Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
Everything in my being begs to turn in my saddle, to crane my head, to catch one last glimpse of the slender maiden standing in that doorway. Everything in me urges to yank my morleth’s reins, haul the beast about, and gallop back across the courtyard, right up those great stone steps. To leap from my saddle, catch her in my arms, and crush my lips against hers in a cataclysmic kiss.
Gods on high and deep below! How am I to protect myself from this need? I crave her presence like I crave air in my lungs. My hands burn with the desire to run my fingers through her hair, to glide my palms over the soft curves of her body. My lips and tongue starve for a taste of her sweetness. I long to drink her in, every inch of her. To know her and, in the knowing, to claim her. To make her mine.
But I cannot. I dare not. For it is not my heart alone which is at stake. It is the fate of all Mythanar. Never can I forget it. I must put up every barrier, every shield. And when those threaten to crumble, I must retreat. Put as much distance between us as I can. It is the only way.
I shake my head, focus on the road ahead. The whole company surges into a gallop, moving swiftly and fluidly down through the city, across the bridge, and on to the tunnels and darkness outside Mythanar. Once we’ve left the brilliant lorst lights behind, the morleth are happier, and their riders have an easier time keeping them under control. I’ve brought five of my finest with me on this mission, including Hael. Armor-clad and helmed, they are ready for action. I can only hope there will be no need, and this mission will prove a simple reconnaissance. That we’ll find my misplaced brother, have a quick word with Lord Korh of Hoknath, and be home again by dimness.
Every instinct tells me it won’t be that simple.
I turn and catch Hael’s eye. She urges her morleth up beside mine. It sticks out its long neck and takes a bite out of Knar’s shoulder, ripping away a strip of coarse black fur to reveal the ugly scales beneath. Knar snorts and snaps back, but Hael and I yank their heads and wrestle the beasts into submission. Only then does Hael speak: “What is your plan, my King?”
She’s very stiff, formal. Of course, Hael is always professional when on duty, but I cannot help wondering if we’ve forever lost the easy friendship we once shared, if we’ll ever be able to trust one another again. It seems impossible.
“According to Jot, the riverway is blocked,” I reply with equal rigidity. “We’ll take the old Karthur Channel instead.” Karthur used to be a swift, narrow river wending many miles deep through the Under Realm. Following a stirring three generations ago, it dried up, leaving behind a dry channel. It serves well enough as a highway between Mythanar and Hoknath but is rarely used in favor of the swifter river routes.
“It will be dark,” Hael says. “Korh does not keep the channel lit.”
“We have our own lorst stones. And the morleth will like it.”
Hael cannot argue this fact. She nods. It feels good to have her back at my side, to know I have her support and strength. Despite everything, she’s still the one I trust the most to have my back in a difficult situation. Still, a small part of me wishes I’d left her behind. I would be easier in my mind knowing Faraine was under Hael’s watchful eye. But it’s high time I gave Yok greater responsibilities. The boy has proven his courage if not his good sense. He’s young. Time will season him into a true warrior, like his sister.
Besides, it would be cruel not to bring Hael on this mission. I know what Sul means to her . . . even if, in my personal opinion, she could do much better than that reprobate brother of mine.
After an hour’s hard riding, we come to the mouth of the old channel. It’s much broader but darker than the road we’ve been traveling. Hael gives the command, and my companions and I affix lorst stones to our helmets. Then I steer Knar’s head toward the opening. As we draw near, however, he suddenly rolls his flame-ringed eyes, snorts, and stamps his hooves. I urge him again, and he shakes his whole body so hard, my bones rattle inside my armor. “What is it, boy?” I rub his scaly neck. “Do you smell something?”
He stands at the channel entrance, nostrils flared, ears pricked forward. Every muscle in his body is tensed.
“What’s wrong?” Hael asks, driving her own nervous steed up beside mine.
“There’s something in there.” Tentatively, I sniff the air. Then I hiss through my teeth as a familiar sour stench fills my nostrils. “Raog!”
Hael curses. Turning in her saddle, she hastily barks for everyone to don their masks. I’ve already pulled mine out, a long, ugly beak filled with crushed miraisis blossoms. It fits tight over the lower half of my face, covering both mouth and nose.
“We cannot take the morleth in there,” Hael says, dismounting. Her voice is muffled behind her own mask. “Morleth are mad enough as it is. Rabid morleth are not a problem I’m prepared to deal with.”
I can’t argue. Instead, I motion for my people to dismount. Immediately, the morleth slip out of this dimension, vanishing one after another in puffs of sulfur. Soon my five comrades and I stand at the mouth of the channel. The lorst stones on our helmets cast weird, long-beaked shadows behind us.
“These masks offer only three hours’ worth of protection,” Hael says warily.
“Do you want to go back?” I ask.
She does not answer, merely grips the hilt of her sword. I turn to the rest of the brave men and women standing with me. “I cannot predict what lies ahead, either on this road or when we reach Hoknath. If poison has taken the city, we must be prepared for the worst. I will not make any of you continue unless you are prepared to meet whatever lies ahead. If you prefer to return to Mythanar, tell me now.”
The four of them exchange looks. They are my bravest and boldest—Toz, Wrag, Grir, and Lur, seasoned warriors with their share of scars. Captain Toz’s small eyes spark beneath the stone ledge of his brow. “Let’s go find the guthakug prince,” he growls.
I answer with a grim grin, then step forward. I intend to lead the way, but Hael insists on taking the fore, and I don’t argue with her. I’ve never traveled this winding road on foot before, and I’m unused to such complete darkness. There are no natural lorst stones in this stretch of cavern, and none have been set in place to light the way. Our own small lights gleam feebly against the weight of impenetrable black. Trolde though I am, I find it singularly oppressive. It isn’t long before I wish I’d chosen a different route.
My light catches on something bright. It flickers in the tail of my eye, drawing my head sharply to the right. I turn. Blink. Shake my head and look again. The light catches on a twinkling necklace of delicate gems, strung around the neck of a woman. A woman whose torso lies at a strange angle among the stones on the side of the road. A woman whose lower half is entirely missing.
My blood turns to ice.
“Look, my King,” Hael says, close to my elbow. She points.
I angle my lorst light to reveal another corpse. Then another and another. So many corpses. Torn apart. Strewn across the dry riverbed. “Morar-juk!” The words escape my lips in a little puff of air as my lungs constrict inside my chest.
“What happened to them?” Lur’s voice is high and a little too loud in this terrible black stillness. “What did this?”
None of us can answer. So we continue silently through the horror until we come upon another body, different from the rest. A low, four-legged, blind monster, with a bone-plated head and massive, rock-tearing claws.
“Woggha,” Hael says. She strides swiftly forward to inspect it and pulls a spear out from the base of its skull. Some brave soul had brought it down. Someone who died soon after, I suspect. No one escaped this tunnel, no one reached the safety of Mythanar.
“One cave devil couldn’t have done all of this,” Wrag says, turning his head this way and that, his light flashing across the corpses. He’s right. Woggha are solitary creatures. It’s rare to come upon more than one at a time. But this level of carnage could only be the work of many devils.
Where have they all gone? We find four more woggha corpses among the other dead. Not enough to account for the scope of this slaughter. I lift my gaze to the high walls surrounding us, all the various nooks and crevices. Woggha are like cave crickets, able to slip in anywhere at any time. They can find ways through what looks to the rest of us like solid rock. “Stay on alert.” I say. “Weapons out. Be prepared to meet these fiends head-on.”
We proceed cautiously, passing more dead bodies as we go. Too many to count with certainty, and only a few of them fighters. Most, from what I can discern in the dim light, were ordinary people. All of whom seemed to be fleeing in one direction: away from Hoknath.
Dread tightens in my gut.
At last, we come to the end of the channel. It opens onto a vast cave, bigger than the cavern of Mythanar. Lake Hoknath, still, dark, and deep, lies some fifty feet below us. Giant glowworms build webs along the cavern ceiling. They gleam an eerie blue-green, lighting up the space, a very different light source from the crystal light of our home cavern, but beautiful. The glow illuminates the city itself—numerous gigantic stalactites which hang suspended above the lake. The city dwellings are carved directly into the stone with bridges suspended between them. I’ve journeyed here many times in my life. This city is familiar to me. But it’s always been a bustling metropolis of activity and commerce.
Now, all is deathly still.
The water level has risen significantly since the last time I was here. The nearest of the giant stalactites is partway submerged, the lowermost streets and dwellings flooded. Large chunks have broken off one of the other massive formations and fallen into the lake, jutting out like the broken body of a dead giant. Overhead, patches of the glowworm webbing have gone dark and dead. I see no sign of the great worms themselves.
“There.” Hael points. I look down to the water below us where dozens of small boats have been pulled onto the shore and abandoned. “They must have tried to evacuate,” she says. I know she’s referring to the dead in the tunnel.
With a grim nod, I scan the cavern wall, the places where riverways emerge, cascading down the rock to fill the lake below. One of those is the channel Sul traveled. I hope when the cave-in happened, the rushing water washed him out on this end, and he managed to keep himself from drowning.
“We’ll take the boats,” I say. “Search the shoreline. Then we’ll venture into the city and see what we can find.”
My people fall in line down the narrow stair. We split into three of the smaller crafts. Hael and I take one boat and set off at once for the nearest riverway cascade. Hael’s shoulders are tense as she sits in the prow, using a paddle to navigate around large boulders. My eyes are peeled for any sign of my brother, but I can’t help casting glances back over my shoulder at the ruinous city. It’s so dead. So still. So like Dugorim was when we returned through the Between Gate. But Dugorim was a small mining town on the edge of my kingdom; Hoknath is a mighty center of the Under Realm, an ancient and densely populated city.
“My King.”
Startled, I pull my gaze away from the city to meet Hael’s wide, pale eyes. “Look down,” she says.
Frowning, I cast a quick glance to the water below us. Then I look again, peer under the rippling dark surface. There are lights down there. Lorst stones, flickering with the last of their energy, like dying stars. Their glow illuminates a world under water—a world of the dead. So many dead. Men, women. Children. Too many children, clutched in the arms of their parents. White bodies turned gray in death.
I cannot see far. The light is not strong enough. But I can see enough. “They jumped,” I whisper and look up at the hanging city. All the vitality seems to seep from my body. “Like Dugorim. They jumped to their deaths.”
We should go. At once. If the poison is still in the air, our masks will not protect us much longer. We too will go mad, one by one, killing each other before we kill ourselves. We should go, get away from this place. Seal all the riverway entrances to Hoknath and never speak of the city again. We should . . . we must . . .
“Aruk, hirak!”
Captain Toz’s growling voice yanks me back to the present. I turn to the boat he shares with Lur. Both of them gesticulate wildly to a point in front of my own craft. Frowning, I lean to one side, peer around Hael. A large chunk of broken rock juts from the water off to our left. I look again. There’s a figure pulled up on top of that stone, lying there like a broken doll, one arm twisted oddly. It’s Sul.
Hael gives an inarticulate cry. Without waiting for word from me, she angles our craft toward that rock and paddles with all her strength. We shoot across the dark water. “Sul!” I cry. My voice echoes hollowly in the dead stillness of the cavern. The figure on the rock does not stir.
Hael is wild in her efforts. She nearly steers our craft into the rock. At the last moment, she sticks out her paddle and pushes away so that our prow does not crash and splinter. “We need to look for a place to—” I start to say. Too late.
Hael leaps from the boat. Catching the side of the boulder, she hauls herself up and clambers to Sul’s body. She slips, one foot hitting the water, but adjusts her grip and pulls into a more secure position. Reaching out, she presses her fingers to my brother’s neck. “He’s alive!” she calls, twisting to look back at me.
“Yes,” a thin but silky voice responds, “but not for long if you keep shouting like that. You’ll bring the rest of the cavern crashing down on our heads.”
“Morar-juk,” I breathe, more like a prayer than a curse. That was unmistakably Sul. Alive, and well enough to muster his habitual sarcasm. I angle the boat around, craning for a better look.
Sul rolls his head. White hair trails over his sickly gray face. He blinks up at Hael. “My gods!” he says, the words thick on his tongue. “I never realized just how beautiful you are, Captain. You’re such a formidable specimen, it’s easy to overlook. But really, you’re like a warrior angel come up from the deep heavens to avenge us poor souls above.”
Hael shoots me a look over her shoulder. “He’s delirious.”
Sul grunts. “Very likely. I was just dreaming I was being kissed by an angel. Would you care to kiss me? Purely as a matter of study, of course. I’d like to see if it’s the same.”
“Shut up, Sul.” My captain’s trembling hands move over his body, searching for injuries. She looks at me again. “His arm is broken.”
“Happened in the cave-in.” Sul grimaces. “I thought for sure I was going to be pulverized to dust and then drowned for good measure. But the river shot me out into the lake and washed me up onto this stone. I suppose the Deeper Dark still has some purpose for me. Or maybe the other gods didn’t want me hanging about heaven, seducing the angels. Either way—”
A hand bursts out of the water. Before I have time to bark a warning, it latches onto Hael’s ankle. She gasps a vicious, “Juk!”
Then she’s yanked off her perch on the stone and dragged under the dark surface.
“Hael!” Sul cries, pushing himself painfully upright. “Vor, she can’t—”
I don’t wait to hear the rest. I’m already yanking off my helmet and breastplate and diving in after her.
