3 When Darkness Falls.8 (44 page)

"Be careful," he said aloud. "The floor is wet."

And why was it wet? It was true that the Angarussa had undoubtedly been running very high in its bed this season — both above and underground — but if Kellen was certain of one thing, it was that the Elves would have made certain that the caverns would not flood. And if for some strange reason they did not choose to do that, Umerchiel would have mentioned the possibility of flooding.

But if there was a trap, they were supposed to be walking into it. Gritting his teeth, Kellen gave the signal to advance.

The floor in the next cavern — its walls, suitably, as this was the last one before they reached the Angarussa, were carved with a frieze of selkies at play amid the currents of a river — was also slick with moisture, but no wetter than the floor of the one before.

At the end of the cavern, they came to a wall.

It was nothing the Elves had made. It was well-built, of blocks of shaped stone obviously cut from someplace here in the caverns, but compared to the workmanship of the Elves, it was as crude as a child's mud-pies. It blocked the opening to the next cavern, the one that led to the Angarussa. It was not quite finished, at least if it had been meant to seal the opening completely; there was still an opening at the top, where a few courses of stone had yet to be laid.

Umerchiel had described the chamber beyond to him, and it was clearly indicated on the map. A long low transverse gallery, the Angarussa ran through it at the bottom of a deep gorge: This chamber was actually entirely artificial, created to expose the river where it traveled beneath the earth. A stone bridge crossed the river at the top of the gorge, level with the floor of the gallery, and led to the passageway to the surface, where Churashil was waiting with his guard-party.

Kellen regarded the wall with his battle-sight. Not the trigger to a trap, but part of one. He pulled off his heavy leather glove and the armored gauntlet beneath it and touched the wall with his bare hand.

The stone was damp, beaded with water.

Holding his breath, he tapped it experimentally — and very gently — with his sword. The stone gave back a dull thudding sound. The wall was very thick, or else the chamber beyond had been filled in completely.

"I'm going to see if I can see over the top," Kellen said.

"
Komentai,
let me go," Ambanire said urgently.

"No. This is a trap. I need to see more."

Replacing his glove and gauntlet, and sheathing his sword, Kellen began to climb.

He reached the top, and sent the ball of Coldfire hovering over his head out into the chamber.

For an instant he could not believe what he saw.

Water. Black and still and smooth as glass, it filled the chamber beyond to the level of the retaining wall, a vast underground lake extending into the passage to the surface.

Suddenly there was a booming crash, and Kellen saw the level of the water in the lake begin to drop sharply.

"Ambanire, sound the alarm," he said, dropping back to the ground. Whatever had been meant to kill them, he'd just found it. He drew his sword.

* * * * *

UMERCHERIEL'S forces had reached the
xaique
chamber a little after Kellen's party had gone on ahead. Isinwen showed him the mutilated statues, and they settled in to wait.

It was hard to calculate time so tar beneath the earth, but Isinwen thought that no more than three quarters of an hour had passed when he felt a long rumbling shake the rock beneath his feet.

A roaring sound built, as if suddenly they stood beneath an enormous waterfall, and a strong wind began to blow from the direction they had come.

He heard the sound of running — no,
splashing
— feet.

The orderly ranks of waiting Knights patted to allow the passage of the guards Kellen and Umerchiel had left on the side-galleries of the first cavern. They were as wet as if they'd fallen into the Angarussa itself.

"Isinwen! The caves fill with water!"

The ground shook again, and over the roar of water, Isinwen heard the distant notes of Ambanire's warhorn.

The water was to his ankles now, rising with a relentless surging motion. It came from the direction of the cavern's mouth.

"Follow me," Isinwen said. "Quickly!"

* * * * *

A strong steady wind began to blow toward Kellen, and he felt the rock beneath his feet shudder, as if the subterranean earth were some nightmare beast attempting to cast off unwelcome vermin. He risked one more climb up the wall. It was just as he'd feared. The water was already level with the surface of the bridge, and whirlpools eddied in its surface as the artificial lake was sucked elsewhere into the caverns. Suddenly the water that had been seeping toward them slowly but steadily began to pour into the chamber with the steady force of the Angarussa itself. When Kellen dropped to the floor again he was standing ankle-deep in a river that poured inexorably through the caverns with the steady force of a rising spring.

Dams. It was why the Angarussa had been so easy to cross. It had been frozen nearly solid because there hadn't been much water in its bed. Kellen knew from bitter experience that the Shadowed Elves were master engineers; they must have constructed a series of dams and spillways down here somewhere and diverted the Angarussa to fill them. Now they were pumping that water back up into the upper caverns, trapping Isinwen and the rest of his force.

As Kellen stared out at the rock it was as if, for a moment, it turned to smoke. He could see the dam-mechanism; the series of side and lower galleries painstakingly bricked up and outfitted with a complex mechanism of pumps and conduits over the last three moonturns.

There was no way he could reach them to disable it.

And there was worse. The vibrations he had felt were the sound of several of the side-galleries collapsing. The water roaring into the Caverns of Halacira would have even less space to fill than otherwise, and so it would fill it faster.

But though the work of the Shadowed Elves was brilliantly-conceived and sweeping in scope, it had been hastily-executed and would not hold for long. Already Kellen's battle-sight showed him that the damming and pumping mechanisms were buckling under the strain of operation and the new walls designed to seal up caverns as artificial dams were crumbling under the weight of the water pressing on them. Soon all the Shadowed Elves' careful work would give way and nearly everything would return to normal within the Caverns of Halacira.

But before that happened, Kellen and the people he had led down here would all be dead. If he could not get his army out before the water trapped them here, two thirds of the force Redhelwar had sent with him would drown beneath the earth.

And there was only one way out.

Across the bridge.

"We've got to get this wall down," he told his men. "This is the way we're going out."

He began to hack at the wall with his sword.

* * * * *

THE stone was soft and water-soaked; the wall was not something that was meant to hold for long. Ambanire shoved him rudely aside and began chipping at the mortar between two stones with his dagger; Kellen quickly switched to the smaller weapon and applied himself to the softer bands between the stone as well. The water was rising around their legs.

Cilarnen or Jermayan could summon a lightning bolt to blast the stone to ash. As far as Kellen knew, he had no such abilities — even if he could call up a thunderstorm out of season, he couldn't bring the lightning
here
— and if he could, it would be far more likely to strike Elven armor than inert stone. He hammered harder at the wall, fury and frustration lending him a strength neatly that of his companions. He had not led them this far just to let them die.

"Shield — and push."

It was not his own thought. It seemed to come from outside him. It was almost Shalkan's voice, and yet not.

But I don't Shield
—
I can't!

Shield was a spell no Knight-Mage cast, or needed.

But he wasn't going to let his people die simply because he wasn't willing to try.

"Stand back," he told the others. The water was to their hips.

When Idalia had thought he was going to be a regular Wildmage, she'd told him about casting Shield-spells. A Wildmage Shielded naturally when Healing, though that wasn't quite the same thing. And of course, in his lessons in the High Magick, he'd had the principles of Mage-Shield dinned into him by Anigrel morning, noon, and night for almost a decade.

He did his best to forget all of it.

He placed his hands flat against the wall.

I need this,
he said to the Wild Magic.
I need this for my people. They trust me to keep them alive. I will pay any price — anything!
He felt the Presence descend. "
When the time comes, you must…let go.
"

Once he would have thought of that as a light Price. Now he thought it might be the highest Price of all.
Yes
, he thought.

The sense of listening Presence departed.

His hands began to glow — brighter than the Coldfire above his head, until he had to close his eyes. Not the green glow of Healing — that he had seen before. Nor was it the blue light he had unconsciously expected — the first voice in his mind had sounded a lot like Shalkan. Instead, it was almost a blend of the two, a deep blue green, a color he had never seen in Nature. Even with his eyes closed, he could still see what the light was doing. It spread from his hands over the wall, and where it touched, the red glow of Taint vanished like smoke, until the entire wall radiated with the Shield he should never have been able to cast.

He pushed.

The stone resisted, but now it was soft and rotten, almost like chalk. His hands went through, pushing a large chunk of the center of the wall with them, and he pulled back just in time to keep from getting hit by the top of the wall as it fell free.

Water began to rush through the gap.

"Come on," he said to the others, his voice ragged with the exhaustion that came with summoning the Wild Magic. "Tear it down. Quickly."

* * * * *

A mile was a variable distance.

It was one thing if you were walking through the woods on a warm spring day. Another if you were riding — or walking — through a winter blizzard.

Yet another trying to move through waist-deep water in a cave beneath the earth.

Moving at the head of the Knights, Isinwen splashed forward as quickly as he could, though the waist-deep water slowed his steps and those of his men as if they moved through thick mud.

His heavy fur cloak was a sodden weight; he unclasped it and let the water pull it away. Though his heavy wool surcoat was also soaked with as much water as it could hold, and clung heavily to him, he did not consider removing it: That would require unbuckling his swordbelt, and he dared not take the time. Every item of clothing he wore was designed to withstand the cold of winter and the subterranean chill of a winter cave; it provided no protection at all against the icy water that he waded through, and the fur, thick weaves, and heavy leather soaked up and retained water, adding to the weight he carried.

The weight that would hold him down, hold every one of them down, and drown them when the waters reached above their heads. He could — they all could — strip off their armor and swim for it, but they would be miles from their supply wagons when they reached the surface.

And the exit they were heading for was narrow and steep, a small staircase.

It would take so many a long time to ascend by such a narrow passage.

* * * * *

THE cave-opening was clear, and the water was pouring through it, back into the bed of the Angarussa. The level of the water here in the selkie-cavern had dropped to their knees, though the force of the current, as it foamed through the narrow opening, had increased. Kellen was glad to see that the river was running swiftly through its channel — which meant that at least some of the water in the caves should be draining away — but the water level was beginning to rise again as well — swiftly — it was possible that this gallery might refill, even with the constant drainage, cutting off their only way out. If these caves were flooded, then any chambers below this level were also flooded. Since the cave floors were both level and even, the water was almost certainly the same depth everywhere in every one of the surviving chambers. They were running out of time.

Had he made the wrong decision, to go deeper into the caves with only a skeleton force? He knew he hadn't. If he had proceeded with his entire command, they would have been trapped here when the Shadowed Elves opened the spillways, with no time to open a line of retreat.

"Ambanire, it would please me greatly should you desire to take the Knights and cross the bridge to join up with Churashil's force immediately. Direct him to send messengers back to the main force: We will need our horses brought to this entrance."

The bridge itself was not trapped. Perhaps the Shadowed Elves themselves needed it. Perhaps trapping it was something they hadn't gotten around to. Or perhaps they'd realized that if they left it alone, it would be a lure he simply couldn't refuse.