Shadow (41 page)

‘Enough!' Siel whispered fiercely, grabbing Far Gaze's arm. ‘Help us! This excursion was not my idea either. I am willing to die in battle but not to those things.'

‘Oh fine! Everyone, listen. Lie down, stay low. Gorb, come closer.'

‘What do you cast?' said the Mayor.

‘A spell that would shield us from the sight of men. But some animals can see through it, and it may not work on these creatures. There is no time for my other options. I gamble my life for yours, Mayor. I don't have to do this. Remember it if we live! You are steeply in my debt. You personally, and your city. Do you agree?'

Tauk's eyes blazed with anger. ‘I do.'

‘Good. I have made your word to me binding and if you lied you are cursed. All of you be utterly still, make no sound.'

They lay flat on their bellies among the long stiff grass and dead leaves. The creaking sounds seemed to come through the trees around them, at times from where the path curved behind. Far Gaze began an urgent chant, till his low murmur sounded like wind blowing through leaves. Cold air passed over them as though blown from the magician's lips. ‘Hold your nerve,' the Mayor whispered. Siel did not turn her head to see what had provoked his comment, but she heard the creatures coming. The air filled with their stink. She had an almost overpowering urge to watch them, to glean some scrap of knowledge of the creatures while they didn't know they were being observed. Dust from the ground went in her nose and made her want to cough.
Creak, creak, creak
 …

Here came one stalking through their midst, by luck not bringing its feet's pointed blades down on any of them. It paused by the corpse of the slain Tormentor. The newcomer was taller than the other had been, its arms so long its finger-blades reached the ground. Its head moved in a fast low swing as it peered at the corpse; its mane of needles faintly rattled. It went still.

Another came. Like black knives the long spikes of its feet sank into the ground close to Siel's face. She tensed, expecting to feel the stab of blades sinking into her. Hold your nerve, hold your nerve, she thought. Did the magician's spell work? They were not invisible to each other, and she could not be certain the Tormentors didn't see them. One of the men would panic and run, she was sure. He would dispel the whole illusion …

The two creatures stood close together and went still.
Perfectly still,
Lalie's voice echoed, with an image of the hunters' hall and all its death. She shut her eyes as she all too clearly envisioned the same death spread over this ground they lay upon, her own remains indiscernible among the glistening red.

The minutes stretched out as though they were in the pull of the creatures' bent time. One of the two suddenly shifted, its limbs swinging in smooth arcs, its many hooks and spikes in a flurry of motion as though by these means it spoke an urgent message to the other. It stalked away down the path. The other followed.

Siel felt triumphant sweet relief for just a second, till yet another came from the path behind them. Her skin crawled as she heard it come close, closer, the heavy press of its feet indicating it was the largest of them yet. Then the man next to her hissed through his teeth in pain. She turned her head ever so slightly. One of its long dark legs had planted right beside her, the spikes all down its length curling. Two of its foot's five long blades had gone through the wrist of the man next to her.

Its other toes tentatively explored the ground around it with gentle touches. Then finally, finally the creature's foot lifted and it moved on. She could have kissed the man beside her.

The Tormentor went to where the others had lingered and stood still as stone.

There was noise of more of the creatures coming. Siel sighed deeply. Would the next one walk over her? Would Far Gaze's spell break if their spiked feet trampled him?

Movement caught her eye then: a small hand waving. She heard in clear focus a tapping sound that had been going on for a little while now as though to get her attention. The hand came, it seemed, from the ground. As though …

Tii's face popped up. He looked back behind to where the lingering Tormentor now seemed engaged in a silent dance of its sweeping arms and head. Tii couldn't see them through Far Gaze's spell, but he knew they were here. ‘Tii!' she whisper-called.

‘Hush,' said the man who'd endured the Tormentor's foot. His voice was quiet as a breath but she heard furious anger in it for her speaking after what he'd endured in silence.

Tii had heard her. ‘Hole! Back, not far! Come down?' he called.

‘Take us?' she whispered as loud as she dared.

‘Yes! Big one not fit.'

The Tormentor, if it had heard the exchange, did not react – its slow dance went on. Siel took a deep breath, counted to three, then yelled, ‘All of you, up and
run, now!
'

She got up and dashed toward Tii without pausing to see if the others followed. Tii darted off like a rabbit, out of a groundman hole too small for the rest of them to fit through. He dived into a slanted cut in the ground she'd not have seen without him going through it first. She dived in after him, her feet hitting its floor painfully hard.

She rolled away to make room for the others. Gorb's head poked in but his shoulders would not fit. ‘Tii! What about the giant?' said Siel.

Tii eyed Gorb nervously. ‘Cave, that way,' he said, pointing. ‘Go in. Big enough. Meet there soon.'

‘I'm going to go find Bald,' said Gorb, ‘I left him down the path. They might've got him.'

‘Fine, but go! You're blocking the hole!'

Gorb stood aside for the Mayor's men, who slid down the dim tunnel and gazed about as though hardly daring to believe what they saw. The small space filled with their hoarse panting. Tii looked at them pensively as though he'd not expected this many would be coming underground with him. Siel was too relieved to care. She laughed, embraced the man next to her, embraced Tii. ‘Why are you here?' she said, crying tears of relief.

‘Follow,' he said. ‘Follow you from place with water. Never far. Tunnels all beneath. Secret tunnels, big people never find. Found friends, below. They come too. Not far.'

‘You followed me all this way? Since the tower?'

‘Followed, by stone paths. Deep path.' He tapped the cavern wall. ‘Felt you. Felt bad things, near you. But no way up. Stone told us where you came. Hard work to follow. You go fast. Where Shadow?'

Eric, he means where's Eric. ‘I don't know, Tii. He's not with us. Can you help us? Can you lead us all back to Tanton, underground? It may be the only safe way for us to get there.'

‘I take you,' Tii said, still eyeing off the Mayor's entourage with grave concern. ‘These men come?'

‘Yes. I know that's uncomfortable for you. But Shadow would want it.'

‘For Shadow. I take men to city. Only for Shadow.'

5

Their brief walk through the caverns was the closest Siel had come to happiness in a while now: a rush of relief and joy to be alive. Her head spun with what she'd seen in Far Gaze's spell. Generations had known only inevitable defeat or long and bitter stalemate. She felt she were dreaming. What would her parents think, that this day had come in their daughter's lifetime? Would they feel avenged by her part in making history, or just saddened by all she'd gone through?

‘I did it for you,' she whispered, tears coming to her eyes as she imagined them with her now, hearing her. ‘I did it all for you.'

If Tii's groundman friends were nearby, they were too nervous to show themselves. Soon he took them to a part of the tunnel he had to widen out for them to pass through. On the other side, Gorb the half-giant waited in a hillside cave. Next to him Bald rocked back and forth on his heels, face covered with his hands. Gorb spoke consoling words. One of the guns was braced on his knee. A small dead Tormentor lay in broken pieces at the cave entrance.

The Mayor touched Gorb's gun barrel very carefully. ‘What is this device?' he said.

‘Bald made it,' said Gorb. A hint of anger had come into his slow speech. ‘I got six more of em in the pack. It's what I wanted to show you earlier. But you rode off, left me behind. It cost one of your men his life. That matter much?'

‘Watch your words, giant,' said Tauk.

‘Watch yours, human. Your bones break easy; your skin is soft; that sword won't kill me.'

‘This is an ally of ours,' said Siel, mortified.

Gorb scoffed. ‘Not of mine. His city never did much for my kind. Made it a crime to hunt us. But that didn't stop em. One bribe and the Hunter's free. I'm not loyal to
him.
I could break all these guns. Or I could take Bald and run to some other city. Think a different city would want a look at these guns? They might make a thousand more. Then they'll make war on
him,
' he jerked his thumb at Tauk, ‘whether they call him friend today or not. Like he'll do to them.'

‘I do not make war on friends,' said Tauk in a gentler tone. ‘I can't speak for past rulers of my city. You remain free to go where you will.'

‘And not because of some human boss's say-so,' said Gorb.

‘Of course. You're invited to come with us to the safety of my city's walls, if you will mind your words. I cannot be spoken to this way before my people.'

‘I'll go with those two if they want me.' Gorb nodded to Siel and Far Gaze. ‘I'll ask them that in private.'

‘I've not decided my course,' grunted the folk magician. Still naked, he sat with legs crossed on the stone floor. ‘It is now a very changed world. Leave me alone, all of you. Mayor, some advice. Get back to your city, prepare it for battle, if battle is not already upon it. I'll visit to claim my debt when I am ready. And I
will
claim it. Lives are expensive. The lives of Mayors? More so.'

Tauk's jaw clenched; he didn't reply. He and his men filed out through the cave, back into the tunnels.

Siel picked up from the ground one of the broken pieces of Tormentor Gorb had blasted apart. She had to will herself to touch it, but it was just like holding cool stone. The spikes were slightly flexible. ‘The corpses get weaker, but very slowly,' said Far Gaze, watching her with his eyes half closed. ‘They stay hard but become easier to cut and break. It is not like any other flesh I know.'

‘What are they?' she said, and suddenly tears were in her eyes. Angrily she wiped them away. ‘I can't understand them. Not anything about them.'

‘The wolf scented things which I now understand. The airs that changed them are not normal, not even in Levaal South. They are like poisonous silt on a river bottom. Something kicked them up, probably the stoneflesh giant that crossed. They settled quickly and sank again. Your friend Tii and his people will need to stay away from tunnels near the Conflict Point, once this poison settles again.'

‘Conflict Point,' she repeated, intrigued by the phrase. ‘What is this poison? A flung weapon?'

‘In effect. But so is a violent storm. Maybe we just got in the way. Maybe it was hurled at us on purpose.'

‘Must you abuse the Mayor?' she said.

Far Gaze laughed. ‘I have the same regard for him as the giant does. He may be fine as lords of men go, but I have known many polite thieves, charismatic traitors, articulate fools. Barbarians who trouble to scrape the blood from their hands don't much impress me either.'

‘He is none of those things!'

He looked at her with renewed interest. ‘I see.'

‘You see what?'

He chuckled. ‘What is your course, Siel, now that the old war is not quite lost?'

She sat and buried her face in her hands. ‘I'm tired. I want it to be over, I want to live a different life.'

‘Poor child. You've done more than most. But you've seen too much now to ever have peace. The nightmares will always come. Part of you will always trudge through battlefields and the reek of death. There are ways to dull the sting. What of the next few days? Those first.'

‘I don't know.'

‘Giant?'

‘I won't fit in the tunnels,' said Gorb, whose voice had lost its edge of anger and was ponderous again. ‘I'm better alone, or hidden somewhere. I'll just wander, or go back to the tower. There's a mage there. I've seen him in the valleys. He spelled the village, made it vanish. He might want strong hands. What about you, wolf?'

‘The night has changed everything,' said Far Gaze. ‘I'll return to the place we left. If there is a mage there I wish to speak with him. A master of disguise he must be, to have hidden himself from me. I'll get there fastest alone.'

‘So you won't go with me, if I choose to go to the same place?' said Siel.

‘I don't know, I have not been asked,' he said drily. ‘Why do you think I spoke to Tauk that way? We are in the age of mercenaries now that the Mayors' alliance has collapsed. My services are for hire. You may make offers.'

She had to get away from the magician. She felt on the brink of tears again and didn't want him to see her; an old instinct not to look weak before men she fought with. She stumbled outside, heard Gorb call a warning about going out there but ignored it, tripping as she went on the stretched limb of the Tormentor's corpse by the cave entrance.

The glade was quiet and still, with many limp vines hanging from tall woods like braids of hair. There was no sound or sign of Tormentors roaming nearby. The first tentative bird calls sounded the way birds sing after a storm has passed.

She sat on a tumbled piece of stone fallen from the hillside long ago, now covered in moss. Mushrooms grew beneath it. She plucked them – easy food was not to be turned down – and checked their underside for signs of poison, pitching one with odd pink markings into the distance then eating the others.

To be alone, to be not mindful suddenly of danger, seemed a protest, an appeal to the gods or the Dragon or against life itself: let the perils take her. But there was no danger here just now, only a quiet rustle of leaves, branches and vines as a breeze swept through the glade. Her head spun from exhaustion. She could sleep here, and in fact why not lie awhile in the soft grass? So she did, just resting her eyes from the incessant light, just resting …