“Go!” Thulu hissed between his teeth. “Go, lad, go!”
On his hands and knees, Dani scrambled as fast as he could, heedless of the rocks bruising and tearing his skin, horribly aware of the pounding feet and baying voices of the Fjeltroll that pursued them.
Attempting to navigate the Vesdarlig Passage in darkness had been a fearful task, but they had worked out a system. He had taken one wall, and Uncle Thulu the other. As long as each of them kept one hand on their respective walls, they could warn the other of gaps and confer, pooling their knowledge to avoid straying into the side tunnels.
Ominous though the darkness had been, it had saved their lives; or at least prolonged them. With their darkaccustomed eyes, they had seen the torches of the oncoming Fjel in enough time to hide deep in the very side tunnels they had been avoiding.
But the Fjel had caught their scent, and there was nothing for it but to flee and flee and flee, racing ahead of the pursuing torches, the howling Fjel, twisting and turning, deeper into the narrowing maze, running bent, then doubled, then forced to crawl in single file as the tunnels closed in upon them, too small to allow the Fjel to enter.
It was the chance fate afforded them, and they took it.
For what seemed like hours, Dani crawled blindly, scurrying. Terror fueled his flight. He chose at random unseen branches, head lowered and shoulders hunched, protecting the clay vial hanging from his throat, never certain when he would collide headfirst with a wall. Sometimes it happened. His head throbbed, his knees ached, and his hands were slick with blood.
And then there was silence, broken only by the sound of their ragged breathing. There was no sign of pursuit. They had entered a blackness so absolute, it seemed all the light in the world—every candle, every spark, every distant, glimmering star—had been extinguished. Dani slowed, then halted. Like a hunted animal, he crouched in his burrow.
“Do you hear anything?” he whispered.
“No,” his uncle whispered back. “I think we’ve lost them.”
“I think we’ve lost us.” The words were not as frightening as they should have been. Wriggling, Dani maneuvered his body into a sitting position. If he drew his knees up tight to his chest and scrunched low, he could rest his back against the tunnel wall. Just a rest to catch his breath, he thought. It was a relief to have his weight off his bruised knees. The enfolding blackness was reassuring, warm and familiar. And why not? Dying was like being born, after all; so the Song of Being told. Inside the womb there was perfect blackness, although Dani did not remember it.
He remembered his mother, who had died before he was two years old. He remembered warm flesh, soft and dusky, smelling sweetly of milk. In the darkness, Dani smiled. Mother’s milk, the odor of love. She had loved him very much. He remembered his father telling him so, and afterward, after his father was gone, Warabi and old Ngurra, who had raised him, the scent of mother’s milk and warmed flesh, the sharp tang of a wad of well-chewed gamal.
Truly, the blackness was not so terrible.
“Do you smell that, lad?” Uncle Thulu said dreamily. “It’s like the scent of baari-wood, newly peeled, slick with morning dew. Nothing like it, is there?” He laughed softly. “I must have been about your age when I cut my first digging-stick. ‘Learn to follow the veins of the earth,’ old Ngurra told me. ‘The Bearer will have need of your skills.’” Another soft laugh. “Even the wise are wrong sometimes.”
A faint sense of alarm stirred in Dani. “Baari-wood?”
“Peeled clean as a whistle, sweet as dawn.” Uncle Thulu squirmed into place and slumped back against the wall beside him, their shoulders brushing companionably in the darkness. “You’ll see, we’ll go to the grove together, and you’ll see.” He inhaled deeply, then yawned. “You can almost see it now, if you try.”
It was wrong, all wrong. There was no scent of baari-wood in the tunnels, only mother’s milk and desert-warm flesh, and that was wrong, too, because his mother was long dead and his father, too, and there was nothing here save stone and darkness.
“Uncle.” Dani shook Thulu’s unresponsive shoulder. “Something’s not right. We’ve got to keep moving. Please, Uncle!”
“To where, lad?” Thulu asked, peaceable and sleepy. “Back where the Fjel are waiting? That path is gone. Onward to starve in darkness? There’s no way out of here. Better to rest, and dream.”
“No.” Gritting his teeth, Dani wiped the blood from his sticky hands and fumbled for the clay flask, trying to work the cork loose. It was tight; he had made sure of it after his fall had jarred it loose on the plains. His palms burned, his fingers felt thick and clumsy, and it was hard to get a grip on the cork. For a moment he thought, why not rest? Uncle is right, we are lost forever, it’s better to rest and dream.
Then the cork gave way and the scent of the Water of Life arose, and it was clear and clean and potent, heavy with minerals, almost a weight on the tongue, shredding the veils that clouded his mind. With his head heavy and low, Dani took a deep breath, tasting life, verdant and alive, and understood anew how precious and precarious it was, and how tenuous their grasp upon it here in the bowels of the earth.
“Here.” He thrust blindly into the blackness, shoving the flask in the vicinity of his uncle’s nose. “Breathe, Uncle. Breathe deep.”
Thulu did, and shuddered as though awaking from a dream. “Dani?” he murmured. “Dani, lad?”
“I’m here, Uncle.” Retracting the flask, Dani felt for the lip and replaced the cork, banging it in tight with the heel of his wounded palm, repressing a wince. All around them was blackness, and there was no longer any comfort in it. “It’s time.”
“Time?”
“Time to follow the veins of the earth,” Dani said gently. He felt for Thulu’s arm and squeezed it. “We’re under the mountains, Uncle; at least, I think we are. You’re right, there’s no going back, but there’s still forward. Somewhere, these tunnels must emerge, and somewhere there is a river, the Gorgantus River.”
“Yes.” In the blackness, Thulu’s voice was muffled, hands pressed to his face. “Perhaps. Ah, Dani! It’s hard, so hard, buried alive beneath the earth. I wish I had my digging-stick to sense the way. Maybe then …”
“You don’t need it.” Beneath his fingertips, Dani felt the sinews of his uncle’s arm shifting, the blood pulsing steadily under his skin. “Please, Uncle! You can do it, I know. It is what you trained all your life to do. Guide us.”
For a time, an endless time, there was only silence. And then, faint and ragged, a tuneless song. It rose from his belly, rumbling deep in his lungs. In the black bowels of the earth, Thulu of the Yarru-yami sang of water, closing his blind eyes and tracing the veins of the earth, singing the song of its course through the stony flesh of the World God, Uru-Alat. And his voice, at first uncertain and desperate, slowly grew in strength, syllables rolling from his lips like cataracts leaping from a mountain ledge.
“Forward,” he said at last. “You’ll have to lead, lad; there’s not enough room for me to pass you. Forward, and when the path forks, bear to the right.”
Eyes open onto utter blackness, Dani got back onto his hands and knees and began to crawl.
“His lordship wishes to see you.”
In the doorway of her chambers, Cerelinde took a step backward, but having delivered his message, the Havenguard remained waiting in silence, huge and impassive, three of his fellows behind him. Cerelinde glanced behind her at the tapestry with its hidden door.