In the face over the tunnel Vaddi saw the black eyes open, the balefires within them glowing with a malefic power. There could be no greater deterrent than entering the mock mouth below those eyes, but with three dead behind them, there was no alternative. Vaddi cursed and ran forward. He smote at the sides of the tunnel with his elf blade and fire blazed from it at once. The eyes above squinted in pain and for a brief moment the mouth of the tunnel twisted, as if in pain. Roots and fronds fell from the sides of the tunnel as Vaddi hacked violently at them, the anger inside him welling up.
Fallarond took his lead from Vaddi and joined him, also cutting into the overhanging vegetation. Between them they had cut enough away to widen the mouth so that they could pass through and along the bank of the river rather than drop down into it. Their blades glowed, and around them in the womb-like curve, roots and filaments withdrew from them. Nyam and the remainder of the company entered the tunnel, and without another word, they moved on. A tiny wake in the center of the river showed where Ezrekuul still swam.
“How far?” called Fallarond.
“Little now,” said the creature.
Behind them, silhouetted in the grayness of the tunnel entrance, a number of shapes squirmed and flapped, distorted and hunched. Whether they were trees or humanoid, it was impossible to tell. Their numbers grew, but something in the tunnel held them back so they did not follow. Instead they emitted furious shrieks, their voices ghastly, their cries murderous.
“Ignore them!” Ardal snapped. “Move on.”
As the company did so, they felt the shuddering of the wooden walls around them, as though something huge was pressing against them from both above and the sides. The tunnel may have formed a temporary haven from the horrors that the Madwood had unleashed, but around it, the nightmare inhabitants of the jungle were swarming, and they were not content to remain outside. They were attempting to rip their way in.
Zemella opened her eyes on darkness so crushing that it weighed her down like several tons of earth. She was in a solitary stone cell, far below the ground where her captors had brought her, but it may as well have been sunk into the depths of Khyber itself. These cursed Murughel had done their treacherous work well. Her hands were bound, and the leather strips that held her were steeped in sorcery. Whoever controlled this band of Murughel was powerful, a mage of some kind.
They had taken her at sea, locking her away with chain and spell until their craft had broken the waters of the eastern seaboard of Aerenal, so they were not to go to Shae Thoridor after all. The knowledge had come as a blow to her. When the Murughel had taken her ashore, she knew by instinct that they had reached the very edge of the Madwood. In Valen Bay, they were met by more of their kind. No one had spoken to her, not even to taunt her. Their leader was cunning, well familiar with elf powers, and the cleric was by now far away.
She was no longer sure why she was here. She was so far from Vaddi that the cleric would be able to deceive him and turn him back upon the course he had originally set for him.
They must intend to kill me, she told herself, unable to avoid the thought. They dare not set me free. They know that the Finnarra would hunt them down, but why here, the Madwood?
Once ashore, she had been hooded, dragged along for a day or more, but she knew by the sounds and the smells that she was being taken deeper and deeper into the Madwood. Then it must be to a sacrifice! Her blood would be used to invoke dark powers in the Madwood.
I will not allow them to spill my blood, she thought. I will die first! By my ancestors, I swear it.
She sagged down in the darkness, head buried on her chest in despair. How? How could she achieve this? They would be watching her. Even here, in the total night of the cell, they would be watching.
Far above her, in another room lit faintly by cold fire, two shapes sat at a stone table, looking out across a vista of thick treetops, above which gray fog curdled. The hooded leader of the Murughel was like a statue, his lidded eyes fixed on the pale figure before him.
Caerzaal smiled grimly his white face vivid, even in this poor light. “So the flies have entered the jungle. Whichever way they turn now, they must stumble into its web.”
“A score of them, no more.”
Caerzaal leaned forward, face hardening. “Is the peddler with them?”
“He is.”
Caerzaal’s sharp teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “A minor issue, but it will please me to deal with that one. How long before they find us?”
“The Madwood has swallowed them. We may not know until they reach these ruins, but the Murughel are ready. I have mustered two hundred of them. Fifty will be given to the Wood after we have what we want.”
Caerzaal scowled. “A high price in warriors. To become one with the Wood, its slaves.”
“Your prize, Caerzaal, is greater.”
“Yes, that is so.”
“And the serpent god, Sethis? You still intend to invoke him?” The hooded one looked across from their high vantage point to a stepped pyramid beyond. Fires burned in braziers on its flat top, and a score of Murughel warriors kept guard there.
Caerzaal laughed coldly. “Of course. The Valenar bitch will be the bait that draws the Orien youth. With what he carries, he will be powerful. It will take the power of Sethis, my servants, and your Murughel to best him. But at the end, when the boy is exhausted, I will have him bound, and what he carries will be mine. And you,” he added, a long finger stabbing at the Murughel’s chest, “will know what power really is. The Emerald Claw will praise your part in this. You will know new joys and pleasures that you have not yet dreamed of.”
The hooded one did not smile. He turned, scouring the misty roof of the jungle and the skies above it. “Did you sense something pass?”
Caerzaal studied the night like a hound scenting its prey. “In the skies? Who knows what flies above the Madwood? Its servants are many. Some are better not seen.”
The hooded one nodded, but he remained uneasy. Whatever it had been, it was no small thing.
Several hours into the journey, Fallarond called a halt. Ahead of him, daubed in the wavering glow of their swords’ light, a number of flat stones formed a crude bridge across the river. Ezrekuul came to the bank and gazed up at the Deathguard.
“How far to the ruins?” said Fallarond.
“Not far, not far,” said the creature.
Above and outside, the sounds of pursuit had faded, although none of the company believed for a moment that the servants of the Madwood were not tracking them there. Everything had gone silent. Even the river moved without sound, slow as treacle, black as tar.
Fallarond turned to the company and indicated the way they had been travelling. “If any of you wishes to go back, now is the time. Once we cross the river, we are set on our course.”
The Deathguard remained motionless, their silence a polite dismissal of his suggestion.
“What about you, peddler?” said Fallarond. In the poor light his skull face looked even more horrifying.
It is suicide, Nyam thought, and they know it, but they are prepared to die for Zemella and Vaddi. Some will die. I don’t have their powers, but I won’t desert him now.
“Let’s get going,” he said.
Fallarond stepped onto the stones. They were slick and treacherous, but the company passed over them to the other side of the narrow river, its southern bank. Once they were all assembled, Fallarond called Ezrekuul to him again.
“What lies outside these tunnel walls? Can we cut through?”
“Cut through? Why? The river take you to the first ruins.”