in a few weak glimmers of moonlight, and she looked up to see what had slapped against her face.

It was falling with her. She twisted in the air, just in time to avoid the full weight of its clammy, stinking flesh as they hit the ground together. The light caught the ridges on its long, writhing body and gleamed dull on the gray-pink skin. Its smell caught at the back of her nose.

And it wasn’t one monstrous creature, but dozens of ordinary ones. Earthsnakes, tied together in a cruel knot. Their bodies moved in aimless, irregular spasms, and their stink filled the small space where she was lying. They were ugly and unpleasant, but there was no harm in them.

For a second she relaxed, ready to laugh at herself for taking so long to understand. Then one of the earthsnakes twisted up toward her—and she saw that it had no head. It was still alive, but instead of narrowing to a point, its body ended abruptly, in revolting, ragged shreds.

Some other creature had bitten through the naked flesh, leaving it helpless and unable to escape.

Sitting up, Lorn peered through the gloom, letting her eyes travel from one earthsnake to another. They were all the same. Something had wound them into a tangled ball and then bitten off their heads, leaving them buried in the ground like a store of living meat.

She had no idea what kind of monster did that. All she knew was that it was loose in the tunnels.

Dragging herself off the ground, she began to feel around on the earth with her feet. It was impossible to smell anything except the raw stench of the earthsnakes, but it didn’t take her long to find one of Bando’s big, untidy footprints. And then another. And another.

He was still ahead of her, going on down the tunnel. She had no idea how much farther he’d gone, but she knew she had to reach him, before the monster did.

Ignoring the stink of the earthsnakes, she took a long breath of air. And then she started to run.