There were matters more urgent.
“Liuba!” Bran gasped with sudden hope. “How did you come here! Are there others with you?” Liuba’s eyes were sardonic. She seemed scarcely out of breath after the swift slaughter of six armed guards. “I came alone, King Bran. You did not return, even as I had given you forewarning. I reasoned that the vermin would spare you for certain abominations such as they love, and that they should take you to the cavern of the Black Stone. I followed to discover if I might still save the bold king of Pictdom from his doom.”
Bran had questions, but this was no time to raise them. “Can you open the cell? Did you see the key on any of the guards?”
“I can open your cell,” Liuba told him.
Bran swore at her coolness. The struggle had been sudden and deadly-concluded before any had shouted the alarm. But at any second someone might come to investigate the brief clamour of combat.
“Thunder of all gods, woman! Then let me out!” Liuba seemed of a mood to savour her moment. “Once before I freely offered to you my aid, Bran Mak Morn. You spumed my offer and my warning.”
“Liuba, will you…!”
“Listen well, this time, King Bran!” Her tone was implacable as her blade. “This time do I again offer my aid-but for a price!”
“Damn you, woman!” Bran was frantic at this unhoped for chance to escape. “Name your price and be done!”
Liuba’s eyes were cold as her smile. “The price shall be of my naming when I so choose to name it-nor shall you refuse to honor me in that which I demand.”
Bran would have bartered even his soul in that moment, when the alternative was certain and hideous doom at the ancient serpent-wizard’s soul-slaying sorcery. “Anything that’s mine to give, short of the crown of Pictdom, is yours to demand, Liuba! This I swear to you! Now open the cell!”
“Have no fear, King Bran,” Liuba told him. “I’ll not demand that crown you make sham to cast away. Now, will you bid me to enter your cell?”
“Liuba! Enough of your game! The serpent-folk…”
“Will you bid me to enter your cell?”
Bran groaned in frustration. “Milady Liuba, will you be pleased to enter my humble cell.”
“At your request,” murmured Liuba without humor. In the poor light, Bran had not seen the girl work the key into the lock. He assumed from her confidence she had plucked it from the body of the one guard she had paused beside for the coup de grace. More to the point, the lock instantly sprang open at Liuba’s touch.
Bran pushed past her as she opened the door and made to enter. She deserved to enjoy her game for what she had done for him, but Bran had half a mind to strangle her.
Swiftly Bran caught up a fallen sword. The short Roman blade was strange to his hand, but to have sharp steel in his fist again brought a surge of new strength to his exhausted frame.
“Would that there were time to strip a pair of these vermin,” Bran said in sudden inspiration. “But we dare not stretch our luck any farther. The serpent-folk may come upon us in another instant.”
“What do you desire of twice-plundered Roman equipage?” Liuba asked him.
“To pass ourselves off as a pair of Nero’s legionaries,” Bran explained. “Or at least, for myself. I came here for Morgain, and I’ll not leave without her. I can’t ask you to share any greater risk than you have already, but if you dare to hunt through these caverns a while longer…”
“I so dare,” Liuba snapped. “You have bought my sword, and I must see that you live to pay account. Lead on-if you know where!”
Bran found the girl’s mordant sense of humor unnerving under the circumstances. “Morgain escaped from her cage some hours ago,” he explained, striding quickly away from the corpse-strewn island of light. “I’ve heard nothing of her since.”
“I can’t believe she could have slipped past them to the surface,” Liuba hazarded. “They must have her.”
Bran spat a curse. “The wizard ordered Nero to take her to the Great Old One. Do you…?”
“If Morgain has been given to the Great Old One, there’s no more you or the gods can do for her!”
“I’ve got to know for sure!” Bran growled.
“Then you’ll need to look in the lair of the Great Old One,” Liuba advised darkly. “And that one isn’t the passage you want. Come this way, and stay close.” Having no other recourse, Bran followed Liuba’s lead. There were urgent questions that must be answered, he promised sombrely. But the moment held matters of far more pressing urgency than demanding answers of this enigmatic angel of death-who seemed too well acquainted with all the paths and demons of hell.
19
DEATH AND STARLIGHT
Cold water closed over Morgain’s face, choking her. By pure reflex she struck out. Her fists flailed against stone. Dimly she realized the river had swept through a tunnel in the rock. There was no longer any air to come up to-only solid rock overhead.
Then the current sucked her into its embrace, wrenched her through its midnight millrace like a bit of flotsam caught in a maelstrom. Rushing turbulence hurled her limp body past drowned walls of polished stone. She spun helplessly-blind, exhausted, her last breath failing. Stone walls grazed her bare flesh-the current ran at a speed that would have smashed every bone in her drowned body if she struck anything head on.
Not that it would have mattered to Morgain. She was drowning within the drains of hell.
It seemed her lungs would burst. Then she glanced off a rushing wall of smooth jet, felt the sharp crack of her ribs through the ache of her lungs-and her breath burst from her chest in one last ecstatic bubbling cry.
Icy water sucked into her lungs as she could no longer defeat the reflex to inhale. Morgain thrashed about aimlessly with the last of her strength, no more conscious of what she did than an infant crawling headfirst to birth.
And this was death.
Coughing and choking for breath, Morgain strangled on mouthfuls of spray, blindly struggling through the primitive instinct for life. She was too far beyond coherent thought to understand that air filled her lungs again, along with the tossing froth of rapids.
A trick of the tumbling current swept her battered form over a shallow ledge, where she was flung up against a barrier of lodged drift. Scarcely knowing what she did, Morgain dragged herself along the pile of drift-he crawled over the moss-slick outcropping from knee-depth torrent and onto a gravelled beach.
Agony stabbed her bruised ribs as she vomited again and again, forcing the black water from her belly and lungs. When she was able to control her retching long enough to pillow her face on the cold gravel, Morgain became aware of a brilliance that dazzled her aching eyes.
It was starlight.
***
For a space Morgain lost consciousness. Dreamless, deeper than sleep, it was the final collapse of her overtaxed body. For some few hours, the girl lay motionless as the drowned corpse she had almost been-a battered piece of drift cast up by the currents of hell.
Eventually she uttered a low cough, and stirred from her near coma. The cold gravel bruised her sore body, and Morgain painfully sat up-shivering under the chill caress of the night winds on her still damp flesh. Taking hold of a driftwood snag, Morgain pulled herself to her feet.
The night was moonless. Evidently only a few days had passed since her abduction, since the moon had been in last quarter when last she saw it. Time had meaning again.
And space? Morgain gazed about her surroundings in baffled wonder. As her dazed consciousness sought understanding, the girl realized the underground river had ultimately cut its way through stone and back to the world of men. But where? She had wandered beyond all reckoning beneath the hills of Caledon.