By the time weariness was telling Karkald that it was time for another sleep, his mind had returned to more immediate concerns. Thus far they’d encountered none of the patches of fungus that had provided them with sustenance on the cliffs below, and the emptiness in his belly was a growling, relentless pain. In the deepest reaches of his awareness he admitted to a stark fear, the harsh realization that he had failed his wife in every way possible. Yet it was not a fear he could articulate, for he needed to maintain a facade of hopefulness, to provide some reason for them to keep on trying.
But now, finally, he had no more energy, no more hope, to offer.
With a sullen grunt he sat on a rounded boulder, stretching his weary legs, fighting to keep his fear, his despair, from showing on his face. Darann touched off another pinch of flamestone and they looked around to see the same interminable, winding cavern. They had been following a patch of dry riverbed that boasted a few patches of sand and many jagged rocks.
“You’re not planning to sleep here, are you?” she asked.
“Seems as good as any other place,” he declared sourly.
“If you don’t mind rocks poking your back! No thank you-I’m going on.”
“What’s the point?” Karkald demanded. “Just to keep on walking till your boots wear out?”
“Maybe the point is to find something to eat… or a better place to sleep. Or maybe we’ll find a way back to-” Her voice choked off and she turned away from him, standing straight and proud.
“To Axial?” he snapped. He saw her flinch and immediately regretted his tone, and his anger. Still, he was unprepared for the fury in her eyes when she turned to face him.
“Maybe to Axial!” Darann proclaimed. “All we know is that we couldn’t see the city’s lights anymore. Maybe it’s still there-maybe our people are alive, wondering about us! Maybe we can give them warning of the Delvers!”
“And maybe mushrooms will grow around our feet while we’re standing here!” shouted Karkald, his own temper slipping away. “Try to understand, we’re the only Seer dwarves here! We have no one else to turn to, no city to go back to, nothing!”
“I don’t believe you!” she cried.
“Fine. Believe what you want!” he retorted, rising and stomping through a circle in the cave, his body trembling with anger. The force of that rage was a frightening onslaught, a tidal wave of emotion he felt unable to contain.
Rather than unleash that torrent, he clumped away from Darann, marching resolutely along the cavern pathway, backtracking over the route they had taken an hour earlier. He listened, half hoping that she would call out to him, apologize, plead with him to return… but she remained grimly, stubbornly silent.
And so he marched out of her sight, and kept going. His feet followed the cavern floor by memory, and his sturdy legs stretched through long strides. Despite his earlier fatigue it now felt good to move, to give release to his contained energy. He drew deep breaths, alternately feeling self-pity, anger, and guilt. Each emotion came with its own level of pain, and the cycle repeated over and over in his mind until he had walked a very long way.
Finally he leaned against a wall, feeling the support in the darkness, realizing that he was in fact incredibly weary. He slumped downward onto a makeshift seat and sighed. The storm of feelings had abated, and in its wake he felt emptiness, a hollow sensation that seemed to have the same effect on his emotions as hunger had upon his gnawing belly. Nothing remained to drive him, to bring him to his feet and to move him toward anything resembling a purpose.
Until the acrid scent wafted past his nostrils and he sat up, rigid with sudden, gripping fear.
Wyslet!
The odor was instantly familiar, a stench every dwarf learned to recognize at an early age. This spoor was faint, but unmistakable-a mixture of urine and carrion that lay across the air, like corpses staining a battlefield. The savage predators had for the most part been driven from the surface of the Underworld, but they were known to lurk in trackless tunnels. They lived in small packs, stalking such prey as they encountered. Primarily this meant that they ate bats, fish… and unlucky dwarves.
Terror galvanized Karkald and he sprang to his feet, spear held in his hands. He was afraid not for himself, but for Darann, and he started along the path at a run, searching the air with his nose, hoping that the scent would fade, that the wyslets were far away.
Instead, his fright expanded into panic as the stench only grew stronger. His feet pounded the cavern floor as the odor grew piercing and pervasive. The truth was inescapable-not only were the wyslets between himself and his wife, but they were moving closer to her, at a speed faster than he could hope to run.
W hy did he have to be so damned stubborn? Darann shook her head and paced a few steps across the cavern floor. He was an ill-tempered fool, and she really was better off without him! What in the First Circle had ever compelled her to go to that Goddess-forsaken watch station anyway?
And in the next intake of breath she was fighting back tears, feeling the bitter moisture sting her eyes and, against her best efforts, trickle onto her cheeks! Damn her foolishness anyway-she already missed him!
Still, she decided with a snort of determination, it would do him good to spend an interval alone in the darkness. He could simmer and stew all he wanted, and in the end he would see that she was right. They had to keep going, had to believe in something at the end of their journey. To give up would be to die, and she was not yet ready to yield that fight. Her face hardened-Karkald had to trust her, to see the wisdom of her position.
And he would.
With at least that much resolution she went back to the small bundle of her knapsack, the satchel illuminated softly by coolglow, and allowed herself a few sips of cool water. She was just tucking the waterskin under the flap of leather when the stench wafted past. Immediately she stiffened, then spun to stare into the surrounding darkness.
Of course she knew the smell of a wyslet, but now that odor had a very different character than it had when she’d visited the animal cages in Axial. The thought of the rangy hunters prowling through these caves prickled at the hair on the back of her neck. She wished Karkald was here, and felt a deep pang of regret over the harsh words that had sent him away.
Clenching her teeth, Darann made a small pile of flamestone atop a nearby boulder, a rock with a flat top that rose a little higher than her head. Touching off the coolfyre, she crouched in the shadow at the base of the large block of stone and stared into the cavern that was now brightly lit.
At least four pairs of red eyes glared back at her for a moment until, with snorts of surprise, the wyslets ducked back into the darkness. But in that flashing instant she gained an impression of desperate, unfeeling hunger, and the sensation filled her with utter terror. They were soulless, those eyes, and on a visceral level she felt vulnerability reduce her to a living, breathing morsel of food.
An instinctive fury rose in opposition to that revolting fact and she groped around the cavern floor, clawing for loose stones. She pulled up a rock as big as her fist and hurled it in the direction of the nearest wyslet. The missile clattered into the darkness and she heard a startled hiss. A long, lean shape skipped through the swath of her light and vanished into another shadow. Her breaths rushing through short gasps, she snatched up another stone and then whirled at the sound of a rattle behind her.
A slinking shape flickered through the edge of her vision to disappear behind another of the rocks that rose like knobby teeth from the cavern floor. She sensed that the creatures were toying with her-and with that realization she spun back to find one of the wyslets creeping closer. The beast froze, those red eyes bright and unblinking as she deliberately raised the rock to throw.