A Stone's Throw (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 3) (3 page)

“He was cheating,” Drake said.

“We pulled you out of the tavern before you got arrested for fighting,” Rahiel added.

“Oi, well, I went back and settled things between us like men.” Drake shrugged.

“By that you mean you waited until he was passed out drunk and then robbed him blind, right?”

Drake fixed the chain around the tree by twisting a dagger through the links and pulled, testing its strength. “He snored like a rabid bear fighting off a wolf pack.”

“Man had fingers like Traegalean sausages. Was he wearing that ring?” Makha shook her head as she walked to the edge of the sinkhole and tossed the pile of chain links in her hands over the edge. The links were large enough that our boots would easily fit in them. It wouldn’t be an easy climb, but the chain made a tenuous ladder down into the chasm.

“He ordered butter and toast before bed. Was a fresh crock of the stuff right there on his nightstand.” Drake grinned. He motioned over the cliff and looked at me. “Elf ladies first.”

Slinging Thorn over my shoulder, I descended the chain. The mist from the waterfall made the thick steel links slippery and the climb slow. I jumped off the chain a few feet above the rocks and let out a deep breath when my feet were firmly planted on solid ground. As Makha began her descent, I took a look around.

The stones around the edge of the pool into which the waterfall plunged were a mix of natural shale and tool-cut granite. I brushed my fingers over faint designs carved into decorative columns smashed in the collapse of whatever ruin had once been over the sinkhole. Whatever had been carved into the grey, black, and white stone was obscured now by water and time. Beyond the half-moon beach was an overhang and my keen vision showed a passage angling back into the rock. I walked to the overhang and ducked under. Damp, earthy air cooled my face. Air movement. Beyond the shallow cave was an opening that looked to be a tight fit, but passable enough.

I squeezed through the opening, my eyes adjusting to the lack of light and picking up a faint glow down ahead of me. The floor of the passage sloped downward and the walls were striated and almost sharp to the touch, carved by water over the course of many floods and many years. The air stayed damp and fresh, pushing slightly against my skin. A draft. I couldn’t tell if the dim light ahead was daylight but it seemed odd that a passage going deeper into the ground would have light at the end. Makha and Azyrin would find this corridor an uncomfortable squeeze. I moved down a short ways, testing the width with my hands. They would fit but once we were in this passage, there would be no turning around if the leader got into trouble. I tried not to think of the massive weight of earth and stone over my head.

I heard my companions arguing about something behind me. I backed carefully out of the passage, wincing as I forgot to duck and banged my head into the overhang.

Makha and Drake were collapsing the chain ring, the pixie-goblin having flown the end down. Rahiel perched on a piece of column and glared at Bill. The mini-unicorn stood with his gold hooves splayed and nostrils flared, staring into the shallow cave I had just come out of.

“You go into houses. You went into the castle under that lake. Do not be ridiculous now.” Rahiel folded her arms, her wings flicking in agitation.

“Rahiel,” Azyrin said gently, “if he not want to go, we will not make him.”

“Caves are different than man-made buildings,” Drake added.

“Fade isn’t coming, either, I’m guessing,” Makha pointed out.

That was true. Fade didn’t like to be out of the open air. He never entered buildings without great protest, not even as a kitten. In the beginning, I’d had to hide him in my pack when I went into towns. As soon as he got large enough to fend for himself, I just left him on the outskirts when I made supply runs. He was one of the main reasons I had never bothered actually sleeping indoors before I met my companions.

“Fine, you can stay out here.” Rahiel glared at Bill. The pink unicorn snorted and jumped up onto a somewhat flat rock, turned around twice, and lay down on the sun-warmed surface, his back to the pixie-goblin.

“You’re just mad because you’ll have to fly under your own power,” Drake said. He ducked the pebble Rahiel threw at him.

“So? Into the cave?” Makha asked.

“That’s where the rapier would have washed into, I think. Unless you fancy a swim in that pool there.”

I turned and went back to the passage. I slipped two arrows from my quiver and held them in the same hand as my bow. There wasn’t enough room in the corridor to have a good shot or to draw my bow properly, but I felt better being ready for it and having something sharp in my hands.

“Dark as tar in here,” Drake muttered behind me. “Wait, is that light up ahead?” I felt Drake’s breath warm on my ear as he pressed up behind me and squinted over my shoulder.

“Tight fit,” Makha said. “Keep moving, I don’t wanna scrape the shit out of my shield on these walls.”

“That is light ahead. Weird.” I felt Drake shake his head. “Sorry to crowd you there,” he mumbled as I moved forward, away from his pressing body heat.

The channel descended for at least one hundred paces before it turned sharply to the left. It was one of the longest hundred paces I have ever traveled. Dripping water rang in my ears and the walls of rough, striated stone seemed to close in on me even though I could tell the passage wasn’t getting much narrower as we went. My grip on my bow turned slick and I strained my eyes in the near darkness, focusing on the glimmer of dim light in front of me.

I squeezed around the bend in the passage and abruptly had space to move. Drake, pressing through the turn as well, ran into me again as I stopped and stared, gaping like a fish at the cavern the tunnel opened into.

Thick terraced shelves of glowing green lichens lined the walls of the huge domed cavern. Water trickled down from far above, draining off the wall near where I stood gawking and into a shallow pool that spread out across a large part of the cave, its water shimmering with eerie light from the phosphorescing moss coating its banks. The floor was wet and shining with lichens and stalagmites rose from the stone like exotic trees.

“Bloody gods above,” Drake whispered as I stepped to the side to give him and the rest of the group room to enter.

“Don’t see something like this everyday,” Makha said. She walked forward a few steps and touched a gauntleted hand to one of the stalagmite columns near us. Her fingers came away glowing faintly green as the lichen rubbed off on her armor.

“That stuff might be toxic.” Rahiel flew out of the passage and up into the open space above us, flashing her pink leather boots and white bloomers. She had a wand in each tiny fist and a grudgingly awed expression on her delicate face.

Makha sniffed it. “Seems fine. Smells like dirt.”

“It is safe,” Azyrin said. “Is called glimmer moss. Will stain clothing and skin. Make you shine like lamp for little while. So careful what you touch.”

“Is it worth taking some with us?” Drake scuffed up a glowing furrow with his boot.

“Is like ocean algae and will die quickly. You cannot keep it.” Azyrin shook his head.

After checking my hauberk for scratches, even though I doubted stone could do real damage to my elf-crafted armor, I walked over to the pool and brought a little of the water to my nose. It smelled heavy with minerals, which I expected, but also somewhat sweet, which I did not. I picked up no movement in the water and the pool looked wide but shallow, though the glowing light on its banks cast the middle into shadow. Not that it mattered; there was enough room to give the pond wide berth and still get around it.

“I think there’s some daylight filtering in over here,” Rahiel called from further in the cavern. “And a big passage to somewhere else down there.”

“Drake? Is your call if we go on.” Azyrin looked at the rogue and motioned toward where Rahiel flitted about.

“We gotta search this place first. Maybe they washed into here and the sword is in that pool or something.” Drake ran a hand through his hair, smearing glowing lichen into his black curls.

“I ain’t goin’ in the water,” Makha said.

Drake looked at me but I turned and pretended to study the nearest stalagmite very closely. Behind me, he sighed and I heard the rustle of clothing being removed.

The stalagmites had been growing here undisturbed for a very long time. Water marks stained the yellowish minerals with darker bands. Many of the growths were as large as saplings, forming blunt spires up toward the far off chamber ceiling. Careful not to touch the glowing lichen more than was necessary to move among the stalagmite forest, I picked my way across the cavern floor, Thorn held loosely ready in my hand.

There were signs that other passages had opened off this chamber but time and rock falls had blocked them, debris choking the wider ones except the opening Rahiel had found. My boots left dark scuffmarks in the lichen, and the glimmer moss turned the leather bright green so that each step flickered. After finding nothing but stone and glowing vegetation, I made my way toward where Rahiel perched on the bulbous top of a squat stalagmite.

“Do you smell honey?” she asked.

I didn’t, though of course I couldn’t tell her that. I did smell fruit though, the crisp, tart scent of a pear freshly sliced.

“Nothing in the pool, thanks for asking,” Drake said as he wove around the minerals and came up to us. Makha, her dark blue armor smeared with glimmer moss trails, followed, Azyrin trailing her.

“Don’t suppose you are ready to abandon the hunt?” Makha clapped Drake on the shoulder and he winced.

“We’ve barely begun, see that passage there?”

“Vents in roof,” Azyrin said. He studied the ceiling just ahead of where we had gathered. Daylight, fainter than the bright green glow of the glimmer moss, filtered in through holes in the rock far above our heads. “Where are animals?”

“What do you mean?” Drake tilted his head back. “Those holes aren’t very big.”

Rahiel lifted off her perch and flew high. “Water most likely carved these holes. Stone is damp.”

“Should be bats here. Insects to eat lichen and each other. Spiders, millipedes, and there are fat worms called
zurst
, or?” Azyrin looked at Makha.

“Aye. We call ‘em whitewicks.” She sniffed at the air. “I smell strawberries.”

“So do I,” Drake said, looking around.

“Not strawberries. Wintergreen.” The half-orc curled his upper lip back from his tusks and tasted the air with a pale blue tongue.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck started to itch. No animal life, despite being open to the plains above which teemed with deer, birds, fish, insects, and a myriad of small furred or scaled creatures. I fitted an arrow to my bowstring and started checking the ground more closely, looking for any irregularity. The stone floor was ridged and bumpy and the glimmer moss light tossed out odd shadows, making an eyeball search for bones or other signs of this being a predator’s den almost impossible.

“There are berries or something growing up here,” Rahiel called down. “I will grab you a sample, Azy.”

My head snapped up and I drew my bow even as Azyrin cried out a warning, his thinking following mine.

Too late. Parts of the ceiling peeled away as winged creatures took to the air, enveloping the pixie-goblin.

I shot an arrow straight up but the creature dodged and my arrow fell back into the stalagmite forest. A bright flash of blue fire followed by a ball of acrid smoke confirmed that Rahiel was still alive, at least. She dropped out of the swirling, glowing bodies of the monsters and flew down to us.

“Go, go, go,” she yelled. “Too many of them!”

The bright cloud of creatures descended, and I saw she was right. The beasts were coated in glimmer moss, which blended into the surroundings and created a flickering illusion of size. I picked up glimpses of paper-thin wings veined black through the green shine, clusters of pearly fruit-like growths dangled in front of narrow snouts, and curved claws edged their wings. The creatures descended like a deadly blanket tossed over the cavern.

“The passage. Go.” Drake darted for the wide opening that led deeper into the caves.

I stayed where I was as the others rushed off, sending arrow after arrow into the mass of eerily silent creatures. Blood splattered down from where my shots pierced hide, black against the green lichens. I ducked a clawed swipe and dodged around a stalagmite as one creature tried to grab hold and envelop me.

“Killer, move your elfin ass.” I heard Makha yelling behind me and turned, sprinting for the passage.

The corridor was too large to keep the creatures from following, but its ten foot height prevented them from dropping down on us from above, so there was some small bit of luck. We descended further underground, the creatures coming after us by crawling along the walls, their curved claws creating a skittering echo that hurt my ears and reverberated in my molars until I wished I could scream just to stop the sound. All I wanted to do was run from them; get away from the glowing horde and grating noise.

I forced myself not to run but to keep shooting any of the creatures that skittered too close. My instincts screamed at me that something was wrong here. This passage was open, clear of all debris. The other openings I’d seen had been nothing more than rock and dirt piles.

Dirt piles?

The pieces slid into place. The holes in the ceiling where time and water had shoved their way into the chamber. Holes cleared of debris and dirt. Dirt that had to go somewhere so it wouldn’t choke the lichens or damage the cavern. Stones clogging the other entrances. This place had been engineered this way by at least somewhat intelligent creatures. Creatures I suspected were now herding us somewhere.

I took a shaky breath and spun to see where we were being shunted to, trusting that Makha beside me would keep the creatures off my back. If I were right, they wouldn’t even try to close the distance in a serious way. Azyrin let me past him, stepping in beside his wife with his falchion drawn and gold light encasing his other hand.