Severed Souls

CHAPTER 59

By late in the afternoon, as they worked their way ever downward through the dense, forested landscape, the ground became more rugged as fractures and rifts widened and deepened into wooded chasms. It wasn’t long before they found themselves descending between soaring walls of gray granite. Low, heavy, wet clouds scudded by between the mountains soaring up overhead, conspiring with the close walls to make for a confining, gloomy journey. Drizzle dampened the walls and their faces.

Some of the horizontal sections of slick stone in the walls to the sides overhung the stacked slabs of rock below, so there was no hope of climbing out. They were going to have to follow the twisting course of the chasms if they were going to find a pass through the mountains. Richard knew from having seen the crooked canyons from above that it was going to be a confusing, difficult maze to traverse.

If there was ever a natural barrier guarding the back door of a city, this was it. He just hoped it wasn’t also poisonous.

As they descended deeper into the main chasm leading them into the only possibility of passage through the mountains, they found it to be surprisingly broad. From up high on the distant prominence behind them it had been hard to tell precisely how big it really was down in the canyons. Now, Richard could see that in places the walls were hundreds, and in places thousands, of feet high. In some spots the floor of the twisting gorges broadened out, with the walls closed in closer overhead, almost touching, to create a murky, sometimes subterranean landscape of thick growth down below. In spots the rock bridged the walls high overhead.

Richard spotted flocks of small birds darting under the stone bridges. The walls probably provided relatively safe nesting spots for a variety of birds. The canyons were alive with small wildlife, everything from gnats and birds in the air, to centipedes and voles on the ground. He knew that where there was such wildlife, there would be predators.

The growth at the bottom of the chasms, while similar to the forests above, was denser. The daylight down in the bottom was limited by the towering walls, so the trees grew more slowly. Ancient, monarch spruce created brief areas where the forest floor at the bottom of the chasm was open among the massive trunks, so that they could see the walls off to either side. The thick beds of brown needles made for a spongy mat to walk on.

In other places, the space between the walls narrowed and smaller hardwoods and brush held sway. The maples made for a denser forest, with tangles of young saplings crowding the ground where older trees had fallen, providing some precious light. Soldiers pushed small, slender trunks over with their boots to make it easier for those following behind. The ground was deep in places with drifted leaves and debris that had accumulated between boulders and rocks, and because of how wet it was, it smelled of rot. In a few flat areas, the water standing in long, stagnant stretches was alive with bugs atop and under the water, and snails around the edges.

The walls above them seemed to continually weep water. Long green streaks of slime grew down the walls where it looked like water almost continually seeped down the rock face, staining it black. In other spots, where the rock walls higher up tilted inward, water dripped in thin rivulets from hundreds of feet overhead, splashing on the ground, creating either bare spots on the rock floor or in other places thick wonderlands of mosses growing in shapes like fuzzy, miniature cities. In a few spots the water fell from such towering height that it mostly turned to mist before reaching the bottom.

All of that water running and falling down the walls meant that travel along the bottom of the chasms was a wet, miserable trek either through a jungle of wet undergrowth or over stretches of sloping granite ledge with sheets of water running over a surface of slime that made it extremely slippery. At times the fall of water echoed, and at other times it roared.

Richard didn’t like having to travel through the chasms. He knew that it was dangerous to be in such a confined space. They could usually deviate a little if need be, but in this case, down in the canyons, they had no choice but to get through or turn back and spend days going around.

Richard knew that he and Kahlan would not live long enough to go the long way around. He knew they were running out of time.

The thing he didn’t like about having to go through such a place, though, was that if they needed to escape any kind of predator that hunted the canyons, they had nowhere to run and rarely anywhere to hide or seek cover. If they were killed by a predator they would be just as dead as dying from the poison. At least the thick growth in most places would prevent the flying predators they had encountered before from easily getting in at them.

Richard shielded his eyes from the falling drizzle of water to look ahead into the various fractured slivers of passageways, divided by thin walls of rock. Some of those slim walls had collapsed, leaving jumbles of boulders and debris filling the narrow canyons. As they made their way farther in, they saw that in places the thin rock walls had disintegrated, leaving holes going back and forth between adjoining canyons.

The farther in they went, the more immense those holes became. In some areas they formed shallow caves. In other places they led a short distance through darkness to mossy rocks at the bottoms of towering cliffs in adjacent chasms on the other side.

To be able to continue on, they had to make their way up and over stacks of granite slabs littering some of the canyon floors. Some of the huge pieces of stone had been worn down and rounded over by the continual fall of water. As the granite eroded over time, it crumbled away to create gravel beds. Mosses, ferns, and small shrubs grew thick and green in the maze of passageways and tunnels. Vines clung to rocks and climbed the walls, making some look more leaf than rock.

Richard snatched Kahlan’s arm just before she stepped on a green snake stretched out along folds in the moss. She let out a sigh of relief as she went around the snake. The men passed word back to be careful of it. Richard didn’t know if it was poisonous or not, but he and Kahlan already had enough poison in them and Richard wasn’t about to test his luck.

The way ahead offered a choice of winding, forested chasms and enormous caverns. Many of those caverns were passageways interconnecting the chasms. Looking through as they passed, they were offered views through the short stretch of darkness at light and lush growth at the other side.

As they climbed the stacked slabs to enter a cavern leading to a chasm on the other side going in the direction they needed to go, he saw something swoop low in the darkness. It wasn’t a bat—it was far too big—but the way it flew reminded him of a bat.

Richard’s blood ran cold when he peered farther into the dark passageway, over the heads of the men, and saw something dark moving on the surface of the rock above their heads. The whole ceiling of the cavern seemed to come alive, the way a cave full of bats was alive. As the things moved, it stirred the air just enough that the gagging stench of guano wafted out of the cavern.

Richard crossed a finger over his lips, signaling the men behind to be as quiet as possible, then urgently gestured for them to go back the way they had come. The men out front, though, turned back and started running out of the cavern, suddenly yelling for everyone to run. Richard didn’t know what they had seen, but by the way these fearless soldiers were running, he was not about to stop them to ask questions. He turned Kahlan around and started back with her.