Vengeance

CHAPTER 16

Tobry walked through solid rock and vanished.

‘Tobe?’ said Rix, unnerved.

‘Maybe the caitsthe’s hurt worse than we thought,’ Tobry said from inside.

‘More likely it’s putting on an act to lure us in.’

It wasn’t the caitsthe he was most afraid of, though. It was the illusion — or the wizardry behind it. Who had made it, and what was it protecting?

Tobry came out again. ‘And maybe it’s circled back to kill the horses and strand us here.’ He chuckled. ‘We’re a dismal pair, aren’t we?’

Rix grimaced. At times his friend’s relentless nihilism grew irksome, yet he could not have done without him. Damn it, he thought, I’m going through. Taking his sword in hand, he walked into the illusion.

It parted around the blade like a twinkling curtain and he found himself in a broad, lens-shaped cave that, oddly, was far colder than it had been outside. Even odder, he could see the vine thicket and the forest beyond — the illusion only worked one way. The floor had been swept so clean by the incessant wind that the single fist-sized stain was a bloody signpost pointing into the dark.

‘It crouched there for a moment.’ Tobry’s eyes were darting again.

To their left, water dripped from dagger-blade stalactites into a natural stone basin shaped like a kidney dish, encrusted with white and yellow concretions and full of clear water. Rix’s throat was dry as paper. He dipped a hand into the basin, the world tilted and turned upside-down, and his sight vanished in a tangle of whirling colours.

‘Rix?Rix?’

He groaned. Tobry was distorted and wild colours were streaming out of him.

‘What the hell happened?’ said Tobry.

‘Don’t know. Help me up.’

‘Stay down until you’re better.’

‘’S nothing. Just felt dizzy for a bit.’

Tobry gave a barking laugh. ‘You’ve been out for ten minutes.’

‘Can’t have …’ Rix tried to get up but his head was spinning and his hands did not know where the floor was. Again he felt as though part of his life had vanished.

Tobry heaved him to his feet. Rix clung to him, afraid of falling, shivering, shaking.

‘Joints feel funny — not sure knees will hold me up.’ The colours were fading, Tobry and the cave becoming clearer, the vertigo easing. ‘It’s getting better. Think I’m all right now.’

Tobry peered into his eyes. ‘Ever had a turn like that before?’

‘Never. I just put my hand in the basin.’ Rix let go and did not fall down, though he still felt wobbly.

Tobry studied Rix’s hand, which was unmarked, then extended a fingertip towards the water. His hand jerked downwards as if it was being pulled into the basin, and it took all his strength to hold it back. One fingertip touched the water and his head wobbled in a circle. He stumbled to the entrance and scrubbed his finger with a clump of moss.

Rix wiped his own hands and the sensations passed, apart from a trembling weakness of the knees and a worrying liquidity in his bowels. Just what I don’t need right now, he thought wryly.

‘Bad water,’ said Tobry, making a couple of passes over it with his right hand and murmuring words that raised goose pimples on Rix’s arms.

‘Enchanted?’

‘Not by any gramarye I understand. Lucky you didn’t wash your face in it.’

‘Lucky I didn’t drink it,’ said Rix. ‘I was going to.’ Death by magery — his personal nightmare. Well, one of those in the queue.

‘I’ll take some back, see if I can find out what it is.’ Tobry emptied out a glass potion phial and filled it with water from the basin, using a couple of twigs as tongs.

Rix could not see the back of the cave, though an air current suggested it ran for some distance. He swallowed painfully. ‘Let’s get on.’

‘You’re not up to it and neither am I.’

‘I told you — ’

‘I’m not going any further. This is a trap.’

The place bothered Rix too, but he could not turn back. ‘How could it be? No one knew we were coming.’

‘That damned sword of yours did.’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

‘When you spun it that last time, I tried to turn it away,’ said Tobry. ‘I used my strongest magery on it but it kept spinning. It fought me, Rix. The sword was determined to bring us here.’

‘Whatever!’ Rix swallowed his unease. ‘Look, you know what shifters are like — after they heal themselves they have to feed. I’ve got to finish it … but you don’t have to come.’

‘I’m not.’

Deep in the cave, something went thunk. The water in the basin rippled and a rush of frigid air stirred Tobry’s hair.

‘What was that?’ Rix whispered.

‘Falling rock,’ Tobry said, too quickly.

Rix took a few steps towards the back of the cave. It was hard to move; the heavy air clung to his legs like molasses.

‘You’ll need light,’ Tobry added, too casually. He was fighting his fear of shifters, and what if he cracked? Every man had his breaking point.

Including Rix. Had he taken a mouthful of the uncanny water he would now be dead or insane. Had the caitsthe made it? They were intelligent creatures, the product of uncanny forces, and maybe they could do magery, too.

And if he had been lured, or led, here, why?

Tobry went out, hacked an oozing branch off the nearest resin pine, came back and lit the resinous end with flint and tinder. Rix reached for it.

‘I’ll carry it,’ said Tobry curtly.

‘You don’t have to come.’

‘Shut up!’

Once the flame grew to a yellow sputter Rix raised the torch in his left hand, took his sword in his right and headed into the dark. Ahead, the shadows writhed like a shapeshifter’s nightmare. The cave narrowed, then sloped down beyond sight, but at least it ran straight and smooth-walled, leaving nowhere for their quarry to lurk.

Unless it could shift into a less visible form …

Weather-worn images appeared on the walls, and as they descended the pictures became clearer and brighter, as if they had only recently been painted: peaceful scenes of forest and glade, seashore and mountain, fruits and flowers and beasts of the field.

‘Cythonians must have lived here long ago,’ Tobry said.

With the sword in his hand, Rix saw their art for what it was. ‘Sentimental, pretty rubbish. Why don’t they show the world as it really is?’

‘Nasty, violent and brutal?’

‘You can’t hide from reality.’

‘I’m doing my best.’ Tobry stopped. ‘Shh!’

Ahead, the passage turned sharply to the left. Rix edged around the corner. Ten yards further on, the floor was covered in debris fallen from the roof — a tumbled pile of iron-stained stone large enough to provide cover for a prone caitsthe.

He sniffed the air. ‘If it’s behind that, we’d smell it.’

Tobry licked a finger, not the one he’d dipped into the basin, and held it up. ‘The air’s moving down past us; it’d carry any scent away.’

‘And our smell to the shifter. Anyway, wherever it is, it’ll nose out the torch from a hundred yards away.’

‘Hold it higher.’

Rix went up on tiptoes and moved left and right. ‘Don’t think it’s hiding there.’

‘If the beast attacks, we go for its weak point — the nuts.’

‘You go for its nuts.’ Rix touched the welt across his cheek.

Here, the passage was wide enough for them to walk abreast. The space behind the rubble was empty, though twenty paces further along the cavern branched into five passages, their walls being oddly blurred. Rix poked the torch into each in turn. Further on, they all split into more passages.

‘A maze.’ Rix stumbled. ‘Sorry, head’s spinning again.’ He could barely focus.

Tobry steadied him. ‘It’s enchanted to confuse anyone who gets this far.’

‘How come I feel it worse than you?’ Rix said dully.

‘Weaker mind,’ said Tobry with a thin smile.

‘Which way?’

Tobry got out a hand-sized piece of silver-streaked wood, carved into interlocking swirls that did not seem physically possible.

‘That thing makes me uneasy,’ said Rix.

‘Not thing, elbrot.’

‘I know what they’re called.’

‘It focuses my magery. And without magery, we may not get out of here.’

Tobry swept the elbrot back and forth before the five passages, studied it, sniffed the air, grunted and waved it towards the second on the left. For a second or two, the elbrot shimmered with emerald cold-fire.

Rix’s fingers clenched on the wound-wire hilt.

‘Something the matter?’ said Tobry.

‘What did the glow mean?’

‘A warning — don’t take that passage.’

‘So that’s the way we’re going.’

‘Need you ask?’