Straken

Ten

In a second, much darker world, in a stronger, more heavily warded Keep, in a place and time where life was measured by the thickness of sinew and iron and the durability of hope was as ephemeral as mist, another attempt at escape was hanging by a thread.

Grianne Ohmsford lay motionless on the floor of her cell, a ragged, broken creature, listening to the sounds of an approaching Goblin’s heavy breathing. The guard it had come to relieve was dead, and in its place, sitting cloaked and hooded not ten feet from her cell door, was Weka Dart. Her would–be rescuer and the one creature in that wretched world who had demonstrated any compassion for her, he was also her betrayer and a liar of such monstrous proportions that it was impossible for her to know his intentions from one moment to the next.

Grianne Ohmsford, Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order, had been reduced to a place in life where reliance on betrayers and liars was the best she could expect. How she had come to that end was still something of a mystery, although she knew the identities of those responsible. She knew, too, what was at stake, and it tethered her sanity and resourcefulness directly to a driving need to get clear of the dungeons and find her way back to her own world.

But once the Goblin caught sight of the poorly concealed Weka Dart—which it surely must—the alarm would be given and her last hope of ever escaping would be ended. She could not let that happen. Whatever her misgivings about the Ulk Bog, however uncertain his loyalty, he remained her one chance. Her expectations were reduced to little more than gambling on the mercurial nature of a creature she barely understood. It would have to be enough. Weka Dart would have to do.

She stirred, deliberately drawing the Goblin’s attention. It turned toward her, hearing her scuffling sounds, her whimpers, her sudden gasps, watching her attempts to rise from the floor on which she had lain by then for the better part of three days. It grunted something at her, taking hold of the bars to the cell, leaning forward and peering in. She was an amusement that could keep it entertained during the long hours ahead, a curiosity to be enjoyed and, perhaps, even teased. She could see it in the Goblin’s eyes. She could read it in the look on its face.

Then a shadow slipped behind the gnarled figure, swift as smoke on wind, and the Goblin inhaled sharply as a knife blade thrust through its throat and pinned it against the bars. Weka Dart held the Goblin in place until it was limp, then dropped it on the dungeon floor and kicked the body aside.

« They should all go the same way,” the Ulk Bog hissed. There was a look in his eyes that Grianne hadn’t seen before and wasn’t sure she wanted to see again.

She pushed herself off the floor and limped over to the cell door. Her mouth was dry and her head was pounding. Her vision was blurred from too many days of no food and water and no real sleep. She was still impacted by her ordeal with the Furies, her impulses still governed by her need to be one with them, to mewl and spit and snarl. She fought those impulses, but the effort was debilitating.

« Open the door, Weka Dart!» she snapped at him. «Let me out! Hurry!»

She did not mean her words to sound so urgent, did not intend to appear so desperate. But her needs overpowered her intentions, and the truth escaped before she could contain it. She would do anything to escape. She would give anything to distance herself from the horror she had endured as the Straken Lord’s prisoner.

But instead of opening the door, Weka Dart glanced sharply at her, an uncertain look in his yellow eyes.

« What are you waiting for?» she snapped. «Do you have a way to free me or not? Is our bargain still good? Will you honor it as you have said you would?»

« Our bargain is not complete,” he growled. He reached into his pocket and produced an iron key, holding it up for her to see. «My end of the bargain is here—the key to your cell door. I can take off the conjure collar, as well. But what of your end of the bargain? What of the service I require of you?»

« Forgiveness? You already have that. I have told you that by telling me the truth, you have gained that forgiveness. I don’t want revenge on you. I won’t harm you when I’m free. You have my word!»

His strange, wizened face scrunched down farther on itself and the yellow eyes glittered. «Your forgiveness was the price for my truth. That bargain is made and done. This bargain is new, Grianne of the Straken Lord’s jails. If I give you your freedom—from this cell and from the collar—you must give me what I need in turn.»

She stared at him, realizing suddenly that he had failed to reveal as yet his reasons for coming back. Coming to her aid was not something the little Ulk Bog would do out of the kindness of his heart. He had abandoned her, cast her off as useless to him when she had refused to allow him to lead her where he wanted—which was right where she had ended up anyway. But he had lost his chance at reinstatement as Catcher with Tael Riverine, a loss that left him homeless and shunned. He had come back because he expected her to do something about it.

« I can’t give you anything,” she told him. «It isn’t within my power to give you anything.»

« Ah, Straken, you underestimate yourself. You are exactly the one who can help me, and it is for that reason that I will help you. A favor for a favor. I don’t want much. I don’t want anything more than what you want for yourself. Freedom. From these prisons and from this world. I want you to take me with you.»

Take me with you.She stared at him. Take him out of the Forbidding, he meant. Take him back with her into her own world. Voluntarily release a creature that had been locked away by the Faerie world since before the dawn of Mankind.

« You want to come with me?» she asked him, still not certain she was hearing him right. «You want to leave the Forbidding and come back with me into my world?»

He licked his lips and nodded eagerly. «When you find a way to get free, you must free me, as well. I know that you were brought here against your wishes. I know that you are trapped. But I have seen what you can do. I think that you know a way back—or if you do not, that you will find one. I have seen how resourceful you are, much more so than any other Straken I have ever encountered. You may be a match for Tael Riverine himself!»

« I am a match for no one,” she countered. «I don’t know if I can help you. I don’t know if I should.»

He bristled at her words, stepping back from the cell door and hissing at her like a snake. «Then I don’t know why I’m wasting my time! I don’t know why I bothered coming here at all! You would rather stay in this cell than escape back into your own world? You would rather die here? Better that than help someone like me? Is that what you are saying? That I am not worthy of your efforts, that I don’t deserve your help?»

He spit at her. «Free yourself, then!»

He wheeled and started to walk away. It took everything she had to refrain from calling out to him, from begging him to come back to her. But if he thought she needed him more than he needed her, she would be in his power, and that was a price she could not afford to pay.

He was halfway down the hall when he wheeled about, his face contorting in fury. «I came back for you!» he screamed so loudly that she jumped in spite of herself. «I risked everything to come back for you! I came to save you, and now you won’t help me? One little thing I ask of you, Straken! One tiny, little thing!»

He came rushing back down the hall, sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders shaking. «Nothing, for someone with your power! Nothing! Why won’t you do it?»

She took a deep breath. «I can’t be sure of my power here. I can’t be sure of what it will do. What if taking you out of the Forbidding is more than I can manage?»

He shook his head slowly from side to side, as if her words made no sense. «Don’t you understand, Grianne of the cat sounds? I was driven from my tribe for eating my children! They will never take me back! No Ulk Bog door will ever be open to me again! Losing the protection of Tael Riverine closed every other door, as well. Now all creatures are my enemies. I am shunned by everything that breathes. I have nowhere to go and no one who will take me in. Better I was dead than to try to live like this!»

« But why bother with me, Weka Dart?» she pressed. «If you just wait, won’t this demon that Tael Riverine has dispatched to my world break down the Forbidding and free you anyway?»

« Free me from what?» he screamed at her. «Free me from one prison so that I can go into another? Free me from one world in which I am outcast so that I can be outcast in another? I don’t want the Straken Lord to succeed! I don’t want the Forbidding destroyed! If your world becomes like the world of the Jarka Ruus, what difference will it make whether I escape into it or not!»

He pushed his face up against the bars. «You can help me, Straken. If I can help you, surely you can help me! How hard can it be for someone like you to give me what I want?»

In truth, she didn’t know. What would it take to escape the Forbidding? Was the boy foreseen by the shade of the Warlock Lord real? Was he coming to set her free, or was the prophecy a cruel trick? She couldn’t be certain, but it was the only hope she had. The shade of Brona had not lied about the truth behind the reason she had been sent into the world of the Jarka Ruus—Weka Dart had confirmed that.

She was here so that a demon could be free, a demon that would destroy the wall of the Forbidding. If Brona’s shade had told the truth about that, then it might well have been telling the truth about the mysterious boy.

So she must gamble on the words of a monster. She must accept the possibility that her only chance for escape was through the coming of a boy she didn’t know. It didn’t seem to her that Weka Dart’s hopes for escape were any less realistic than her own. While she did not relish setting the Ulk Bog free in her world, it would be infinitely worse to refuse his bargain if it meant that she must stay imprisoned, as well.

« If you release me,” she said, «I will try to find a way out of the world of the Jarka Ruus and back to my own world. If it is within my power to do so, I will take you with me. I can promise you nothing more.»

« I have your word?»

« You do.» She held up one cautionary finger. «But remember, I don’t know yet that I can find a way back for either of us. I don’t know that I can save us, even if you set me free. I don’t know that I can find a way to stop the Moric from destroying the Forbidding. I don’t know that.»

He was already working the key to her cell into the lock. «You will find a way. I know you will.»

He released her from the cell, then used a second, smaller key to unlatch the conjure collar. Stepping back, he handed her the collar, his wizened face bright with pleasure.

« I kept my keys to the cells and the collars from my days as Catcher,” he said to her. «Tael Riverine never suspected I would dare to do such a thing.»

« He has misjudged us both,” she said. She cast the collar aside. She would never wear such a thing again or ever again be anyone’s slave. «How do we get past all the guards and their demonwolves?» she asked as they stood facing each other in the empty hall.

He grinned, all his teeth showing. «We won’t go that way. That way is death. We will go another way, a way I know that few others do. It is how I got into Kraal Reach to find you in the first place. I know secrets, little Straken. 1 know many secrets.»

She didn’t doubt him. But she refrained from saying anything, gesturing for him to lead the way. She was weak from her imprisonment and lack of nourishment, and she was already wondering how far she could go before her strength failed completely. She had no idea how long she had lain semicomatose in her delusional state in that cell, but it had to have been days. During that time, she had not eaten or drunk anything that she could remember. She had barely slept, suspended between sleeping and waking, beset by dreams and dark imaginings, still caught up in the subterfuge she had used to survive her ordeal in the arena of the Furies.

Some part of her was still there, she knew, amid the cat–things, unable to quite let go of the identity of the creature she had pretended so hard to be. Her magic was a powerful thing, and when it was employed as she had employed it in the arena, she could do or be anything. But the aftereffects were equally powerful and tended to cling to her psyche like the damp leavings of a sweat brought on by nightmares. She was Grianne Ohmsford again. She was Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order once more. But she was also the Ilse Witch and the things the Ilse Witch could become. She had opened a door she had kept carefully closed for more than twenty years, and she was not sure what it would take to close it again.

They went down a corridor lined with doors that opened into cells like her own, some of them empty, some of them become containers for piles of bones and small lumps at which she chose not to look too closely. The corridor was silent and musty and empty of life. She heard Weka Dart’s breathing and the scrape of his boots, but her own passage was soundless, a wraith’s passage through darkest night.

The corridor ended at a set of narrow steps leading up, but Weka Dart took her into the shadows behind the stairs, where a rusted iron door was seated in the stone. He worked its ancient latch back and forth, a slow creaking in the deep silence, and at last the door opened into a wall of blackness.

« Very dark down here,” the Ulk Bog announced solemnly.

He reached into the blackness to produce a torch, stuck its pitch–coated tip into the flames of one already lit in the corridor behind them, and caught it aflame. He gave the fire a moment to spread, then grinned at her once more and led the way forward.

She followed him down into the earth, down stairs eroded by centuries of footsteps and moisture, into depths so frigid that the cold cut right to the bone. The tunnels they traversed smelled of old damp and raw metal, and at times she saw what looked like frost on the rock but was, in fact, patches of lichen that glowed with a strange, bright radiance. Weka Dart’s torch burned with smoky insistence, clogging the air with its distinctive smell, causing her to cough and finally forcing her to breathe through the sleeve of her tunic. There was no ventilation in the tunnels, and the smell of burning pitch trailed after them like a marker. If anyone thought to look for them down there, they would not have a hard time tracking them, she thought.

Weka Dart pressed on as if pursuit were not a concern, glancing back at her now and then to be certain she was keeping up, as if fearful he might lose her in the dark. Indeed, it wasn’t an altogether unrealistic concern. She was already having trouble keeping up with him, even absent his tendency to roam as he had earlier in their travels. Her head ached from the cold and smoke, and her body was fatigued and shaky. She wished she had looked for something to eat or drink, but she had not even thought of that, so anxious had she been to get clear of the cells. In truth, she had not eaten or drunk in any reasonable way since she had come into the Forbidding, and the gradual erosion of her energy was finally making itself felt.

Time passed, more than she could keep track of, and the trek through the tunnels beneath Kraal Reach wore on. Clearly determined to take them through as swiftly as possible, Weka Dart did not stop or even slow. From time to time, he retrieved a fresh torch from a crevice she would have passed by without even seeing, lighting it from the old one so that they could continue. Their passage wound down crude steps cut into the stone, along narrow, twisting corridors in which they were forced to stoop, and through caves thick with stalactites dripping with mineral–rich water. After a time, the air warmed a bit, and Grianne stopped shivering. The floor of the tunnels began to rise, they were moving back toward the surface.

But still their journey continued with no end in sight.

Finally, as they were passing through yet another cavern, she stumbled and fell. She lay where she had fallen, her vision blurred and her muscles aching, too tired to rise.

« Are you hurt, Straken?» Weka Dart asked, trying in vain to pull her back to her feet.

« I am exhausted,” she told him. «I have to rest.»

He shook his head. «It is not safe here.»

« I don’t care. I have to rest.»

She crawled along the floor of the cavern to an open space where she could stretch out. She was breathing so hard that the wheeze filled the silence of the cavern, frightening her with its intensity. Her head was spinning, and she felt as if all the strength had left her body.

« Do you have anything to eat?»

He produced a tuber of some sort, which she ate without questioning its strange taste, then accepted the water he produced from a gourd tucked in his clothing. She was beyond caring about the source of the offerings, beyond caring about anything but taking nourishment and going to sleep.

« I have traveled through these caverns often,” he advised, glancing around at the darkness. He sat cross–legged before her and wedged the torch upright between two stones. «That’s why I know where torches can be found to light the way. Most of them, I put there. I used these passages to leave the Keep undetected when I was Catcher for Tael Riverine. Sometimes secrecy was best.»

He shrugged. «Of course, these tunnels are home to things you don’t want to take chances with. That is why I said it is dangerous. We don’t have to worry, though. I know what they are and how to avoid them. Mostly. Some are very large, some very small. Some have no eyes, they have been down here so long. Some are things no one but me has ever seen.»

Her breathing had steadied enough that she could respond. «This whole world is filled with things I have never seen.»

« 1 suppose that’s so.» He thought a moment, rubbing his fingers across his wrinkled features. «I will not be sad to leave this world,” he said suddenly. «I will be happy to leave.»

She nodded, saying nothing.

« I was never meant to be here.» He shook his head emphatically. «I was born into this world, but it was a mistake. I should have been born into yours. If I had been, I would not have done the things I did. I would not have eaten my young. I would not have been a Catcher for Tael Riverine. I would have done something important.»

He smiled, showing off a frightening display of teeth. «I will be much better when I am living in your world, Grianne of the kind and gentle heart. I will serve you. I will be your friend and helper. Whatever you need me to do, I will do it. I am good at many things. I can find anything. That is why I was such a good Catcher. That is why I was able to find you—both times. Nothing escapes me once I set my mind to finding it. It is a gift. I am lucky to have it.»

« I have to sleep,” she said.

« When I am in your world, I will not do bad things,” he continued, apparently not hearing. «I will not eat things I shouldn’t or hurt those I care about. I will work hard. I will become your most trusted companion because I know how important that is. I have never had anyone I could trust before. I have not even had a friend. In the world of the Jarka Ruus, friends are hard to find. Mostly, we have alliances with those we protect or who protect us. Everything hunts or is hunted. It is not safe to have friends.»

She was stretched on the ground now, barely aware of what he was saying. She felt his hand touch her arm. «But you are my friend, little Straken. We are friends, you and I. We shall always be friends.»

A moment later, she was asleep.

She dreamed of dark creatures and long chases, of being hunted relentlessly, of each pursuit ending in a fall that segued into the next. She never knew exactly where she was. She never knew what it was that was after her. She caught shadowy glimpses of her surroundings and of the things that hunted her, but both changed shape and size so often that she could identify neither.

She woke groggy and out of sorts with Weka Dart shaking her. «Wake up, little Straken!» he hissed. «Something’s coming!»

She could hear the fear in his voice, and it brought her all the way awake. «What is it?»

« A Graumth! A cave wyrm!» He glanced over his shoulder quickly, then back at her. «There hasn’t been one in these tunnels for years. They live deeper underground, you don’t see them ever here. But this one scents us. It comes!»

She scrambled to her feet, still unsteady, still aching and worn. She took a moment to gather her thoughts and test her balance. «What should we do?»

His teeth showed in a glistening line. «Run from it! If it catches us, we will be eaten. Have you ever seen a cave wyrm? Very big. Not afraid of anything. I saw one destroy an entire company of Goblins once. There was nothing left but their armor and their weapons when it had finished feasting on them. Come!»

She didn’t require any further urging. Weka Dart was already moving away with the torch, and she hurried after him. They cleared the cavern and plunged into a fresh set of tunnels. But they were going back down into the earth again, and she realized that the Ulk Bog had been forced to alter their escape route to avoid the Graumth. She guessed there was nothing she could do about that, but she wasn’t sure how she would hold up if the detour proved lengthy. Her headache and sense of disorientation had returned. The food, water, and sleep had helped, but she was not yet herself.

Behind her, something huffed powerfully, like an angry bull or an explosion of steam. Only much, much, louder.

« This thing is big?» she asked, panting.

« Very big.»

« Then it can’t get down into these smaller tunnels, can it? We should be safe!»

She saw the glint of his eyes in the torchlight as he glanced back at her. «Graumths can squeeze themselves down to a quarter of their size to get through small spaces. We are not safe anywhere, Straken.»

They hurried on, not at running speed, but perhaps at half, which was dangerous enough under the circumstances. Even with the torchlight to guide them, the way was treacherous, strewn with knobs and depressions, spits in the rock floor, outcroppings, and occasional drops. Running was dangerous, but easier for the Ulk Bog than for her. She did not possess his agility or his strength. With her balance already uncertain, she soon found herself unable to keep up.

« Weka Dart!» she called to him. «Not so fast.»

As if in response, the Graumth’s huffing burst out of the darkness behind her in a wave so unexpectedly loud that she almost screamed. It was much nearer, rapidly closing the distance between them.

Weka Dart rushed back to her and seized her arm. «If it catches us, Grianne of the clever tricks, I have no weapons with which to fight it! Can you bring your Straken magic to bear?»

In truth, she didn’t know. She hadn’t tried to use her magic since the ordeal with the Furies, and she wasn’t sure what part of it would respond in her present condition.

« Keep running!» she said, pushing him ahead.

They cleared the narrower tunnel and emerged into a broader one, its ceiling fully twenty feet high. Ahead, the walls opened wider still, the beginnings of another cavern. There was movement behind them now, a kind of sibilant scraping that suggested something heavy and slick. The huffing was all around them, the sound of breathing, heavy and anxious.

They ran on through the broader tunnel to the entrance to the cavern, and then she grabbed Weka Dart’s arm and pulled him around.

« We’ll make a stand here.»

She was played out. She had nothing left. She pushed him behind her, then summoned her Druid magic. It would not come. It resisted her call, locked away deep down inside her where it refused to budge. She had not had that happen since she was little and in training with the Morgawr during the early years of her life as the Ilse Witch.

In the darkness of the tunnels they had just come through, the Graumth was moving rapidly, sensing their presence. For a moment, she panicked.

« Straken!» Weka Dart hissed suddenly, thrusting the torch at her. «Use this! It cannot see in the light! Graumths live in the dark and never see the sun! Perhaps this torch—”

« Keep it!» she snapped at him, furious with the interruption, her concentration completely broken. «Use it yourself if it gets past me!»

She resumed her efforts at summoning the magic, burrowing down inside herself, breaking down barriers one by one. It was her fear of becoming a Fury again that most resisted her efforts. That fear closed about her as she worked to reach her recalcitrant magic. It threatened to make her lose control completely. She understood its power. She would do anything to avoid becoming a Fury again, anything to escape the terrible madness that becoming one of the cat creatures would cause. If she was to do it again, she did not think she could reverse the effects. The madness would claim her, and she would be lost. That fear permeated everything about her need to call up the magic, and she could not seem to separate it out.

« Straken!» cried Weka Dart.

Writhing and twisting, the Graumth burst from the darkness of the smaller tunnel. It was a huge insectlike creature covered with bony plates that gleamed with an oily lubricant. Mandibles clicked at the center of its flat, featureless head, and short, spiky legs ended in huge claws that supported its narrow, reticulated body. It seemed to grow larger right before her eyes, and the forward part of its body lifted right off the cave floor, filling the tunnel with its bulk, undulating as it advanced on them.

As she fought to bring magic to bear, Weka Dart lost control. Whether from fear or impatience or out of desperation too overpowering to resist, he gave way. With a terrifying howl, he burst past her, waving the torch wildly at the Graumth, sparks flying from the flaming brand in long crimson streamers. The Ulk Bog went right at the monster, a bothersome gnat waiting to be crushed. The Graumth made the familiar huffing sound, then jerked back from its tiny attacker, clearly bothered by the presence of the light from the torch.

« No, don’t!» Grianne screamed.

Weka Dart was right underneath the monster, rushing it and then backing quickly away, waving the torch as if it had magical powers, howling as if he were the magician who could make them come alive.

In that instant, driven by her fear for the little Ulk Bog and her rage at her own impotence, she broke down the last of her resistance to the summoning of her magic. She smashed through her hesitancy and her reticence, tore down her fears and doubts, wrenched the magic free, and brought it to bear. The wishsong, its blood heritage both a blessing and a curse to generations of her family, but to no one so much so as to herself, surfaced.

Like a tidal wave.

Release me!

Terrified by its unexpected force, by the immensity of it, she fought to contain it. The magics powerful response was something new, entirely different. It roiled inside her like the winds of a storm, breaking down everything in its path, threatening massive destruction. She clutched at herself with both hands, trying to contain it, to keep it inside until she could control it. For she had no more control over this than she had over her Fury self. She was enveloped. She was consumed.

Release me!

She could not stop it. The magic exploded out of her. Responding instinctively to her needs, it swept through the dark and the damp like a hammer, slamming into the Graumth, striking it with such force that the creature was lifted off its crooked legs and thrown back against the rock of the tunnel walls. The result was instantaneous and devastating. The Graumth didn’t merely collapse on impact, it shattered. Armor plates, legs, and body parts flew everywhere until all that remained were bits and pieces that twitched with slow jerking motions in the faint light of Weka Dart’s flickering torch.

Then the magic simply faded until no trace of it remained.

Drained of her strength and stunned by her body’s response to the magic’s implacable surge, Grianne Ohmsford sank to her knees. The wishsong had come out of her with more power than she had ever experienced. It was as if she had been storing it away for weeks on end, had accumulated and hoarded it, waiting for just that moment to set it free. The wishsong had been put to the test countless times over the years, but she had never seen it respond that way.

What had happened to make it do so?

Weka Dart was standing before her, wizened face bright with un restrained exultation and wild–eyed glee. Holding out the torch in a kind of salute, he bent his head in crude submission.

« Straken Queen,” he whispered, the awe in his voice unmistakable. «Yours is the greatest power. Yours is the supreme magic. I bow to you. I salute you. You have no equal.»

She closed her eyes against what she was feeling and made no response. She did not pretend to know if the extent of her power was as vast as it appeared. But she knew without question that it was strong enough to have revealed their presence to the Straken Lord, and that he would be there quickly enough to test it for himself.