"There," he heard Eruka say.
"Good," Perkar replied. He looked quickly around, hoping to see the Lemeyi, but he was not within the torch's small circle of illumination.
"Here, light yours, too," Eruka said.
"No. Just one going at a time; we may need them all to get out of here."
"Oh," Eruka said. "Good thinking."
Apad was still in the treasure room, head between his knees, retching as Perkar had been only moments before. His vomit reeked of woti.
"Get up, Apad," Perkar growled. "Thanks to you, we have no more time for this. We have to get out of here now!" He shouted the last word, and it seemed to sink through to Apad's consciousness. He staggered to his feet.
Trying not to look at the corpse, Perkar strode over to the weapons. "Bring the torch, Eruka," he commanded, and the singer obeyed.
"Which one?" Perkar muttered. Perhaps any would do, even the one he held. He gnawed his lip, knowing he had no time.
"Each of you take one," he enjoined. "Leave your own weapons here. We'll have to run, I'm sure." He made his own decision, took up a long, slender weapon with a blade the color of jade. It reminded him of water. As soon as he touched the hilt, he felt a tingle, as when he grasped the last, but this felt stronger, somehow. He hesitated, when he unbuckled the sword Ko had made, the sword his father had given him to make him a man. He hesitated but left it, anyway. It would be too heavy to carry both of them, and his own sword could not slay gods, of that he was certain. Perhaps this one could. He dropped the sword and its scabbard, only after he did so realizing that he had dropped it into the slowly spreading pool of blood. In an instant, the scabbard was stained, the applique pattern his mother had made ruined. Near it lay the woman's needlework, doubly red with blood and torchlight. Perkar was transfixed for an instant, understanding in a sudden flash how deep the roots of ruin could burrow, once a single seed was germinated, began growing. The instant passed; he would outrun what ruin he could.
Eruka selected a weapon without much dithering, and when Apad just stared blankly, Perkar thrust one into his hands. Apad nodded numbly and took it. He kept looking at the dead woman, a puzzled expression on his face.
"We go," Perkar said, shaking him roughly. "We go." He belted on the new sword, thrust his unlit torch into his belt, took the burning one from Eruka. A significant portion of it was already gone. Without waiting to see if his companions were following, Perkar left the treasure room, retracing their steps. In the torchlight, the cavern winked at him with bloody eyes, a million ruby accusations.
The first torch was burned down nearly to Perkar's hand; he lit his reed bundle without stopping.
"We have to move faster," he told Apad and Eruka. "If we run out of torches, we might as well start our death chants."
"Is this the right way? Are you sure?" Eruka asked.
"As sure as I can be," Perkar admitted. "I think I remember how we came."
"If we get lost…"
"Then that will be that," Perkar said. "Save your strength for running."
They could not, in fact, actually run. The tunnel floor was too uneven. In the tightest places, crawling seemed nightmarishly slow, and Perkar feared that at any moment the Lemeyi would reappear to work further mischief. He was certain that he occasionally heard the half god cackling, but the way sound traveled in the caves, the creature could be almost anywhere. Worse things than the Lemeyi could find them, as well, things bent on vengeance rather than cruel amusement. Perkar had no idea whether the woman had any relatives here—it seemed plain enough now that she was a Human Being or at least mostly Human. Perkar clenched his teeth on another eruption of bile; he had no time to be sick; let that come later. He swore silently that he would burn offerings to the woman's spirit, but he knew this was empty, for he did not even know her name, much less her lineage. The memory of her dull, glazed eyes and that terrible wound stayed with him, mocking him, and he understood that even if his offerings found her spirit, she would know them for what they were: a pale attempt to appease his own guilt. And though he was angry with Apad, Perkar knew the fault did lie with himself. Apad and Eruka, for all of their talk, would never have entered the cave at all if he had not forced the issue by running off to do it alone; he had challenged their manhood, allowed their fear of missing out on fame and glory to overcome their growing reluctance to implement their grandiose scheme to wrestle land from Balati. And it was fear—fear, not rage or anger or even greed—that had killed the old woman. How many songs told of seemingly harmless creatures discovered by the hero to be dragons or monsters in disguise? Apad's failure in the fight with the Wild God must have gnawed at him; he must have planned night and day what he would do next time they encountered danger. And then the evil Lemeyi whispering in his ear, cajoling him.
But he wouldn't have come in without me. If I had paid more attention to him, I could have stopped him.
Of course, then they would not have the weapons, the jadelike sword that rattled and flapped on his thigh.
I will avenge her, too. When I slay the Changeling, I will make her death worth something, turn it into Piraku for the whole world.
But that rang hollow, too. He had a vivid vision of the Stream Goddess, fury in her eyes—or weeping—knowing the things he was doing in her name.
The reed torch seemed to last longer than the heart pine, but it constantly threatened to go out, guttering to almost an ember at times. Perkar had to nurse it as they went along, and that slowed them further. When he lit the third torch, it was with a growing sense of despair. He did not know how far they had to go, but he knew it was much farther than their torches would light the way for them. After that it would be fumbling at the walls, the darkness surrounding them, the Lemeyi standing an arm's breadth away, laughing, fully able to see them but invisible to the Humans.
The blood beneath his armor was beginning to dry, to stiffen, and the gambeson began to rub his skin raw. It stank, too, a thick, sweet scent that the smoke from the torch could not cover. To that unpleasantness was added another; behind them, to their sides, the Humans began to hear noises. Slithering and scraping, faint chittering, a clicking like a hundred hard rods rapping against stone. In the larger spaces, the ones that the torch did not fully illumine, they caught glimpses of things just at the edge of the torchlight. Eyes, mostly, blinking green, yellow, or red. Once Perkar saw something large, irregular, shaped nothing like a man, retreating from the light on many spidery black legs. Perkar remembered that the Lemeyi had warned them that light in the tunnels would be noticed. Perkar could only hope that the unaccustomed glare would also deter whatever lurked about them— followed them.
Soon, though, it was the last torch that was nearly scorching his hand. He wondered wildly if there was anything else to burn; the noises—especially those behind them—were growing in volume; they could not be dismissed as imagination, and fear took hold in their minds. Perkar wondered how long they would last, fighting in the dark.
"My father will never know what happened to me," Apad groaned—the first coherent words he had uttered since their flight began.
"Our spirits will wander here without gifts, without even woti. I have killed us all."
"There's plenty of blame to go around," Perkar said. "If it hadn't been for me, we wouldn't have even come in here. Without Eruka, that thrice-damned Lemeyi would not have been our guide and we would have neither found the weapons nor been tricked into slaying their keeper. We've all been fools, but we can't make up for that dead."
"It was like cutting butter," Apad said, his voice rising hysterically. "These swords are terrible things. It just slid through. I thought it would be like fighting the Wild God, hacking and hacking almost without cutting at all. I thought we had to attack first, before she could change… Her blood was red!"