succeed! I don’t want the Forbidding destroyed! If your world becomes like the world of the Jarka Ruus, what difference will it make whether I escape into it or not!»
He pushed his face up against the bars. «You can help me, Straken. If I can help you, surely you can help me! How hard can it be for someone like you to give me what I want?»
In truth, she didn’t know. What would it take to escape the Forbidding? Was the boy foreseen by the shade of the Warlock Lord real? Was he coming to set her free, or was the prophecy a cruel trick? She couldn’t be certain, but it was the only hope she had. The shade of Brona had not lied about the truth behind the reason she had been sent into the world of the Jarka Ruus—Weka Dart had confirmed that.
She was here so that a demon could be free, a demon that would destroy the wall of the Forbidding. If Brona’s shade had told the truth about that, then it might well have been telling the truth about the mysterious boy.
So she must gamble on the words of a monster. She must accept the possibility that her only chance for escape was through the coming of a boy she didn’t know. It didn’t seem to her that Weka Dart’s hopes for escape were any less realistic than her own. While she did not relish setting the Ulk Bog free in her world, it would be infinitely worse to refuse his bargain if it meant that she must stay imprisoned, as well.
« If you release me,” she said, «I will try to find a way out of the world of the Jarka Ruus and back to my own world. If it is within my power to do so, I will take you with me. I can promise you nothing more.»
« I have your word?»
« You do.» She held up one cautionary finger. «But remember, I don’t know yet that I can find a way back for either of us. I don’t know that I can save us, even if you set me free. I don’t know that I can find a way to stop the Moric from destroying the Forbidding. I don’t know that.»
He was already working the key to her cell into the lock. «You will find a way. I know you will.»
He released her from the cell, then used a second, smaller key to unlatch the conjure collar. Stepping back, he handed her the collar, his wizened face bright with pleasure.
« I kept my keys to the cells and the collars from my days as Catcher,” he said to her. «Tael Riverine never suspected I would dare to do such a thing.»
« He has misjudged us both,” she said. She cast the collar aside. She would never wear such a thing again or ever again be anyone’s slave. «How do we get past all the guards and their demonwolves?» she asked as they stood facing each other in the empty hall.
He grinned, all his teeth showing. «We won’t go that way. That way is death. We will go another way, a way I know that few others do. It is how I got into Kraal Reach to find you in the first place. I know secrets, little Straken. 1 know many secrets.»
She didn’t doubt him. But she refrained from saying anything, gesturing for him to lead the way. She was weak from her imprisonment and lack of nourishment, and she was already wondering how far she could go before her strength failed completely. She had no idea how long she had lain semicomatose in her delusional state in that cell, but it had to have been days. During that time, she had not eaten or drunk anything that she could remember. She had barely slept, suspended between sleeping and waking, beset by dreams and dark imaginings, still caught up in the subterfuge she had used to survive her ordeal in the arena of the Furies.
Some part of her was still there, she knew, amid the cat–things, unable to quite let go of the identity of the creature she had pretended so hard to be. Her magic was a powerful thing, and when it was employed as she had employed it in the arena, she could do or be anything. But the aftereffects were equally powerful and tended to cling to her psyche like the damp leavings of a sweat brought on by nightmares. She was Grianne Ohmsford again. She was Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order once more. But she was also the Ilse Witch and the things the Ilse Witch could become. She had opened a door she had kept carefully closed for more than twenty years, and she was not sure what it would take to close it again.
They went down a corridor lined with doors that opened into cells like her own, some of them empty, some of them become containers for piles of bones and small lumps at which she chose not to look too closely. The corridor was silent and musty and empty of life. She heard Weka Dart’s breathing and the scrape of his boots, but her own passage was soundless, a wraith’s passage through darkest night.
The corridor ended at a set of narrow steps leading up, but Weka Dart took her into the shadows behind the stairs, where a rusted iron door was seated in the stone. He worked its ancient latch back and forth, a slow creaking in the deep silence, and at last the door opened into a wall of blackness.
« Very dark down here,” the Ulk Bog announced solemnly.
He reached into the blackness to produce a torch, stuck its pitch–coated tip into the flames of one already lit in the corridor behind them, and caught it aflame. He gave the fire a moment to spread, then grinned at her once more and led the way forward.
She followed him down into the earth, down stairs eroded by centuries of footsteps and moisture, into depths so frigid that the cold cut right to the bone. The tunnels they traversed smelled of old damp and raw metal, and at times she saw what looked like frost on the rock but was, in fact, patches of lichen that glowed with a strange, bright radiance. Weka Dart’s torch burned with smoky insistence, clogging the air with its distinctive smell, causing her to cough and finally forcing her to breathe through the sleeve of her tunic. There was no ventilation in the tunnels, and the smell of burning pitch trailed after them like a marker. If anyone thought to look for them down there, they would not have a hard time tracking them, she thought.
Weka Dart pressed on as if pursuit were not a concern, glancing back at her now and then to be certain she was keeping up, as if fearful he might lose her in the dark. Indeed, it wasn’t an altogether unrealistic concern. She was already having trouble keeping up with him, even absent his tendency to roam as he had earlier in their travels. Her head ached from the cold and smoke, and her body was fatigued and shaky. She wished she had looked for something to eat or drink, but she had not even thought of that, so anxious had she been to get clear of the cells. In truth, she had not eaten or drunk in any reasonable way since she had come into the Forbidding, and the gradual erosion of her energy was finally making itself felt.
Time passed, more than she could keep track of, and the trek through the tunnels beneath Kraal Reach wore on. Clearly determined to take them through as swiftly as possible, Weka Dart did not stop or even slow. From time to time, he retrieved a fresh torch from a crevice she would have passed by without even seeing, lighting it from the old one so that they could continue. Their passage wound down crude steps cut into the stone, along narrow, twisting corridors in which they were forced to stoop, and through caves thick with stalactites dripping with mineral–rich water. After a time, the air warmed a bit, and Grianne stopped shivering. The floor of the tunnels began to rise, they were moving back toward the surface.
But still their journey continued with no end in sight.
Finally, as they were passing through yet another cavern, she stumbled and fell. She lay where she had fallen, her vision blurred and her muscles aching, too tired to rise.
« Are you hurt, Straken?» Weka Dart asked, trying in vain to pull her back to her feet.
« I am exhausted,” she told him. «I have to rest.»
He shook his head. «It is not safe here.»
« I don’t care. I have to rest.»
She crawled along the floor of the cavern to an open space where she could stretch out. She was breathing so hard that the wheeze filled the silence of the cavern, frightening her with its intensity. Her head was spinning, and she felt as if all the strength had left her body.
« Do you have anything to eat?»
He produced a tuber of some sort, which she ate without questioning its strange taste, then accepted the water he produced from a gourd tucked in his clothing. She was beyond caring about the source of the offerings, beyond caring about anything but taking nourishment and going to sleep.
« I have traveled through these caverns often,” he advised, glancing around at the darkness. He sat cross– legged before her and wedged the torch upright between two stones. «That’s why I know where torches can be found to light the way. Most of them, I put there. I used these passages to leave the Keep undetected when I was Catcher for Tael Riverine. Sometimes secrecy was best.»
He shrugged. «Of course, these tunnels are home to things you don’t want to take chances with. That is why I said it is dangerous. We don’t have to worry, though. I know what they are and how to avoid them. Mostly. Some are very large, some very small. Some have no eyes, they have been down here so long. Some are things no one but me has ever seen.»
