CHAPTER 45

Climbing out of the second level isn’t as hard as I thought it would be, even with one hand. The knotted rope hanging from the hole in the ceiling does its job, and all I’m forced to sacrifice is my remaining torch, at the time just a barely-lit stick of wood. Navigating the tight space of the tunnel in complete darkness is considerably harder, and at first I only know I emerged out of it because I stop banging my head against jutting bits of rubble.

The third level is very still and very dark. So much so that even Rue’s normally gentle buzzing sounds harsh and out of place.

We’ve been going over the finer points of ‘why did you push Hilde, Malco?’ So far, my answers haven’t satisfied the little blob. He’s not very worried about how I traded an easy exit for a long and perilous trek in the darkness, no. He just thinks it’s rude to push people, and none of my attempts at justifying what I did seem to satisfy him. In truth, they don’t really satisfy me. The only thing that does right now is knowing that I spared Hilde from this fate. This desolation. The darkness yawns around me, an open mouth waiting for me to tumble inside. I keep up the conversation, though. It helps stave off the headache and the shivering.

“But if I hadn’t pushed her, she would have forced me to go through the portal,” I say for the third time.

“You should have told her you didn’t want to go through the portal,” Rue rebuts. Again.

“Rue, shh,” I say. “There may be slimes about.”

“There aren’t any.”

“How do you… Oh.” I would smack my forehead if I had an uninjured free hand. “You don’t really need light to see, do you?”

He buzzes no. Softly, though, vibrating my shoulder more than making himself heard.

“How do you see?”

“I thought we didn’t want to attract slimes.”

“Can you see any?”

“Maybe,” he buzzes smugly.

“Rue!”

“Don’t worry, Malco. There’s a path through the rocks right in front of you.”

I follow his commands, picking my way down through the rubble slowly and then dragging my feet across the dust to keep myself from falling until the path turns smoother and less littered with detritus. The cold in the cave contrasts painfully with the warmth I feel inside, the sweat running down my face. The empty expanse seems to press down on me like a blanket; every time there’s a sound I half-expect leathery wings to snap above and one final, sharp pain…

“Can you sense the big flying serpent?”

“No. If it’s here, it isn’t flying.”

“That’s a mercy.”

“Yes,” Rue says. “The slimes are very active, though.”

“You can see some?”

“Oh, you’re following one right now,” Rue says, matter of factly.

“What?” I stand stock-still and perk up my ears.

“It’s the thing making this nice smooth path,” he says, unperturbed. “Don’t let it get away!”

No matter how much I strain, there isn’t a sound to be heard. Dragging, slithering, nothing. The thought of accidentally stepping into a mutation slime freezes me to the spot. Hurrying after it the last thing I want to do.

“What is it doing?” I whisper.

“Moving. Slowly, but as slowly as you are. There are a few rocks floating inside it.”

“Why isn’t it chasing me?”

“I don’t think it can sense you, Malco. Or if it does sense you, it doesn’t seem to like what it senses very much. It’s just going away.”

“I… They follow what they feel in the ground,” I say, remembering Tale. “The shaking. Is everything covered in dust?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of dust. We’re all dusty.”

I think on this a moment. Before this, I’d thought Rue ‘saw’ in the same way the slimes did. But if he can sense all this even from my shoulder when the slime is as blind as I am, then that can’t be it. I begin walking, taking each step with a lot more care than before.

“What do you sense, Rue?” I ask.

“I sense the slime has gotten away from us. We’re losing it.”

“Rue.”

He makes a buzz that sounds remarkably like a sigh.

“I sense a few alive things and a lot of not-alive things.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to describe,” he says with a twinge of annoyance.

“Well, try.”

“Stop it!” he snaps. “Stop it, stop it! Stop asking questions about me. I don’t want to explain. You can’t make me.”

The outburst surprises me. He continues to mutter ‘Stop it, stop it!’ as he moves to the very tip of my shoulder, apparently trying to put some distance between us. His background buzzing is different also, thinner, sharper. I feel a thousand tendrils move against the leather of my coat. A few pierce through the fabric and sink, needle-like, into my skin.

“Hey, ow, ow, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

The needles stop and Rue quietens a little. What I interpret as his enraged buzzing continues, but with a lower, simmering intensity.

“I’m sorry, Rue. I shouldn’t have prodded.”

He buzzes a single note sharper than the rest and resumes his sullen brooding, like a child crossing their arms and refusing to speak to you.

“All right. Not speaking is fine. Just tell me if I take a wrong turn, all right? I’m counting on you.”

Facing a wall of busy, buzzing silence, I continue my careful trek over and around the rubble of the third and fourth levels. To offset the lack of guidance, I pull the shortbow from my back and swing it in small arcs in front of me, like Rev did with her sword in the caverns under the hills so long ago. I keep it slow, so as not to alert anything roaming around with a sudden careless whack.

The silent treatment continues and makes it harder to forget my overall sickliness. My body feels heavy and exhausted, and not just from being awake and running around a deadly dungeon for gods know how long. How long has it been, really? Down in the earth my sense of time has been completely shattered. Is that by design? All I know is that I miss the sun on my skin like water for drinking. Lazing by a bend in the Steel, feeling the light she down on me.

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These thoughts manage to keep me entertained while I walk, but Rue remains resolutely silent. I smack my shin against a bit of rock my improvised walking stick misses and bite my tongue to keep from shouting out. The pain brings up a whole host of other concerns. Worries that I try to force down bubble to the top of my thoughts like river scum: about Rev, about Katha, about my parents, about dying in this godsforsaken hole because my single companion, a blob of who knows what, refuses to tell me the way forward. I lean against a smooth section of stone and breathe in deep.

It’s no use. The air comes out of it in a rush followed by a strangled sob. My body shakes from tiredness and shock, the successive waves of pain that followed one another without respite. My eyes are wet, I realize, and suddenly a deluge springs from them and wets the cloth around my face. I sink to a sitting position, bury my face in my hands and allow myself to cry with some surprise. All in all, I’m just glad it didn’t happen before. I assure myself that no one can see me. The Godtouched have probably had their fill of watching me walk without a single hit of excitement beyond feverish delusions. The slimes can’t hear me. The serpent is far away, maybe. It’s just me and the darkness. Another sob rakes my body along with a shiver. Is the shivering just from the cold, or is the fever taking hold again? I steel myself for the possibility of another hallucination making an appearance.

“Malco?”

Rue speaks softly, inching closer to my head.

“Malco, why are you crying?”

“I’m not,” I say stubbornly.

“All right. But if you’re not crying then why are you making those crying noises and why is liquid coming out of your face?”

“Don’t worry about that. Just something that happens sometimes.”

I wipe my eyes and nose on my sleeve and lean against the smooth surface behind me. It’s cold, but solid, and I need something solid to hold onto right now.

“Just a little bit of despair, Rue,” I sigh. “Just… everything that happened, and we’re walking around in this cavern filled with dead things and monsters, and we’re probably never going to find the right place anyway, and—”

“But we’ve found it, Malco.”

“—we’re going to… What did you say?”

“You’re leaning against it,” Rue buzzes.

He sounds pleased, our grievance forgotten.

I scramble to my feet and run my hands against the smooth surface. Its polished, gently curving exterior doesn’t have a dent. Curving! Curving like a pillar!

“Are you sure it’s not the Silver Door one?” I ask, not letting my excitement get the better of me.

“I am,” Rue says decisively. “They taste very different.”

“Taste? I—” I stop that line of enquiry before it gets out of hand. “All right. We have to– I have to get things in order. Keep watch!”

Following Rue’s indications, I walk back a few good meters then put the shortbow and the arrows on the floor within easy reach. Next the rope, and after it the dice in a bowl-ish depression in the rock. I tie knots in the rope. Even with one hand, it’s easy; the rope seems to curl almost without assistance.

“How tall is the pillar?”

“Tall.”

“Yes,” I say patiently. “But how many of me would fit between the ground and the top? Standing,” I add to make sure.

“Hum… Lots.”

“Rue, I need something a little more…”

“Two of the Floating Room. It’s that big.”

“Yes, good. That’s exactly what I need to know.”

It’s also quite far. But that’s fine. That’s why I brought everything else.

After the knots are tied, I tie one end of the rope to an arrow and step on the other end. I’m not sure how the rope works, and I don’t want to have it disappear into the darkness.

“Rue, what you did when I fell and you caught me by the wrist? I need you to do it again. Same arm.”

In response, he slithers down the length of my arm and lashes his tendrils around my skin. I give a little yelp when he moves too close to the wrist and he dutifully retracts those feelers. The result feels like a glove hanging from my wrist.

My fingers can neither close around a bowstring nor hold a shaft in place. But with Rue’s help…

I explain what I want from him. He understands the basics. How he must hold the tension while I aim and then release all at once. We try a practice run, twanging the bow with no arrow nocked, making awful, discordant noises that make me hold still listening for moving things. Nothing descends from above to eat me.

When I am sure that Rue has got it and all the equipment is lined up in easy reach, I kneel next to the rough rocky bowl and take the dice in my hand. I’ve handled hunting bows before, though never successfully. This one isn’t that, however; it has too many curves, is too compact, and the draw is heavy. Heavier than I can easily pull even while using Rue for a makeshift hand. Hence, the dice. I feel the surfaces with my fingers to make sure of what I already know: every face but one is blank. The remaining one contains a line of three pips. We might be here a while. I need the extra strength.

I only dare let the dice fall a short distance, afraid that they’ll roll away in the darkness. They click-clack to a stop and I open my mouth to ask for strength, just in case I got lucky. Another noise cuts me off before I can. It comes from everywhere and nowhere, inside my head and out, and I’m up and looking around in the darkness, heart pounding, before I even recognize it for what it is. Laughter. Hearty, relieved laughter, and a swirl of wind that whips the dust up around me before both fading into the dark.

A hallucination. My body is warm and flushed and I’m light-headed, and certainly I saw impossible and weirder things just a little while ago. Hope prevails, and I calm myself down with long, deep breaths before Rue buzzes up.

“What was that?”

“You mean you heard it?”

“Yes. Very loud.”

I stop. Block out all my other useless senses, focus on the tiniest, most distant sounds. There’s no laughter. But there, in the distance above, the slow beating of wings begins…

Heart pumping and feeling no added strength, I reach for the bowl and pick up the dice. I roll them again, saying ‘Strength!’ as soon as I hear them stop. This time, I don’t need to make sure. Don’t need to touch the surface because I can feel the power immediately swelling inside me. It’s not the lightness of before, but a ponderous heaviness. I feel unstoppable.

Grabbing the bow and the arrow, I aim up. Obediently, Rue wraps his feelers around the bowstring, and when I draw my arm back, feeling almost no resistance beyond a throb of pain, he holds too.

“Hold the arrow in place,” I say. “Tell me where to aim.”

The wings sound closer now. It doesn’t bother me. This power demands to be used, it aches for combat against stronger things than I am. Let the beast come.

“There,” Rue says in a thin, sharp voice.

“Then let go.”

The tendrils snap away in a single sudden motion. I hear the arrow whistle up, the rope uncoiling, growing?, after it.

“It passed it,” Rue says. “Flew past the platform.”

Crap.

That’s frustrating. The added strength won’t last long. If I pull the rope now, maybe I’ll get another attempt, but then I’ll have nothing left to climb the rope with…

“It’s turning,” Rue says, shaking excitedly. “Flying!”

“Snaking?” I ask, but then the tip of the rope under my foot twists and I see it. In my mind’s eye the arrow flies over the platform, carrying the rope and all my hopes of getting out of here. I see the rope noticing the mistake, and I see it using the momentum to twist in the air and turn back to the desired target…

High above, there’s a whip and a slap, and the rope grows taut. I hold it with my good hand and pull. It doesn’t budge.

I run boldly forward, laughing as I jump over boulders and trip over rocks. Objects get kicked far into the darkness with a clatter that mixes with the sound of many wings. Ascending the rope with my feet locked under me feels as easy as flying, single hand or not. The rope helps: my hands never slip, the fibers never burn my skin, and with its successive swings and twirls it seems to even propel me up. We’re over the lip in no time, high above the rubble and the dust.

Only when I’m there do I notice the quiet. No wings. No loose rocks to kick. Rue’s buzz is very, very low. There’s quiet and there’s… Something else. I didn’t notice it in the same way that I don’t notice air: it’s all around us. It takes me a moment, but then I recognize it. A hungry, throaty growl, large and menacing as a storm.

“Malco…”

“It’s right here, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The platform is big, but not that big. I imagine the enormous serpent perched on the precarious thing, invisible in the absolute darkness, observing a meal that, for once, came to it. Its snarl turns to a low, sibilant hiss.

“Tell me when it attacks. Be quick.”

Very slowly, I lower myself to a crouch and breathe in. Everything comes down to this single moment, and I’m not afraid. The serpent can devour me in one gulp, but I’m not afraid. I am not afraid. Is my confidence tied to my strength? It ebbs away even as I depend on it. By some unknown sense, I can feel it draining, not the power itself, but the time I have to use it. And still I lower myself, and I wait, and I am not afraid.

The slithering comes a beat before Rue’s harsh buzzing note. I swing into the darkness with all my weight behind me, feel the punch connect with hard, scaled skin. Even all this magical strength isn’t equal to the beast’s might: I don’t push it back, only sideways. The enormous body passes to my side and falls into the darkness, shrieking in pain and frustration. The flap of its wings comes, the crash as it hits the ground, and then the loud, furious hiss.

But I’m not there. I run, following Rue’s directions, and touch the side of the White Door. The strength leaves me in the same moment, and I feel weak, frail, sickly. I step on the rope and follow its curves to the foot of the pedestal it’s wrapped around. I imagine it streaming dark light into a dark cavern as I reach into my pocket and pull out the Jet Keystone. I push it into the slot. There’s no brilliant, welcoming light as the Door opens. No blues, no emerald green, though I imagine that, in the all-pervading darkness, I see a deeper shadow, swirling, calling me into it. Gladly, I obey. I step forward.