Stephen Lawhead - The Paradise War

I could not decide. And I could not bring myself to take another step one way or the other until I was certain. Brute stubbornness would not let me turn back; indecision would not let me proceed. So I stood rooted with uncertainty, and the hesitation was more painful to me than all the wounds I had endured so far. I simply could not bring myself to take another step until I knew beyond all doubt that we were on the right path. But knowing was impossible.

We might have been standing there yet, if Tegid had not roused himself and said, «I see light ahead.»

I looked and saw that it was so. While I had stood frozen in doubt, the tunnel ahead had lightened somewhat. Tegid's light-deprived eyes had noticed it first. But, even as I watched, the passageway lightened some more. The thin, spidery light was definitely growing brighter.

It was dawn in the outside world. We had travelled underground through the night, and now the passage ahead was becoming brighter because the sky outside was growing light. Had we turned back, we would have missed it, and we might never have found our way again.

It came to me then that my attack of doubt was a trick of Lord Nudd, a subtle attempt at turning us aside. But we had not succumbed to his ruse. We now knew the way before us was the true path, and, what is more, that we were very near the end. In all events, we were very near the end of our strength.

«Courage,» I said, more to myself than to Tegid, «it is just a little further.»

Ttiat little, however, turned out to be the most difficult by far. The already narrow passageway was made more so by chunks of rock and boulder-sized slabs protruding from the walls. We were made to go on our stomachs and worm our way under the jutting obstructions; or, faces pressed to the cold rock slab, clamber laboriously over, dragging our burdens.

We struggled slowly ahead, keeping our eyes fixed upon the dim light filtering fitfully down the shaft. The grayed glow neither brightened nor did it fade, but shone steadily, if faintly, from somewhere ahead. On battered knees and bleeding elbows, we advanced. Dogged, determined, but never drawing nearer our destination.

The buskins on our feet had long since become soggy scraps of leather; our clothing hung on us in shreds; our faces were bathed in a grimy mist of sweat and blood. And, when my muscles no longer obeyed, when my blistered feet refused to shuffle another step further, when the very bones beneath my flesh cried out for breaking, we came to the end.

The passage terminated in a blank wall. The light we had seen issued from a vertical shaft. Snowflakes sifted down from above, and we could hear the wind's shivering shriek ss it tore itself against the rocks of the entrance somewhere ugh above. To look at the climb we must make was to lespair. And we were not the only ones whom despair had caught in that desperate place. For, as we lay down our bundles of stones and stood for a moment blinking in the Light, Tegid motioned to a heap of cloth partially covered in drifted snow.

«Murder has overtaken one of her own,» he said, prodding the heap with his toe. «This one is long dead.»

I joined him as he stooped and rolled the cloak-wrapped body into the light. Tegid pulled away the stiffened cloth to reveal that the gray, frozen features, eyes wide and staring, nouth open in an expression of disbelief, belonged to Ruadh, the prince's bard. I had seen him only once or twice, but recognized him nonetheless.

«Did he fall?» I wondered, looking up into the shaft above. «I think not,» Tegid said, lifting the cloak. A brown-black ~tain, now hardened, spread across the former bard's chest. 'Whoever was with him let him lead the way out, and then ~illed him here to seal the secret.»

We knew now who had killed the Phantarch, and we knew tlso that Ruadh had not acted alone. «How did they know ibout this passage?» I wondered.

«That we will learn when we discover who was with Ruadh.» He rose and turned his face to the opening above. 'Come, we can do nothing more here and we are needed elsewhere.»

Stepping beneath the opening, I cupped my hands and ,oosted Tegid into the shaft. He climbed, bracing his back igainst one side of the shaft and his feet against the other, then hunching himself upward until he disappeared into the ~vhite haze of light above.

And then.. . after an eternity, I heard him call to me from somewhere above. I roused myself and stood. The end of a rope dropped before my face, and Tegid, his voice faintly echoing, shouted, «Tie one of the bundles to the rope. I will haul it up.»

I watched, as the first bundle swung slowly up. After the longest time, Tegid shouted again and dropped the rope for the second bundle. When that had cleared, it was my turn to climb. Using a loop in the rope, I boosted myself into the crevice. Then I followed Tegid's example and hunched my way up the vertical shaft. Tegid stood waiting to haul me out of the pit. Whereupon we both collapsed and lay panting in the deep-drifted snow at the sheltered entrance to the cavern. It was cold, and the wind sliced at our skin. But, after the noxious darkness and fetid underground air, the crisp cold felt like a blessing. It revived us, and quickened us to our purpose.

We had emerged from a dry well which had at one time served the kitchens behind the hall. We could not see the gate and eastern rampart from our position, but we lay for a moment listening-above the wail of the restless wind we heard the hideous cries of the Coranyid and knew that they were still swarming outside the walls. We had returned in time.

I looked at the tattered bundles we had, at enormous sacrifice of toil and strength, raised from the Phantarch's tomb. In the cold, dim light of a dark Sollen day those two lumpy bundles of stones seemed pitifully small, an impotent weapon to raise against such a fierce and relentless foe.

Tegid watched me for a moment, shivering. Then, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder, he pushed himself up onto his knees and struggled to his feet. «Come, it is cold out here, and I am beginning to miss my cloak.»

I stood on stiff legs and forced stiff hands to grasp the knotted end of my bundle. «Very well,» I said, swinging the burden once more onto my back, «let us do what we have come to do.»

It was all I could do to remain upright, and almost more than I could do to force my wooden stumps to totter forward. I did not think about the cold, or how wretched and exhausted I was, nor what I would do if my ridiculous plan failed. Inside the hall, the hearthfire burned bright. I held this image in my mind and drove myself towards it. The sooner I delivered myself of my burden, the sooner I could sit before Meldryn Mawr's fire, and rest… blessed rest. In the end, that was all I cared about; the thought of a warm cup in my hand and dry clothing on my weary limbs, and rest, kept my battered carcass moving.

Step by plodding, weary step we crossed the yard and reached the wall. The warriors on the rampart gaped at us strangely. They gazed down upon us with expressions of awe and bewilderment. No one said a word.

I thought it odd, and called to them to help us lift our bundles to the rampart, but no one moved. 'What is wrong with them?» I asked Tegid angrily. «Why do they stand staring like that? Can they not hear?»

«They heard you,» replied Tegid oddly.

«Well, are they frozen up there then?»

«No,» he shook his head slightly, «neither are they frozen.»

«What then? Why do they not help us?»

He did not answer. Instead, he shifted the burden on his back and indicated the icy step. «Will you go first, or shall I?» he asked.

Up the icy steps we trudged. A condemned man ascending to the gallows could not know a steeper or more labored climb. Fatigue and lethargy seemed to descend upon my weary limbs like loops of iron chain. My legs trembled to support me. My heart labored in my chest; my breath burned my throat. I wanted nothing more than to release the bundle I bore on my back-how stupid to be carrying rocks! Certainly, a moment's rest would do no harm.