Percepliquis trr-6 Page 14

  The sailor grabbed the end of the rope and dragged it around the base of the little birch.

  “How ya doing, Royce?” Hadrian called.

  “Dangling,” Royce replied. “Pretty slick up there. Give me some slack.”

  They stood in a circle, each keeping a safe distance, all of them standing on their toes, trying to see down. Overhead, the winter clouds made it hard to tell the time. There was no sun, just a vague gray light that filled the sky, leaving everything murky and drained of color. Hadrian guessed they had only four hours of light left.

  Mauvin and Hadrian let out the rope until it hung from the tree, although Hadrian continued to hold on to it just the same. He could not see Royce and stared instead at the thin rope. It too was mostly lost, buried in the snow, leaving only a telltale mark.

  “Can you reach the bottom?”

  “How much rope do we have?” Royce’s voice returned like an echo from the bottom of a well.

  Hadrian looked at Arista.

  “Ten coils of fifty feet each,” she replied. “All told, there should be five hundred feet’s worth,” she shouted, tilting her head up a bit as if throwing her voice into the hole.

  “Not half good enough,” Royce replied.

  “That’s a deep hole,” Hadrian said.

  The rope shifted and twisted at the edge.

  “What’re you doing, buddy?”

  “Trying something.”

  “Something stupid?”

  “Maybe.” He sounded winded.

  The rope stopped moving and went slack.

  “Royce?” Hadrian called.

  No answer.

  “Royce?”

  “Relax,” came his reply. “This might work. I’m on a ledge, big enough for all of us, I think. Icy, but doable. We can tie on here too. Looks like we’ll have to work our way a leg at a time. Might as well start sending down the gear.”

  They brought up the wagon and began lowering supplies, each package disappearing through the opening in the brush.

  “I’ll go first,” Alric announced when the wagon was empty.

  Hadrian and Mauvin tied the safety rope around his waist and legs. Once tethered, the king took hold of the guide rope and, sitting down on the snow, scooted forward. Mauvin and Hadrian were careful this time to let out the rope slowly, and soon Alric reached the thickets and peered through.

  “Oh dear Maribor!” Alric exclaimed. “You have me, right?” he shouted back at them.

  “You’re not going anywhere until you want to,” Mauvin replied.

  “Oh lord,” he repeated several times.

  Royce was offering suggestions, but too faintly for Hadrian to hear exactly what they were.

  “Okay, okay, here I go,” Alric said. He turned himself over and, lying flat on his stomach, started backing into the hole, clutching tightly to the guide rope. “Slowly now,” he warned as Mauvin and Hadrian let out the tether, and inch by inch he slipped over the edge and out of view.

  “Oh sweet Maribor!” they heard him exclaim.

  “You okay?” Hadrian called.

  “Are you crazy? Of course I’m not! This is insane.”

  “Lower him,” Royce shouted.

  They let out the line until Hadrian felt a tug that he guessed was Royce pulling Alric to the ledge. The rope went slack, Royce shouted the all clear, and they reeled up the empty harness. Feeling it best to send him early so they still had enough people to man the rope, they sent Elden next. He went over the side quietly, although his eyes told a story similar to Alric’s.

  “Degan, you’re next,” Hadrian informed him.

  “You are joking,” Gaunt replied. “You don’t expect me to go down there?”

  “Kinda why you’re here.”

  “That’s insane. What if the rope breaks? What if we can’t reach the bottom? What if we can’t get back up? I’m not doing this. It’s-it’s ridiculous!”

  Hadrian just stared at him, holding the harness.

  “I won’t.”

  “You have to,” Arista told him. “I don’t know why, but I know the Heir of Novron must accompany us for this trip to be successful. Without you there’s no need for any of us to go.”

  “Then fine, none of us go!”

  “If we don’t, the elves will kill everyone.”

  He looked at her and then at the others with a desperate, pleading face. “How do you know this? I mean, how do you know I have to come?”

  “Esrahaddon told me.”

  “That loon?”

  “He was a wizard.”

  “He’s dead. If he was so all-knowing, how come he’s dead? Huh?”

  “Waiting down here,” Alric shouted up.

  “You have to go,” Arista told him.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You won’t be emperor.”

  “What good is being emperor if I’m dead?”

  No one spoke; they all just looked at him.

  Degan slumped his shoulders and grimaced. “How do you put this damn thing on?”

  “Put your feet through the loops and buckle it around your waist,” Hadrian explained.

  After Gaunt and Arista were down, Wyatt took over Hadrian’s position on the rope, freeing him to speak with Renwick. “You have supplies to last a week, perhaps more if you conserve,” he told him and the other boys as they gathered around. “Take care of the horses and stay off the hilltop. Make camp in that hollow. For your own safety, I’d avoid a fire in the daylight. The smoke will be visible at a distance. It would be best not to attract any uninvited guests.”

  “We can handle ourselves,” Brand declared.

  “I’m sure you can, but still it would be best not to wander, and try to keep unnoticed.”

  “I want to go with you,” Renwick said.

  “Me too,” Mince added.

  Hadrian smiled. “You’re all very brave.”

  “Not me,” Elbright said. “A man would have to be a royal fool to go into something like that.”

  “So you’re the sensible one,” Hadrian told him. “Still, we need all of you to do your job here. Keep the camp, and take care of the horses for us. If we aren’t back in a week, I suspect we won’t be coming back and it will probably be too late if we do. If you see fire in the north or west, that will likely mean the elves have overrun Aquesta or Ratibor. Your best bet would be to go south. Perhaps try to catch a ship to the Westerlins. Although I have no idea what you’ll find there.”

  “You’ll be back,” Renwick said confidently.

  Hadrian gave the boy a hug, then turned to look at the monk, who was, as usual, with the horses. “Com’on, Myron, it’s nearly your turn.”

  Myron nodded, petting his animal one last time, whispering to it. Hadrian put an arm around him as they walked toward the ridge, where Wyatt and Mauvin were in the process of lowering Magnus.

  “What did you say to Royce last night?” Hadrian asked the monk.

  “I just spoke with him briefly about loss and coping with it.”

  “Something you read?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  Hadrian waited for more, but the monk was silent. “Well, whatever it was, it worked. He’s-I don’t know-alive again. Not singing songs and dancing, of course. If he did that, I suppose I’d worry. But you know, kinda normal, in a Royce sort of way.”

  “He’s not,” Myron replied. “And he’ll never be the way he was again. There’s always a scar.”

  “Well, I’m just saying the difference is like summer and winter. You should be thanked, even if Royce will never say it. There aren’t many who would face him like that. It’s like pulling a thorn from a lion’s paw. I love Royce, but he is dangerous. The life he’s lived denied him a proper understanding of right and wrong. He wasn’t kidding when he said he might have killed you.”

  “I know.”

  “Really?”

  Myron nodded. “Of course.”

  “You didn’t even seem worried. What happened to my little naive shut-in who walked in awe of t
he world? Where did all the wisdom come from?”

  Myron looked at him, puzzled. “I’m a monk.”

  Hadrian was the last to enter the hole, lowering himself hand over hand, sliding on his stomach to the edge, where at last he looked over and saw what Alric and the rest already had. An abyss opened below him. From the rim of the bowl, the opening looked small, but it was an illusion. The aperture was huge, an almost perfect circle of irregular rock, like the burrow of some enormous rabbit, and it went straight down. As in the pass, long icicles decorated the upper walls, stretching down from stony cliffs, and snow dusted the crevices.

  He could not see the bottom. The setting sun cast an oblique light across the opening and against the far wall, leaving the depths lost to darkness. Far below, so far he would not have ventured an arrow shot, swallows flew, their tiny bodies appearing as insects, highlighted by the sunlight and brilliant against the black maw as they swirled and circled.

  A bit light-headed, Hadrian stared down into the space below his feet. His stomach lightened and it took conscious effort to breathe. He got a firm hold of the rope, slipped over the side, and dangled in midair. The sensation was disturbing. Only the thin line separated him from eternity.

  “You’re doing great,” Arista called to him as if she were an old pro now, her voice hollow as it echoed across the mouth of the shaft. He felt Royce pulling him in toward the side. Looking down, he saw all of them crouched on a narrow ledge that was glassy with ice, their gear stacked at one end.

  He touched down, feeling hands on his waist pulling him to the safety of the wall.

  “That was fun,” he joked, only then realizing how fast his heart was racing.

  “Yeah, we should do this all the time,” Mauvin said, and followed it with a nervous laugh.

  “Want us to leave the rope or untie it?” Renwick called down.

  “Have him leave it,” Royce said. “That lip will be a problem otherwise. From this point on, I’ll come last and bring the rope with me. Wyatt, you have the most climbing experience. Why don’t you find the next ledge?”

  Hadrian could see tension on the sailor’s face as they tied on the harness.

  The interior of the hole was a wall of stone with many handholds. Hadrian guessed that even he could climb it with little fear if not for the ice and the knowledge that he was hundreds of feet from the ground.

  Wyatt found a landing point, a new ledge some ways down, and they began the moving process again. The next ledge was narrower and shorter. There was not enough room for everyone, and Wyatt was forced to move on before all of them were down. Royce brought up the rear, untying the rope, coiling it around his body, and climbing down untethered, using just his claws.

  The next two levels Hadrian did not consider ledges at all. They were merely a series of hand-and footholds where only three could pause. As they were forced to cling to the rock without ropes, their gear was left to dangle.

  The next ledge was the widest yet, being the width of a country lane, and upon reaching it, several of them collapsed, lying down on their backs, their chests heaving, sweat dripping. Hadrian joined them, yawning to relieve the growing pressure in his ears. When he opened his eyes, he saw a circle of white light above them that was no larger than his thumb held at arm’s length. A seemingly solid shaft of light, like a pale gray pillar, beamed down into the hole. Through its luminescent column, the swallows swooped at eye level, rising and falling, dancing through the shaft. The far wall was still so distant it appeared hazy in the ethereal light.

  “It’s like being bloody spiders,” Alric remarked.

  “I’m not sure even being ruler of the world is worth all this,” Degan moaned.

  “I can see how Edmund Hall fell now, but he must have gotten down a long way to have survived,” Arista said. “Could you imagine doing this alone?”

  “He wasn’t alone,” Myron said. “He had two friends and several servants.”

  “What happened to them? Were they locked up as well?”

  “No,” Myron replied.

  “They didn’t survive, did they?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Hadrian sat up. His clothes were wet. Around him droplets fell, cascading down the walls. Looking across the shaft, he could see a clear division between a bright level of ice and snow and a much darker level of damp stone. “It’s warmer,” he said.

  “We need to keep going,” Royce told them. “The light is fading. Anyone want to do this holding a torch?”

  “Try and find thicker ledges,” Alric told Wyatt.

  “I find what I find.”

  The lower they went, the darker it became, regardless of the daylight, which, to Hadrian’s dismay, was fading quickly. They dropped down four more ledges. Their efficiency grew with repetition, but their progress was being hampered by the failing light. The walls were black, while overhead the opening had changed from a brilliant gray to a sickly yellow, with one side dipping into a rosy purple as the sun began to set.

  Arista was on the rope, climbing down, when he heard her scream. Hadrian’s heart skipped. He was holding the rope-had it wrapped around his waist-when he felt her weight jerk him.

  “Arista!” he shouted.

  “I’m all right,” she called up.

  “Did you slip?” Alric yelled from farther below.

  “I–I put my hand on a bat,” she said.

  “Everyone quiet,” Royce ordered.

  Hadrian could hear it too, a faint squeaking, but on a massive droning scale. That was followed by a hum, a vibration that bounced within the shaft until it grew to a thunder. The air moved with a mysterious wind, swirling and gusting.

  “What’s going on?” Arista called out, her voice hard to hear behind the growing roar.

  “Hang on!” Hadrian shouted back.

  They felt a rushing movement, like an eruption that issued from below, as the world filled with the fluttering of endless wings and high-pitched squeals. Hadrian braced himself, holding tight to the rope, as Arista screamed once more and the shaft filled with a cloud of bats that swirled with the force of a cyclone.

  With his head down, Hadrian clutched the rope, wrapping it tight around his forearm. Mauvin and Royce grabbed hold of him. Arista was not going anywhere.

  In less than a minute the hurricane of bats passed by.

  “Lower me down!” Arista called. “Before something else happens.”

  He felt her touch down, and as he reeled up the harness, Hadrian looked up. The small patch of mauve sky was filled with a dark swirling line. A cloud of bats snaked like the tail of a serpent, twisting, looping, circling. Like a magic plume of smoke, they were mesmerizing to watch. Hadrian guessed there had to be millions.

  Looking back down, he noticed there was a light below, a bright light that filled the shaft, revealing the glistening walls.

  “What’s going on down there?” he called.

  “I’m tired of not being able to see,” Arista yelled back.

  “She’s got her robe glowing,” Alric said uncomfortably.

  When Hadrian got down, he saw the princess perched on an outcropping of rock. Her legs dangled over the edge, scissoring in the air, her robe glowing white. Whenever she moved, the shadows shifted. Everyone stole repeated glances, as if it might be impolite to stare. Gaunt had no such reservation as he gaped, openly horrified.

  On they went, following the same order, all of them doing their job with a rhythm. They traveled in silence except for the necessary calls of “down” and “clear.” It took five more descents before he heard Wyatt call up, “Stop! I’m at the bottom!”

  “You’re still on the rope,” Hadrian shouted back, confused. “You haven’t touched down yet? You need more slack?”

  “ No! No slack! I would prefer not to touch down.”

  “River?” Arista asked.

  “Nope, but it’s moving.”

  “What is?”

  “Can’t really tell. It’s too dark down here. Give me a minute to find a place
to land.”

  In time, they all descended to an island of rock that jutted up from the floor of the cavern. Even with Arista beside him, it was too dark for Hadrian to see clearly what lay around them. All he knew was that they stood on an island within a sea of dark movement. He smelled a foul odor and heard a soft chattering coming from the floor. The smell was very much like an old chicken coop. “What is it, Royce?”

  “I really think you need to see this for yourself,” Royce replied. “Arista, can you turn that thing up?”

  Before he finished his sentence, Esrahaddon’s robe increased in brilliance, a phosphorous light illuminating the entire base of the shaft. What they saw left them speechless. They were not actually at the bottom. They stood on the tip of an up-thrusted rock, tall enough to breach the surface of a monolithic pile of bat droppings. The cone-shaped mound of guano stood easily three hundred feet high. Every inch of it moved, as across its surface scurried hundreds of thousands of cockroaches.

  “By Mar!” Mauvin exclaimed.

  “That’s disgusting,” Alric said.

  There was more there than cockroaches. Hadrian spotted something white and spidery darting across the surface-a crab, and there was not just one, but hundreds all scuttling along. There was a faint squeal lower down and he saw a rat. The rodent was scrambling to escape the pile as a horde of beetles swarmed it. The rat toppled and was pulled onto its back, where it floundered, struggling in the soft guano. It squealed again. Its feet, tail, and head quivered and thrashed above the surface as an endless mob of beetles pulled it down, until only the trembling, hairless tail was visible, and then it too vanished.

  “ ‘Crawling, crawling, crawling. They eat everything,’ ” Myron quoted.

  “Anyone want to try walking across that?” Royce asked.

  Wyatt replied with an uncomfortable laugh, then said, “No, seriously, how do we get down?”

  “What if we jump and run real fast?” Mauvin offered.

  This idea garnered several grimaces.

  “What if it’s not solid? Can you imagine it being so soft that you went under, like water?” Magnus muttered.

  “You’re thinking something,” Hadrian said to Royce. “You saw this from above. You wouldn’t have come down if you didn’t have some kind of plan.”