Seven Into the Bleak (3 page)

I awoke later. I don't know when. Filki was tangled in the blankets of his bedroll, moaning. The smell of roasted flesh filled the cavern and my mind screamed at me to move, as I was sure that the scent would bring a hundred devils of the Bleak down upon us. But my arms could only twitch and swim in the air for long minutes until, with an effort, I was able to get to my hands and knees and crawl, like a drunk dog, over to where Karn had been strangling Galdur.

Karn was little more than a greasy smudge on the cave floor. I only knew it was my brother-in-arms by the axe haft, charred and with melted, twisted rings of bronze twined around it. Galdur had been untouched by his own spell, but lay with Karn's finger and thumb rings embedded deep in his throat. His neck had not been broken, but crushed by the huge man, perhaps in a last spasm before the magefire had hit him. Galdur's eyes bulged from his head, white and glassy, and his teeth were barred as though he were hissing.

I groaned and crawled away from the carnage, sick of soul and body, not sure I cared what might be drawn to the hideous smell. I collapsed on a bedroll, cursing. The Bleak had tortured us for an eon and yet the worst betrayal of all had been from within. Was the Bleak a living thing, I wondered, a god or a demon that needed to be fed? Would it require all of our souls and all of our blood? If so, it was damned close to the end. I groaned again and buried my face in the rough wool.

A few minutes later, out of curses, I pushed myself to my knees, then to my feet. I  staggered to where Filki lay, motionless now. My heart jumped, afraid that he had been more injured than I had thought, but then I saw his chest rise and fall. I knelt and shook him. The elf's shoulders were thin, like the bones of a bird's wing.

"Filki. We have to go. Galdur's woken the sprits-know-what with that thrice-damned spell.
Filki
."

The Fey's eyes opened and tears spilled down the sides and along his cheeks. He whispered, "I'm dreaming, Tamik. It's so beautiful. We're back home, with Meki's deerhounds at our feet, and the hearth fire blazing--"

I slapped him. He cried out and raised his arms to cover his head as I slapped him again and again. I hit him until I was out of breath and gasping.

"Never say that," I said, my chest heaving. "Dream if you must, but never tell me about it. If I'm to die in this gods-damned pit, I'll do it with a curse on my lips, not a lament. I'll pull your tongue out if you say those things again."

He was crying, but I turned my back on him and gathered my things. I kept my eyes from the bloody mess in the corner and in a minute had everything I needed. Filki, sniffling, looked at me and what I'd packed.

"What about the gold, Tamik? And the gems?"

"We can't eat them. We can't kill with them. So we leave them."

I expected a fight--Filki liked his baubles--but instead he nodded, as if he'd expected me to say the words long ago. We left a hoard in that cave without a backward glance. I wondered what some other group of fools might think a century hence, when they stumbled into a cavern filled with loot and two bodies still stinking of magic, anger, and betrayal.

. . .

With but two of us, we rarely spoke and often days would pass before we uttered a word. At those times our speech was a crow's croaking and we'd have to take a precious mouthful of water or lick the moisture from the cave walls to even form a sentence. Our sight grew more and more accustomed to the darkness until we stopped using Filki's feylight when we made camp. Instead, we squatted in the ever-present night, aware of each other by smell, sound, and touch like the other horrors of the Bleak.

The only improvement was that the halls and corridors of the World Under the World had leveled off. We no longer plunged into steep cavern depths and, I'd feared, to our doom. Rather, the paths and trails in the dark wound on and on without end, flat and featureless corridors going on forever. This became its own kind of hell. What had seemed a cause for celebration turned into dreadful monotony and, like all who are truly lost, we wondered every minute of every day if we were simply walking in circles. I began leaving small markers of pebbles and rocks to tell me if we'd indeed been crossing our trail. But then I began fearing that the monsters and fiends of the Bleak had been removing them after we'd gone, obliterating our trail. Or perhaps Filki had been scuffing them apart for some mad reason only the elf knew. Or--perhaps this was the answer I couldn't bear to consider--we'd been moving forward the entire time and the Bleak was truly endless.

I don't know if it was the hopeless repetition of our trek or simply the accumulated hardship we suffered, but a month after Karn and Galdur killed one another, Filki went mad.

We were sitting in the dark, having stopped to rest without needing to communicate. I went to a corner of the cave to mash blue cave mold with my hands into a paste so I could eat it; I had lost almost all of my teeth by now and had to swallow my food whole. But in the infinite boredom that was our journey, the little chores of survival had taken on over-sized meaning and I was concentrating very hard on my task to the exclusion of all else.

I was nearly done, when some instinct made me freeze. Changes in air pressure and a certain smell told me Filki was near me, very near. I had not heard him move.

The muddy glow of his feylight grew from the soft, almost indiscernible glow of a firefly to a strong, pulsing illumination which sent pain shooting through my eyes and head.

"Filki," I croaked, backing away. "What in the gods' name are you doing?"

The elf said nothing, but I could see his eyes by the light of his magical fire. Where before they'd been a violet hue, now they were dull black, like pebbles. "Tamik," he finally said. "I know the secret."

"What secret?"

"Why we've been unable to leave this cursed place," he said. His voice was reasonable, conversational, and it sent a chill down my spine. "It's taken me a year to understand."

I looked at him, feeling odd. "Understand what?"

"Sacrifice," he said simply.

"Filki, what are you talking about?"

"We are invaders to the Bleak, Tamik. Intruders. We are an infection in her innards. We need to be removed. Perhaps not all. One might escape unnoticed by the Mother of Caverns, but our little host of seven had no chance. We were a fire lancing through her bowels, causing her pain. We hurt her, Tamik. And she fought back the only way she knew how."

"How does that help us?" I asked, suspicious.

"Haven't you noticed how long its been since we’ve been attacked? Not a rock fiend nor a mind gaunt nor a stone harrow for weeks."

"Aye. All right," I said, relieved that Filki seemed to be at least making a kind of sense, if a strange one. "What is that, do you think?"

"It's because we have been reduced to merely an irritation."

"So, we're safe?"

"No," he said, his eyes widening. The pebbles of his eyes became round as eggs. "It's so simple, Tamik. If seven caused her agony, and four gave her pain, and two are a nuisance..."

"...then one would be best," I finished for him and drew my daggers.

His hands wove a complicated pattern as I lunged forward. There was a noiseless flash of light, brighter than the sun, brighter than the afterlife, and I screamed in agony. Filki's broken mind had planned the attack, that much was clear. A dull, distant part of my brain thought of Filki's dead eyes and I realized he had blinded himself in preparation for this moment.

I stumbled as the pain of the light lanced through my head. I felt Filki dodge to one side and heard the whisper of his knife clear its sheath. My eyes were streaming--tears? blood?--but I forced myself to open them. The feylight was already not as bright; perhaps the elf had only enough magic left for one attack. I hoped so, for I took a desperate gamble and rolled forward towards what I thought was a shadow.

I felt a breeze as Filki's attack missed by a blade’s width. I ducked low and brought both daggers up and under his guard. It was a guess, but my time in the Bleak had made my sight less useful than my instinct. My knives buried themselves in his gut. The little elf gasped and shook as they took his life. His eyes lost the stone-black blindness and became violet once more. I lowered him to the ground gently.

"I'm dreaming, Tamik," he whispered, and was gone. His feylight faded to the brightness of an ember and then went out altogether.

I crouched in the darkness, cradling his body, and wept.  

. . .

I crawled away from that last scene of horrors, carrying only my knives and some food in a rotting sack. My eyes had been nearly burnt out of my head by Filki's magic and I knew, were I to find the light of day, I would never see right again. But perhaps it was a blessing, for in the days that followed, my other sense became even more acute. Once the pain subsided, I forgot I'd even been born with the ability to see.

Still, I forged ahead. To where, I didn't know. I had been moving forward and onward for so long that it seemed my only purpose in life. My year--or years?--in the Bleak had hardened me, though. Alone, I now hunted creatures that had terrified me when I'd been one of seven. I stalked the caves and underground rivers like one born to them. Fiends and demons now listened in dread for my approach and scuttled into the cracks and creases of rock whenever I came near.

One endless night, out of boredom or curiosity I chose a narrow path that wound back upon itself instead of the larger, more obvious corridors. It curled and turned for what seemed like days. I followed it with no emotion, no expectation; hope had been killed in me.

But on the fourth day, or so I reckoned, I smelled something so utterly different that it made my stomach churn and my head swim with its perfume. I followed the scent carefully, fearful of getting sick. The smell grew in magnitude and I had to breath in shallow breaths. For hours I followed the smell, only realizing after some time that I was following a slight rise.

My heart began to pound as I felt something on my skin that I hadn't know for a year or more: a breeze. Pus and water spilled out of my eyes and I croaked a laugh as I raced along, looking for the source of the smell, which I recognized now as the faintest whiff of grass.

Upwards and onwards I wound, shedding the Bleak, feeling my soul expand. I kept my knives ready; I refused to come this far only to have my freedom ripped away from me. But as I sensed I was near the surface, I broke into a lurching run, looking for the exit from my hell.

Finally, I found myself in a narrow, crooked gash in the rock. A spring spilled water down into the cave and I splashed through it, trying to get to the entrance. The air was heady with the smell of growing things and I could tell the different scents of trees and dung and dogs and cattle and smoke in one breath.

I slowed halfway through the cave. My damaged eyes wept and stung at the brilliant glow of daylight pushing into the darkness. I slowed, then stopped, my caution overtaking my glee. Crawling on my belly, I moved to the entrance like a worm. I peered out, blinking like a bat.

The lip of the cavern was on a high scarp overlooking a green valley. Trees and hedges marked the flow of streams and creeks. In the distance, I could make out the movement of tiny creatures; cows or sheep, perhaps, grazing in the fields. A thread of smoke told of a home fire burning in a cottage tucked away in the fold of a hillock. The sky was bright blue and expanded endlessly above me. Small clouds dotted the sky like tufts of lamb's wool.

A great sickness, like a heavy winter cloak, came down across my shoulders. The sky spun in place above me and I grabbed onto the ground, trying to hold myself down. The emerald green valley seemed diseased and unnatural to my sight. Smoke meant other men and the idea of encountering a thinking, talking being caused a fear in me so acute that I whimpered and mewled like a kitten.

I backed slowly away from the edge of cliff using only the palms of hands and my toes. I allowed myself to rise to a crouch only when I was safely in the mid-gloom of the center of the cave. As the darkness reclaimed me, the fear began to lift but the misery was only beginning. Sobbing and groaning, I hugged my arms around my middle as I lurched back into the embrace of the Mother of Caverns and descended back into the depths where I belonged.

Into the Bleak.

My home.

Author’s Notes

Expeditions to the deep underground in search of wealth, power, or knowledge are pretty standard fare in the fantasy adventure genre. Challenges and threats to the heroes come in the form of dark races, pitfalls, and mythic creatures.

But rarely is the idea of
life
underground tackled, the beginnings and endings that bookend that heroic middle. It’s not surprising, really; an adventurer’s daily routine isn’t something to scream and shout about. But it’s a reality within the fantasy that’s always fascinated me. What does it mean to fight for your life in the deepest darkness, constantly damp and miserable and cold, no matter what the promised rewards? What happens when you’ve got your gold, but you can’t find the way out? And what occurs inside your own spirit as you watch your friends die and fail around you? These are the questions I wanted answers to when I started writing the story.

As a friend pointed out, Tamik Two-Knives comes to resemble J.R.R. Tolkien’s character Sméagol-turned-Gollum. The similarity is unintentional, but maybe unavoidable; we are both trying to describe the effect that the external world has on our characters. In Gollum’s case, however, Tolkien uses Gollum’s physical dissolution as a metaphor for the spiritual decay the corrupting influence of the One Ring has on a weak spirit. Tamik’s situation is much simpler and less poetic: given enough time, the Bleak will devour even a man of nearly indomitable inner strength. Weaker spirits collapse sooner in various ways, but even a hero of Tamik’s spirit is worn down nearly to the vanishing point, until he is simply swallowed by the whole.

Perhaps one day Tamik will crawl from the Bleak under his own power; he knows the way out. But, as he hints at various times, the man that once entered the Bleak is nothing like the creature that would come out of it. Once you pass beyond the Pale, there may be no coming back.

But that’s another story for another time.