The air grew stale as they traveled ever deeper, and the barriers between them and the outside world thicker. He struggled not to wheeze with every step, heard Irrial gasping at the slightest exertion. And never once did the gnome show any inclination to rest, or even to slow its headlong pace, either unaware of, or unconcerned with, their discomfort. Corvis started to wonder if battling through the Cephiran patrols might not have been the better option after all.
But slowly, so gradually he initially failed to notice, the walls spread outward, the echoes of their footsteps grew louder. Forcing his attention from his exhausted feet, Corvis examined his new surroundings and discovered a far wider passage, replete with forks and little side corridors. From within he heard the occasional scuff of movement, the hiss of a whispered word.
Two humans walked, with faltering steps, through the abode of gnomes.
Bulges protruded into the ever-expanding corridor, and from those solid rocks myriad faces appeared, staring in fascinated hatred at the intruders from above. On two feet and on all fours, across floor and walls and ceiling, the creatures skittered, misshapen limbs pumping and twisting at impossible angles. Air and rock, light and dark, all the same; Corvis, watching as a face slid from a stone to glower at him, realized that these were their actual homes, that the gnomes lived not in the empty spaces beneath the earth, but inside the rocks themselves. It was, somehow, even more than their grotesque ability to move through those rocks, a disturbing reminder of their alien nature.
They oozed through yet another solid wall, thicker than any they'd so far passed, and Corvis and Irrial froze, deaf to the impatient cajoling of their guide.
They stood upon a ledge, frighteningly narrow, at the lip of what could only be described as a gulf of darkness. It had, so far as Corvis's light could reach, no floor and no sides save for the one beside them. He had little doubt that were Mecepheum itself somehow transported here, it would have room to grow.
Only the ceiling was visible, casting back reflections of that feeble illumination. Gems, or what Corvis assumed to be gems, gleamed back in every imaginable hue. Most were white or a pale yellow, but there were sporadic glints of rich red and deep green as well. Despite the steady glow of Corvis's spell, the gems glittered, twinkling like the stars of night above.
Gnomes crawled betwixt and between them in defiance of gravity, stopping here and there to perform what Corvis, from his limited vantage, could only describe as a twisted genuflection. In the cavern air, what he'd first taken to be the rush of a distant waterfall resolved itself into a grinding paean, a song produced by inhuman throats. A hundred identical voices wove it together, one picking up where another left off so not even the need for breath ever interrupted the unending, monotonous tone.
Only when the gnome had actually backtracked and reached out to physically drag Irrial along did they begin walking once more, making their way around the impossible, wondrous abyss. Corvis and Irrial kept their right hands on the wall, hoping to ensure that they would not step out over the edge, for they could not tear their attentions from the false firmament above.
At least, not at first. As they progressed, Corvis began to realize that the gems actually did match the stars of the night sky. He recognized constellations: here the Scales of Ulan; there Kirrestes the Archer, drawing back his great bow for the shot that, according to myth, passed through all seventeen heads to slay the Ryvrik hydra; farther along the winding coils of the wyrm Anolrach, whose spilled lifeblood made the oceans salty.
Corvis wasn't certain which was worse: the thought that the gnomes had deliberately created this mirror of night, or the possibility that the stones had naturally taken such shapes and forms. His mind shied away from the deeper implications of either option.
Nor was this the worst of it. As his vision adjusted even more, Corvis saw other shapes, monstrous, writhing things at the edges of his light, moving unlike any natural beast of earth or air or even sea. They strode the empty reaches, the stagnant darkness, at the center of that black gulf, whispering sounds that reached the ear but which the mind fearfully refused to acknowledge. And when they moved, the nearest gnomes genuflected to them.
Corvis turned his eyes to the path and refused to look any longer into that abyss. THEIR SLOG AROUND ONE MINUSCULE FRACTION of that seemingly infinite cavern could have taken hours or even days; their progress through another array of twisting, monotonous corridors, even longer. Corvis's world had become nothing but the beating of an exhausted heart, the slow plod of aching, blistering feet. During those few moments when he could think at all, he began to contemplate the notion that he had died, that this was some horrible torment imposed in one of the darker corners of Vantares's dominion. He even began to welcome the occasional passage through solid walls, for the burning in his chest as he struggled not to breathe was indication that he yet lived.
He only just noticed when the corridors began, ever more frequently, to slope upward, and in his present state he never quite grasped the connotations.
Not, that is, until the gnome informed him "He goes no farther, no," at the same time Corvis felt the faintest brush of a breeze against his face, tentative and soft as a girl's first kiss. It smelled of grass and soil. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees, whether in gratitude or simple exhaustion he could never say.
"Thank you," he rasped, startled at how dry and gritty his voice sounded. How long have we been down here? It was only then he realized that not only had they never rested, they'd never stopped to eat or take even a mouthful of water. He looked briefly back the way they'd come, a shiver running down his spine, and wondered how much of it had been real.
"He does not want its thanks, no, its pitiful words of useless gratitude. He does not know what it said to him, why he guided it, took it below, between, the organs of the earth. But he knows that he will not do so again, never again, no. It leaves, yes, swiftly, before he changes his mind."
Corvis nodded. Staggering, holding each other upright, he and Irrial shambled forward, following the siren song of the breeze. They climbed shallow slopes, hands outstretched as though to clutch the diaphanous scents of the world above. The sun, when they found it, was overwhelming, knives of light stabbing at their eyes, but it was the most joyful pain Corvis had ever known.
He pretended, as he wept, that the blinding glare was the sole cause of his tears. CORVIS LEANED OUT between two uneven shutters, the knuckles of one hand pressed to the windowsill, and gazed morosely over the collection of wooden shacks and winding roads that pretended to form a town. He'd no idea what the place might be called, and couldn't be bothered to care overmuch. It'd been the first dollop of civilization they'd stumbled across after crawling back into the light from the earth's stone womb, and it had boasted rooms for let above the combination tavern/restaurant/general store. That was enough to make it home, at least for tonight.
He felt his head sag, and pressed the thumb and forefinger of his free hand to the bridge of his nose. Much as he might have liked someone to talk to, a part of him was glad that he was alone for the moment-that there was nobody present to witness his weakness. Or at least, a faint chuckle in the back of his thoughts reminded him, nobody real. Moving from the window, he slumped hard in the nearby chair, unwilling even to expend the effort to reach the thin and lumpy mattress.