Bruce Blake - Spirit of the King

Athryn!

Khirro lurched to his feet, the sudden movement making his head spin and throb. He paused a moment to settle himself, then turned a tight circle, surveying the dimly lit pit. He saw nothing, so shuffled a wider arc, feet leaving divots in the pile of straw and moss that had cushioned his fall. Still no sign of his companion. He fell to his knees, looking for signs of the magician and what happened to him, where he had gone. His fingers grasped dry straw, sifted through loose dirt, but the lack of light made his search difficult as he scuffled around the thick layer set at the bottom of the pit.

This pit isn’t here by accident. But why? The only answer he could think of unsettled him: hunting.

His thoughts were interrupted when his hand found a wide path cut in the mossy pillow, like a track left when something was dragged away. He followed it a few feet until his hand touched a wet and tacky spot of dirt that stuck to the palm of his hand.

Blood.

Khirro held his breath and reached for the Mourning Sword, but his fingers found an empty scabbard. His mind searched back through what had happened; he recalled having the sword in his hand when he plummeted into the pit. He must have dropped it during the fall.

Damn lucky I didn’t land on it and kill myself.

His eyes flickered across the dark ground. The black blade would be invisible in the dark, but he hoped to catch sight of the faint red glow of the weapon’s runes. With his foot planted firmly on the bare dirt to keep from losing the track left on the ground, he groped through moss and straw, praying his fingers would touch cool steel. Nothing. He settled back on his haunches, despair threatening at the edge of his mind.

What am I without the Mourning Sword?

He set his jaw and forced the thought from his head. A sword could be replaced-even one such as the Mourning Sword-but without Athryn, all was lost.

He crawled tentatively forward along the track in the moss, eyes fixed straight ahead, until he saw the mouth of a tunnel. It was nothing more than a shadow in the pit’s black wall leading another unknown place, to unknown dangers. Khirro sighed. In his experience, nothing good happened underground.

After a moment steeling himself for what the darkness beyond held, Khirro rose to his feet and reached for Elyea’s dagger that he carried at his belt, but found its sheath empty, too. He reached for the small knife in his boot. Gone.

Not a coincidence .

He might have believed he dropped the sword and the dagger came loose in the fall, both of them lost in the dark, but the knife wouldn’t have come out of his boot. Someone had taken his weapons.

He wasn’t alone.

***

Despite the passage of day to twilight and beyond, a dim light illuminated the tunnel, allowing him to see a man's-length in front of him; better than he had experienced in the other underground paths he’d recently trodden. In fact, as Khirro went farther, it seemed he could see better.

The tunnel brushed his shoulder at some points, forcing him to turn sideways to pass through, and the ceiling threatened his forehead at others. He progressed slowly, straining to move quietly both to conceal his presence and to listen for sounds that weren’t echoes of his own. He heard nothing but the soft steps of his boots and the occasional scrape of scabbard against tunnel wall.

After ten minutes, the tunnel brightened, lit by a luminescent glow emanating from the ceiling a foot over Khirro’s head; it gave the passage the luster of dawn sneaking up on a new day. The glow spilled down the walls, clearly marking the path ahead, though it wasn’t bright enough to rescue his feet from shadow. The quality of the light reminded Khirro of the tunnels below the Necromancer’s keep and he shuddered because it also reminded him he was still in Lakesh. But this light was also different. In Darestat’s chambers, the lambency radiated from everywhere and nowhere, an indeterminate source; here, the glow came from the ceiling, close enough to touch.

Khirro stopped and looked up. The glow pulsed minutely, the light ebbing and flowing like a wave. Curious, he reached up and brushed his index and middle fingers across the surface. He felt the uneven, rocky ceiling, but it was covered with a thin, soft layer. His fingers came away glowing like the ceiling. Khirro held his fingertips close in front of his face for a better look.

Worms.

On the end of each finger several tiny, grub-like worms wriggled. Khirro chuckled. He’d heard of such things but never seen them. Things that lived in the dark found ways to survive, he supposed, and creating their own light was one of those ways. He watched, fascinated, as the things crawled down toward his first knuckle, leaving behind a glowing trail. It made him smile-how many people could say they’d seen such a thing?

“Oww!”

A pain in his finger like the prick of a needle melted the smile away. He looked closer and saw one of the worms burrowing into his flesh.

“Gods.”

Khirro rubbed his fingers on his breeches, smearing glowing worm innards across his thigh, and fought the urge to pop the pained digit into his mouth. Shaking his fingers, he walked on again, thankful for the worms’ light but giving them all the space the cramped tunnel allowed.

A few steps farther on, a noise behind Khirro made him stop. A soft, barely-noticeable sound. He heard it again: plop. Like water falling on dry stone.

Khirro spun around, instinctively reaching for his missing sword, and saw two glowing spots on the ground where he’d just passed.

I must have loosened them when I touched the others .

The tip of his finger throbbed dully. Another blob of worms fell half a yard from him, then another landed inches from his boot.

I didn’t touch those ones .

Khirro spun on his heel and hurried down the tunnel; the sound of worms dropping from the ceiling followed him like the sound of rain drops on a canvas tent. He dodged as they came down in his path. A glob landed on his tunic and he wiped it away with his sleeve, smearing their glow along its length and cursing himself for not taking his gauntlets out of his pack.

If they penetrate my skin, can they eat through my clothes?

He wrestled his shield off his back, its fire-blackened steel edge striking sparks against the wall of the tunnel, and held it over his head. Worms pattered against it as he followed the tunnel around a curve where it widened and the ceiling sloped upward and away.

Khirro skidded to a halt as he emerged into a modest chamber. He peeked out from under his shield to see if the worms continued to fall, but the increased distance between their ceiling and his head seemed to deter them. Slowly, he removed the shield from above his head. Glow worms covered two-thirds of its surface.

They emitted enough light to cast shadows on the faces of the men in the chamber.

Khirro reacted by slamming the edge of his shield into the man directly ahead of him, but the others overcame him, tore his only weapon from his grasp and dragged him to the ground.

***

The thin rope of woven vines binding Khirro’s wrists was strong, and the men leading him with it allowed no slack in the line. All six men stood a few inches shorter than Khirro, with pale skin and black hair, long and matted. All but the youngest-looking-the one guiding Khirro-wore scraggly beards that brushed the tops of their bare chests. The two at the front of the line and the one behind Khirro carried torches that glowed rather than flickering with flame.

The group moved quickly, following twists and turns and side tunnels with the confidence of people who’d followed the path many times, their route quickly rendering Khirro unable to tell which direction he’d need to follow to find his way out. He wondered if these people were the ones who’d dragged Athryn away as he lay unconscious at the bottom of the pit.