Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

‘And so?’

She grasped his hand in a grip he found excessively tight.

‘Jon, those people had never seen the outside world! All they had ever seen were shadows! They thought the shadows were the real world!’

He tried to remove his hand but found he could not. ‘And just what has this got to do with us?’

She stood up, tall, strong, triumphant: ‘Jon, we are the prisoners! We are in the cave of shadows!’

Jon and Shana walked along the village street, ignoring all the people who were studiously ignoring them.

Shana felt somewhat dispirited; after all, it is one thing to know that you are a prisoner in a cave but quite another to know that fact but not to know the location of the exit from that oubliette. As she thought over and over about their situation, she had felt exultation slowly drain out of her. Where could the exit be? Where?

Jon had been no help: she was not even sure that he believed her about the cave of shadows. Yet it had seemed so obvious when she had been reading about it; it answered so many problems, solved so many mysteries. She looked around, looking out over the edge of the hill to where the savage terrain that she had crossed to reach here lay unfolded below her like a map and then looked up at the bright green sky.

Where?

It was then a shrill, excited voice cut through her musings like a knife.

‘Today is the day! Today! The time of the hunt!’

She felt Jon stiffen beside her as he came to an abrupt halt. She felt tension crackle across the air between them.

‘We should go back to the house,’ he said, looking around in an agitated fashion as if expecting to see something. ‘And quickly.’

‘Why Jon? What’s the matter?’

‘Something I don’t want to see again,’ he muttered.

They turned but found their retreat hampered by a throng of people excitedly going in the opposite direction.

‘We’ll wait until they’ve gone,’ Jon growled, still looking around as if something dangerous was approaching.

But the crowd came to a halt and they found themselves trapped in a mass of chattering, gabbling people in a state of high excitement.

‘Jon, what is it? Tell me!’ Shana said in a quiet voice, brittle with concern.

‘Something very bad,’ was the only response.

Just then someone standing close yelled: ‘Here it comes!’

Shana looked in the direction in which he was pointing and saw a small ball of bright blue light floating leisurely through the air towards them. Then it began to dart this way and that as if hunting for something.

‘Jon what is it?’ she whispered in growing alarm. The way it was now moving was horribly like a predator hunting for a small animal in the undergrowth.

‘It’s one of the traditions here,’ Jon grated, ‘when it settles on someone they’re marked for death.’

‘What!’ Shana gasped. She spun back to follow the movements of the ball of light.

It had stopped directly above a man who immediately looked terrified and began crying out ‘No! No! Not me!’

Instinctively Shana moved forward to see if she could do anything but Jon’s strong grip held her fast.

‘Don’t move. You can’t save him now.’

But then the unexpected happened. The ball did not touch the man but rose back up and began its questing again. Then its side to side movements stopped and it began a straight-line path.

Straight toward Shana.

It hovered briefly above her head and then descended, sending rippling waves of blue-white light cascading down her body. She was motionless within the curtain of light and Jon could see her wide-eyed expression of horror and her lips forming the words: ‘Help me Jon!’

Immediately the cry went up: ‘The Degenerate! Kill the Degenerate!’

The light disappeared leaving them facing a spittle-flecked crowd that was now surging forward, gripped in roaring blood lust.

Jon roared: ‘Shana! To my back – now!’

She turned and stood so they were now back-to-back facing the mob. And they were not alone.

Jon had the terrible short stabbing sword of the Lords of the Sands and Shana wielded Akraz’s dreadful long slashing sword. Jon’s sword absorbed every scrap of light that fell on it but Shana’s blazed brilliantly like captive lightning. Together they formed a whirling circle of deadly steel that few dared approach.

‘Now what?’ Shana gasped.

‘We leave the way we came,’ was the grim reply.

And so they began the long retreat back towards the house, protected by the circle of death they maintained around them. The mob followed; occasionally an individual, egged on by the others, would dare to approach the thirsty steel. Most drew back as they got near; a few did not and fell where they stood.

‘Jon!’ Shana panted, ‘this is no good! We can’t go back to the house – they’ll simply surround it and burn it down!’

‘We have to find a way out,’ Jon said, mainly to himself.

‘But where? There’s nowhere to go!’

Then like a thunderclap it came to him.

‘We go to the place that Korok doesn’t want us to go!’

‘Where? Where?’ Shana cried as she lopped the arm off someone who had come too close.

‘The Gate of Light. It’s the only place left.’

Suddenly it was obvious to Shana too: it had to be the Gate of Light.

They changed direction, passing between the houses towards the slope that lead up to that enigmatic column of brilliance.

Suddenly Jon felt the hairs on his head and arms rise and a prickling tingle ran over his torso. Swiftly he glanced up and then immediately he grasped Shana and threw the two of them to one side. One immeasurable instant later a great column of blazing blue-white heat came down, striking the exact spot on which they had been standing. The heat roared over them like the tongues of hungry beasts. And then it was gone.

Jon looked behind to see that the crowd had fallen back as the fire had come down, giving them some precious extra time. He tugged at Shana and pulled her to her feet.

‘Come on before he tries again!’

They staggered on as the ground before them began to rise into a severe slope. As they climbed higher fewer people followed. Above them, the great column of light loomed larger and larger but remained completely soundless. The last scraps of vegetation died out and then, abruptly, they were nearly at the flat summit of the hill. They looked down: no-one was following – the Gate of Light was too powerful, too mysterious, too potent for any but themselves to approach.

They turned. The great column took up a good half of the summit and remained totally inscrutable. It shone in endless variations of brilliant blue, ever shifting like a sea; it was never the same shade twice and yet it always gave the feeling of being merely the surface of a blue immensity, a surface which covered depths that could not be plumbed.

They glanced at each other for a moment and then began to walk over the stony surface towards the silent structure.

It grew before their amazed eyes, becoming vaster, more gigantic, more overwhelmingly tremendous than they could have imagined. A glance upward showed it dwindling very slowly into a thin cone that had no terminus, no end, a structure that must stretch to mathematical infinity.

They were almost within touching distance. To their astounded vision the surface was as completely smooth as the finest glass and in a continual swirling, bewildering motion.

And then came the voice. A voice that shook their bones, made their eyes roll back into their heads and by its very force and intensity made them drop to their knees.

It was a voice that could have been that of mighty slabs of rock, smashing together in a colossal avalanche.