Chapter 7: 7

The pleading and begging of the caravan guard followed them for some time as Barrin and the woman made their way deeper into the lower reaches of the ruins. An entire sub-structure, built deep underground. Crude, but liveable, after a fashion. Lit only by the braziers and the occasional sconce upon the walls. They gave enough light for Barrin to lead them both further into the tunnels. The moans and cries of the guard eventually receded.

Barrin didn’t know what to make of the woman, Maeal. At once she appeared distressed and horrified by Barrin’s actions against the guard, the next she would appear fascinated. It wasn’t pleasure that she felt as Barrin had tortured the man, but a deep interest, as though she stored the techniques in her memories for later use, but Barrin could not see her ever applying those techniques herself.

He wouldn’t recommend the methods he had used at any other time, however. Torture, though even he thought it despicable, had an art to it. He, too, found no pleasure in causing such pain, but he had often found it necessary and, this day, he had seen nothing else that could have provided him with the information he sought. In battle, causing pain and suffering to an enemy was the most necessary task. He could understand battle. War made sense.

If he could have extracted the information any other way, he would have done so, but he had taken measure of the guard in their first encounter and he knew the mettle of the man. Stubborn. Arrogant. Safe in the knowledge that he held all the power and had the strength of his fellow guards at his back. He thought himself above reproach, beyond the touch of those he guarded. Barrin had wrenched that confidence from him and, in that, he had found pleasure. Someone that thought themselves mighty brought low. Who could not enjoy that?

He sniffed the air once more, curling his nose at the stench. He had noticed it before, but it had not seemed relevant. Now, the deeper they travelled into the labyrinthine spaces of this under-city, the more it revealed to him. These braziers were not lit by any magic. He paused at one, using the broken sword to poke the contents around.

“Dung.” He moved to an unlit torch, held in a sconce to the side, and took it, sniffing the end. “Animal grease.”

“What does that mean?” Maeal sniffed the air above the brazier and turned away, retching. “That is disgusting!”

“It means the braziers are maintained. Dung would have dried to uselessness years ago.” He thrust the end of the torch into the flames until it caught afire. “We are not alone down here.”

Holding up the torch, Barrin took stock of the options before them. He watched as the flames of the torch flickered as he held it before one opening, and then settle as he held it before another. A breeze came from the first opening, which meant that air came from the outside in that direction and their immediate task lay in finding that exit. The other way had a sense about it, the kind of sense that had saved his life many a time in the past. Something foul sat along that passageway.

“Monsters?” At that question, Barrin turned a scowl her way. “There are things in this world even you have not encountered. Be wary of the dark, for it watches and waits.”

“Superstitious nonsense.” He held up the shard of a sword. “Anything that lives can die. Anything that can die, I can kill. Trust in steel and a steady hand, not in stories made to frighten children.”

“Then you should find yourself some more steel.” She pressed his hand down, her touch lingering. “There are better uses for a steady hand, also, White-Hair.”

“You seek to seduce me? Here?” Barrin almost laughed, shaking his head. “You do not have anything that I seek in a lover. And I do not say this to hurt you. You would be better using your energy helping me find a way out from this place.”

Maeal gave a noncommittal shrug, as though she only put off her attempts at seduction for a later time. It wasn’t any of her business who Barrin lay with, but he almost felt compelled to inform her. He had never found women attractive. Oh, he had laid with a few, but had never taken the pleasure from it as he had with men. Men excited him like nothing short of battle. Of course, compared to war, even men fell short. All except Kahri. For Kahri, Barrin would forswear anything else. Even war.

With her hand raised, the three middle fingers blackened from painting her face, her eyes closed, Maeal mumbled something in a tongue that Barrin did not recognise. The hand moved from one opening to the next and began to tremble as her palm pointed along the way without the breeze. The tremble became a shudder and Maeal almost collapsed in a gasp. She steadied herself, her unstained hand rubbing her forehead.

“The way is clear, for the moment.” She waved toward the opening that fresh air emerged from and then at the other. “I sense only hunger the other way. An unquenchable hunger forced upon them long ago. They fear the light. Fear the one. They ... they hide from his eternal gaze. They ... are moving!”

This time, she did collapse, her legs folding, and Maeal slumped to the floor of the passage. Barrin had seen such displays in the past but had always thought it theatre. A way to make the foolish and the gullible believe that they witnessed one with magical powers. Magic had such a rarity that most folks would think it an achievement to witness it. Barrin knew better. He, too, had only seen magic on the most rare occasions, but he could tell it always came with a cost. And not all that cost fell to the one that cast the spell.

Maeal thought herself a seer. She believed it. Barrin did not. A priestess of the god Aa. If she were, indeed, a seer, she would no doubt have foreseen the events that led to her capture. It always seemed thus to Barrin. In a world where magic’s rarity had people grasping for any sign of it, there were always those that would pretend to have power for their own ends. Those with true power rarely performed for the masses. Seers were among those that preyed upon the gullible.

She held up her hand, hoping for Barrin to support her to her feet, but he did not. She had thrown herself to the floor, she could regain her own footing. Regardless, whether she foresaw the way clear along the passage he had already identified, or whether she, too, had seen the flames of the torch flicker, they had a direction to take. He waited for her to return to her feet, brushing down the rags that must once have cost much, and glowered at him.

In silence, he led the way. They soon left the last of the braziers behind and Barrin handed the last unlit torch, within a sconce, to Maeal pressing his own torch against it until it flickered to life. From this point on, the passage would become darker than night in the desert above. At least up there, they could still see by the light of the Moon, or by stars that winked and twinkled above. Down here, without the torches, the darkness would come as absolute and total as though they had lost their sight altogether.

Even sounds took on an odd tone, a volume higher than Barrin would expect, as though his body had given him a greater sense of hearing to make up for what they could not see. The passageway tightened the further along they moved until Barrin found that he had to turn to the side, his shoulders too wide for the passage. Even his great chest scuffed against the wall as he shuffled onward, the torch held before him.

Maeal had no such worries. Barrin expected she had always lived as thin as she looked. The lack of food in the caravan journey had only made it worse. She had no need to turn to the side, her thin shoulders not even close to touching the sides, though she held the torch behind her, thus needing to turn for altogether different reasons. Almost everyone looked small to Barrin, but he had rarely seen an adult as tiny as her. Were he to put aside his taste in lovers, he feared he would break her in the attempt.

“What was that sound?” She turned back the way they had come peering out into the darkness beyond the torchlight. “A scraping?”

“Perhaps you should use your power to see?” To anyone else, that would have sounded like a jest, but Barrin rarely jested. “Rats. They get everywhere.”

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head, still looking back. “Not unless they can climb ...”

Her gasp told Barrin everything. This woman did not shock with ease. If she had gasped in such a way, then she had reason to. Yet, she did not try to run, or to protect herself. Instead, she stepped backward, hand reaching out behind her, flapping as she tried to find him. She did not look back along the passage, but upward and Barrin followed her eyes. Something odd about the ceiling of the passage. Something that moved.

Barrin almost cursed the tightness of the passage. He couldn’t allow Maeal to pass him in order that he could get a better look at what had caused her shock. Nor could he bring the broken sword to bear should he need to. He felt like a fool, blindly following a path he should have turned back from long before. But he had only one thing on his mind. Finding his way out, back to the surface and, from there, finding Kahri. His single-minded obsession had now almost trapped him.

Maeal turned around, her eyes raking over their heads, mouth moving as though she counted and Barrin knew why. He lifted his own eyes. Eyes that had held only one point of importance, the way forward. Shadows had collected above and he had paid no attention to them because he thought he had no need to. Now he saw and, if nothing else, it proved the veracity, or lack of it, of Maeal’s powers as a seer. The way was not clear. Not at all.

Things. Attached to the roof above them. Dark things with legs and arms. Bodies intertwined, laying atop each other. How they held themselves up on the roof like that, Barrin could not imagine. He had always decried the existence of monsters. Had always believed that, had monsters actually existed, he would have encountered more than his fair share of them, and killed them. However, if monsters did not exist, what then were these creatures that settled upon the ceiling as easy as they would lay upon the ground?

“Remain silent.” Even at his lowest whisper, it sounded like the loudest shout in this place. “Move slowly.”

Now he had eyes only for what lay above his head. He scraped his way along the passage until it began to widen once more. Some fortresses used such devices to stall invaders, forcing them to press forward one at a time, ripe for the slaughter, much like staircases spiralled in order for the defenders alone to have the advantage of their sword arm free to fight. If the passage now widened, then they stood a chance of passing beyond the press of the things above.

Barrin stopped. He didn’t know if the flames of the torches had risen too high, or whether he or Maeal had made an unnecessary sound, but something had changed. Shifted. He had watched the things above, in their state of slumber, but now they stirred. All of them. Like a susurration of birds all turning in the same instant. Instinctual. The things above began to pulse and writhe against each other and Barrin was not certain the passage had widened enough to run, he understood that there appeared far too many of these creatures for even him to fight.

His hand flexed on both the shaft of the torch and the grip of the broken sword. From what he could see, they were small enough for him to swat around. He could certainly kill many of them, but their greater numbers would soon overwhelm him. They had to run, even though that thought twisted in his gut and he could hear the echoes of his father decrying the cowardly and the weak.

Then one of the things twisted its head around, slow, a strange, inhuman croaking emerging from it. It’s eyes opened, white and wide and it looked directly at Barrin.