“String,” I say, “where are we going? Is it dangerous?” It feels dangerous, the cool air chilling me instead of comforting me this time, the darkness haunting, not hiding. It’s as if the dark here is a presence, not just an absence of light.
He turns and leans gently towards me, lowering his head and looking at me through wide eyes. They glimmer, reflecting the memory of the strange light in the cavern behind us. “Not dangerous,” he says. “Wonderful!” He walks on, then stops and looks at me again, head to one side, one corner of his mouth raised in a sardonic smile. “But dangerous if you’re on your own. Dangerous, without me.” He moves on.
For a moment I speculate on what String did before the Ruin, before he took on the mantle of a Lord. But the mere idea of him existing in a normal world seems alien and abstract, and in a way it disturbs me more than the knowledge of his Lordship.
Around an outcrop of rock the darkness recedes, and suddenly we arrive at another cavern. This one is open to the sky. A great split in the rock, millions of years old, has formed what is effectively a deep pothole, its entrance eroded by weathering until the walls have shallowed out into a gully. It reminds me of a great fossilised throat, and String and I are standing in the stomach. The hairs on my neck perk up and goose bumps prickle my arms and shoulders. I have the sense of being an intruder, like walking in on someone having sex or gate crashing a funeral. But the feeling is more primal. I feel as though have offended a god.
The gully appears empty, and accessible only from the tunnel we have just emerged from. The floor is uneven and raised at one edge like a ramp to the walls. I can see no reason for my unease, but Della always told me that feelings tell more than sight, and I’m terrified. I assume that String’s words have made me nervous and skittish, but when I glance at him he appears in the same frantic state. That scares me more than anything: the idea that this man is scared of whatever sleeps here.
“What is it?”
String does not hear me, or chooses not to. “Can you feel the power? Does it grab your skull, twist your spine? Can you sense the majesty of this place? This is the real god, Gabe, this is the genuine Provider. A god you can feel. A god who will help you, cure you.” He looks at me, his eyes wide and alive, glimmering with emotion. “You’ll be cured. Made better. Just like Jade. Just like all the others outside.”
I want to go. Suddenly the last place I want to be is here, in this deep gully that encases me like a prison, or a tomb. But String grabs my arm and guides me to the edge of the hole, the place where the ground is ramped against the wall. I start to tremble as we approach it, and I think I can feel String shaking as well.
He hauls me up the slight incline until we are standing on a small ledge, our heads touching rock where the overhang curves inward.
I look down. There is a large stone slab on the top of the raised area, edges blurred by time. I try to convince myself that its surface is not decorated with crude letters and drawings, but they are there, and they will not be denied. The pictures show mere remnants of what must once have been a magnificent tableau: half a reptilian head; the face of a god in the sun; a trail of bones, skulls crushed under wagon wheels. The words are similarly weathered, and I can not decipher any of them. But for that, I am pleased. They look so alien — so unlike anything I have ever seen, in life or history — that I can barely imagine how old they are.
“I think it’s a tomb,” String says. “And whoever is buried here must have been someone … special. This is where the power comes from.”
I can feel it, an implied vibration that enters my holed shoes and seems to shiver my bones, fingering its way through my marrow and cooling everything it touches. I want to shout, but something prevents me. It feels like a hand over my mouth, but I can still breathe. I want to run, but I am restrained. Something holds me where I am, though String is standing several steps away.
Then I can go, and I do. I turn, shout incoherently, and run. String tries to hold me, but grabs only my attention.
“Not that way,” he hisses. I realise that I had been heading towards the blank, strange wall of the cave. I spin, throw his hand from my arm and sprint into the tunnel. The darkness seems more welcoming than the polluted light of that place.
It takes me several minutes to find my way out. Emerging from the cave is like a re-birth. The daylight is wonderful. I keep running until I am far from the ravine, almost at the moat of broken glass, and there I collapse into the dust and stare up at the sky, eyes closed, while the sun slowly burns my face.