Vengeance

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?’

CHAPTER 17

At each new junction, Tobry took the way his elbrot warned against.

After some minutes they emerged from the maze to see two passages ahead, the left-hand path slowly descending, the right tunnel plunging down a steep set of stairs. Its walls and the steps themselves were glassy smooth, as if moulded from a molten state.

Tobry indicated the left passage but, as he headed down, Rix could feel the trap closing. The caitsthe was probably lurking in the maze, and now it could pen them in. He whirled, nearly skewering Tobry with his sword tip.

‘With friends like you,’ Tobry said laconically.

And I was worried about Tobry cracking up, Rix thought.

The air grew ever colder and thicker. Now it was like wading through a pool of smashed ice. A drip froze on the tip of his nose.

‘How can it be so cold this far underground?’

‘You might ask, what’s making it so cold?’

Emerald green light was pulsing through the fabric of Tobry’s coat. He must be fingering the elbrot in his pocket. ‘Or you might just tell me,’ said Rix.

‘We won this land two thousand years ago, yet we know nothing about it.’

Shivers crept down Rix’s half-exposed chest and he wished he’d recovered his coat, torn though it was. ‘Are you saying this cold isn’t natural?’

‘How can it be? It should get warmer as we go deeper.’

The slope steepened. Ahead, seeps formed two lines of ice nipples along the roof, like the belly of a