The air grew thicker as he descended, until it lay heavy and moist in his nose, throat, and lungs, and it took a conscious effort to breathe. At times, clouds of smoke wafted over him, and then he was grateful for his wards, for they seemed to filter some of the stench.

  The weighted presence Murtagh had felt in the village was even stronger in the caves. It pressed in around him like old honey, and he had an unaccountable urge to crouch and hide or else to flee far, far away. There was nothing concrete to which he could attribute the feeling, but it was as inescapable as the stifling air.

  His attention began to wander, and his vision too. Focusing on any one thing for more than a few seconds seemed…not impossible, but his gaze kept slipping, and a few steps later, he would find himself wondering what he had been looking at and what he had been thinking about.

  Strange…

  He shook his head to clear his mind. The motion was a mistake. The world tilted around him, and he fell to one knee, planting his shield against the ground for balance.

  After a moment, he felt stable enough to stand.

  Could there be drink in the air? Mead or strong spirits sprayed in a fine mist? He tasted the air: brimstone and nothing more. Nevertheless, he cast another ward to purify the air around himself.

  It didn’t help.

  Concerned, he staggered onward.

  Phantasms began to plague him: flashes of shimmering rainbow colors, dolorous moans that snaked through the tunnels, and—rare at first, but then with increasing frequency—visions that appeared before his eyes and that, for those timeless moments, seemed as real as the rocks.

  He saw Tornac standing before him, wooden waster in hand. The swordmaster had just been assigned to Murtagh, and they were about to spar…. The clash, when it came, was quick, and the outcome was Murtagh on his backside with a bruise forming across his left ribs. He expected scorn and derision from Tornac. Such had always been his lot at court. But no ridicule was forthcoming. Instead, Tornac walked over to him, offered a hand, and in a matter-of-fact tone said, “It’s a start.”

  The lack of rancor opened Murtagh’s heart. He was slow to admit it to himself, but at that moment, he learned to trust, and he clung to Tornac’s instruction—no, his leadership—as the only steady rock in a storm-tossed life.

  Murtagh blinked, disoriented. Whatever strangeness was affecting him, he wasn’t about to turn back. “Is this what you count on protecting you, Bachel?” he asked, his voice small in the vastness of the cave. “Well, it won’t. This I swear.”

  With dogged steps, he continued.

  —black-sun plain scoured by a howling wind that chilled flesh to bone…A man lay hunched in the barren dirt, arms wrapped around his head as he rocked back and forth, screaming in a high, broken tone—

  The tunnel Murtagh was following angled steeply downward. His steps quickened as, relieved, he allowed himself to be pulled along by the descent. He kept his gaze fixed forward, hoping to see the tunnel’s end, for it ought to lead him close to where Bachel was waiting, if not the very location.

  —a thunder of dragons flew past, so numerous that they blotted out the sky. Their scales flashed with every conceivable color, a profusion of terrifying beauty, and the air beat like a drum from the force of their mighty wings—

  Murtagh broke into a trot. He tried to block out the visions by reciting a scrap of verse. It helped for a time, but then his attention wandered for an instant and—

  —Nasuada lay before him, chained to the ashen slab in the Hall of the Soothsayer, even as the prisoners had been held upon the altar in Nal Gorgoth. The pleading in her eyes was as loud as any speech, but they each had their roles to play, and he could not help her. The king commanded, and he obeyed, and she suffered because of it. They all suffered.

  “No, no, no,” Murtagh muttered. He banged the rim of his shield against his forehead. The impact helped dispel the images still playing behind his eyes.

  The tunnel opened up into yet another cave. As with so many of them, it was lit by slime, and ranks of purple-capped mushrooms edged a small pond far to his right. Rings spread across the surface of the water, as if something had just jumped into—or out of—the pond.

  A thicket of larger mushrooms stood before him, like so many stunted, unwholesome trees.

  As he picked his way between the woody stems, a sharp chittering caught his ear. He stalked quietly between the mushrooms and soon saw…an odd shape crouched over the body of a fallen cultist.

  As the red glow from the werelight touched the creature, it twisted to look at him with the face of a nightmare. A glistening black tongue as long and thick as his arm lolled from narrow, shrewish jaws, which were too thin to entirely contain the muscle. Loose, sagging skin as pink and pale as a piglet—bare of fur, save for an occasional white bristle sprouting from warty growths—hung in repulsive wrinkles over protruding bones. From the narrow skull stared lidless eyes no bigger than a fish egg and seemingly too sensitive to bear the soft glow of the werelight, for the creature squinted and recoiled as if in pain. Most disturbing of all were the beast’s front paws, or rather…hands. It had long, humanlike fingers with broken, grime-packed nails smeared with the blood of the dead cultist, and the fingers opened and closed as if to squeeze the life from another unfortunate victim. Dragging behind the beast was a thick rope of a tail, as limp as a dead earthworm.

  Revulsion filled Murtagh. The creature—the fingerrat, as he thought of it—seemed wrong in a fundamental manner, as if its very existence were a perversion of all that was good and right.

  He reached out to the fingerrat’s mind. What he discovered only increased his aversion: a gnawing hunger dominated the animal’s consciousness, and all it seemed to think about was the pleasure of eating the warm man-flesh below it and its anger at being interrupted. The others would be coming soon, and—

  Others?

  More chittering sounded in the shadows. A horde of pale fingerrats crept closer, feeling their way with their long fingers, their tails sliding across the cave floor like so many scaleless snakes.

  The creature squatting over the corpse uttered a descending moan—Murtagh recognized the cry as one of the many sounds he’d heard filtering through the underground complex—and it returned to tearing at the body, using its tongue to flense skin and muscle from the man’s chest.

  “Begone with you, foul creature!” Murtagh shouted, and sprang forward, waving Zar’roc.

  The fingerrat shrieked like a pained infant as it cowered. Then it hissed, showing rows of translucent needlelike teeth, and—with shocking speed and agility—jumped toward Murtagh’s throat.

  He fell back and slashed the air in front of him, hoping to hit the creature.

  Zar’roc struck, but Murtagh’s edge alignment was off, and the hilt twisted in his hand, and he almost dropped the sword.

  He staggered as the fingerrat crashed into him and hot blood gushed over his corselet of mail. Teeth snapped at his throat, stopped only by his wards. Then he threw the creature off, and it fell to the ground, nearly cut in half, squalling and thrashing in its death throes.

  The stench of offal made him gag. No help from his spells there.

  The squeals of the wounded beast did nothing to deter its approaching kin. They continued to crawl closer through the mushroom thicket while uttering harsh laughing sounds that raised the hair on Murtagh’s neck. Something seemed desperately wrong with the creatures, as if they were half mad from living underground, or else so crazed from the constant smoke that they had no sense of self-preservation.

  “Don’t do it,” said Murtagh, keeping Zar’roc at the ready. “I’ll kill you all.”

  More of the fingerrats appeared out of the darkness. How many were there now? Thirty? Forty? He tried to count, but it was impossible to keep track of any one individual as they moved amongst themselves.

  “Naina,” Murtagh said, and the werelight above him flared in intensity until it was so bright, it banished all shadows beneath it.

  The fingerrats screeched and spun in circles as if a bee had stung them on their sunken flanks.

  “Begone!” Murtagh cried again. It was a mistake. The sound of his voice focused the attention of the creatures; they turned toward him, tongues extending like so many feelers, bleached whiskers twitching, knobbed hands reaching.

  “Kv—”

  The horde rushed him, their hands and paws scrabbling against the dirt and stones of the cave floor.

  Murtagh struck down the lead rat, but then the rest of the creatures swarmed him, snapping and clawing and lashing him with their heavy tongues. His wards flared, and his strength ebbed with alarming speed as the spells struggled to protect him.

  He tried to speak, but the warm hide of a fingerrat pressed against his face, preventing him from uttering a sound. Nor could he draw in a breath.

  The animals smelled of must and musk and warm dung.

  Enough! He focused his will and, with his thoughts, said, Kverst!

  The bodies of the fingerrats dropped from him like so many sacks of flour.

  Murtagh shuddered. It would not have taken much more to deplete his immediate reserves of stamina, and then his wards would have failed in order to keep him from losing consciousness. If the fingerrats had pressed but a little harder, or if he had hesitated a few seconds longer, they would have overcome him.

  A sense of satisfaction filled him as he stared at the mound of bodies. He had no love for such slaughter, but had he the time, he would have hunted down the rest of the carrion eaters and seen to it that their like never bothered another person.

  More chitters sounded in the distant shadows.

  But not now. He reduced the brightness of the werelight to its previous level and hurried away. Maybe the corpses of their kin would distract his inhuman pursuers, give them enough food that they would not bother following him. It was a hope.

  As he trotted along, Murtagh reviewed all the animals he knew of in Alagaësia. He had never heard of such grotesque beasts. Had they a name in the ancient language, he was ignorant of it, and none of the old stories spoke of creatures of that kind.

  Do they only live here, or in all the places where the Draumar worship? Was there a chance he might have encountered fingerrats somewhere beneath Gil’ead? The possibility disturbed him.

  Still, he ran. And though the chitters faded, they never entirely vanished. Twice more, a fingerrat darted out of the darkness and attempted to bite him. Both times he slew the creature with a single blow from Zar’roc.

  Murtagh couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trapped in a waking nightmare. The constant sounds echoing around him—and now he began to question whether some came from other creatures stalking through the underground warren—the seemingly endless tunnels, the shimmering distortions floating before his eyes, and the heat and sweat and crushing sense of presence…all of it combined to give him a pounding pressure at the back of his skull and a conviction that he couldn’t trust anything around him.

  —a body of a dragon draped across the land, spikes as tall as mountains, teeth as long as towers, blood flowing like rivers across the withered plains—

  He shook his head and pressed on.

  Amid the chitters and moans, a new set of sounds became noticeable: a scissorlike slicing and a tiny tapping as of iron nails dancing across stone.

  He froze when something large and angled ran out of a side passage and darted halfway up the curved wall of a tunnel. The thing stopped and clung there, unnaturally still.

  “Naina,” Murtagh whispered, though he almost didn’t want to see whatever the creature was.

  The werelight brightened to reveal…what, Murtagh didn’t know. The creature was the size of a large wolf. A very large wolf. But it more resembled an insect than any furred or feathered animal. It had four double-jointed legs with spikes at the joints, and then another set of legs—or rather, arms—held close against its narrow chest, just beneath its mouth, which was a butcher’s collection of cutting blades. Similarly, the arms ended in razor-sharp pincers, and the creature opened and closed them with the same slicing sound Murtagh had heard moments before. Flat, tick-like head, segmented body, jagged limbs: all of them were clad in black plates of naturally grown armor, no different from a beetle’s shell. The creature had no eyes to speak of: only a double row of pits—no bigger than seeds—along both sides of its head.

  The monstrosity looked as if it were made out of sawtoothed lengths of shadow welded into an unlovely whole that reminded Murtagh entirely too much of a spider.

  Murtagh straightened from his crouch. He didn’t feel like cowering before this particular horror. “I don’t like you,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “If you attack me, I will kill you.”

  The creature cocked its head and mashed the blades in its mouth. Then it darted down the wall of the tunnel and—before Murtagh could do more than take a half step back—skittered out of sight.

  “Shade’s blood,” Murtagh muttered. How many unnatural horrors lurked beneath Nal Gorgoth?

  Gooseflesh prickled across his neck and arms as he hurried onward.

  CHAPTER II

  Freedom from Misery

  Not a hundred feet down the tunnel, the giant spider attacked him from behind.

  Murtagh heard the iron-nail tapping seconds before the creature struck. He spun around just in time to block a spear-tipped leg plunging toward his heart. Zar’roc’s blade rang as it glanced off the spider’s carapace, same as if he’d caught another sword against the edge.

  The spider struck again. It was faster than any human. Faster than any elf. His wards blocked the attacks, but then the spider swept a limb across the ground and tangled his legs.

  Murtagh fell. By instinct, he covered himself with his shield, and as he landed, he again cast the killing spell: “Kverst!”

  The magic had no effect.

  He was so surprised that, for a moment, he failed to act. Then he used his shield to heave the spider off him. It was incredibly heavy, as if it had metal in its shell. Still, he threw it back, and as it scrambled on bony legs to again attack him, he swung Zar’roc far harder than he would have against any human foe.

  He struck the spider across the flat of its head. The carapace cracked beneath Zar’roc’s crimson blade, and black blood oozed out, thick as warm tar. The spider clicked in distress, and the cutting surfaces in its mouth stabbed and gnashed.

  Murtagh swung again, and this time, Zar’roc split the creature’s head in two. Its legs gave way, and it collapsed against the ground.

  He stared at the monster as he regained his breath. Why hadn’t the spell killed it? A ward? On an animal so deep in the ground? It wasn’t impossible, of course, but the only explanation that made sense was that Bachel herself had enchanted the spider. The question was, why? So the creature might hurt or delay him, same as with the cultists? Were the creatures likewise her thralls?

  Chittering echoed in the distance.

  He straightened, grim. Whatever foul minions Bachel had amid the caves, they weren’t about to stop him; of that, he was sure.

  Determined, he resumed his course.

  As he made his way through the underground chambers, the fingerrats and shadow spiders continued to attack. One here. Two there. A rat dropped on him from a crevice hidden high upon a slime-infested wall. A spider leaped out at him from within a dark chasm. And more. Many more.

  He beat back every assault, meeting savage fury with equal force. Zar’roc’s blade was constantly awash with blood, and his boots grew wet with gore, and his eyes stung from dripping sweat. Fatigue slowed his steps, and he began to worry what would happen if he could no longer keep up his wards.

  It was hard to track time or distance. Thorn’s consciousness had faded from his mind, and when Murtagh reached for him, he realized he could no longer feel the dragon’s thoughts. Too much stone separated them.

  Alarmed, he searched instead for Bachel. If he could not locate her, then he was truly lost…. But no, he again felt the witch’s life force. Only she was not just below him, she was also behind him by what felt like a good quarter of a mile. Despair touched Murtagh. He must have gotten turned around during the fighting.

  The path seemed endless. And always the chitters and the tapping and the swish-swash-scissor-slicing haunted him. He dared not lower his guard for even a second, and the constant state of watchfulness was of itself exhausting.

  Even with his magic and his sword, Murtagh felt as if he were a child alone in the dark, afraid of unseen monsters waiting to pounce. But this time, the monsters were real, and no less terrifying for it.

  Visions and phantasms continued to bedevil him. He managed to ignore most of them—even when they occurred at inopportune moments, such as in the middle of a fight—but at last:

  Dark ceiling, dark walls, floor of patterned wood…a fire roaring in the stone hearth along one side of the great hall. Dishes scattered across the banquet table, which all the guests had long since fled…. At the head of the table, the dark shape of his father, still wrapped in his travel cloak, hunched, brooding, the ever-present goblet of wine grasped firmly in his hand. Hovering behind him, the slim figure of his mother, speaking in low, tense tones.

  Murtagh sat on the edge of the hearth. The sounds of his parents talking distracted him at times—his father’s voice was loud, brusque—but then his attention returned to the wooden horse he was playing with. It was painted brown and white, with crisp black hooves, and it had a mane and tail of real horsehair. He ran it back and forth across the hearth, making little sounds as he did. He jumped the horse over imagined rocks and hedges, and then, by accident, he brought the horse too close to the fire, and a spark landed on the tail.

  A flame kindled in the hair. Frightened, he shook the horse, and the flame went out, but the smell of burnt hair stung his nose, and the tail was ruined.