Then he remembered the woman. She had been standing by the door and had seen him arrive. She knew what he was. There was no other option; he would have to find her. Gleefully snatching a torch stub from a bracket on the wall, the creature lit it. Branth’s ruined hand was painful, but the gorthling had experienced worse pain before. He grabbed the Book of Matrah from the table, darted past the burning door, and sprang out into the corridor.
A staircase lay ahead. Laughing aloud, he ran up the stairs and through the corridors of the lower palace levels, setting fire to everything that would burn.
“Oh, gods,” Gabria gasped. “Did you hear that?”
At the sound of her voice, the party stopped dead in the black tunnel. They had lost track of how long they’d been stumbling, crawling, climbing, and scrambling after the old man through the endless maze of crevices, tunnels, and caverns. The cold, damp blackness was wearing on them all.
They looked around nervously.
“Hear what?” Piers whispered.
They remained frozen, their ears straining through the impenetrable darkness. The old man looked back impatiently.
Gabria clamped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream as a wave of terror engulfed her. She sagged back against Piers, trembling and light-headed. She heard Tam begin to whimper.
Sayyed and Athlone said together, “What was that?”
“What was what?” Bregan said too loudly.
Gabria felt her heart thudding in her chest. She was breathing heavily from the shock, but the unknown terror was subsiding as quickly as it had come. “I don’t know. Something happened. Close by. Something horrible.”
The chieftain held up the wavering torch. “Did you hear a sound just then, Sayyed?”
The Turic shifted nervously. “I sensed it rather than heard it. It was hideous!” He bent down to reassure them and to hide the tremor of fear in his face.
Gabria drew herself up and tried to shake off the terrible remnants of her horror. “Athlone, we’d better hurry. I think that may have been Branth.”
The party went on, faster now, driven by the urgency of Gabria’s fear. The old man led them through another narrow passage, around a rock fall, under a Stone ceiling so low they had to crawl on their hands and knees, and into a tiny, rough chamber that seemed hardly more than a wide crack in the earth.
The hillman said several incomprehensible words and pointed to the back of the cave, then he turned and disappeared into the darkness before anyone realized what he was doing.
“Wait!” Athlone yelled, springing after him, but the man had already ducked down another crack and was gone.
“By Surgart’s sword, I’m going to strangle that little rat if he left us lost down here,” Athlone cursed. He strode to the back of the chamber to the spot the hillman had indicated and found another slender fissure on the rock wall. Carefully he squeezed through. There was a long moment of silence before his voice came back to the others.
“Come this way.”
Gabria and the others pushed through the narrow crack, came around some boulders, and found themselves in what seemed to be an enormous cavern. They could not see very much of the lightless space, for their feeble torchlight was swallowed by the towering blackness. A cold silence surrounded them. With great care they edged out across the floor. Only Piers remained frozen to his place, his eyes staring sadly into the dark.
Although she did not have a torch, Gabria walked forward a pace to see what she could discover. Her shin abruptly slammed into a very sharp rock. “This is ridiculous,” she snapped. Raising her hand, she called out a command and a ball of bright light formed over her head.
Every man there jumped like a stung horse.
“Good gods, Gabria,” Athlone yelled. “Don’t startle us like that!” The four Khulinin warriors stared at the light and at Gabria in mixed disbelief and alarm. She looked back at them apologetically. She regretted being so precipitous with her spell, but the frustration of near-blindness and the pain in her leg drove her to act without thinking of what anyone’s reaction might be. They were not used to her sorcery, and the sudden ball of light had been a shock.
Bregan finally shook his grizzled head and tossed his torch to the ground. “Have you got any more of those lights, Lady Gabria?”
Her smile to him was dazzling, and in just a few moments four balls of light hung in the air over the men’s’ heads. Their glow revealed the details of the entire cavern.
Their first impressions had been right; the cavern was huge. As they looked around, it became obvious that, while most of the cavern was natural, a great deal of human labor had been spent smoothing the floors and enlarging the walls. Some unnatural features had been added, too: cages, stocks, chains on the walls, a huge wheeled rack, a forge, and several other unidentifiable machines—all thankfully empty.
“Gods,” Athlone shuddered. “It’s a torture room.”
Without warning, Piers gave a grief-stricken moan and ran forward. In the center of the cavern was a hole, and the healer stumbled to the very edge. He fell to his knees and leaned precariously over the rim.
“Oh, Diana,” he groaned.
“Piers!” Gabria cried. She ran to him and tried to draw him away. The hole appalled her. It was a smooth-sided pit that fell away into a terrifying blackness. A faint, putrid odor rose from the unseen bottom.
“She’s down there,” the healer said, his voice sinking in despair. “The Fon’s executioner took great delight in telling me. Diana wouldn’t confess to poisoning the old Fon—even when they tortured her. They condemned her anyway and threw her down there. My poor Diana.” He leaned against Gabria, covered his face with his hands, and wept. “All these years,” Piers cried. “All these years. I never truly believed she was dead . . . until I saw this pit.”
Gabria finally understood. So many things he had said and done fell into place: his flight from Pra Desh, his refusal to talk about his family or his past, his abiding sadness. She knew how he felt. For the healer, looking into the pit must have been like standing on top of a burial mound and saying goodbye to those buried there. She held onto her friend and let him cry.
“There’s nothing down there anymore,” she said softly. “Diana is gone.”
He wept until the worst of his grief had waned, then he was quiet for a very long time, his gaze lost in the depths of the pit. Gabria could hear the others moving around and searching the cavern for an exit, but she stayed with Piers while he faced the phantoms of his past.
When at last he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and stood up, Gabria knew his grief was under control. The slow, painful process of healing his old wounds had finally begun.
“Was this why you went back to Corin Treld?” he asked, offering her his hand.
She nodded, took his hand, and rose to her feet. “The dead must lie in peace.”
“And so they will,” Piers answered wearily. Then he added, “Now, let’s seek the living. I would still like to face the Fon.”
“Do you know the way out?” she asked.
“Yes. I was here years ago as a healer, but I’ve never had to stay in this place of torment.”
Piers led her around the pit and headed for a wall where a rack of tools and instruments hung. The others followed. He found the door latch, which was cleverly hidden in the stone, and pulled the rack aside to reveal the door. They filed out, with Gabria’s lights bobbing overhead, and found a staircase leading up to the next level. When the last warrior left the torture chamber, Piers looked once more into the black cavern and gently shut the door.
The party went upstairs to the prison level and paused to wait for Piers to take the lead. The travelers stared about them in horror. There were two corridors, one on either side of the stairs, lined with lightless stone cells. The walls were wet with moisture, and the floors were ankle deep in muck and excrement. The smell was horrible.