Whyborne
We descended, as he’d said, eventually finding a path across a wide causeway, far beneath the delicate stone bridges. Beyond lay another series of hexagonal chambers, their floors oddly offset from one another.
“Ah,” Turner said at last. “Yes. Here we are.”
Three doorways led from this chamber. The murals were in much better shape than those closer to the outside. Groupings of dots showed over each door, accompanied by the illustrations of fantastical creatures. At least, I hoped they were fantastical.
Turner paused uncertainly, studying the symbols around them. He didn’t share what he was looking for—although it galled me to admit it, his knowledge of these matters far outmatched mine. “This way,” he decided at last, and stepped into the middle hall.
Christine twisted sharply in his grip, stamping her foot down on his with all of her weight behind it. At the same moment, she seized his wrist to keep the knife away from her. “Now, Whyborne!” she shouted.
I grasped for the first spell that came to mind. Wind roared up out of the depths, and I shaped it with my will. One of the guards cried out and flung up his arm, while a second collided with the third, sending them both to the floor. Elation leapt in me, and I narrowed my focus to set fire to the powder within the gun still in the hand of the first guard.
Christine’s scream turned my blood to ice. Forgetting the guard, I spun to see her slump against the wall, Turner’s knife buried in her upper right arm. He tore the blade free, and blood spurted out after it.
“Make one more move, and it will go in her throat next,” he shouted at me.
The wind died. One of the guards seized me from behind, shoving me into the wall. I struggled blindly, but he’d gotten a grip on the ugly scarf around my throat. I twisted, trying to free myself before he succeeded in throttling me.
“I trust this has been a lesson for you both,” Turner said coldly. “Let him go.”
The hand loosened its grip. I tore off the scarf and let it fall, coughing and massaging my bruised throat. “Christine,” I gasped. “Are you all right?”
“F-Fine.” The word came out in a harsh pant. She leaned against the wall, one hand clasped to her wounded arm. Blood leaked from between her fingers.
I started toward her, but Turner raised his knife. “The wound needs to be seen to,” I said. “You can’t just let her bleed to death!”
“I certainly can. I won’t, as long as you cooperate.” He gave me a nasty sort of smile. “But it’s entirely within my power to end her any moment I feel like it.”
I swallowed against the icy ball clogging my throat. “You’ve made your point.” God, we were going to die down here. “Please, just do something to help her.”
Turner motioned to one of the guards. He gave me a rough shove as he passed and was none too gentle with Christine. The parka proved too thick to tie a bandage around effectively, so she shrugged out of it. Blood stained the coat beneath, but the brute didn’t bother to check the wound, just tied a handkerchief around her arm: coat, shirt, union suit, and all. I hoped it would do some good at least. Christine winced but made no complaint, dragging the parka back on when he finished.
“Now, if we’re done with this nonsense, shall we continue on?” Turner asked, as if giving us a choice.
The hallway penetrated deep into the rock. Already it was far warmer than on the surface, and I tried to remember what temperature caves supposedly hovered at. The ceiling remained level, but the floor abruptly canted down into another of the steep ramps. The walls fell away, and great, barrel shaped columns, carved from the living rock, lined either side of the long ramp.
The ramp ended in a large, almost plaza-like room. Our lanterns showed bits and pieces of distant carvings, and once again the style reminded me irresistibly of my dreams of the abyssal city. Rather than undersea monsters, however, this showed rank upon rank of mountains, and of great land animals that seemed but the distant relations of our modern fauna.
How accursedly old was this place? Had every guess as to the antiquity of the human species been wrong, or...
No. I wouldn’t let myself think it. Not yet, anyway.
An immense door, cunningly carved from stone, blocked the way forward. Like the walls, it too bore reliefs. But rather than depicting a scene or a series of creatures, it showed only a single, massive figure. My first impression was of some Eastern dragon, all sinuous curls and lashing whiskers.
Oh dear. What had Vanya shouted, about breaking open the mountain and releasing a giant worm? Was this a depiction of the umbra?
“What the devil is that thing?” Christine asked. Her voice cracked slightly, whether from pain or thirst I didn’t know.
“The Mother of Shadows,” Turner said. “But don’t worry—we won’t be coming across her.”
The fine hair on the back of my neck tried to stand up. Umbrae meant shadows. And if this thing was called the Mother of Shadows... might be more than one umbra down here? Or was the depiction merely symbolic? Turner seemed certain we wouldn’t encounter the creature.
Turner shoved Christine roughly in the direction of one of the guards. “Put a bullet in her if Dr. Whyborne so much as twitches,” he ordered.
I held myself as still as possible, afraid the order might be taken literally. How could I possibly hope to get us out of this situation alive? We’d come so close in the corridor—if only Turner hadn’t struck such a deep blow, we might be free now.
But there was no use regretting what might have been. I narrowed my eyes and watched Turner as he approached the great door. How on earth did it open? There didn’t seem to be any visible device, no latch or hinge.
Turner, once again, had the answers. If nothing else, this trip to the Arctic had served to show me how utterly inadequate I was in every way. I’d at least thought myself a competent sorcerer, but rather than spend the last year learning the finer points, I’d relied on my natural affinity for magic and merely dabbled in anything more. Perhaps if I’d truly devoted myself to study, I would have known as much as Turner and been prepared for all of this. Instead, Christine was injured and Griffin in terrible danger, and I could do nothing but stand here like a fool.
Turner drew out a short wand: a thick wooden base strung with crystals and wire, and inscribed all over with arcane sigils. He inspected the door, running the wand across its surface a few times, as if dowsing for something. Then he nodded, pointed at the center of the door, and began to chant.
I didn’t recognize the language he spoke: low and rough and strangely painful to hear. Sweat sprang out on his brow, but he repeated the chant over and over again, the wand steady in his hand.
There came a sort of subliminal click I felt more than heard. The door split into two pieces down the center, which swung outward with a low groan. A rush of fetid air flowed from the opening, up from somewhere deep beneath the earth.
“Quickly,” Turner said, and dragged Christine after him. One of the guides prodded my back with his gun.
My skin tingled as we passed through the doorway, as if a thousand ants scurried beneath my clothing. I let out a startled exclamation, but the sensation vanished as quickly as it came.
No one else seemed to have felt it; even Christine looked at me oddly. Turner, however, smiled. “As I thought,” he said cryptically.
Beyond the door stretched a short corridor. Its floor was clear of detritus, no sand or gravel washed down from above. Not even dust; it looked almost as if an army of maids had come through and swept it clean.
And the smell...it didn’t seem like the ordinary foul exhalation one might expect in an ancient cave. Instead, the air reeked like a chemical laboratory. Although it seemed familiar, and not from the context of university or the museum. Where had I smelled that particular fetor before?
“Blast and damnation,” Christine said. Her face paled even farther, and not just from blood loss. “The umbra. It’s...it’s...”
We’d come to the end of the hall and stepped into an enormous hexagonal room. Turner lifted his lantern. Shadows shifted and scurried...and slid. They didn’t move like shadows should.
“Not ‘it,’” he corrected. “Them.”
“Daemons of the night,” Christine whispered.
I stared at the walls, at the ceiling, and the floor in mounting horror. Dozens of black, gelatinous-looking creatures crawled and slithered throughout the room, each one equipped with a single burning orange eye. Tripartite pupils constricted in the light of the lantern.
“We have to run,” I gasped. These creatures weren’t the size of the monster we’d encountered in Egypt, but they were of the same kind. Any moment they’d fall on us, their acid melting our flesh from our bones. We would die here in this stinking lair, and I’d never see Griffin again. I only hoped Turner was the first to go.
Two of the guards grabbed me, one holding each arm. I struggled wildly against their grip. “Run, you idiots! They’re going to kill us!”
“Be still!” Turner shouted. And to the guards: “Hurry, before they can summon a soldier!”
The men dragged me forward, making for the nearest of the things. I thrashed madly, but before I could break their grip, they hurled me directly on top of it.