None of them had wanted to sleep on the stone slabs. Certainly the Children who had been drugged had not. They had all chosen the floor instead, with Tra. Hoppa and two of the women occupying the bunks in the brewing room. Thorn had brought Tra. Hoppa and the baby down, and Showpa had taken to Bibb at once, relieving Tra. Hoppa of him.
But now, instead of Bibb, Tra. Hoppa had Nia Skane and the two little boys from Burgdeeth to look after. All three children had been found in a deep, nearly closed tunnel with a supply of watered MadogWerg so diluted that they were semi-conscious. They lay bound, with their drug-water in bottles beside them, being used in some terrible experiment that sickened Zephy. Thorn thought it had been done to see at what level of consciousness these three young ones would keep themselves voluntarily, when the drug in the sweetened liquid was all the food or drink they had. Tra. Hoppa had taken them at once into her own care, until she fell asleep from exhaustion. No one realized, perhaps, what a toll the journey had taken of her. She had looked tired and drawn when Thorn brought her in.
Now, with twelve Children awakened from the drug, they should surely be able to wake the others. But Zephy felt an unease all the same, for the sense of evil that clung about the caves had not diminished as the Children were awakened one by one. On the contrary, the feel of dark had increased. They all felt it, the sense of dark they had touched from afar, now grown strong all around them. Why? Why? She scowled, perplexed and frightened, and found she was clenching her hands so tight they had gone quite numb.
She rose at last when she heard others stirring, and went to the brewing room to make zayn tea. And all through the day and the next day as the remaining Children were found and awakened from the drug, she puzzled over the feel of the foreboding that lay rank as a bad smell upon the caves. But it was not until she found Meatha at last that she felt the darkness surround and touch her like a live thing.
She had discovered Meatha quite unexpectedly, after she had nearly given up hope, in a crevice so deep she might well have missed her. As Zephy stood staring, then knelt so the candlelight fell full on Meatha’s face, she could see no indication of life, nor could she feel the sense of life that had come from the others. Furiously, she tried to force her own sense of living into Meatha, her terror making her frantic. She poured every ounce of her strength into the pale girl, but the darkness gripped Zephy and held her, and seemed to swing a curtain between herself and Meatha; and she could do nothing.
When Toca found her, she was close to tears and exhaustion, and she thought she had lost Meatha.
Toca came to her silently and stood quiet for a time. She was so preoccupied she paid no attention to him. Then slowly she began to sense a kind of animal need and possessiveness coming from the little boy, something quite beyond her own power, and directed at Meatha. Something so basic and simple—like a baby demanding its mother’s attention with righteous fury. She drew her own thoughts back and waited, letting Toca take hold as he would.
She sensed, as his very spirit gripped into Meatha, that part of what he was doing he had learned from the baby, from Bibb, that demanding, uncompromising indignation; and that part of it was from his own experience. He was still so close to babyhood that he could more easily bring it forth: a charged, young-animal insistence to life that could not be ignored.
Nor was it ignored. For at last, where Zephy’s strongest efforts had failed, Toca’s were responded to. Zephy felt the darkness drawing back, knew that it was being held off; and finally Meatha opened her eyes, staring blankly.
Zephy, shaken, could have wept over Toca. She took his hand in her own and knew that he was complete and special, and admired him—and let him know that she did.
When Meatha was able to rise, able to walk supported by them both, she clung to them as if the very touch of something living was necessary to nurture the flow of her own life forces. As if she had been very close, indeed, to dying. When she had been fed in that dormitory that the brewing room had become, leaning against Tra. Hoppa, taking a hesitant spoonful at a time, she was stronger. She and Zephy looked at each other silently, and a lifetime seemed to have passed. Truly a resurrection of life had taken place and neither could speak of it; and the strangenesses that lay between them brought them closer. For fear bound them; the gift of Ynell bound them; the darkness bound them.
Before the last Children were awakened from the drug, Thorn began to post guards—Children made well and willing to remain at the farther reaches of the tunnels, away from distractions of the mind, to sense anyone coming. above on the hills. But no one came, they were not disturbed; and finally Thorn wondered if the three soldiers—the two dead and the one still captive—had not been set to live here alone for a very long time indeed.
The bound Kubalese refused to talk. He would not give them any idea of when more guards were due or from what direction. When Thorn questioned him about the feeling of evil, of dark, he would only stare as if he didn’t understand. He accepted food grudgingly but told them nothing, so that Thorn half wished they had killed the man after all and saved the trouble. To pity the Kubalese, the drug giver, would have been hypocritical to Thorn, as it was not to Elodia, who felt some strange human kindness for the captive.
It was Elodia, though, who to save the others danger had successfully shielded her thoughts, taken a knife, and crept out into the night with Toca, through the hillside door. They went alone to locate a band of horses that Toca sensed, grazing untended, to the south. The little boy would have gone by himself, recklessly. They returned with the news of a small band of Kubalese horses and a wagon at what appeared to be an iron ore depot. And, a fact that shook them all, two smaller Carriolinian mares, butternut, all butternut. This news made them renew their search for Anchorstar, though he could not be sensed. Why had they felt him before they ever reached the caves, but not now? Their efforts brought an increased feel of evil only, an aura of malignancy. Their great fear was that, drugged and perhaps unfed, Anchorstar had died. Or that he had been deliberately killed, as too threatening in some way.
“I could not sense him here when we came to the caves,” Meatha said. “We could feel nothing but the evil. But we could feel no Children either, though we knew they were here. You saw them in your visions but we never did, we only had the knowledge of them. Maybe you did because you had the stone. When we came, there was just the feel of evil. And then almost at once a dozen Kubalese soldiers were around us, forcing us down to drink of the drug, making us swallow, holding our mouths open and pouring it so we choked—and they laughed, they were doing that to us and laughing. We could not resist them. Then afterwards I wanted the drug. I wanted it again and again,” she said, ashamed. “And when I was in that sleep, I didn’t care about Anchorstar, about anything. I—I wanted him to be like us . . .” She hid her face in her hands, torn with sobs.
“But I don’t understand,” Zephy said. “What made you come here from Eresu? Why didn’t the Children come before, if they knew about the captive Children?”
“They didn’t know. They could only feel the darkness, the danger. They don’t know everything, even in Eresu. They felt the evil, but they didn’t know what it was, where it was.
“But when you drew near Eresu on the mountain, I could sense you. I knew I had left the runestone for you to find, and now I began to feel that you had it. As you came nearer I began to see you sometimes. It was only after we began to sense you and the strength of the stone, that we began to feel that the darkness came from these hills in the south, and that there were Children here. It was as if before, with the Children drugged, there was nothing strong enough to reach out to us. The drugged Children were as dead; there was nothing in them to reach out and echo in our own thoughts. Perhaps when the runestone was closer, and magnified it, the sense of them in the darkness was clear.