"Love of Mystryl," she prayed, "if Sunbright saw me like this, he'd-"
He'd what? Reject her? Never love her? He didn't love her now, did he? Or she him?
Suddenly she didn't know anything. Could she love a human? A sweaty, garlic-stinking, sour half-beast that would age almost overnight into a decrepit wreck? Was this her curse, to feel affection for a human and so to become one? Many of her fellows would say loving a human was like marrying an animal. Humans were no better than orcs, equally without worth or honor or use, a plague loosed on the earth by malicious gods to chastise the true folk, the elves.
"No!" she called aloud. Her reflection showed a caved-in mouth empty of teeth.
Then two reflections. No, herself and…
Sunbright, no longer human.
His bright blond topknot was normal, and his rugged, tanned, lean face. But his light eyebrows pulled upward at the ends to almost touch his scalp, and his eyes were slanted, his ears pointed. He looked lean as a whippet, with thin but powerful arms. His tapering torso showed no chest hair.
He was an elf!
How had this transformation occurred? And why now, when she'd been made human… or had she? Did the gods hate them so much that now Sunbright would be acceptable to her people as a lover and husband, yet she'd been reduced to the gutter-level of faded, hairy, grotesque humans? Could any gods be so cruel?
And how much of this was real? Was it her own guilt at loving a human that plagued her? Did she punish herself worst of all?
Something was happening in their reflections. The elf-made Sunbright caught the skinny, saggy arm of the hunched, aged, too-human Greenwillow. The ugly crone tried to turn away, to hide her face, but the elf-man saw her wrinkled, toothless mouth, warts, and chin hairs. Repulsed with horror, the elf-Sunbright staggered back and turned, crying, from the vision.
Shrieking, Greenwillow, too, dashed away from the horrid image. But a low wall rammed her knee and sent her tumbling. Her sword clattered to the green stones, and her clumsy hands seemed too crabbed and numb to grab it.
Below her, more images roiled in the stone. Fascinated, hypnotized like a bird by a snake, the elven-or-human woman watched.
Touching her from underneath, equally on all fours, was another Greenwillow, still human but younger and naked, with a swollen belly showing she carried a child. Her white skin was stretched as tight as a drumhead and enflamed with coarse blue veins, so she looked like a fat-uddered cow too long unmilked. Did she carry the elf-Sunbright's child, a baby half-elf? Would her child be hated by both races? Would the child hate her for birthing it? Would the elven Sunbright desert her for becoming human? Would she die alone and unloved in some empty wasteland?
Crying openly, Greenwillow crawled to her feet. Before her loomed another wall with yet another reflection. A deadly pale, naked Greenwillow staggered as her belly was punched from within. Gory red goblinlike arms split her skin, ripped her open so blood ran in rivers. She was birthing a monster and dying in the process.
Shrieking, she whirled and ran. Another wall had been erected behind her, forming an arch. Running full-tilt, half-blind with tears, she ducked to dash under it.
The arch lowered as she came. Lights exploded in her dark mind as her head slammed stone.
Sunbright floated and swam through fog, dropping slowly until his hobnailed boots chuffed in what he guessed to be dirt. Fog swirled around his shoulders, but a quick shake dissipated it.
Instinctively casting about for the lay of the land, Sunbright concluded this place, wherever it was, didn't seem dangerous, just a tunnel cut through dirt. But instinctively he found Harvester in his hand, for the tunnel hadn't been cut by humans.
Giant earthworms, more likely. No part of the tunnel floor was smooth, but every step was ridged, rippled like the bottom of a shallow stream-or something else. Then he got it. It resembled the guts of a reindeer, tubes ringed with muscles, and he was caught inside like a tapeworm. Nor was any stretch straight, but twisted every inch. Ahead the tunnel rose gradually, then so abruptly he couldn't have climbed the walls. Another sloping branch from an acute angle turned suddenly downward, then leveled again.
His judgment, his decision to jump from the black glass platform, had been foolish and hasty. He might follow turns to dead ends and backtrack for days and never find his way clear to whatever was above ground. He was underground, and yet he could see. Light didn't come from any one source, but seemed to hang in the air, if that made any sense. And the fog he'd dropped from was gone.
Seeking courage, he pronounced aloud, "Well, I can't stand still forever." But the tunnels of guts sucked up the sound of his voice.
Too, they sucked at his courage, like wading in icy water sucked body heat, until all that was left was coldness inside. Sunbright shook his head, but couldn't shake the sensation of dread. Time and again he flicked a glance over his shoulder, trying to catch whatever crept up on him.
Coward, the tunnels seemed to whisper. Gutless. You're afraid of your own shadow, a child frightened of the dark.
Frowning, grip on his sword sweaty, Sunbright turned right and went up the slope. Upward would be his strategy for the nonce. But the trail didn't go up for long; it only flowed over a hump and back down again. He cursed. "What now? Back or ahead?"
Cursing more, he turned back. Perhaps if he returned in the direction from whence came the fog, he'd go "up," since he'd dropped "down." Or had he?
But that, too, failed. He counted as he walked forty paces back, but he couldn't find the fork. Any fork. Just more wavering tunnel.
Now the grip on Sunbright's sword made the weapon slippery. If the tunnels could change when he turned his back, he'd never get out. He'd be lost until he died of thirst and his body rotted to bones.
Despite years of wilderness training and lore, Sunbright panicked and ran. Cursing, gasping, fighting not to cry out in fear, he plunged through the tunnels headlong. Clambering up with clawed hands, sliding down slopes steep enough to break legs, choosing directions willy-nilly, he charged-until he ran out of wind and dropped.
Heaving, retching on air, he fought for control. Perhaps this was good, he thought. Perhaps getting the panic over would leave him cool-headed. Certainly he was ashamed, not that anyone would ever know he'd panicked. Only himself.
And certainly he could blame himself for leaping off the platform and leaving Greenwillow, a boon companion, if an enigmatic one. The feeling of dread turned to bitter sorrow when he thought of her. Surely abandoning her was the worst mistake he'd ever made. He'd die unhappy knowing…
He rapped his skull with the heel of his hand. Flogging himself wouldn't help. Better not to think at all. Stumbling to his feet, the barbarian forced himself to walk, not run, and to try to think his way out of this dilemma. If only he had a landmark to work from, he might…
As if the maze had read his thoughts, a stretch of rippled wall turned dark and craggy. The giant earthworms had cut through something jagged and splintered like a midden of broken brown glass. While some frightened childlike portion of himself wanted to run screaming, his native curiosity made him pause. Perhaps it would provide a clue, point the way out. He studied the lumps overhead and underfoot and at either hand.
They were bones, so old and buried so long they'd taken the color of the earth. Thick, many of them, with knobby joints like those of a lion or bear. A flattened claw was long and hooked like an eagle's talon.
And on one wall was a huge brown beak, much bigger than any eagle's could be, larger than Sunbright's head.
Bears with beaks?
Something stirred in his memory. Hadn't someone somewhere once routed a valley of-what were they called? — owlbears? These people had slaughtered hundreds of them to gain the valley, which held gold or copper or other riches. A few of the creatures had survived, but not many, left to wander the deeper forests, seeking prey and never dying.