SPARX Incarnation: Mark of the Green Dragon (SPARX Series I Book 1) (19 page)

Chapter XXVI

Interlude - Dark daemons

D
oes it matter if you break a vow that you were forced into? I didn’t really know the answer to that, at the time. Had I not surrendered to Kabor’s demands and had the Stout followed through with his threat, I might have been left to flounder in the dark, cursed to die in those tunnels. I wasn’t sure if he was capable of doing that to me, but I wasn’t about to test the waters one way or the other either. So I forced myself to follow the footsteps of my new master faithfully. Naught but a faint flickering glow led the way. And with each desperate step, my mind raced, and my rage multiplied. There are at least a hundred ways to take someone down.

With that, the steps forward became easier, but an uneasy calm came over me as I plotted. In an odd way, I reveled in the notion that I would get back at Kabor. I began to imagine all sorts of machinations about exactly how his demise might come about by my hand. But one thing nagged at me. I had once taken something that wasn’t mine to take, something of great importance. I was very young when I did it, but that was no excuse, and the reasons were not as grand…

After some speechless wandering and ample time to cool off, I concluded that the best way to inflict revenge on Kabor was to bide my time and let Paplov know about what happened when I got home. He would bring in the town guard and Kabor would be in a mess of trouble when it came time to answer for his actions. Of course, there was one flaw in that plan – it would mean that he had been right and that his way led out, making him impossible to criticize. He would be a hero for sticking to his guns. Webfoot folk liked that sort of thing and Stouts idolized it.

Kabor held the stone tight in his thick fingers the whole way, as though it were a gold nugget. His mason-like hands were typical of Stouts from the Hills – like his uncle’s, they were honest hands built for honest work, not for thieving.

And yes, in the perpetual night of the underground world, he who held the light was king. But even a king must sleep, eventually…

Chapter XXVII

Forsaken

T
he passage leading to a way out was brick-lined, just like all of the other subterranean halls in the area. And in the tinted glow cast by the stone, the walls flickered as red and pale as any we had stumbled upon. Nevertheless, a brief excursion inside was enough to confirm that we had entered into a new zone, and that something was very different.

For starters, the air seemed vaguely familiar. It had an earthy scent to it, more like that of the original point of entry than of the intervening cave system, but pleasant – without the underlying stench of decay. There was even a hint of freshness. On the wall, signs and markings began to appear in an unfamiliar script. Directions of some kind, it seemed, combined with arrows pointing to side tunnels or down. The down arrows were a mystery, drawing attention to unremarkable sections of the debris-laden floor. We cleared the area beneath the first few, searching for covered openings, more signs or hidden doors, but found nothing of the sort. It wasn’t much of a concern, really – we were on the lookout for ways up, not down.

It wasn’t until we came upon another dead-end that our prospects heightened. Cave fill from a ceiling collapse fully blocked passage from top to bottom. On the face of it, the dead-end was just another disappointment. The automatic thing to do was to backtrack and find a suitable side passage to try instead. And that is exactly what happened, or began to happen. But as I gazed back into the dim, empty tunnel, something compelled me not to abandon the area just yet. Call it a gut feeling. Whatever it was, something about that spot gently tugged at my instincts.

“Wait,” I called out to Kabor, already well on his way back. “The ceiling.”

His shoulders slumped, and then he turned around. After so much effort that had yielded so little, I didn’t fault Kabor for his lack of enthusiasm. The fatigued Stout had already forsaken the blocked passage and seemed reluctant to linger any longer. Annoyed, he dragged his heavy feet the whole way over. It seemed to take all the strength he could muster to humor my bog-wild notions.

“All right,” he said. “What is it?”

“Just a minute,” I told him, and climbed to the top of the pile.

Water trickled down from a cavity in the ceiling, above the blockage. It wept onto the jumble of shale and clay and ran down the side of the pile, settling in a shallow puddle at the bottom.

While on top, I cleared enough debris from beneath the cavity to stick my head inside. It was too dark to see anything.

“Kabor, have a look,” I said, and climbed down. I would have done it, but the Stout still held the stone and was loath to part with it. The Stout sniffed at the drafty air.

“Do you smell that?” he said.

“I know,” I responded. “That’s
real
bog air, I’d recognize it anywhere… I know the place… it’s… it’s…” I trailed off. Unfortunately for Pips, smell is the sense least linked to memory. I couldn’t quite place it.

Kabor climbed the pile and stuck his head right up into the hole. Light in one hand and eyes an inch from the inner surface, he examined it closely. He said nothing for an excruciating minute.

“Well… what is it?” I said. “What do you see?”

“Ahh!” he screeched and jerked back. “Damn it! Right in my eyes.” Muck covered the Stout’s face. He rubbed his eyes to clean it off. A sly grin crept across his lips.

“What?” I asked.

“Look for yourself.” The Stout moved aside and held the light up to the cavity so I could see.

It was more than just a gap in the ceiling; it was a natural shaft extending nearly straight up into the darkness. It was round and tubular in shape, with a glistening surface of wet clay. I felt a pulse of air pass by my face – definitely boggy.

The wave of realization hit me. I laughed and cried out. “We found it!”

“Hold on.” Kabor nudged me aside and began to inspect the shaft acutely. He took on that engineering look that Gariff sometimes gets when sizing up a job.

“I don’t know… might be a blind shaft,” he said, still peering into it. “Plus those walls are slippery and unstable. If we fall—”

“We’re dead and buried if the wall gives,” I said.

“But on the upside,” he offered, “the sides are soft enough to dig your hands and feet into. On the downside, even you barely fit.”

We stood pondering for a long minute.

“Sometimes you have to follow a blind passage to know that it’s blind,” I said.

Kabor nodded in agreement.

“I can chimney up,” he said at last. “I’ve done this sort of thing before in some of the old workings. There were some really narrow shafts in there – downright dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“We have to go up one at a time though,” he continued. “There’s no sense in you having your head stuck up my rear. I’ll go first and find solid holds and footings. I’ll dig them in a bit so you can use them on your turn.”

“I bet I can squeeze through the tight spots easier.”

“Maybe so, but I’m going first anyway. If I can get through, you’ll be sure to and we’ll both make it out.”

“It’s a good thing Bobbin isn’t with us,” I said, not thinking. The words didn’t sound right to my ears, and a sick feeling came over me for saying them.

Head askance, Kabor looked me in the eye.

“That is the plan, right?” he said. “That we
both
get out.”

I nodded, feeling somewhat selfish about my earlier notion to abandon him to the dark and return later. The flag incident came to mind, suddenly. Truth is, I wanted to be the one to climb that time as well, but fear had gotten the better of me. Fear of climbing to the top of the flagpole and fear of being caught in broad daylight. It wasn’t even the flag I wanted – it was the adventure. Once again, I let him take the risk.

“How am I supposed to see the walls when it’s my turn?”

“Follow the light. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you behind. ‘Never leave a hand behind.’ That’s as much a sacred code of honor as you’ll ever find in the Bearded Hills. And that’s not just for Stouts either. It applies to anyone – even boggy-smelling Pips.”

“What if the shaft isn’t straight, or what if it’s too long?”

The pile shifted and Kabor braced himself as debris slid beneath his feet, and him along with it. When it settled, he stroked the wispy whiskers on his chin where his beard rightly should be, at least by Stout standards. As he stood there, a blob of runny muck splatted onto his head. He shook it out of his hair.

“I’ll drop the stone down to you,” he said.

“What?”

“We’re in this together, right?”

“It might hit something hard or get stuck along the way,” I said. “I’m not sure about this.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Not really.”

“Look, I’ll call before I drop it down. It’ll be up to you to catch it. You can’t miss it – it’s the only thing lit up around here. Have a little faith. Look for the glow.”

Kabor was convincing, not just in his words but also in the conviction of his voice and the confidence that emanated from every pore. There would be no stopping him.

“OK.” I surrendered. “Good luck.”

“I could use a little luck today. This would be a lot easier with rope. If we had—”

“We don’t. Get going. I don’t want to be down here any longer than needed.”

“I was just saying… ah, forget it.” Kabor brushed a few mud-soaked strands of hair away from his face.

“Stay clear of the shaft at first or you might be sorry for it,” he said.

With those words, Kabor clenched the stone in his teeth. He began his ascent, leveraging the walls to pull, push and twist his way up. I stood back as mud splattered down onto the pile.

“Don’t swallow the spark!” I called. Not long ago, I would have wished he’d choke on it so I could rip it out of his throat. But I watched with hope as the wiry Stout slowly scaled the shaft, up and away, until the red glimmer of the stone grew dim in the distance.

I removed my pack – it would be too cumbersome for such a narrow climb. I was reluctant to leave my bow and the deepwood arrows behind, but bows and arrows are replaceable.

Kabor grunted and groaned about the climb, but made fair progress nonetheless. Judging roughly, he must have chimneyed a good twenty feet before disappearing around a slow bend, out of direct sight.

“Can you see daylight yet?” I yelled up the shaft.

“I’m not sure,” he yelled back. “It’s hard to see anything up here. There are roots and—”

That was the last of it, those final words lost to echoes in the dark.

A tremendous crash followed. I scrambled back. A pulse of water shot out of the hole. I backed away farther. The pile became drenched. The next instant, a loud sloshing sound funneled through from above, and the opening sighed with a strong rush of air.

Something big was coming. I began to run, but stumbled and fell. A muddy mess came crashing down behind me. A long moment passed in the dark before I processed what had just happened. And then it was quiet.

I tried to feel my way back to the opening, but cave fill blocked the passage. I couldn’t get through. Kabor was nowhere to be found.

“KABOR!” I screamed.

I threw myself at the debris. Desperate, I clawed and dug my way in with my bare hands. I groped for a rock that could help and found a suitable piece of shale.

“KABOR, ARE YOU THERE? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

Silence.

“KABOR!”

Scraping at the cave fill with my rock, I managed to gouge out a space. I tried digging up where I thought the hole might have been, but my efforts were repeatedly undone as runny sludge seeped down.
I can’t see. I need to see.
I called out.

“KABOR, ARE YOU THERE?”

There was no answer.

I plunged my fists deep into the soft regions of muck, reaching and grasping for a limb, hair, clothes… anything. It was no use. The sludge was overwhelming. I dug and clawed and scratched at the earth until my arms went weak and my hands began to shake.

Soaked in sweat, fingers raw and stinging, I crumpled against the wall of the passage, exhausted. Warm blood trickled down along my battered knees as I caught my breath.

A minute went by way too fast. I forced myself to my feet and returned to the pile. I tried tapping rocks on the ceiling, hoping the sound would carry through – that he might be in a cavity.

There was nothing in response.

Then a horrible thought occurred to me. I had to stop.

I had to stop and shake my head.

I had to walk in circles, shake my head some more, and mutter “No” as I did so.

“NO!” I screamed, to stifle that unfeeling, inner voice.

“no…” I said quietly.

I will not think or ever say that he had it
coming.

That was for everyone else to say. And they would, if only they knew.

Chapter XXVIII

Cloaked

S
o deep underground and so far away from everything that matters, at times I welcomed the idea of transmuting skin to bark, even begged for it. No more pain or weary limbs or pangs of hunger to dampen the mortal spirit, no infections or maladies of the flesh, no need for sleep, increased resilience as opposed to infirmity over the centuries, and less mortal concerns altogether, I suspected.

But if the inevitable were to occur while still trapped underground, the re-becoming’s leaves would have no choice but to unfurl in utter darkness. Would they sustain the new being? I think not. Trees need light, but do Hurlorns? I didn’t have the answer.

Such was the doom and gloom that consumed me as I paced in the dark hallway of the collapse.

No respectable Stout would leave someone behind to perish underground. But what is a Pip to do about a Stout that might already be dead, was
likely
dead? Did they all perish… all of my friends? Am I the last?

Back and forth… back and forth… the monotony was strangely reassuring, a diversion from all the mulling over things I couldn’t possibly control. Pacing, even if it produced nothing, was better than pure inaction. Pure inaction would have been unbearable. Somehow, the motion kept a part of me busy that just wanted to curl up and die, or scream, or do something drastic… something
extreme
.

And it seemed that as long as I continued to pace, some grand idea lurking in the back of my mind might take shape, propelled into being by the sheer momentum of my stride and the sharpness of my turns. But nothing brilliant came of those dark minutes, and the gray matter of my intellect left me holding a black list of sad alternatives to choose from instead.

“A hard choice,” Paplov would have said. He warned me about having to face situations where there were no right choices or easy answers. “There’s value in waiting,” he said on one occasion. That meant do nothing until you know what to do. Years later, on another occasion, he told me to “just choose
something
, follow through with it, and hope for the best.” He never gave his reasons.

I bowed my head for several long minutes and prayed to the nameless gods of my father. It was more of a complaint, really. I promised to be good. Praying was not something I did very often.

Somehow, the exchange left me feeling refreshed. I revisited the blocked shaft and tried to reach Kabor again. After all, he might be stuck in an air pocket. I quickly settled into a routine: dig, tap, listen; dig, tap, listen; and so forth. And every so often, I took a break to resume pacing. Through it all, I pondered the situation at hand.

Kabor should have come out with the initial rush of water. He must have either dug in his heels – a typical stubborn Stout thing to do – or become stuck on his way down. Either way, if the collapse started higher in the shaft, he should have come down with the cave fill, otherwise there would be a lot less of it because the space was too cramped to let that much material pass around him. Since I did not find him in the pile, odds seemed not terrible that the collapse started
beneath
Kabor, perhaps in a spot he had disturbed that took some time to react, or maybe he started an avalanche with his foot.

With Kabor’s chances of survival stabilizing in my mind, I began to consider my own prospects. In utter darkness, it would take every bit of razor sharp memory and every pinprick of heightened awareness to have a chance of making it back to the entry cave. And this wasn’t some ordinary game of “Green Ghost.” If I messed up, I couldn’t just open the blinds and end the game. There were enough turns, dead ends, pits, and circling paths to make the darkened course deathly treacherous. The hard choice was clear. I had to try.

I will not wait here much
longer.

But suppose Kabor did make it to the surface, got help, dug his way back down through the shaft and didn’t find me waiting. Then what? He would still know the general layout of the caves, and he would have brought with him lanterns and loud horns and certainly experienced miners.

Perhaps the others made it to safety as well. Then a search party might have already discovered the entry cave. Help might be on its way, trudging through the caves. Would they know which way to go? A good bogger should be able to track our course.

No one is coming,
warned a small voice inside.

I continued to dig, making fair progress for a time. I managed to excavate an arm’s length into the cavity without provoking another collapse. But the stability was short-lived. A minute later more sludge slid down the neck of the cavity and jammed it up again. It was hopeless.

Defeated, I decided to finish up with one last round of tapping, rock on rock. Finally, I got a reply. But it wasn’t the one I was hoping for.

Chk-chk-fwip… chk-chk-fwip.

My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t dare breathe. The scraping sound was near. It was
really
near. Emboldened by the dark, I heard the creature scuffle overhead and then down along the opposite wall. All became silent. I thanked The Nameless that whatever it was had backed off a bit.

Back against the wall, I blindly squatted to the ground and felt through the rubble until I found a sharp, fist-sized rock. I lifted it high above my head. Muscles tensed as I waited in the dark, ears pricked, and breaths thin.

But I needed more air.

I breathed heavy once.

The silence and waiting amplified my fears.
Can the thing somehow see me?
My heart raced and pumped so quickly, so violently, that it hurt my chest. It resonated in my ears so loud, I feared the thing would hear the wild thumping.

The noise started up again, but softer.

Shsh-shsh-fwiph… shsh-shsh-fwiph.

It slowed, and even crept – a disciplined and willful motion like the careful, muted footfalls of a cat stalking oblivious prey… just before the pounce. I could barely discern the sound over the pounding of my own heartbeat. Again, there came an awful silence.

I had decided to take another normal breath, but in that instant of anticipation, it was stolen from me.

A moist, sticky mass slapped me in the face and stuck there like a wet towel. I couldn’t breathe.

I felt for the thing. The body was incredibly thin and flat, but solid like pure muscle. I tried to pull it off, but its back was slippery and coated with slime. I dropped the rock and tried to pry the creature free, but it was clamped on tight.

I can’t breathe.

Frantic, I dropped to the ground and rolled, pulling and clawing at the thing on my face. But I could not get a good hold on it. Under the slime lay stony flesh, impervious to my nails. The beast wrapped its long, winding tail around my neck and began to squeeze. Grunting and struggling, I rolled onto my face and shook my head violently, scraping the creature against the roughness of the floor. But the mud was too slick and the thing only squeezed tighter.

I felt the smothering creature’s mouth open, near to mine. A ring of razor sharp teeth pressed against my cheek, and a rough tongue – rough enough, I reckon, to lick the flesh right off my face, down to the bone. A head butt to the wall caused the teeth to retract.

Reeling, I tried to peel the creature off again. It just wasn’t working, so I tried another head butt. The thing reeled back and emitted a shrill screech. It came partially undone. I tore it off.

Free at last, I gasped for air and fell against the pile. I swept my hands through the debris, searching for another rock. All at once, the darkness lifted. The mud suddenly lit up, and then went dark again. My wayward crystal had found its way back to me. When it lit up again, I grabbed the stone and gave it a quick wipe against my shirt. I held it like a burning torch.

I scanned the area. At the first set of flashes, the passage appeared empty: the walls were blank and fill covered the floor. During the next flurry of sparks, a thick glob dropped next to me. I looked up. The creature was there. Its skin matched the color and texture of the ceiling so perfectly it looked like part of the rock. The light went out. I stepped away. On the next flash, I noticed a flap of black skin that seemed out of place on the thing, loose and hanging with fluid dripping down – the damage I inflicted.

The stone went dark for a long moment.

Chk-chk-fwip… Chk-chk-fwip.

“YAAW!” I yelled, waving my arms wildly in the dark, “GET OUT! BE OFF!”

I picked up a rock. The creature was an easy target, wide and flat, and far too confident in its disguise. I waited patiently for the light to return. When it did, I flung the rock – a solid hit, square on the back. The creature jerked and fell. It twisted and contorted in mid air as it plummeted, reminding me of a falling cloak. But that cloak never hit the ground. Rather, the thing spread itself out in an arc and
flew
away down the tunnel with the pulsed grace of a bat – long, smooth glides punctuated with abrupt shifts in height and bearing.

I groped for another rock and tried my luck once more. It sailed through the air and missed by a wide margin. The flying thing accelerated around a corner and out of sight.

I gathered my pack. It was half-buried in cave fill. I readied my bow as well and crouched with my back to the pile. Arrow notched, for a very long time I watched, waited, and listened for the creature’s return. My head pulsed as my heart pounded at my chest.

Once I realized that the creature was truly gone, I relaxed my stance. My face felt sticky.

I made one last feeble attempt to find Kabor before turning to leave. In a small way, I was glad not to find him. Not finding him meant he could still be alive… but without the stone.

I hauled on my pack, slung the bow over one shoulder, then turned to the open passage and started along it.

I thought about something Kabor had said. He had been right; it wasn’t beyond me to abandon him, alone in the dark.