The Cave
There was no more discussion. They plunged upwards along the ascending trail. The wagon rattled alarmingly, and despite Torvul’s sputtered assurances of the sturdiness of dwarfish construction, they could read the worry on his deeply lined features. They ran the animals for a long time, too long, and finally with no sign of further chimera attacks, horses and ponies slowed to a walk. It grew colder, and the sun sank lower. Ardent’s breath roared in his chest and Allystaire slipped out of the saddle, but he kept hammer and shield ready.
Idgen Marte hitched her brown courser to the back of the wagon along with their pack horse, and trotted forward to meet Allystaire as they took a brief pause. Torvul’s ponies drooped in their harness, and the alchemist clambered out of his seat. He fetched a bucket from a rope on the side of the wagon and emptied a waterskin into it, then tugged a potion out of a pouch and upended it into the water, then went to offer it to his team, letting each pony drink in turn.
“Boy best know his business,” Idgen Marte murmured, as they watched the dwarf. Soon enough Torvul came towards Allystaire, and held out the bucket.
“Give that great beast of yours a sip or two of this. Not too much, now.” Allystaire took the bucket, setting down his shield. He brought it to the horse’s muzzle, and Ardent dipped his nose in and began slurping. Allystaire took it away quickly, though the horse stretched his neck out for more, giving his head a vigorous shake and stamping his front hooves. Ardent’s eyes went a bit wider, and despite the lather on his shoulders and flanks, the destrier looked ready to run.
“What did you put into this?” Allystaire handed the bucket off to Idgen Marte.
Torvul frowned, the expression creasing his broad, hairless face from forehead to chin. “Somethin’ to keep their heads up. It won’t do the animals any good over too long a time. Enough of it and they’ll run till they keel over dead. Still, for tonight, and mayhap a bit in the morning, so long’s we give them a rest after, ought to be fine.”
“Do you have more of it if we need it?”
“We won’t. I don’t think…” Torvul looked back at his wagon, where Gideon’s head had emerged from inside. “Boy’s a bit uncanny, but I think he means what he says.”
Their rest came to a quick end after all the animals were treated with Torvul’s potion, and they set off again, Gideon now riding next to Torvul, leaning forward, his eyes closed and his hands resting on his knees, concentrating intensely.
And so they rode, the horses and ponies showing renewed vigor, eating up ground till they were off the switchback trails and onto a straighter, albeit rockier track. The wind bit at them a bit more, and the pass narrowed in places, though never so far as to threaten the safe passage of the wagon. Rock walls and mountains loomed up on either side of them, and Allystaire gripped his hammer tightly, straining to hear any sign of further monsters. Soon enough, Idgen Marte rode up to replace him at the point, but he stayed up front rather than fall back, riding side by side with her. Neither spoke, for their state of watchfulness did not allow it.
Once, Allystaire heard an echo of the half-human, half-raptor shriek of a winged chimera, and he and Idgen Marte both started towards the noise, hands filling with weapons. The cry receded, but not their vigilance, till the moment when Gideon suddenly stood up on the wagon’s board and pointed to the left. “There!”
Torvul hauled back on the reins to stop his ponies, and followed the boy’s extended finger. Several yards away, over rough rock and scrub, a pile of stones didn’t quite obscure the opening of a cave. It was positioned on a slight slope above the main pass, with no real tree cover to shield it.
“The opening is large enough for man and horse,” Allystaire said, “if we can move some of the rock. Go.” He slid off Ardent’s saddle and began leading the horse up the slope, loose rocks sliding around the destrier’s hooves and onto the track. Allystaire stopped just short of the cave, planted his feet, and began digging at the rock pile with his gloved hands.
No sooner had he begun than Torvul’s wagon halted along the track and the dwarf leveled his crossbow with one hand while swinging the door open with the other. He chanced a glance back into his little cabin, and cursed.
“Ah dammit, the woman’s asleep. I didn’t…” The dwarf looked to Allystaire, shaking his head. “Didn’t count on this when I gave her that little tincture.”
Idgen Marte rode up behind the wagon, her bow at her side. “Allystaire! There’s more coming. Half a score, mayhap a dozen. Slow, scared I think—but they’re coming.”
“Cold,” Allystaire spat, even as he shoveled away another rock. The way was clear enough for most of them—but not for him. More importantly, not the horses.
Gideon, meanwhile, leapt down out of Torvul’s wagon, holding in both hands a long piece of the bar stock the dwarf had purchased back in Londray. “I cannot carry her,” he said, as he ran to join Allystaire at the cave mouth. “But I can do this. The right tool makes almost anyone as strong as a knight.” With that, he plunged one end of the bar amid the rocks, rooted it around, and then began tugging on it, throwing all his weight into it. The pile broke free and rushed down around Allystaire’s ankles, almost tripping him as he began running for the wagon. Torvul set down his bow, hopped up the steps, and ducked inside. The dwarf came out carrying the woman and handed her over to Allystaire.
Meanwhile, Idgen Marte had hopped atop the wagon and drawn her bow, tilting the arrowhead high up to give it distance, then loosed. The shaft was quickly out of sight, but Allystaire thought the wind carried to his ears a distant, canid yelp of pain.
Bethe was barely conscious in his arms; whatever Torvul had given her had dulled her senses considerably. When Allystaire ducked into the mouth of the cave, and the late afternoon sun was suddenly dimmed, she sat upright in his arms and tried to scramble away, her face frozen in a rictus of fear.
Wincing, Allystaire gripped her tighter and laid her down against the rough rock wall just a few feet in. She tried to break his grip and could not. Her mouth closed in a thin, tight line and she began breathing hard and sharp, her eyes wide open and her clawed hands scrabbling at his arms.
“Bethe,” Allystaire said sharply, his voice echoing loudly in the cavern. “Bethe, listen to me. I know it is dark. I know why that frightens you, but there is no sorcerer coming with a hooked knife for you here. It is dark, but you will see light again, I promise. Have Faith in the Mother. Have Faith in my right arm, and Torvul’s magic, and Idgen Marte’s blade, and you will see such brightness that you never need fear the dark again.” The woman’s hands relaxed and she ceased buffeting him, and that would have to do. He stood, ducking beneath the cave’s roof instinctively, though it was several feet above his head. Torvul appeared with his lantern in one hand, crossbow in the other, and Gideon in tow.
Torvul quickly sparked his lamp to life—how Allystaire never quite saw—and unshuttered it, throwing bright white light through the cave. It was enormous and full of points reaching gracefully up from the ground or somehow threateningly down from the ceiling like liquid stone, poised forever on the point of a drop. The light fell across a dark red smudge that drew his eye. He had little time to study it, but he knew instinctively that it had been shaped. Whether by hand or by instrument he could not guess, but it was some kind of painting on the stone wall, of a form walking upright, like a man, but with an unmistakably bear-like head and huge claws at the end of its outstretched arms.
“Allystaire!” He heard Idgen Marte’s call and pulled himself away from the painting and towards the cave mouth, stooping to pick up hammer and shield as he emerged into the light. Idgen Marte had gathered up all the animals, cutting Torvul’s ponies and Allystaire’s packhorse free from their lines and harness, and was leading them towards the opening. Distantly, down the track, Allystaire saw monstrous forms loping towards them, hooting, roaring, calling, and barking.
The animals shied from the opening of the cave, protesting loudly, and Idgen Marte hauled hard on the tangle of reins and straps to no avail. Whirling on one foot, Allystaire barked out, “Ardent!”
The grey turned his head, yanking his reins from Idgen Marte’s grasp, and ran to his master. “Go inside,” Allystaire said. “Watch the entrance. Kill anything that comes in that is not one of us. Now.”
The huge destrier whinnied and reared slightly, stamping his front hooves on the ground. And then disappeared inside the opening of the cave, taking the other animals with him.
“That’s not canny,” Idgen Marte said, as she came back out.
“Agreed, though I stopped questioning it some time ago,” Allystaire replied. He and Idgen Marte moved a few paces away from the mouth of the cave, stretching their arms.
“How many shafts do you have left,” he asked, rolling his shoulders beneath his armor, lifting his shield and hammer in turn to test his arms, the right still tingling.
“Half a dozen. No chance to retrieve any.”
“Fine,” Allystaire said. “Stay behind me, a dozen paces or more, till they are spent. Gideon thinks he can end this. We need to give him time.”
“Is the boy a sorcerer or not?”
“I expect we will learn that soon enough.”
The pack of chimera—more than ten but less than a score—were drawing closer now. Numbers were hard to determine, for they moved so quickly, so oddly, and close enough to distort one another. They seemed hesitant, but Idgen Marte nocked an arrow and raised her bow, and Allystaire lifted his shield and spread his feet, swinging his hammer in small arcs to keep his wrist loose.
One broke from the pack and charged. Idgen Marte loosed, and Allystaire set his feet and squatted behind his shield.
* * *
Inside the cave, Torvul had left the large lantern with Bethe, who had calmed but refused to leave the mouth of the cave and its view of the daylight. He produced an even smaller one from a pouch, little more than just a tiny dot of light in the immense darkness of the cave, and followed Gideon. The boy walked unerringly forward, picking his way through the formations of rock spikes without the slightest hesitation.
“What is in this cave that’s so important, boy?”
The boy stopped, tilted his head to one side, but did not look back at the dwarf. “Power. Whatever is animating those monsters. Whatever has made them into beasts.” He paused. “I think.”
“Made them? So what were they before?”
“Men,” Gideon answered as he adjusted his grip on his staff and set off again.
“They were what? What has the power to twist man n’ beast into those…things?”
Gideon stopped, turned back, and said, “A god.”
“Well, I’d hate to be put out like this for anything less,” Torvul huffed, as he hurried to scramble over the rocks and catch the boy, who had already turned and moved ahead into the twisting, dark passages.
* * *
Idgen Marte put an arrow into the shoulder of the furred and scaled horror that crashed against Allystaire’s shield, but if that slowed it down, Allystaire couldn’t tell. The impact drove his weight onto his back foot, and chances were he was only saved from being overborne by having the high ground. There was no time to reflect on the odds. Claws and teeth scraped against his shield. The attacker was focusing on the blue-and-gold-painted oak, it seemed, rather than the man behind it. Allystaire had time to cock his arm and bring his hammer down in a savage and skull-shattering arc directly on top of the creature’s head. It was as deadly a swing as he had ever managed; with the advantage of height, the economy of his arm’s movement, and the way he was able to shift his weight, he felt confident it would have staved in the finest steel greathelm.
The creature staggered back a pace or two, roaring, and held its head at an odd angle as it tried to charge the paladin again. It tripped, and fell, and Allystaire leapt upon it, battering its skull with his hammer once, twice more. Finally he heard a loud and resounding crack and the beast, some mix of bear and fowl, twitched and spasmed on the ground in its final moments.
He shuffled back up the slope, keeping his shield facing the group of chimera that seemed cautious, hesitant to approach. From several yards away it was hard to tell just what parts each beast was made of; they were a writhing mass of fur, feathers, claws, teeth, and the occasional and incongruous human.
“Up the slope. Slowly. One step at a time. If they rush us before we make the doorway—”
Don’t give them ideas. They might know our speech. Idgen Marte’s thought cracked like a whip in his mind, and he cursed inwardly.
They were within half a dozen long paces of the cave mouth when two of the stirring horde finally drove themselves against them. With sharp, curved raptor’s beaks set in gaunt human cheeks, beneath huge yellow bird’s eyes and winged arms, these two seemed more coherent, more whole than many of the others. They both attacked Allystaire, from either side, screeching madly, awfully, and driving themselves into the air in short hops, their wings not quite taking them aloft, but serving to lengthen their jumps dangerously. Too late, Allystaire realized that their attack was not just in unison, but in concert, as they hurled themselves at his shield arm and his hammer arm. The one to his right, that had lifted a leg and bent one taloned foot, claws flexing as it reached for the haft of his hammer, suddenly screeched and fell tumbling backwards in a storm of loose gravel as Idgen Marte’s arrows feathered it twice.
The other, though, managed to plant both its claws on the rim of his shield and immediately threw its weight, wings beating the air, backwards. Allystaire felt his feet begin to slide on the loose rock beneath them, and even as Idgen Marte loosed an arrow—and missed—decided to let go of his shield. He slid his arm free of the straps and danced away, and the winged chimera tumbled to the ground, cawing in triumph, as its taloned feet flung the shield down the slope.
Grimly, Allystaire shifted both hands onto the haft of his hammer, stepped towards the shrieking beast, and swiped the head of the maul savagely across its face, smashing its beak, and scattering pieces of it amidst a fountain of blood.
He and Idgen Marte scrambled back to the mouth of the cave as the rest of the chimera began a charge upwards at them. Allystaire reared back and flung his hammer into the midst of them; it thunked into something but amidst the roiling mass of monster he couldn’t see what he hit or how hard. Idgen Marte’s final arrows joined it, and then she tossed her bow aside and both of them drew their swords, Allystaire’s a wide and ugly hand-and-a-half, Idgen Marte’s a singly edged and graceful curve.
* * *
Inside the caves, Torvul’s breath puffed in his barrel chest as he scrambled, banged his shins on rocks, dislodged streams of pebbles with his boots, and occasionally crunched down on something brittle he preferred not to think about.
Finally his breath caught as he pulled up behind the boy in a massive round chamber. He knew enough of caves and tunnels to know that they’d been moving steadily down into the earth, and rock rose above them in a dome so perfectly formed that Torvul could not help but think, briefly, of the grace and art of the cities of his own people, lost beneath the same earth as they stood under now.
This dome, however, was natural. Torvul’s eyes, at least, couldn’t find the mark of a tool on the stone, and if any eyes would’ve noticed, he was sure they’d be his. Gideon’s footsteps had stopped, and Torvul had to tear his attention away from the cavern around him to see why.
The dome arched over an underground pool, not really large enough to be a lake, but large enough that his lantern’s light did not reach its far shore. What light his lamp did throw, though, was cast upon a small island, only a few paces wide, smack in its middle. On it stood a circle of tall, smooth shapes. Too regular and straight to be the natural stone, he thought.
“It is on the island,” the boy was saying, his breath rapidly filling his thin chest.
“A god is on the island, boy?” Torvul lifted his lantern higher and peered into the darkness. The tall shapes…obelisks? Pillars? He couldn’t put a word on them. They ringed the island at regular intervals, and something—dark irregular shapes—sat atop each.
“What is left of it,” Gideon answered. He glanced up at the dome, then the island, and finally at the dwarf. “Follow me with the lantern. I may need your help.”
Torvul’s gaze was drawn upward again. He just thought he could make out, on the ceiling, more shapes of red daubed on the wall. Winged and feathered things, standing on straight, human legs. His attention was quickly torn away by the splash of water as Gideon began wading into the pool.
“Wait, you don’t know what might be in that water,” Torvul found himself calling out, before snorting and wading in after him. “Travelin’ with Allystaire is startin’ t’wear off on me,” he muttered, as he plunged first one boot, then the other, down into the water, lifting his lantern high above his head.
Several paces ahead, Gideon had adopted a graceful swimming stroke. Torvul was only halfway across the water when the boy, skinny and dripping wet, clambered onto the island to confront the last vestige of a god.
* * *
Outside, the scene was chaos.
Idgen Marte dashed and darted among the beasts, using their own shadows to move from one to another, her arms whipping her curved sword from one chimera’s leg to another’s back to under another’s arm. Her blows were not enough to fell any single monster alone, especially with thick fur, the occasional patch of leathery, near-armored flesh, and the bulging of unnatural muscle there to absorb her attacks. But the multiple cuts added up, and soon her blade was flinging droplets of chimera blood with every swing.
Allystaire, by contrast, had no grace in his swordsmanship. His blade was large and ugly and swung in wide, dangerous arcs. The sword’s length kept the worst of the monster’s claws from him and near constant movement kept any of them from trying the same trick that had divested him of his shield.
It was not, given the way his arms and shoulders protested, a long term strategy.
He whipped his sword to his left, felt it bite into the body of a furred and scaled horror that had been opening a wide-jawed, razor-toothed mouth and lunging for him. His edge had taken the monster under the arm and stuck. It twitched and bled, still trying to raise a bear’s claw for him, when Allystaire leaned back just far enough to raise his boot and kick it away, hard. His sword came free with the heavy crack of ribs breaking.
With half their numbers dead or writhing upon the ground, the pack of chimera broke away, and Allystaire and Idgen Marte backed up to the very entrance of the caverns. Inside, they could hear Bethe’s praying, her voice running from a shout to a mumble and back again, invoking Fortune, Braech, Urdaran, the Green, the Cold, and gods and powers whose names Allystaire did not know.
Heaving for breath, and only just avoiding falling to a knee, Allystaire locked eyes with Idgen Marte, who had streams of sweat running down her face.
“Your Gift,” she said, pausing for a deep breath. “Why is it not—”
“I do not know,” he said, turning his eyes to the roiling, wounded pack of monsters that cawed and roared at them. One, another that went on all fours—though one arm and one leg were those of a man, burned a dark brown by the sun, and the rest of his body was that of a wolf—suddenly broke back towards them, leaving Allystaire no time to finish his thought. He stepped forward, holding his sword straight out, the pommel braced against his armored hip, and the point steady in the air like a pike set to receive a charge.
The impact of the thing impaling itself and dying upon his sword staggered Allystaire, and he fell backwards, sword tumbling from his hands, the bleeding, spasming body of a dying chimera locked upon its end. The wind was knocked out of him by the force of the fall, and he had a dim sense of Idgen Marte standing above him, holding ground in a fight instead of leaping about, and with what seemed to him a painfully deliberate slowness, he pushed himself back to his feet, just in time to catch the birdlike chimera, a beast that seemed unfazed despite carrying two of Idgen Marte’s arrows in its flesh. The raptor-like creature was able to dart its head in and sneak its razored beak past the cheek guards of Allystaire’s helmet, and rip a strip of flesh from his face—below the eye, which Allystaire realized had been its target. He seized its neck with one hand and drew the other back, curled into a fist, and began raining blows upon its face.
* * *
When Torvul climbed out of the water surrounding the island he almost cried out in shock, as he saw Gideon kneeling in the midst of the pedestals, before some rough stone block that answered too well to the description of altar.
But what truly gave the dwarf pause was the boy’s thin arms reaching out to some object on it and changing, one sprouting feathers, the other fur.
And then the boy shook his head, and Torvul felt, more than heard, the word No emanate not from Gideon’s lips, but from his mind. It was the sound of a massive gate rolling closed in front of a keep. It was the sound of an executioner’s axe striking clean and thudding into the block.
Gideon’s arms were his own again.
Torvul dared not approach closer because he did not wish to spoil the boy’s concentration. And, in truth, after feeling that resounding wave of power thud through him he was, perhaps, a little afraid. With two fingers he loosened the mouth of a pouch and began easing a potion bottle out of it.
He spared a quick glance at the pillars. Long straight tree trunks, crudely smoothed. And at the top of each one, twice his height, rested a skull. He saw bear, raptor, wolf, fox, and others too shadowed to make out.
Then the dwarf suddenly felt a tug as if at his own mind, and then it was as if something huge was smothering him, something that promised him hot blood in his mouth and fresh meat for his fire. The thing that touched his mind sang a dark and bloody song of strength and power, of animal bloodlust, of safety, and the dwarf felt his body being shaped by this force, reshaped for the necessity and the glory of the hunt. His lantern fell to the ground from fingers suddenly grown large and clumsy.
But it was too much, and though on some level he knew that this spirit, this presence, was trying to help him, he felt very suddenly and clearly that his mind would disintegrate beneath its presence.
And then there was another No, shouted into the air like the crack of a whip. It echoed in the chamber. Torvul found his thoughts realigning along with his body, and he flexed his fingers and breathed deeply, reassuring himself, as he bent to pick up the lantern.
By then Gideon had lifted something off the altar, some kind of crude stone idol. He wrapped his hands tightly around it and closed his eyes. Torvul saw a ripple of flesh along the boy’s arm, as if the spirit was reaching out to change him as well, but Gideon shook his head and the movement along his arm stilled.
“I know,” the boy said, speaking directly to the idol. “But you must understand.” The boy shook his head, intensely. “We do not need this gift. We cannot use it.”
The boy held the idol at arm’s length, opening his eyes as he continued. “Your time is passed. We no longer need the caves. We are beyond this. We need not become animals to take prey. Your gifts are too much. They drive us mad. We no longer understand them, as you no longer understand us. It is time to let go.”
The dwarf felt some kind of answer. It was not articulated, and he could not have explained it, except that it felt like a kind of mourning, a shade of regret. Perhaps in some way an apology. There was a sense of loss. Torvul had the impression of the end of a failed hunt, of partners in the chase parting for good.
Then there was a soft crack and the idol in the boy’s hands shattered, turned to dust, and released a shockwave of power that the alchemist could feel getting ready to expand and fill the cavern.
Except Gideon raised a hand, and just as quickly as the power had fled, he gathered it into himself. It was like watching a tremendous wave being pulled into a small drain, and not of its own movement. It did not flow. It was drawn.
He turned then, to Torvul, his eyes wide and calm as always. “It is done. We should go now.”
“What, what just happened? What did you do?”
“I expect that the others will ask the same questions. If it is all the same to you I’d prefer to explain once.”
Torvul frowned and set his mouth into a grim line. “Why don’t you explain t’me on the way? I might be able t’help the rest understand.” He tried to let his hand rest casually on his belt, his fingers a quick twitch away from the potion he’d eased out of its pouch earlier. With his other hand, he gathered up his lantern, none the worse for wear from spilling to the ground. Of course it isn’t, came his smug craftsman’s thought. I made it. He lifted it high, and turned back to the boy. “You lead the way, talk as we go. My old legs are tired.”
The boy nodded, bent and picked up his staff, and began walking towards the edge of the island, swinging it like a walking stick.
When Gideon turned his back, Torvul slipped the single bottle free from its pouch and palmed it. Lady, grant that I don’t have to use this, he thought, with a genuine ache behind the words. Then, with a deep breath, he thought, Grant me the wisdom to know what I just saw and what it means for You.
Gideon had stopped, halfway across the pool. “Are you coming? I can see in the dark but you might want to follow me.”
“Right. Coming.” Torvul set off with one last look at the impossibly perfect dome of rock, and the just as impossible hand-daubed paintings that covered it like some temple’s ceiling. Which, he had only just now realized, it had once been.