The Nax were also known as fledge demons. No one had ever seen one and lived. Most had an idea of what they were-myths, stories, legends handed down from generation to generation, drawings in books, ancient cave paintings that smeared some of the rock walls of the home-cave Church-but as well as sometimes being exaggerated with time, the truth can also be diluted. Most people had no idea what they were about to face.
Heads turned as the shadow burst from darkness into weak firelight. It flew across the cavern and landed at the base of one of the five giant pillars. And then it started to kill.
Trey fell to his knees and screamed. His mother shouted in her sleep, sounding as if she was being choked. Other cries rose up across the cavern, high-pitched and androgynous with terror. Because as well as the sight it presented its victims-wings spread, various limbs tipped with spinning bone-clawed appendages, openings that may have been mouths steaming and spitting gobs of flaming gas-the Nax gave them so much more. Its mind reached out as well, probing with alien fingers, seeming to touch everyone in the cavern. And it was like eating shit.
Trey pressed his hands to his ears, screamed, shook his head, trying to drown out the feeling that he was being invaded, his senses turned in on themselves, twisted and forced and split apart. He saw the slaughter that had begun below, people spinning and coming apart as the Nax danced across the uneven ground, limbs slapping at the air just as Lufero had shown in his play. Coughs of fire leapt from its mouths and wrapped around heads, stomachs, bounced along the ground until they found something to burn. People ran but few escaped; the Nax was too fast. It could run, it could fly, it could whip out its long tail and haul the escapees back into range of its killing limbs. They saw all this, but there were also images that could only have been seen through the Nax’s eyes. And with those images came outlandish glee. There was the smell too, the burning of flesh and spilled blood as Trey’s friends died before him. He retched, and his stomach rumbled with hateful hunger. Screams of pain and terror drove him mad. He tried to cry out again but he seemed to roar instead, a fledge-filled scream of fury and pent-up hunger that was echoed around the cavern by a thousand other voices, each once unwilling and yet reveling in its new freedom. The Nax was sharing itself with its victims before it killed them. A creature of the drug, its casting of its own consciousness was part of its makeup, a facet of the hunt.
Trey fell back and crawled into the cave on his hands and knees. “We have to go!” he said to his mother.
“We can’t leave,” she said, shaking her head, trying to shed the alien images. “We’ll fight, there are plenty of us, we’ll have to-”
“Mother, I sensed it, I felt it waking. There were more than one. Something woke them. I think something’s happening topside, and it angered them and drew them out of hibernation. Mother, we have to leave! We’ll go topside, somehow. Whatever, we have to get out of the cavern.”
“The mayors will know what to do,” Trey’s mother said with blind, humbling faith. But then she glanced over his shoulder, and he knew what she was seeing without turning around, because the image was shared between them all. A second Nax burst from another tunnel and powered straight into one of the pillar dwellings. Trey felt the walls and balconies of that place splintering, and he knew the weak flesh of the mayor was parting beneath the onslaught of the spinning and ripping limbs.
“Come with me,” he said. “Ignore everything you sense, just keep one thing in your mind: escape.”
“I have to get some things,” she said, and she turned slowly, dazed, confused. Trey grabbed her arm and squeezed hard.
“Mother. Please. These are Nax! We can’t waste any time, if there’s a slightest chance of escape we have to take it now!”
His mother winced and glanced down at where he was squeezing her arm. He had never hurt her before, not physically, not emotionally. She was strong. When she looked up there was a tear in her eye. “Oh Trey, I’m so scared.”
Trey hugged his mother, but only briefly. He could not be close to her with these images, these smells riding the psychic waves from outside. He felt corrupted.
He dressed quickly, then nudged aside the curtain and looked out. Many of the smaller cave fires had already been extinguished-the miners’ natural state was darkness, and that was where they found most safety-but new conflagrations were being seeded across the home-cave by the Nax. The hateful images and sensations were confused now, and Trey could not tell if there were still only two Nax down there, or more. People were running, screaming, whispering and trying to steal away. Some passed his cave and headed down the steps. Trey called after them, but they did not hear. He ducked back inside, breathing hard, not knowing what to do.
“Can we get out?” his mother asked. “Is there a way?”
Plenty of ways, Trey knew, but none of them sure. None of them safe. And what about Sonda? He’d looked across to her side of the cavern but there had been only darkness. That could be a good sign, because it may mean the Nax had not visited there yet. Or perhaps it meant that they had been, and finished.
“We’ll have to get through the tunnels to the rising,” Trey said. “There’s an old seam, one that was mined way before the Cataclysmic War, that gives a route between the face we’re working on now and a tunnel leading straight there. It’s never used, it’s too narrow, too awkward. Barely a crawl space at times. If we can get there, get through, maybe we can make it up. If the Nax haven’t been there as well.”
Trey’s mother looked sad. “I can’t do all that, Trey. Look at me.”
Trey looked. His mother was big around the waist, even though their mining caste erred toward tall and thin. Her hands, on the coldest parts of the year when fires merely drew in colder air from deeper caves, were crippled into twisted claws. And she was old. She had been down here forever, with only a few visits topside to break up her underground existence. These visits, legendary in her eyes and related whenever she had the opportunity, had all been made safely, and via the proper routes.
But he loved her. He took her for granted and sometimes she annoyed him, always here for him. “I will not leave you behind. I don’t know much about the Nax-I don’t think anyone does, only what’s told in legend-but I do know that this is the most dangerous place to be. We can’t stay. Maybe if we can just get into the tunnels and hide, it’ll all be over soon.”
He knew that was a lie. And he thought his mother did too as she nodded, stepped past him and peered out into the cave. There were more screams out there from farther away, closer to the dark holes that plummeted to the underground river. There was also the occasional twang of a crossbow being fired, and here and there Trey saw the glint of steel as disc-swords were unsheathed. He turned quickly and ran to the rear of the cave, grabbing his own disc-sword from beneath his bed. If he came close enough to a Nax to use it he would probably be dead already, but there were other things out there. If they made it into the tunnels there may be stingers in the old fledge seam, hiding away from the miners. Past them, if Chartise and his mules were still alive, perhaps there was topside, the world of sunlight and moonlight and starlight, the world of no darkness. And there probably dwelled countless dangers of which he had never dreamed.
Trey was a miner no longer.
If he lived past the next few hours, he would be a survivor.
THEY WORKED THEIRway down the series of steps and balconies carved into the walls of the cavern. They hid behind huge pots on the landings, breathing in the meaty fumes of moss and trying to figure, from the ghastly psychic twinges they felt in sight or sound or taste, just where the Nax were unleashing their slaughter. Trey touched the ball of moss before him and squeezed, reveling as ever in the feel of this cold growing thing, pleased that his own sensation was covering those exuded by the murderous Nax.