Winloki rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Nothing had been said about eating or sleeping, so she supposed it was only a temporary rest. Could anyone sleep after the horror of the ghouls? But it would be days before they were safely out of this place, and they would have to sleep long before that.
When she lowered her hands and looked up, she saw Camhóinhann looming over her in his scarlet robes. He crouched down beside her, and from somewhere in the heavy folds of his outer garment, he drew out a leather flask. “Drink this. It will put heart into you.”
“I am not afraid—nor in any danger of swooning away.” It was a lie and perhaps he knew it. Fatigue had dulled only a little the sharp edge of fear.
Under his level, dispassionate gaze, she found she could not, after all, refuse what he offered her. She accepted the flask, unstoppered it, and took a swallow of honey cordial. It felt cool going down, but became warm as soon as it reached her stomach. That warmth diffused swiftly through her veins, until she began to feel, if not braver, at least a little stronger.
He had not moved from his place beside her. “Though you ask no reassurance, still I will offer it. If anyone leaves these tunnels alive, it will be you. There is not a man here but will lay down his life on your behalf.”
“I don’t want anyone here to die for me!” She realized even as she said it how petulant, how childish she sounded. “I want nothing from any of you, except my freedom. I want to go home.”
The priest rose smoothly to his feet. “We are taking you home, home to Phaôrax. You may not understand that as yet, but you will.”
After too short a rest, they were up and walking again. Winloki had thought they had seen the last of the burial chambers, the last of the petrified bodies, but she soon discovered her mistake. After stumbling through a dozen more rooms, she felt she could not possibly bear another sight of them.
When they did stop to eat and to take a longer rest, Winloki found that she could sleep after all. Despite fear, aching muscles, and the hardness of stone floors, the body made its own demands. While she slept, with her feet tucked up inside her cloak and a blanket to warm them, the pain woke again in her insteps and ankles.
She soon stopped counting the intervals of weary trudging punctuated by short snatches of sleep. As miserable as she was, she knew there were those who suffered far worse. Two of the men who had sustained minor scratches during their battle with the ghouls had grown weak and feverish. Their comrades supported them as they walked.
Wherever they went, the horses followed at a short distance, sometimes in a straggling line, sometimes in a tight little herd. They would not come too near; neither would they drop far behind. And though they ate the grain the men scattered for them, they would suffer no one to touch them. Even when she slept, Winloki could hear the horses stamping the ground and shrilling their distress.
In time, water ran low, all the leather skins and bottles they carried with them empty or nearly so. The horses still carried water, but it was impossible to get at it. Only the injured men were allowed more than a sip during their brief periods of rest. Though food was a little more plentiful, the priests rationed that out carefully, too. With mouths so dry, eating became a chore; Winloki chewed and swallowed only because it was necessary to keep up her strength.
As for the men, she had given up hating them for who and what they were—it had been a pretense anyway, a lie she told herself and never entirely believed. They were so brave, so cheerful in adversity, so generous and considerate to her that she would have been ashamed to despise them.
“We will not drink any of the water we find here,” said Camhóinhann when they came to a place where moisture trickled down from a crack in the ceiling and formed a little pool, “not unless we are forced to do so.”
The water did smell of minerals, and remembering the stone men and women in the burial chambers, Winloki was content to go thirsty a good while longer. “But the horses—”
“It would be difficult to prevent them. And since we have not enough to share with them, we must hope for their sakes that the water is wholesome.”
There was another attack by the ghouls. This time, coming up near the back of the party, where Camhóinhann kept watch, they were quickly repelled, but not before three men had been viciously slashed by the ghouls’ long, curving nails.
The cuts were very deep, and they continued to bleed even after Dyonas bound them up with strips of linen from one of the reclaimed saddlebags. “I could help them if you removed these silver bracelets,”
Winloki said to him. “I could help the others, too, the men who are sick. I am a healer.”
“A healing would cost you strength you cannot spare,” he answered shortly. “In any case, none are seriously injured—and the pain will pass.”
There came a time when Camhóinhann announced they were only a short march from the Doors of Corundum, which would provide them a way out of the catacombs. “We may yet win through to safety.”
Heartened by this announcement, they continued on with renewed strength and hope. All other considerations aside, this news came none too soon. They were running out of torches, and Winloki thought she might have gone mad if forced to continue the rest of the journey by werelight.
Yet they were all beginning to flag again by the time they saw the faint flicker of blue in the passage up ahead that told them they had reached the final gate. It was Dyonas who knelt down by the sapphire doors and began to chant a spell, while Camhóinhann and Goezenou kept a watch on the tunnels and everyone else waited in a fever of impatience.
Yet the doors did not open, and an unaccustomed look of strain appeared on Dyonas’s face, great beads of sweat on his pale forehead.
“What is it?” said Goezenou, leaving his post and coming up behind him.
“I am not…entirely certain,” he answered, his jaw tightening. “I believe the darkness lies here so thick and deep, it is almost becoming earth. You know what that means: it is growing in intention. And that intention is apparently to hold these doors in place.”
In the tunnels behind them, there was a fierce clatter, followed by a rolling rattle coming steadily closer.
Scenting danger, the horses scattered down intersecting corridors, their hoofbeats echoing off the walls.
Winloki turned along with the men, her heart pounding furiously, her eyes straining in the dim light of the guttering torches, searching for the source of the continuing rattling noise.
And then she saw it: a great mass of decaying and putrefying bodies melded together into one huge creature, inside a coat made of bones and armor. It was not possible to count the limbs, they were so many and various, but it moved on its body like a snake, and the parts had been joined together so badly she could hear bones grinding and the intolerable soft squelching of the fleshy parts rubbing together. In the hollow sockets of the great eyeless head something moved: an unlight, blacker than black, a rudimentary intelligence that Winloki could sense—and knew with a thrill of horror that it could sense her, that it was seeking her.
There was a soft hiss of steel as all the guards and acolytes drew their weapons. But scarcely had swords cleared their sheaths before the hands that gripped them lost all strength and they went clattering to the floor. For the reek of the thing was beyond all corruption, and wherever it spread, minds grew confused, limbs were chained. Winloki felt a cry rise up in her throat, but her tongue was a stone; the sound shriveled and died while it was yet inside her. Around her, the men made frantic, incoherent noises.
Of those closest, only Camhóinhann retained sufficient willpower to move. Whipping out his sword, he stepped quickly between her and the lurching monstrosity, raising the other hand in a commanding gesture. For a moment her courage rose—until he opened his mouth, no sound emerged, and the spell died on his lips.