Those black, finely grained scales looked familiar. .
Gage dropped his gaze to his right hand. His gauntlet. Gone!
He jerked his eyes back to the figure. It stood now to its full height and beyond, reaching and stretching its long, clawed limbs as if waking from sleep. Or as if freed from an enchantment that bound its shape into something far smaller. Say, a glove?
The creature, clearly a demon, began to chuckle. One of its eyes fixed the thief with a sinister, gleeful glare. A mass of burned flesh and scars festered where its other eye should have been. Gage recalled again how Angul had burned his other gauntlet to a cinder, the one with the single, enchanted eye.
He scuttled backward on hands and legs. A sharp rock cut his palm.
The demon flared its wings. It interrupted its mirth to speak. "Recall the payment I've reminded you that you owe me, mortal, time and again. I'm afraid our acquaintanceship is over. The time has come for me to eat your soul!"
Fear tried to break his normally professional detachment, bringing an unfamiliar and unwelcome quiver to his limbs as he sprang upright. His voice, too, sounded weak and pitiful in his ears. "Demon! Uh. . Hold, will you? Wait! I have more value to you alive than dead, if you hear me out. I offer a bargain!"
The scaled wings pulsed and the razor-sharp tail lashed, but the demon remained at the edge of the hole. Its single eye narrowed, and it growled, "Explain." Gage's wit failed him. He stammered then turned and ran.
The thief heard the demon laugh. Then, oddly enough, it screamed.
He glanced over his shoulder. The stone spider was back! Its upper body protruded from the burning hole at the demon's back, the pale stone of its carapace blackened and cracked with alchemical scorch marks. The wail of a baby burst anew from the insectoid maw like a little one hungry to suckle.
The spider's mandibles clamped the demon around its waist. The demon's wings burst into a fit of mad flapping, as a moth that is caught too near a flame. It bit, clawed, raked, and bucked with such ferocity the tunnel floor shook. All to little effect. With a chilling finality, the spider retracted its head and body back into its lair, dragging the hapless, howling demon with it.
The demon gave one final, soul-shattering scream, which ended abruptly.
Gage, without his gauntlets and unable to see, sprinted, whimpering, into the unrelenting darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stardeep, Underdungeon
A wind, bearing alien odors, brushed Raidon's face. He wondered by what dark, subterranean route the air had traveled, and for how long before caressing his face with its feathery, unseen hands. Black lakes, unlit mansions of stone, warrens of crystal, caverns housing forgotten secrets-who knew the depths of these passages whose extent was large enough to generate its own breezes, perhaps its own weather?
Raidon followed a conflicted woman. As they strode white-washed subterranean tunnels, Kiril muttered and mumbled as if possessed. More than once he saw her hand move toward the hilt of the blade she wore on her hip, only to flinch away before contact.
An obsession, certainly, perhaps something like the tie that bound him to his grandfather's daito? True, his fixation had given way to something less obviously lethal. The amulet bequeathed him by his mother had led him into a world beyond any he could have imagined. Was it not obsession that yet held him fast to Erunyauv?'s legacy? This amulet of a Sign whose significance he didn't fully comprehend would point him toward his missing mother. With it, he could discover why she left him. If not obsession, something powerful, whatever its name, gripped him.
"Look at this!" came Adrik's startlingly loud call from behind. Raidon whirled, ready to defend the small group.
The sorcerer pointed to a greenish stripe of mold running along the wall of the tunnel, only a half-pace above the level of the floor. Raidon had earlier noticed the mold and discounted its appearance as unimportant. A sputtering light flamed and smoked from the coin Adrik clutched in his left hand. The illumination was born of a quick series of syllables the sorcerer uttered when they'd left Sild?yuir's light behind.
Kiril turned, one eyebrow raised in a question. Xet, riding her shoulder, belled a short, rising tone.
"Fungus wouldn't grow in such a uniform line unless this tunnel periodically floods," replied Adrik. "But then we'd see a parallel stripe on the other wall."
"What of it?"
"No matching stripe, no flooding. The only answer is that there must be a reservoir of water behind this wall. It must seep through, providing moisture enough for this growth!"
The swordswoman snorted, turned, and continued stalking forward.
The sorcerer swiveled to flash Raidon his eager expression. The monk said, "I missed that, Adrik-you have eyes for this sort of delving, it seems."
The sorcerer smiled at the compliment, at the same time raising a finger as if to make a further point. The monk turned and followed Kiril before the man could expound upon mold, moisture, their musty relationship, or some related topic likely to interest the monk not in the least. He appreciated Adrik's boundless enthusiasm for diverse topics-truly, he did-but in their present circumstance, he preferred to avoid such distractions.
Even as Raidon allowed introspection to sap his focus, he noticed the narrow tunnel through which they'd progressed was gradually widening. Far ahead, blue-green illumination seeped into the tunnel, staining its white walls with alien color.
"Kiril," Raidon said, "pause a moment. What does that glow ahead presage?"
The elf shook her head. She muttered, "How would I know what lies ahead? The only way to know is to move forward and look. One way or another, these tunnels lead into Stardeep's heart. Don't ask stupid questions, Telflammer."
Raidon cocked his head, wondering if she baited him purposefully. Now that they both knew his mother was native to Sild?yuir, referring to his Shou origin seemed a slap in the face. Or perhaps it was her implication that he had asked a frivolous question. Or perhaps he was merely losing his focus. .
He pushed the irritation from his thoughts with an old mantra: Have no limitation as limitation. His thoughts couldn't be swayed by her words or attitude-only he could channel his mind-others' words imparted information only. They couldn't change the tracks of his knowledge or attitudes unless he allowed them to do so. He was free unto himself, not bound to limitations others tried to place upon him.
It was becoming clear, however, that Kiril Duskmourn would try even the serenity of Xiang Temple master.
The intensity of the light grew as they approached, and the tunnel fell away to reveal a wider space. One side of the tunnel fell away to become a ledge skirting the edge of a deeper cavern filled with strange growths.
Puff balls, fungal draperies, fronds, and toadstools grew in thick profusion within the wide depression, all glowing with varying shades of bioluminescence. Sprouting up through a layer of turgid black ooze were small, yellow protrusions, as wide and thick as fingers. A few toadstool caps grew so tall they towered above the level of the catwalk to brush the ceiling and spread flattened, mushroomlike canopies overhead. A smell like baking bread, citrus, and rotting flesh wrinkled Raidon's nose. A bluish glow hazed the air.
"Breathe carefully," advised Adrik, who placed a fold of his robe over his mouth. His muffled voice came again. "Spores."
Kiril grunted, "I wouldn't have guessed such a garden could survive in these darks. I wonder on what sort of rot this plot grows." The crystal dragonet belled unhelpfully.
She shrugged and walked onto the tunnel catwalk. Some hundreds of paces ahead, the ledge plunged into a smaller tunnel.
Raidon and Adrik followed her. Halfway across, the monk glimpsed a shape moving through the fungalscape. Turning his head, he saw some sort of. . humanoid. It was a bulky, hunch-backed humanoid composed of mushroomy flesh partly covered in a bony black carapace. Its head was a puffball suffused with wavering filaments. The creature used daggerlike obsidian claws to slash its way through the fungal garden. Luckily, it was moving away from them. Raidon estimated its size equal to a giant.