Silence fell among them awhile. Finally Delon turned to Arin. "And what do you believe, Dara? About Hel, that is."
Arin looked over at the bard. "If there is a Hel, then I would think it a great emptiness, a void, an abyss, with absolutely nothing therein, no light, no dark, no substance, no force, absolutely nothing whatsoever. And there is no one in this emptiness, this void, but thine own self. Canst thou think of a punishment worse?" She looked 'round the circle, but no one had a response.
And then the water began to boil above the charcoal fire, and soon talk turned to other matters as they drank hot tea and ate a cold meal on the edge of an endless maze.
As they had done all along on the trail, each took a turn at ward. And in the dead of night during Delon's watch there echoed from the bowels of the labyrinth afar another ghastly howl, one which startled all the sleepers awake, and they were long in regaining slumber.
Arin stood the final watch, and she soothed Egil when he was visited by his nightly ill dream, this one of Lutor being slowly pulled apart.
Dawn lay on the horizon when the Dylvana lit another charcoal fire and set a kettle for tea; when the water came to a boil, she wakened the sleepers. As the others relieved themselves and readied for the day, the Dylvana walked to the perimeter of the precipice and looked at the pathway down. She stood a moment on the lip and sipped tea and chewed on a bit of waybread. And then she attempted to ‹see› in her special way. To her right something faintly glowed among a cluster of jagged boulders. Keeping an eye on the nebulous tracery, she stepped along the rim to the pile, and there between two of the huge rocks, hidden in a manner she could not fathom, she found another path leading to the verge and downward.
Her thoughts echoed the 'alim's warning in the archive: "Not all paths are what they seem. Search well; choose wisely." Arin took a sip of her tea and looked back at the other path and then again at this new one. Which, I wonder, is the true way to follow?
Arin extended her exploration a goodly distance in both directions along the perimeter, but no other paths did she find.
"Two paths?" Egil looked at her in consternation. "Where is the second?"
"Beyond those jagged boulders," replied Arin.
Ferret gazed toward the cluster then leftward to the way they had seen last night. "Which one should we follow?"
"The one at the rocks, I should think," said Arin.
"Oh?" said Alos.
Aiko glanced at Arin and nodded in agreement. "The path at the boulders is hidden, as is the temple."
"Exactly so," said Arin. "Too, this new path may have a charm upon it."
Delon touched the amulet at his neck. "Let us go see."
"If it has a charm upon it," said Delon, looking at the narrow trail, "it's not one of invisibility."
"Perhaps it's a ward of some kind," said Ferret, standing at Delon's side. "Perhaps one that is not meant for us, but for foes of the temple instead-the Fists of Rakka, for one."
"You mean it hides the path from them and only them, or perhaps turns them aside?"
Ferret looked at Delon and nodded. "Aye. That or the like… if charms can do such things."
All eyes turned to Arin, but she shrugged. "Were I a Mage, mayhap I could say yea or nay."
"This is what the 'alim meant," said Aiko, gesturing leftward at the other way, "when he said that not all paths are what they seem. He was warning us away from the obvious."
"That is my belief as well," said Arin.
Alos cocked a skeptical eyebrow but remained silent.
Egil looked at the others and then at the sun, now poised on the rim of the world. "Let's not waste the daylight."
As they returned to the camels, Arin said, "I shall lead the descent."
Both Egil and Aiko protested, especially the Ryodoan, saying that if danger came, a warrior should take the brunt.
But Arin was adamant. "This path has a charm upon it, one we do not know, and among this band only I can ‹see›. And should it change in any manner, 'tis I who can best decide what it portends."
"But, love-" Egil began, yet, with an upflung hand, Arin stopped his words.
"Once we are down within the labyrinth, where I ween the way is wider, then Aiko or thou canst lead. But as we descend along the charmed way, 'tis mine to do."
Egil glanced at Aiko, and she blew out a long breath, then stiffly said, "As you will, Dara. As you will."
Swiftly they laded the camels, and amid hronks of protest mounted up and got all the animals to their feet. Each towing a beast, they moved toward the precipice, Arin in the lead, Aiko immediately after, then Egil, Alos, and Ferret, with Delon bringing up the rear. They paused on the verge and looked out over the endless canyons plunging deep into the crimson stone.
Delon sighed and said, "Of all our philosophies, why is it only I who believe we are about to step into Hel?"
In the lead, Arin urged her camel forward and started down within.
CHAPTER 5 1
As the waning half moon above fled before the oncoming sun, down the path Arin and her comrades edged, stone rising sheer on the right and falling sheer on the left, the way narrow and steep. Alos took one look down leftward at the precipitous drop, and, moaning, quickly turned his face to the stone on the right and closed his eyes tightly, whimpers leaking from his lips, the old man praying for Garlon to guide his camel true.
Egil, too, was somewhat daunted by the height, for, like Alos, he was a man of the sea and no climber of stone. And though he was raised on a steep-sided fjord, it was nothing like this. So he gritted his teeth and for the most stared straight ahead and trusted to the camel's sure feet.
Aiko, however, was unfazed by the drop, for her training in Ryodo had included many a vertical climb. But even though the fall held no fear for her, still Aiko was distressed, for her tiger was greatly unsettled and Dara Arin rode ahead; if danger came upon them, she and not Aiko would meet it first.
In the lead, the drop into the depths held no meaning for Arin, only the faint ribbon ahead, for she concentrated fully on the pathway downward in her attempt to ‹see›.
Near the rear of the procession, Ferret leaned over and looked at the ruddy stone falling sheer below. Then she glanced back at Delon to see him staring downward, too. "Are you not afraid?" she called. "It's quite high, you know."
Delon smiled. "No, luv. In my youth in the Gunarring, my father and I often scaled such steeps, though not in a bloody red Hel like this. -But I say, what about you?"
"I walked the rope before I was nine," she replied, "and flew the trapeze as well. Heights are to be respected, not feared."
"Aren't you afraid your camel will bolt?"
At Delon's question, Alos moaned and clapped his hands over his ears.
"Animals have more sense than to do such," replied Ferret. "At least in the cirque it was so."
"Cirque? You were in a cirque, luv? You'll have to tell me of it."
Ferret took a deep breath and then let it out. Except for the story about Old Nom, Ferai had told none of the others aught of her past, not even Delon. She looked down into the depths below and then back at the bard to find him yet looking at her, awaiting a reply. "Someday, perhaps," she called out to him, then turned and faced front once more. Someday, perhaps, someday.
Down they went and down, twisting and turning into the depths of bloodred rock, the angled way sometimes shallow, sometimes steep, but always narrow and ever clinging to vertical ripples frozen forever on the face of perpendicular stone. Along this slant they rode for nearly six miles, the path arcing 'round meandering curves and angling past sharp bends, until at last they came to the enshadowed floor of the jagged canyon below, where crimson walls rose some fifteen hundred feet straight up to a ragged slash of sky. Here in the depths they could no longer see where they had begun high on the rim above, for it was lost beyond uncounted crooks and twists and turns in the pathway behind.