THE MONSTER’S LAIR
Hunger’s desire to chase the Fir-Noy and consume them was immense. The battle with the enemy’s Skir Master had required huge amounts of Fire. The Skir Master had been very hard to break, but he’d killed him, just as the Mother had commanded. Killed him and reached through the doors of his binding to ravage the enemy whom the Skir Master served. But the Mother of the Skir Master broke the binding before he had a chance to do any damage to her.
He needed to eat. While he felt no physical pain, his body had sustained a large amount of damage. It would require Fire and soul to repair itself completely. He needed to eat. Except he dared not. If he distracted himself, he might lose this opportunity while it was in his grasp.
The Mother had commanded him to gather in all of this Grove of Sleth, all those who stunk. She’d commanded him to find the young male. He hadn’t recognized him at first. He’d recognized his scent, but couldn’t place it. But as he was carrying Ke and Matiga back to the Mother, he remembered smelling him in the yard of Sparrow, smith of Plum.
Hunger had found the male, Purity’s son. And he’d found the last member of the Grove. The last member that mattered. From Larther, he knew there were two others, but one had been lost for a very long time. The other, the rumored half-beast named Harnock, was elusive and unstable. In all the years Larther had been part of the Grove, he’d never once seen him. He suspected none even knew where he abode. But all those that lived on this side of the mountains had been accounted for. All except Argoth.
He could feel the Mother’s anticipation. And his own anticipation joined with hers. When he delivered these two, his task would be fulfilled. And she would be bound to let his family go. In the back of his mind he feared she would not keep that promise. But he pushed those fears aside. She kept her word; hadn’t she already proven that?
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Sugar ran with Legs toward an outcropping of rock on the hill. Partway up she turned and watched the monster swat Talen aside as if he were nothing more than a grass doll.
Zu Argoth knelt in the grass, rocking back and forth, back and forth. He didn’t even look up to see the creature standing behind him.
Sugar watched as the thing bent over and picked up Zu Argoth, cradling him in one of its massive arms, and then it turned and looked directly at her.
“Down,” she said to Legs, pushing him behind the rock. “Down!”
There was no way she and Legs could outrun it. She could only hope it hadn’t seen her.
But it had. It had.
She waited there, listening.
Legs clutched at her hand.
She heard it coming, a pounding thump, thump, thump. Closer and closer. And then it was upon them. They couldn’t hide, couldn’t run. She glanced back, and the creature, in midstride, plucked Legs up and stole him from her grasp.
“Sugar!” he cried, panic on his face.
She bolted after him.
“Sugar!” he yelled.
The creature’s strides were immense.
Soon she was panting, her lungs burning, but she ran after him, laboring up the slope. The creature drew away from her, Zu Argoth in one arm, Legs in the other. One, five, ten strides, then it disappeared over the crown of the hill.
“Brother!” she yelled.
She could not go on.
“Brother!”
She doubled over, resting her hands on her knees. He was gone. Gone!
“Lords,” she cried. “No. Please, no.”
She slumped to her knees, panting, her mind racing. There was no way she could defeat it.
But she did know where its lair lay. She could lead an army there.
No. That would do nothing. It couldn’t be killed. Not by dreadmen, not by Skir Masters, not by whirlwinds. And then she thought of the remaining hag’s teeth. The Skir Master hadn’t been able to use them. Did they still lie below?
She turned and looked back downhill. The bodies of men lay scattered in the grass and scrub. The Crab smoldered in the coals of the fire, sending up a smoke that thinned in the breeze. Across the meadow the morning winds stirred the tree-tops. She spotted the Skir Master lying at the edge by a cluster of massive elms.
Something moved below. Talen was on his knees in the scrub.
“Hoy!” she called out.
Talen grabbed something then stood. He held his ribs on one side as if he’d injured them. Then he spotted her, and raised something high into the air, something silver that flashed in the morning light.
It was the case that contained the hag’s teeth. Maybe, she thought, they could stab the monster with one of those.
“I’m coming, brother,” she said. “I’m coming.”
At that moment, one Fir-Noy who had not fled with the others slowly rose from his hiding place. He gave Talen a glance, but turned away. As Sugar raced back down the hill, the Fir-Noy ran to a horse that still stood in the meadow. It was saddled, its reins tied to a bush. The Fir-Noy untied it, mounted, and then kicked it into a gallop heading away from her.
When Sugar reached Talen, he said, “I see you put the fear of Regret into at least one Fir-Noy.”
It was a hollow jest, but she responded in kind. “It’s a start,” she said.
He held the case up to her, showing its contents. Originally, there had been three spikes. Two remained. The spikes were almost the length of a span, their tips sharp as needles. She quickly scanned the ground around her, fearful of where the third one might be. The sight of it working its way out of the Crab’s temple still sickened her.
“We’re going after the others,” Sugar said.
“Of course we are,” said Talen.
She pointed, but didn’t dare let her finger get close. “What do you think the etching on the sides indicates?”
“Who knows?” asked Talen. “But I’m sure some of that makes them easier to hold.” He shook his head. “After seeing the Crab, I wouldn’t want one of these to accidentally slip out of my grasp.” He closed the case. “We’ll finish the job. But I suspect we need the gauntlets to handle them.”
Sugar laughed. She wondered how that was possible.
“What?” asked Talen.
“It sounds so preposterous, the two of us finishing what a Skir Master and a host of men could not.”
He smiled a tired smile. “Perhaps it is. I doubt the Creek Widow thought we’d face these kinds of ‘limitations,’ but we will do the best we can.”
“You were holding your side, are you okay?”
Talen tried to move his arm and winced. “It’s nothing, probably only a minor shoulder break from the monster’s love tap. It will heal wrong, and I’ll be deformed for the rest of my life, but such is the life of a fearsome Sleth like myself.”
“Not if we rescue your sister. The lore can heal as well, remember?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Hand the teeth to me,” she said. “You’re in no condition to slash and throw. It looks like I’m going to be the one that will have to tangle with the monster. Do you think it will scare at my presence as easily as that last Fir-Noy did?”
“Not quite,” he said and handed her the case. “You may be the one to deliver the blow, but you’ll not tangle with it alone. Nor will we make it back to the cave looking like two Koramite youths, especially not with the Fir-Noy who fled the field alerting the whole countryside. I’m bigger than you are. Not as big as the dread-man, but big enough to wear one’s armor and fool people from a distance.”
She nodded. Two horses stood at the edge of the meadow. She might be able to catch one, but they had no saddles. They would have to ride doubled up. “You go see if the Tailor is still in the cave.” She motioned at the big dreadman. “I’ll strip him.”
The big man was hard to roll, but she finally got him on his side and out of his shining cuirass. She gathered up his helm, his black sword, and its scabbard.
Talen walked out of the cave leading the Tailor and holding the leather sack from which the Skir Master had withdrawn the hag’s teeth and gauntlets. He held the horse’s reins as Sugar buckled the dreadman’s armor on Talen and then attached the bright yellow cloak of the Lions of Mokad. When it was time to mount the Tailor, Talen tried to use his left hand to grasp the saddle, but he obviously wasn’t used to using that hand.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll give you a leg up.”
“I don’t think that will work,” he said. “Because once I’m on, how am I going to pull you up? We need a rock to stand on.”
They found a rock. When Talen was firmly mounted in the saddle and she behind him on the horse blanket, she asked, “Where do you want me to hold on?”
“The hips,” he said. “I don’t think anything is broken there.”
They rode over to the Skir Master. He lay on his side as if asleep. She dismounted and knelt next to him and noticed that his limbs lay in odd positions. A few flies already buzzed about his face. Sugar picked up his hand to untie the sleeves of the white, gold-studded gauntlet and found the arm bent like a reed. It was shattered. Gelatinous. She removed the first gauntlet then began to work on the other. When both were tucked firmly in her belt, Talen urged the horse to another rock and she mounted up again. She tried to be careful, but Talen grunted slightly from the pain when she grabbed his shoulder to balance herself.
“We’ll need torches,” she said.
“I know a place not too far out of the way.”
He covered her hand that held his right hip. He patted it. “We’ll get him back,” Talen said. “We’ll get them all back. We have more weapons than just the teeth and the gauntlets.”
It was a brave sentiment. She just wished that it were true.
“We have the victor’s crown. That, the Widow’s codex, and a few other things that were in the Skir Master’s sack.”
“Then let’s hope,” she said, “that we find the others before we find the monster.”
Sugar knew there was no sense trying to gallop the whole way. No horse, not even one that was multiplied, could do it. So they trotted, but that gait proved too painful for Talen. In the end, they stole a small wagon and Sugar drove it while Talen held his side and grunted at every jolt.
They had to cross through three villages, clusters of less than a dozen homes. It was at these times that Sugar gave the Tailor a flick of the reins and urged him into a gallop. They fooled nobody, but she could see from their faces that she and Talen perplexed them. And it was enough to keep them from raising a hue and cry.
When they rode up to the old Koramite chandler and Sugar saw toddlers digging in the dirt in the yard, she had second thoughts. But Talen called out before she could say anything.
“We’ve heard news,” the chandler said.
Talen waited.
“I trust your da,” the chandler finally said. He had only three torches, but he agreed to make more and set his daughter to warming the resin and his skinny wife to cutting lengths of rope while the grandchildren looked on in silence.
When they’d finished another three, Sugar said, “We need to go.”
“These won’t last long,” said the chandler. “It takes a good day or two for the resin or tallow to properly saturate the rope. These will burn too quickly.”
“We can’t wait for more,” said Sugar.
“But what if the cave is a mile long?” asked Talen.
“Then a few more torches won’t matter, will they?” said Sugar.
Talen paused for a long time. “You’re right,” he said. Then he turned and fed the Tailor the last bit of oats. When he finished, they climbed in the wagon and bid the chandler farewell.
They drove on for some time. When they passed the last village, Sugar turned into the woods and followed the trail she’d taken the day before until the way narrowed and would not allow the wagon farther. From there they rode doubled up to the spot where she’d seen the grayfans, then it was up the the hill. A few dozen yards from the cave, she stopped and dismounted. Talen slid off with a grunt. He was breathing hard and clutched his shoulder. “Get this thing off of me,” he said.
She unclasped the buckles of the cuirass and let it drop to the ground.
Talen untied one of the saddlebags. He pulled out a small square of red cloth and unwrapped the crown. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?”
It didn’t look like anything at all. A square disk woven of golden wires. She touched the metal square with one finger. “It doesn’t feel like much either.”
“And yet the Creek Widow practically knelt on the ground and prayed to it.”
“Let us hope it is everything she said it was.”
Talen nodded, then wrapped it back up and stuffed it in his pants pocket.
Sugar took the Tailor’s reins and tied him to a tree. Then she unbundled the torches and gave them to Talen to carry in his good arm.
“Shouldn’t we just let him go?” asked Talen.
What kind of an attitude was that? “I’m coming back,” she said. “We might need him to carry the others.”
“Of course,” said Talen, but he was looking at the mouth of the cave and she could tell he wasn’t quite sure.
The chandler had given them a flint striker to light the torches. She took it and worked it to shoot a thin spray of sparks onto the torch. A number landed on the wet rope and glowed. She blew on them. They glowed brighter, then a small flame spurted up. Soon the whole torch head was burning. She handed it to Talen. “I’m going to need both hands for the teeth.”
“Give them to me,” said Talen. He took the burning torch in one hand and held the others in the crook of his arm.
She pulled the white gauntlets on and fastened them. They were too big for her, but would have to do. Then she withdrew one of the gleaming teeth from the case.
They stepped around the cold stream and entered the cave with Sugar in the lead. Talen walked behind, holding the torch out to the side to minimize the shadows he cast before her.
The breeze fanned the flames on the torch. “It’s going to make them burn fast,” said Talen.
“Then we’ll have to walk quickly,” said Sugar.
She passed the spot where she’d crouched earlier. The torchlight revealed walls wet with water and slime. She tried her best to keep from stepping barefoot in the water; the cave was cool and the last thing she needed was to chill herself to the point where she could barely move.
Sidestepping the stream worked for a while, but the dry earth soon ended.
From wall to wall was water. Black, icy water.
Talen held the torch out. There was no way around it.
So be it. Sugar stepped into it. At first it only came to her ankles, but then it deepened and she found herself wading in spots up to her thighs, hoping with each step that the ground didn’t completely drop out from under her.
Her feet quickly began to ache from the cold. She had calluses built up from walking barefoot all summer, but they were not proof against the water and sharp points of the rocks.
She stumbled, caught herself, then stumbled again. She did not want to lose her grip on the tooth, and so let her knees take the brunt of the fall.
She landed on the edge of a stone underneath the surface of the water and cursed at the pain.
“Lords,” said Talen.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“No,” he said, “not that. Look.” He held the torch higher.
She pushed herself up and looked ahead. The pathway ended in a wall.
“Are you sure this is the right cave?”
“I’m sure,” she said. But then her courage faltered: maybe the thing climbed the walls. Furthermore, in many places the torchlight did not reveal this wall’s total height. Maybe the creature’s lair was up, not forward, and they’d already walked past it.
She took the torch from Talen and splashed forward. When she got to the wall, she held the torch up. The jagged wall stood perhaps twelve or fifteen feet high. Water dripped down from the ceiling. She could hear water splashing from above like a brook cascading over a small fall. She reached out and felt the slippery rock of the wall. There was no way they could scale it.
“There,” said Talen and motioned to the right. “We can get up that way.”
On her right the rock face was broken and free of slime. It looked like a narrow ledge joined up with the area above the wall.
“How are you going to get up that?” she asked.
“You go first, then pull me up with the rope.”
She looked at him. “I don’t know if your lame carcass is worth it.”
“Oh, it’s worth it,” said Talen.
She looked back up into the blackness. “It’s going to be up there waiting for me.”
“Maybe,” said Talen.
“And I can’t climb that holding the tooth in my hand.”
“No, you can’t. But I’ll hold the light for you.”
“Oh, that’s a big help.”
He shrugged.
“I’ll carry the torch in my teeth,” she said. At least then she’d have light when she got to the top. She put the hag’s tooth back into its case. Then she tied the case to her body. She didn’t take off the gauntlets. If something was up there she wouldn’t have time to retrieve the case and put them on. When she finished tying the case to her, she put the stem of the torch between her teeth, then began to climb.
If the creature caught them now they were lost.
There were plenty of foot-and handholds, but they were not as dry as they seemed. And her dripping clothes only added to the problem. But even if it had been dry, her feet and legs were still stiff and hurting from the icy water. Nevertheless, she rose. It was slick and slow going and she expected the monster to appear at any moment.
But then she reached the ledge. It was perhaps two feet wide and more than enough for her to sit on. She clambered over the edge, and then took the torch from her mouth and held it to see farther down the passage.
The ceiling seeped. Long stalactites and stalagmites had formed, looking like huge caramel teeth. Farther down, water poured out of a rent in the side of the corridor, then slid over the wall. Beyond that was blackness.
The ledge did indeed join that passage.
She untied the case, placed it on the ledge beside her, then threw down one end of the rope.
Talen tied the remaining torches into a bundle, and she hauled them up. When the torches were resting next to her, she held the light out for Talen.
“I can do it without a rope,” he said.
“It’s slicker than it appears,” she said.
“I can feel that,” he said. “Especially where you dripped.”
He climbed, gingerly at first, then began to proceed at a good pace. Soon he was almost to the top
“Ha,” he said. “Lame indeed.” But at that moment his footing slipped and he lurched to the side, then backward. He tried to grab the ledge with his bad arm, and winced. She reached out for him, but instead of grabbing her hand, he grabbed a thick handful of her hair.
His grasp caught her off guard and she was yanked toward him.
Talen shouted his dismay, his eyes wide.
They were both going to pitch over the ledge.
Then Sugar caught a seam in the rock on the ledge with both hands and pushed back. It was like a man trying to tug a donkey, except in this instance Talen was the man, holding on to a fistful of her hair, and she was the donkey.
He twisted, and for a moment she thought his weight would pull them over, or pull her hair out, but then he got a secure foothold. The change in balance was enough for her to reach up and grab his arm, and then with a mighty tug, pull him over the brink and onto the ledge.
Talen finally let go of her hair and pulled himself to sit with his back against the wall. He held his shoulder and grimaced.
Sugar felt her stinging scalp. “You couldn’t have grabbed my outstretched hand? Lords, I don’t know who’s going to kill me first-you or the monster.”
“I’m doing my best.”
The way he said it made it sound as if he were doing his best to kill her. She looked over at him and laughed. It was unexpected. Probably nothing but nerves. Yet it felt good.
Talen finally understood what he’d said and laughed with her.
“I guess we could look on the bright side,” she said. “If it wasn’t already aware, your yelling has certainly alerted the monster to our presence. So that will save us some walking.”
“There you go,” he said. “Now give me the torch. If I’m going to meet my death, it’s going to be with thawed toes.”
That was a good idea. They both turned and sat cross-legged facing each other with her holding the torch between their bare feet. Talen’s back faced the main corridor beyond.
The warmth was wonderful.
“That’s going to be a bugger climbing back down,” he said.
“No. Next time, seeing how poor a climber you are, we’ll just be sure to use the rope. I think I’ll tie it around your neck.”
He smiled.
Something sounded in the corridor behind Talen’s back.
Talen slowly reached for the torch and took it from her hand.
Sugar opened the case and withdrew the hag’s tooth. There was not enough room to stand up, and she doubted whether the monster could fit on this ledge, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t climb up just as they had.
They waited until the torch had burned through the rope and now was little more than a fire stick.
“I don’t think anything’s there,” said Talen.
“If something were,” she said, “then at least we could get this over with.”
“Well, we won’t get over anything squatting here,” he said.
She looked at him. He was not some strapping armsman. Not a formidable warrior. But she was happy he was with her.
“What?” he said.
“We’re going to have to light another torch.”
Talen nodded. He took one from the bundle tied with rope and lit it.
“Let me go first,” she said. “The last thing I want is for the monster to snatch you and leave me trying to strike it in the dark.”
“What are you going to do? Crawl over me?”
“Exactly,” she said.
When he saw she was serious, he lay on his belly. She crawled over him, careful to not to touch his ribs or shoulder, and then moved along the ledge until it joined the main passage and they could stand up.
Talen held the torch up and scanned the ground. “There,” he said and pointed to a spot on the tunnel floor. “And there.”
Sugar looked at the ground. There were a brief series of regular markings on the floor. They were partial footprints. Not a human’s. But something two-legged that was large and twisted its right foot slightly as it walked. “We’re in the right place,” she said. “That’s a comfort.”
Talen held the torch higher, illuminating the path beyond the stalactites.
The cavern walls here were much different from the ones below. They rose up to the ceiling in smooth lines with patterns carved into them.
“This is stone-wight work,” Talen said.
“Do you think this monster is one of them?”
“I don’t know.”
At her feet, covered in thick dust, were different-colored stones set in a geometric pattern. She wondered where the bat dung was. A cave such as this should be heaped high, beetles crawling about in it. But there was no dung. No bats. No cave vermin.
“You keep your ears perked,” said Sugar. Then they proceeded down the corridor, always just a stride or two from the swallowing dark.
They passed many carvings. One was of a great tree with all manner of beasts in it. Another of a bear carved with such fine detail she could see individual locks of its fur. Yet another contained a panel of ancient writing carved from top to bottom.
At one point she thought she’d heard something again. They froze, her waiting for the creature to come running out of the shadows, Talen stepping forward and to the side so the torch would illuminate more of the corridor.
She decided the sound was some trick of the cave, and proceeded forward, still tracking the creature by the occasional marks the creature made as it walked. She held the hag’s tooth ready in one hand, the case in the other. The silver glimmered in the torchlight. The tooth was long and felt well-balanced for throwing. But she couldn’t risk a long throw. After seeing the battle with the Skir Master, she knew she’d only have one chance.
With every step she became more certain that their names were going to be added to the list of those fools who had been swallowed by the ancient stone-wight ruins. Soon the second torch burned low. Talen lit the third. They now had only three left. Not long after that they arrived at a fork. Talen held the torch at a low angle to create better shadows that might reveal footprints. They walked down to the right a few paces and found nothing. A few paces down the left passage Sugar found another half print.
Talen froze and sniffed.
Sugar sniffed as well. Sulfur.
“The monster’s up there,” she said. “In that stink.”
“Aye,” said Talen.
Sugar gripped the tooth in her gauntlet, the gold studs gleaming in the torchlight, and took a step forward.