Once, Gallen passed a huge circle just on the right side of the path, a place where the ground seemed to have been dug away. The circle was too round, too perfectly symmetrical to have formed naturally. It looked like a mine shaft. Maggie held up her light. The hole dropped far into the darkness. Gallen looked up. It continued above as far as the eye could see.
Not a mine shaft, he decided. A tunnel. Something a mistwife could climb up through.
Suddenly Gallen feared to breathe, to move. He wondered if the vibrations caused by their walking would call a mistwife.
Orick stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down. Gallen dared not speak, dared not warn him. The bear nosed around, then turned, knocking a clod of dirt into the pit.
From far down below, Gallen heard the echo of a splash, followed by a wondrous thrashing sound, waves beating against one another as something enormous moved in the water.
Orick opened his mouth wide in terror, backed from the pit as if bitten. Gallen gave a curt gesture, urging everyone to flee. He didn’t know if the light would attract the mistwife, what the beast might be capable of.
Maggie and Tallea rushed past Gallen.
A horrible groaning escaped the pit, a sound like a tree makes in the deep forest as it collapses under the weight of snow. Then Gallen heard rushing water.
The ground beneath his feet trembled, and Orick scrambled past. A hissing erupted from the pit. Something was rising, rushing through the hole.
Gallen reached for his weapons belt, unsure what to grab. None of his weapons would defend him against something this big.
An enormous form gushed up through the hole, water tumbling from it, propelled by no means Gallen could distinguish. Enormous worms, pinkish gray in color, dozens of meters long, shot up above him, writhing to find purchase in the next layer of the tangle. Suddenly the worms each broadened, and Gallen saw fluke-shaped webbing holding them all together at the base, followed at last by a broad head that sported an enormous white eye.
When the mistwife’s eye passed Gallen’s level, the creature jerked to a halt. It gazed at the glow globe Maggie held.
Gallen ran. He couldn’t force the others to retreat without light, yet the mistwife had seen them. He needed a barrier of some kind between them and the creature. He pulled out a small canister of Black Fog-the only one he had-and tossed it behind. It hissed and spurted darkness, spinning under the pressure of escaping gas.
Darkness wouldn’t stop the creature. The ground rumbled as a tentacle snaked toward Gallen.
Gallen retreated as the tentacle burst through the rising Black Fog. Gallen ripped a heat grenade from his hip pouch and tossed it into the humus, knowing it would be far too small to kill the mistwife, hoping it might sting the beast.
Gallen spun, ran after the others as fast as he could. The grenade exploded into light and thunder, its searing blast filling the cave with smoke. For a moment the ground quit rumbling. Gallen had gone a hundred meters or more before he heard a terrible shriek that caused the earth to tremble. It was a high, thin sound, a squeal of consummate power and wrath.
Then the mistwife advanced. The ground beneath Gallen shook, as if the mistwife were trying to tear the world apart. Behind Gallen, Black Fog filled the tunnel so much that he could not make out the flames thrown by the heat grenade.
The sudden movement of the creature made a wall of Black Fog billow toward him. Gallen sprinted to keep ahead of it.
Maggie and the others had been running on a trail made by a fallen tree. Now they’d reached the end of this particular tree. The passage ahead was blocked. But above them was an opening to another passage.
Tallea scampered up the sheer, muddy cliff, but Orick couldn’t follow. He clawed at the mud, but it wouldn’t hold his weight. Maggie stood at the bottom of the cliff, helpless to advance farther, Zeus at her side.
Behind Gallen, a second tentacle whipped into the light. It bore no scars or burn marks from the grenade.
Gallen spun and hurled a second heat grenade as far back as he could. It blazed like the sun; the smell of smoke filled the narrow chamber, overwhelming.
Again the mistwife shrieked; the ground shook furiously. The mistwife was grappling with the bole of the tree that they stood on, twisting it.
Gallen grabbed Maggie to keep her from falling. The tentacle withdrew from them, but the smoke that filled the passage was choking them all.
Suddenly, the end of the log Gallen stood on pulled away; a pit opened beneath them, perhaps six meters down, and Zeus tumbled in. It led to a small tunnel. Gallen and Maggie couldn’t go up to Tallea. They could only go down to Zeus.
“Come down with us!” Gallen shouted to the she-bear: he grabbed Maggie, helped her slide down into the tunnel.
In moments the bears scampered behind him, and Gallen ran. He didn’t want to wait and see if the mistwife would try for them again.
Here a path led down an ancient highway of worm vine. The road was broad and smooth, the roof above them higher than before.
Behind, Gallen could hear the mistwife thrashing. The crash of giant trees being ripped apart, the creature’s horrible shrieking cries.
Gallen wondered if the mistwife’s cries of pain would attract sfuz.
No, he decided. If I were a sfuz, I wouldn’t go to investigate something that caused a mistwife to shriek.
Yet as they passed one wide chamber, Gallen could clearly hear the mistwife above him, shrieking in rage. And he realized that the mistwife was eeling ahead of them, going north and climbing upward.
Gallen got a cold feeling in his stomach. “I think the mistwife is heading toward the cliffs,” he whispered.
Zeus said, “She’s angry. Maybe she thinks the sfuz are to blame.”
Of course-of course, Gallen realized. She is the huntress here, and the sfuz are her prey. She knows where to find them.
He’d imagined hunting for days or weeks to find Teeawah, but now he saw that he would only have to follow the mistwife through her hunting passage. It would lead to the sfuz.
“We have to go up higher, and go north,” Gallen whispered, gazing ahead. Nearby, a jumble of trees had collapsed into a pile, and the cave forked.
One route appeared to head in the direction he desired. “That way!”
Chapter 33
Abroad the dronon starship Acquiescence, Thomas stood thoughtfully gazing down onto the bridge.
The dronon starship seemed unthinkable by human standards: the deck, though clean, was much like the birthing chamber on one of the great walking hive ships. A bevy of dronon technicians clung to the sides of the dome-shaped walls like insects.
The technicians, with their twisted vestigial wings, their tan bodies and strange green facial tatoos, reminded Thomas of mantises, waiting to strike. Yet the technicians had no prey but the monitors and various switches they guarded.
Higher on the walls, in a great circle, were viewscreens that displayed images from on planet. Dronon hunting teams showed their Lords images captured as warships swept through a strange alien jungle, beneath a terrible storm.
The ships were diving into the woods, lights blazing through a nearly impenetrable gloom of foliage and mist, flying thousands of meters down into this vast and bizarre wood.
From here aboard the Acquiescence, the dronon would coordinate the work of the thirty-six hunting teams. Thomas watched the spectacle of the pursuit in horrid fascination.
Lord Karthenor had retrieved several people from the surface of Ruin-the dictator Felph and his two beautiful daughters. Karthenor spoke to Felph as if he were a “guest,” enjoying dronon hospitality, but Thomas knew Felph and his daughters were hostages. If they lied about Maggie’s whereabouts, if they tried to deceive the dronon, they’d pay dearly.