“Wolf!”
Hugo spun around, swinging Elfgift down. He stood balanced on rocks not far from the mine entrance, gripping her by one thin arm. She didn’t stand. She fell into a sort of crouching huddle at his feet.
Using hands as well as feet Wolf scrambled over the snowy rocks. He had no plan, except to do exactly what Rollo had told him not to do. Get in Hugo’s way.
“I’ve come to get Elfgift.”
Hugo said quietly, “You can’t have her.”
Wolf shook his head; he was still getting back his breath. “Where’s Halewyn?” he demanded.
“How should I know?”
“You followed him. He led you here. I saw him!” Wolf insisted as Hugo frowned. “He rode ahead of you all the way.”
“Are you mad? I came alone.”
Wolf’s heart turned to ice. “No you didn’t. Whether you saw him or not, he brought you here. Sir, you can’t take Elfgift into the mines.”
“Can’t?”
“Because you won’t. Any more than you’d let Brother Thomas hurt her. Rollo says you’re better than that, and so does Nest.” He added passionately, “You are, aren’t you?”
“Ah, God.” Hugo’s eyes were hard and bright. With a shock Wolf saw that the brightness was unshed tears. “The things we must do, to be men! What a place the world is, Wolf! Ringed with angels, and as rotten as an old tooth. Don’t mistake me for a hero. In the Holy Land I raised my sword for Christendom — where Peter was forbidden to raise his sword to defend Christ — and if all the blood I helped to spill has soaked down through the earth, the rivers of Elfland must be foaming full.
“And Heaven’s a bright, cruel place, where God and his saints sit in stainless bliss. They turn grief and doubt away from the gates, like shabby, bandaged beggars. They’ll never let me in.
“But Elfland — I wander through Elfland every night. It’s full of outcast angels and men I saw die in the wars, and unbaptised babes, and travelling companions left behind on the road. I’ve seen the twisting path that leads there. I’ve been lost on it ever since Eluned died. I’ve followed it in dreams: a maze of false turnings.
“Now I have to go down that road in very truth. It starts here.” He nodded at the gaping black slot in the cliff at his back. “I need your elf-girl. As a hostage — as a guide—”
“How do you even know Lady Eluned’s there?” Wolf cried. “Nest thinks she’s not. And Howell, Howell says she’s in Paradise.”
“And if she’s in Paradise,” Hugo sounded deadly tired, “I’ve lost her forever.”
He took a fresh grip of Elfgift’s arm and tried pulling her to her feet, but she hung limp and set up a pitiful, high screaming like an animal in a snare. Hugo set his teeth and dragged her towards the black mouth of the mine, still screaming.
“Stop it! Oh, stop it!” Wolf rushed at Hugo, seizing his elbow. Icicles dropped from the cliff, shattering on the rocks. Argos sprang around, barking.
Hugo let go of Elfgift’s arm, looking sick. “You’re right. I can’t do it.”
Elfgift took off like a rabbit. She tore past Wolf almost on all fours, using her hands for balance over the rock spill. He glimpsed her eyes, wide with terror in her blotched face — then she vanished into the trees. Argos flew after her.
“Elfgift! Come back!” Wolf leaped after them. His foot went into a hole under the snow and he fell on the rocks. Picking himself up painfully, he saw Hugo turning towards the mine.
“No! Hugo, don’t!”
Hugo looked back. His face lit to a teasing, surprisingly gentle smile. “Fine feathers, Wolf. Did Nest give you those clothes? You were never cut out for a monk, were you? Tell her to give you two silver marks from me, in payment for your services.”
“You can’t go in there alone!” Wolf was torn with grief and panic. He wanted to rush after Elfgift, yet he couldn’t leave Hugo.
“Why not? You did! Am I less of a man than you?”
“But you waited outside for me — I knew you were there.”
Hugo paused. “Watch for me, then, if you will. Wait by the entrance.”
“But I’ve got to find Elfgift!” Wolf cried.
“Wolf!” Hugo took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Do what you must.” And with that, he ducked in under the low overhang of the cave mouth.
Wolf knelt, shivering, watching Hugo vanish. It was as though the cave ate him. One moment he was there: the next, gone. Wolf was alone. The cliff dripped silently on to the back of his neck.
He got to his feet. This was a bad place: he’d always thought so. Even through the snow he could smell the odd, sour smell that he’d noticed before.
He jumped over the rocks and ran down the slope. Elfgift’s trail, overlaid with Argos’s, went looping away into the woods.
“Elfgift!” Nothing stirred. Fog was gathering under the trees. “Elfgift!” He whistled for Argos, long and shrill. The dog did not come back.
Wolf shoved his hands through his hair in agonised uncertainty. What to do? He could follow the tracks, but who knew if he could ever catch them? Perhaps he should stay here. If he waited patiently they might return. Argos might, anyway: and then he and Argos together would be able to find Elfgift.
But waiting patiently wasn’t in Wolf’s nature. He clambered back over the stones. He jiggled from foot to foot. He bit his nails. He glanced at the wood. He glanced at the mine. Horrible to think of Hugo, buried in there! Perhaps he hadn’t got far. Perhaps he was already coming back. Wolf threw himself down and stuck head and shoulders into the opening. The cold stone was forbidding, pressing close on every side.
“Hugo?” he called. “Hugo?” No answer.
He listened, remembering the last time he had been here. He thought of Hugo leaning into the darkness, calling for Eluned. He thought how he’d hoped to be Hugo’s squire. He thought of Hugo’s tired, teasing smile.
If I were really his squire, I would have gone with him.
So the decision made itself. Light with relief, he dropped his fine new cloak on the rocks. If Elfgift came back she would see it, and know where he had gone. She could use it to keep herself warm until he came out again. He threw a last look at the snowy wood, filling his eyes. Then he bent under the stone lintel and crawled into the mine.
Almost immediately the outside world became difficult to believe in, like a fantastic story. Only the stone was real, and the dark; his body blocked the daylight like a stopper in a bottle. He scuffled and slid down the first slant of gritty mud. He knocked his head on the roof and hastily bent double, then dropped to hands and knees.
How far had Hugo got? He called, and his voice sounded flat, trapped. “Hugo!”
Somewhere ahead, miraculously, a gleam of yellow light appeared, curling around the edges of the tunnel. Wolf saw where he was going: a short, downhill crawl under a drooping bulge of rock. He crabbed his way painfully along over glistening, pointed stones, and emerged in a wide chamber with a low, uneven roof, no more than three feet high. The floor was an undulating expanse of mud, stones and shallow puddles. Hugo was sitting in the middle of it with a fat, stumpy candle. The flame winked like a star.
He nodded at Wolf, as casually as if they were passing each other in the yard. “So you came.” The nonchalant welcome made Wolf glow more than speeches of gratitude. “Is this the place where you found Elfgift?”
“Yes. But I never saw it before.” Wolf looked around in wonder. His breath floated out in damp clouds. The ceiling was ribbed and arched like the roof of a mouth, and lots of little white drops clung to it like pimples. He looked down. Near his left hand was a broken, brownish curve. He picked it up. “This bit of broken pot — I remember putting my hand on it.”
“That’s not a bit of pot,” said Hugo. “It’s a piece of someone’s skull.”
Wolf flung it from him with a start of horror. He scrubbed his hand against his sleeve. “Whose?”
“Who knows?” Hugo’s voice was quiet and grim. “And there’s a jawbone here. You can tell it’s old. Maybe someone crawled in here to die. Maybe someone the elves lured in and enchanted.”
Wolf threw a nervous glance around. The edges of the cave disappeared into darkness.
“But this isn’t the place where I saw the wall open up,” he whispered. “That was further on. I was following Argos, and Argos was following Elfgift.”
“Which way?” Hugo asked.
“I don’t know.” Being able to see was confusing him. He closed his eyes and pointed. “That way, I think.”
“Let’s go and look.” Hugo lifted the candle. Awkwardly, one hand raised, he began crawling across the stones, and the chamber seemed to tilt and tip as the shadows lurched after him. Wolf followed in his dark wake. The roof descended towards them and Hugo knocked his head. “There — is penance in this,” he said with a gasp of pained laughter. “To crawl on the naked knees over sharp stones — it is good for us, Wolf. It teaches humility.” He began to murmur the Paternoster.
Wolf joined in. They crawled on. Presently, Hugo checked. “Dead end.”
Wolf peered past Hugo’s arm. The candlelight flickered on a hollowed-out rock wall, pocked with dimples and scarrings that looked like old tool marks.
“This is it! This is where I caught her. She was trapped against the wall. What do we do now?”
Hugo blew out the candle and the darkness was absolute.
Hot, sooty smoke wreathed past Wolf, filling his nostrils. He gasped like a fish. The shape of the candle flame reappeared, repeating itself on the darkness, greenish and unreal, sliding up and down wherever he turned his straining eyes. Corpse candles!
He’d forgotten how terrible this place was. Why had he returned? Why had he been so mad? He touched Hugo’s sleeve. “Light the candle!”
Hugo laid an arm lightly across Wolf’s shoulders. “Keep up your courage, young Wolf. Suffer a little darkness for me and my lady.” After a while he added, “If I’d had a son like you, I wouldn’t have put him in a monastery.”
It was the ultimate accolade. Pride could go no further. But Wolf thought loyally of Nest. “Your daughter’s just as—” he began.
“Hush. Listen!”
To what? Tense and quivering, Wolf obeyed, his eyes uselessly wide, his mouth open, his ears straining. What could he hear? Nothing. And then a steady drip of falling water. And then a far-off murmur, like voices speaking many rooms away. Or even low laughter. Prickles raced over Wolf’s skin.
“You hear it?” Hugo breathed. “Rumours from another level. Deeper down.” And suddenly he shouted: “Open up!” In the confined space the noise was terrific. Wolf cringed, clapping his hands over his ears.
“Open up! Open up!”
Breathless, Wolf waited for the walls to split open. For the enchanted green fields of Elfland to float glowing into view.
Nothing happened. With a sharp chipping sound, sparks fell like seeds and grew into a pale, tender flame. Hugo had relit the candle. He moved it around sharply.
“Look!”
Wolf looked. There was a little tuck of darkness at the side of the floor.
“Down there?” he gasped. “But it looks tiny!”
Hugo swam the candle closer. The shadows moved back, and Wolf saw that the side of the passage they were in dropped sharply towards the mouth of this new tunnel, in a steep downward step.
Hugo lay down and stretched his arm under the edge. The candle flame shivered. “See?” said Hugo softly. “There’s a current of air. It goes somewhere. Here. Take the candle, and then pass it to me when I ask you. I’m going to look.”
He tipped himself head-first into the dip and wriggled forward. Wolf held the candle, watching Hugo squirm his shoulders under the rock shelf, then half his back. At last he heard a muffled grunt — Hugo was asking for the candle! He held it as low as he could, trying to pass it under the edge of the rock close to Hugo’s side. Somehow Lord Hugo managed to grasp it. He moved it ahead of him, and darkness swallowed Wolf.
He crouched, trying not to panic. Listening to Hugo gasping and struggling was worse than doing it himself. At last — it seemed an age — the sound of boots grinding on stones and trickling gravel ceased. Hugo’s voice, less muffled now that his own body wasn’t blocking the hole, called quietly, “I’m through. It’ll be easier for you. You’re smaller.”
Wolf took a shaking breath of the damp, sour air. He groped towards the edge of the slope and tipped himself down it as he’d seen Hugo do. At once he felt committed. His heels were higher than his head, and his body bent in a bow-shape. He kicked violently, slithering forwards and down over cold, wet mud. Protruding stones grazed his knees and hips. The layer of rock above pressed his shoulders like a hand forcing him down. But once his head and shoulders were well into the tunnel, he could see the faint glow of candlelight on the other side, fifteen or twenty feet away. With renewed vigour, he began kicking himself on.
“What’s it like?” he panted.
“Bigger,” Hugo’s voice floated. “You can stand up.”
Wolf was glad to hear it. He wriggled on like a worm, making so much noise that he only dimly heard Hugo swearing. “Wolf — hurry! The light!” His voice faded to a mumble.
“What?” Wolf felt a cold splash of terror. Was the candle going out? Then a strange greenish light washed into the crack he was lying in, and faded.
Hugo spoke again, “Oh!” His voice vibrated with wonder and alarm. What had he seen? Icy with fear, Wolf dug elbows and toes into the gritty ground and squirmed on.
Then he heard Hugo say quite clearly, “Wolf, be quick! I have to go.”
“Wait!” Wolf scrabbled and strained towards the light. There was that smell, the acid smell of the elves: sharp on his tongue. “Wait for me. Hugo, wait!” Gasping, sweating, streaked with mud, he dragged himself out of the constricting tunnel and collapsed on his stomach on a smooth rock floor. Hugo’s candle burned on the ground in front of him, shooting rays into his eyes.
Hugo was not there.
Wolf scooped up the candle and scrambled to his feet. He turned around, sure Hugo must be standing close, hidden in the shadows. His own enormous shadow revolved behind him. Panting like a dog, Wolf raised the candle high so that his shadow shrank and cowered underfoot. No Hugo. He was in a narrow gallery, about five feet high, part natural rock, part squared by tools. He could only see a few yards each way.
“Hugo!” he screamed. “Hugo!”
He ran — not knowing which way to go, he just ran — and the candle fluttered wildly and almost went out. He dropped to a fearful, pacing stride, shielding it with his hand. He had no flint, nothing to strike a light. If the candle went out, he was lost — unless Hugo came back.
“Hugo!”
The passage ended suddenly in a small, blunt chamber like a fist at the end of an arm. No way out. He passed the candle along the roughly marked walls to be sure. Just a concave surface of rock glistening with seepage of slow, brown water, and a wet, gritty floor. Hugo must have gone the other way: must have. Wolf turned, leaving the blind space to its eternal darkness and went swiftly back.
“Hugo?”
His voice frightened him. It was lonely, lost. It was the voice of someone who no longer expects an answer. The passage was longer this way. His hopes rose. Then an end loomed dimly into the candlelight.
Unbelieving, Wolf carried the candle right up to it. It was not curved this time, not a chamber: simply a wall where the tunnel stopped. He thumped it, and his fist didn’t even make a noise. Solid rock.
Terror overtook him. He had just enough sense to put the candle down before flinging himself against the rock, pounding and kicking it, and screaming, “Hugo! HUGO!” At last, bruised and dizzy, he slid to the floor.
He was in a place where people got lost — lost—
a maze of false turnings…
they’ll draw you down deeper than you want to go…
draw you down deeper…
lost — lost—
nobody knows you’re here…
nobody cares—
It seemed that a thousand dry voices were whispering in his head. The sound prickled on his skin in pins and needles. Clutching the candle, he stared down the passage into shadows as black as the centre of an eye. Where was Hugo?
Lost, lost, said the muttering, shifting voices of the elves.
The flame dwindled to a blue bead, and at once the darkness was all around him, a fingertip away. In a fright, Wolf tilted the candle. Hot tallow fat ran over his hand and the flame recovered, struggling up in a smoky spire.
Wolf coughed, and his heart pounded. If the candle could not live here, neither could he. The acidic, elvish smell caught in his throat. If he lingered, he would never get out. He would die right here at the end of the tunnel — unless the elves opened the walls and drew him in as they must have done for Hugo. He had to find the crack he and Hugo had crawled through.
“Quick,” he mumbled.
Wolf, be quick. Hugo’s parting words. Be quick, be quick! I have to go.
(Before the candle dies, before the shadows catch me…)
As he stumbled along, shielding the unsteady flame, the shadows harried him. They crawled past him along the floor, ducked down in front of him, shrank around corners, leaped up behind him. It was like blundering through crowds of faceless, angry ghosts. He nearly missed the way out altogether. But there it was, an unappealing slit at floor level, brimful of darkness like black ink.
Wolf, be quick!
Wolf flung himself down, panting uncontrollably. He gripped the candle in one fist and thrust it into the opening. He squirmed after, dragging himself along by his elbows, wrenching his way through the tunnel. His lungs were raw from breathing the rancid, cellar-cold air; his fingers were numb and bleeding. Be quick!. Be quick!. He got to the halfway point and began to kick and struggle upwards. The worst part was not being able to see the end. Everything ahead was dark.
Wolf, be quick! The candle flame was shrinking again. Sobbing, grunting, swearing, Wolf hauled himself on. For the last time the flame trembled like a blue water drop. Then, as if invisible fingers had reached over his shoulder and pinched it, it went out. For a second a tiny red-hot spark remained glowing, the only visible thing in this world of night. It faded.
Wolf shut his eyes. It was better than trying to see. He scrabbled and clawed his way on. He began to be giddy. The passage held him in its fist. Which was the right way? Was he still heading out? He could never turn around. At last his groping hands knocked on stone ahead. In despair he reached left and right, patting and fumbling. More stone.
Wolf laid his aching head down, exhausted. This was the end. The long struggle was over. He’d lost Hugo; he’d lost everything.
Lost… agreed the whispering voices. Lost…
Beyond fear, Wolf lay stretched in the tunnel. Weariness soaked through him, and he welcomed it, sinking into cold sleep.