Ibb returned, frowning at his annotated map. “This is going to be harder than we thought,” he announced.
“How so?” Kit said, drifting in behind him.
“If we want to stay clear of trouble, we’ll need to avoid this set of galleries.” Ibb slid his finger across the map. “That means working our way through the side tunnels here. Once we’re past this junction, we can shift back over, I think.” He looked up at Kit. “If that’s all right with you, of course.”
“Like I told you,” she said, “I’ll let you know when I see something familiar.”
“If you’ve never been here before, how can it be familiar?” Yora muttered.
Not a bad question. But Gyre didn’t speak up, and Kit just smiled.
*
Beyond Beggar’s Rest, the temperature dropped with every step forward. The choking, red-hot fumes of the Pit were a long way behind them, and without that warmth there was no avoiding the fact that they were climbing through the bowels of a mountain in the tallest, coldest range in the world. Somewhere above his head, Gyre supposed, through thousands of meters of rock, were the glaciers that shrouded the Shattered Peaks in permanent winter. It was a strange thought.
Following the twins’ advice, they’d veered away from the main galleries, working their way through an interconnected network of narrow passages and round, nearly featureless rooms. Until this point, evidence of the original inhabitants of these tunnels had been scanty, with even worthless debris scraped up by some hopeful scavenger. Here they started to find scraps.
The ghouls, masters of dhaka but without access to deiat, hadn’t wrought their creations in unmetal and crystal like the Chosen. Much of their arcana had been biological, tools and implements grown to fit their purpose. Some of their tools had even been alive in their own right, a living creature used as a modern arcanist might wield a plier or a scalpel. Four hundred years had reduced most of these wonders to decomposed slime, but there were hints at what had been. Strange skeletons, coiled in nooks and crannies, and multichambered shells like mollusks. Bits of crystal and glass mixed with patches of phosphorescent fungi, marking the place where some ancient bit of arcana had found its resting place. On the ceiling, more glowing patches flickered fitfully to life as they approached.
Lynnia would have a field day. It was remnants like these that alchemists used as raw material.
There were signs, too, the queer spidery ideograms of ghoul script carved into the stone. Kit stared at each marking they passed, but if she understood them, she wasn’t saying. She’d put on a heavy coat of her own, so big it dwarfed her thin body, making her look smaller. Every breath puffed into steam around her face, shrouding her in mist.
Finally she halted in front of one set of signs, studying them intently. Gyre stopped beside her. His scar itched under the chilly metal of his mask, and he fought the urge to scratch it.
“Can you read them?” Gyre said.
“Of course,” Kit said. “I told you I could find what we were looking for once we got close.” She turned to the others and pointed. “We need to go that way.”
Ibb glanced at the map and pulled a face. “That will take us across the main gallery. If we keep on from here for another few—”
“No guarantee we can find directions again farther on,” Kit said, tapping the Elder sign. “If we go too far, we might miss it entirely.”
Ibb glanced at Yora and Harrow. The big warrior gripped the handle of his axe.
“It’s too much of a risk,” Harrow said darkly. “If we get caught in the open by a large group …” He shook his head.
“Halfmask?” Yora said.
“It’s a big gallery,” Gyre said. “They can’t patrol the whole thing all at once. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“It’s a gamble,” Ibb said.
“I like gambles,” Kit said, grinning.
In the end, in spite of Harrow’s grumbles, there wasn’t much option. Nobody wanted to come this far and miss their objective.
A few twists led them back to the main gallery. It was a wide tunnel, the size of the streets out in the warm, living part of the city, but littered with stone and wreckage and rimed by frost. Curiously regular piles of metal and crystal lay about. A few had been scattered by scavengers, but most were intact, the inorganic wreckage sunk in black slime and ranks of mushrooms. A few more glowing patches came to fitful life on the high ceiling.
“There,” Kit said, pointing to another mark incised into the wall. “That way.”
Ibb gave her a dubious look but followed as she scampered down the corridor. The others fell in behind, with Gyre bringing up the rear. The larger space made Gyre’s skin crawl and set his scar to itching. Side tunnels branched off every dozen meters, leaving innumerable ways they could be outflanked and surrounded. Harrow was right. It’s too open. His jaw clenched.
But trouble, when it came, didn’t arrive from ambush. There was a chunk of fallen rock in the middle of the corridor, and as Ibb and Kit got within a few meters, a lantern came on, blindingly bright for eyes adapted to glowstone light. Gyre blinked away tears and saw a single figure clad in shabby black sitting on top of the rock. It looked like a man, but something was wrong, and it took another moment to process what: curling horns sprouted from his head, curving back on themselves and winding to a vicious-looking point.
“Hello, friends.” There was something strange about his voice, too, deeper and more resonant than it had any right to be. “You’re in Beloriel’s territory now. I assume you’re willing to pay the appropriate toll.”
Kit gave a quiet snort of derision, and her hand drifted toward the blaster at her side. Ibb stepped in front of her, signaling her to wait.
“That depends,” he said, “on how much the toll is. We’re fully prepared to be reasonable.”
“Oh, wonderful,” the horned man said. “I do love dealing with reasonable folks.” He cocked his head. “You’re well armed, for scavengers. Surely you don’t need two blasters, especially if you have our protection.”
“We’d prefer to pay in thalers, truth be told,” Ibb said, hands spread. “You know how one gets attached to one’s gear—”
The crack of a blaster going off ripped through the silence of the cavern, and the bright flash left dazzling afterimages in Gyre’s eye. Kit had her weapon out, aimed not at the horned man but at one of the piles of debris behind them. The bolt tore it apart, sending bits of stone and metal flying in all directions, and Gyre had a glimpse of a human figure pinwheeling away among the shrapnel.
For a moment, everyone was frozen. Then the horned man gave a roar, an echoing cry like a lion’s that filled the cavern. He leapt forward, unnaturally fast. Ibb swore and clawed for his own blaster, even as misshapen figures swarmed toward them from all directions.
Gyre offered a choice oath of his own, drawing a blade in each hand. The bandits had emerged from behind the mounds of rotting wreckage in twos and threes, dressed in thick leather and ragged furs. They were armed with a mix of knives and spears, with a few sporting improvised metal shields. Gyre could see at least a dozen, with probably as many behind him.
Kit fired twice more, one bolt sizzling high to explode against the rocky wall of the corridor, the other catching a charging bandit head-on and blasting him into grisly chunks. She had time to holster her blaster and draw her curved saber before two more were on top of her. Pivoting with a dancer’s grace away from a spear thrust, she brought her weapon down on the haft and cracked it, then ducked in time to evade the swipe of another man’s blade. Her momentum brought her sword around, striking sparks from his metal shield, and she rebounded off and turned the motion into a spinning kick that sent him stumbling. Before he could recover, she darted inside his guard and opened his throat with an easy motion.