From the cavern of the Black Stone, the passage into which Liuba had drawn Bran pitched sharply downward. Bran guessed they must have covered a distance of several miles in total darkness without incident-Bran following close behind Liuba’s long, swift stride. The woman never faltered in her quick pace, moved unerringly around sudden obstructions that Bran had not perceived, ignored passages that entered or broke away from this one she had chosen. Now and again Liuba’s low tones warned Bran of some unseen pitfall, advised him of a sudden turning; otherwise they descended in ghostly silence into the stygian depths of the earth.
At length they paused for breath-more for his sake than Liuba’s, Bran sensed in annoyance. It also occurred to him that the enigmatic swordswoman was holding her stride to allow him to keep pace. The ordeal of the last several days had driven even Bran Mak Morn’s iron endurance to the breaking point. But Bran realized that something more than his own exhaustion was at work here. No one-no matter how fit, how reckless-could negotiate this pitch-black labyrinth with such swift confidence, unless…
“Liuba,” Bran asked, “can you see in this darkness?”
“Yes,” she answered, as if stating the obvious, “How otherwise could I have found my way to the cavern of the Black Stone?”
“I wonder how it is that you have this gift.”
Liuba laughed easily. “Why, I was born at night, King Bran-and therefore I am a spirit of the night, as the saying runs. How can I say why my eyes pierce this darkness? Explain, rather, to me-why are some born blind, and others with vision keen as the kestrel’s? But does it trouble you?”
Bran shrugged. Unusual, but not impossible. It was commonplace that some men saw things clearly in the darkest night, where others groped blindly even when the moon was a bright circle. Liuba obviously was not one of those afflicted with nyctalopia.
“It interests me more that you seem to be able to find your way through this maze with such ease,” Bran suggested. “And that you seem well acquainted with the secret designs of the Children of the Night.”
“Why shouldn’t I have some familiarity with these burrows?” Liuba demanded. “And with the cunning plans of these vermin! I watched a day for your return, and I’ve toiled a full day since, creeping about this serpents’ den-trying to find you, then waiting for the chance to release you. You forget that I can see these turnings that are so bewildering to you. Ha! The gratitude of kings has not changed! Exactly of what do you accuse me?”
“My apologies,” murmured Bran, somewhat ashamed. In truth, there was nothing-only a vague uneasiness and a sense that something lay hidden beneath Liuba’s glib explanations. No-she had freed him; there was no sane way she could figure in the serpent-wizard’s insidious machinations. The last terrible days left him suspicious of everything.
And vacillation now could cost Morgain her only slim chance. “We waste time,” growled Bran, sensing Liuba’s unseen smile.
The passage continued ever downward, frequently crossing rock-fanged grottoes through which Liuba confidently led the way, at other times no more than a cramped tunnel bored through solid stone. Once Liuba halted, drew Bran back into the recesses of the grotto they were about to pass through. Crouched behind distorted columns of stone, they waited while a considerable party of the serpent-folk emerged from the tunnel they had been about to enter.
Bran listened to the scurrying tread of the unseen horde, as it crept past them and disappeared along the passage he and Liuba had just come down. Had they come upon this creeping horde in the narrow tunnel ahead…
“We have been fortunate thus far,” Liuba whispered, as they rose from concealment. “The hunt is concentrated along the outer levels, Ssrhythssaa does not suspect we instead crawl ever deeper into the pits of hell.”
Bran grunted, hoping Liuba’s knowledge of this maze had not played her false. They were going to be hard pressed to force their way back to the outer passages once the cordon was secured.
“They may have come from the creature’s den,” he wondered anxiously. “How much farther?”
“We draw close to the altar of the Great Old One,” Liuba told him. “There are two passages that lead to its lair. I think it less likely we will come upon the serpent-folk on the path we follow.”
“Then it’s more likely that they drag Morgain to her death through the other passage,” Bran swore. “Let’s push on-and let the vermin try to stop us at their peril!”
Almost immediately upon emerging from the narrow tunnel and into the next cavern beyond, Bran became aware of an ominous foulness that tainted the darkness. At first he assumed it was merely the reptilian stench that lingered after the wake of the horde of the serpent-folk. The two rushed on, and the mephitic air grew ever more noxious. It was a nauseating stench of corruption and decay, of an overpowering reptilian musk, of the foetid slime of the nether hells.
It was the taint of the hell-worm.
Abruptly Bran caught sight of a sickly shimmer of greyness piercing the far wall of the cavern. Liuba made straight for that nebulous smear of light, only in the total darkness of this buried cavern could it have been noticed at all. They reached the phantom patch of grey, and Bran saw that it was the mouth of another narrow tunnel, whose confines channelled a wan trickle of light from some point within.
The air within the burrow strangled them with its dense foulness. It was as if they invaded the crypt of some monstrous dragon through whose putrescent corruption the vermin yet roiled. Bran had not eaten in recent days, so that it was only bile that soured his throat.
The tunnel opened onto a narrow ledge, encircling the sheer walls of a deeper cavern whose floor dropped away a hundred feet or more below their gallery. The floor of the cavern seemed aflame with the phosphorescent substance that the serpent-folk so revered-evidently some sort of fungoid growth. A sinister altar of black stone made a dark island amidst the glistening witch-fires below. Dominating the sunken pool of hellish radiance, a circular abyss opened from the center of the cavern floor-and Bran Mak Morn knew that he looked upon one of the doorways to the hells beneath the hells of man’s puny imagining.
“The lair of the Great Old One,” Liuba explained unnecessarily. “Below is its altar on which the Children of the Night offer up such delicacies as are doomed to fall into their foul hands. The altar is empty, for now. ”
“How can we get down to it?” Bran demanded.
“A path leads around the walls of the pit,” Liuba told him. “It’s treacherous, but I think we can negotiate it. The vermin drag their sacrifices to its altar through that passage below.”
She pointed to a darkened passageway that opened from the base of the far wall, a hundred yards across from where they stood. The altar rose near the edge of the abyss, on the rim between the abyss and the tunnel mouth. This cavern could in no manner be a natural formation, Bran realized. He wondered what hideous deity and what depraved worship held ritual within this buried temple.
“What manner of devil is the Great Old One?” Bran asked in a tone of awe.
“There are hells beneath hell, and hells deeper still,” Liuba murmured. “Many are the dread secrets and elder survivals that lair in earth’s buried crypts. Pray that these crypts never be opened, King Bran! The Great Old One is one such lurker within, that Ssrhythssaa in his evil has summoned from the crypts beneath this hell.”
“Can it be slain?”
“You yourself may best judge that, Bran Mak Morn. For you have met the Great Old One on closer terms than have I.”
“Have I?” Bran knew the answer already.