That's a coward's thought, he reminded himself. I have to do something. I'm the only one here who can do anything. But he had to be honest.
"I can't leave the cave for six nights after this one. But I can bring you to the entrance, if we can make it past all the monsters. I'm not sure I can kill them all."
Andra grinned, as if at a joke. "Just do what you did before. It worked well enough for this guy." She rapped their mantis-shell doorway with the back of her fist.
"But what if it doesn't work?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized what he sounded like. Fool. You're asking a thirteen-year-old girl what to do?
He coughed to cover his embarrassment and continued on. "I mean, it might not be good enough. That's what I meant to say. I just thought you should know. But I'll do everything I can, I promise you that."
They beamed at him, and he had to repress a surge of doubt. What if these kids got killed? It would be his fault. His only consolation was that if they died, he probably wouldn't live to see it.
Not surprisingly, the thought didn't comfort him much.
CHAPTER TWELVE:.
ESCAPE.
After a few more minutes of rest, Simon led the Agnos children out of their little cave. Unaided, he could never have pushed aside the giant mushroom cap, but after a draft of steel strength he pushed it back with one hand.
They almost didn't get any farther.
The carnivorous eels had been drawn to the fresh corpse of the mantis-monster outside, leaping up out of ripples in the stone to tear its rocky plates off and feast on the flesh beneath. When Simon stepped outside, he disturbed their feeding, sending all the fanged creatures into a frenzy. They dove at him, scales rippling with spectral blue light, flashing teeth the size of his fingers.
If he hadn't already summoned steel, they would have torn him to shreds in seconds. Lacking the reflexes from the Nye essence, the only thing he could rely on was raw strength. So that was what he did.
The first fanged horror was inches from his face before he managed to swat it from the air with his palm, but the impact launched it into the distance as if it had been hurled by a catapult. He kicked another just as it left the ripples in the stone, snapping its spine in half, and caught a third by the tail. Then he swung that fish like a flexible club, smacking the rest out of the air before they became a danger.
He was just falling into a rhythm when he heard the beginnings of a scream behind him, and he whirled without conscious thought. A ripple headed straight towards Lycus' feet. He had pushed his sister behind him and now stood between her and the still-submerged creature. His eyes were wide with terror.
Simon had no time to think of a better plan, so he did the first thing that came to mind: he brought his arm back, then swept the fish in his hand down like a hammer. It was stunned but still alive, thrashing weakly in his hand, but he ignored it.
The fish in the stone, expecting to take its prey by surprise, jumped from the ripple in front of Lycus. Its fanged face had barely cleared the rock when Simon's weapon crashed into it.
The scales of both fish cracked, sending dark blood splattering across Simon's face. One of the squirming creatures even let out a weak scream, eerie and shrill. But in seconds both fish were dead, one of them still half-sunk in solid stone.
Simon dropped the eel-thing and wiped his face with a trembling hand. He had not been nearly careful enough. What if these fish had sensed them before he had moved the door? He shuddered; the three of them had sat on the ground. All three humans would have been shredded to pieces before they could react.
The kids were entirely unharmed and, if anything, looked even more impressed with Simon than before. He kept all expression off his face, but inwardly he trembled. That had been entirely too close. He tried to tell himself to relax, but he was only too aware how near his mistake had come to costing lives.
As they walked to the entrance tunnel, Simon kept his sword sheathed. Instead, he kept himself on the brink of summoning his powers. If he so much as sensed a motion in the shadows, he was going to down both of them before he even looked twice. That should have been his policy before he ever set foot in Orgrith Cave, but he had been too shortsighted to plan ahead.
That was one mistake he wouldn't make again.
Finally, they approached a spot Simon recognized as near the entrance. He signaled Lycus and Andra to remain quiet and stay against the wall, then drew on a draught of both the Nye essence and metallic strength. Cool power rushed through his veins, ran along his bones. Everything around him slowed, until it seemed that everyone else moved through thick honey.
He was as ready as he could be. Simon crept forward hesitantly; though, in his accelerated state, he was probably moving at almost his normal running speed. He immediately spotted the tail end of the giant worm they had earlier seen devoured. Though messy-its shell was torn open at several points, its blood splattered on the rocks all around-it appeared to have been abandoned. At least, he saw none of the fish that swam through rock.
That was a relief; maybe the tunnel would be unguarded as well. He pulled his sword out and looked into the tunnel entrance.
It was twice as wide as it had been, and a totally different shape: a horizontal oval where it once had been circular.
Did something make it wider, Simon thought, or does the entrance change shape? If so, the tunnel out may be more dangerous now than it had been when he entered. This may not even be the tunnel out any longer; the passage could now lead to a stone wall. Or a nest of unspeakable monsters.
Simon shook himself. This was no Territory, where normal physical laws barely held sway. Tunnels through rock did not simply shift for no reason. Obviously something had happened here to widen the entrance. Maybe this was more evidence of whatever hidden monster had tugged the rock worm's corpse. That was a disturbing enough idea; anything that could drag that enormous corpse and take huge gouges out of stone would probably tear through him like a flimsy cloth.
With that cheery thought in his head, Simon called as loud as he dared, "Lycus. Andra. Come on out."
They peeked their heads around the softly glowing trunk of a giant mushroom, saw he was alone, and hurried over to him.
"Is this the way out?" Lycus whispered.
I hope so, Simon thought, but all he said was, "Yes. Follow me."
"Can't be worse than in here," Andra said with a soft laugh, as she fell in line behind him. Simon wished he agreed.
The tunnel out this time was rougher than Simon remembered, gouges seemingly carved in the floor and tunnel. It was darker, too, since much of the glowing blue moss had been scraped away, so they had to step carefully to avoid putting a foot in shadowed gorges.
Simon's unease grew with every step they took. Whatever had happened in this tunnel during the few hours since he had come in, it was violent and recent. Instincts born in Valinhall screamed at him that something was about to jump out from the dark. He kept his sword in one hand, holding the Nye mist inside him for as long as possible. Even aside from the edge it would give him if they were suddenly attacked, he found that he liked feeling quick and powerful. It helped counteract the all-too-reasonable fear of something lurking in the shadows.
After perhaps half an hour of creeping along, stopping every few paces to listen, Simon whirled around at a scream from Andra. He angled his sword to stab, reaching out to Valinhall for Nye essence.
Andra doubled over laughing. True, she kept her voice down so it didn't quite echo in the stone corridor, but Simon still didn't think it was appropriate. Lycus looked as Simon himself must: shocked, disbelieving, still half-ready to respond to a threat. To the boy's credit, he had lunged forward to try and help his sister at the first sign of danger.
"Your faces," Andra managed to get out, at little above a whisper. "Oh, seven stones." She dissolved into giggles.
"You think this is funny?" Simon said. He hoped it was too dark for them to see his face flushing. Lycus just growled and turned away from her, evidently in disgust.
Andra folded her hands in front of her. "I'm sorry. I'll be good." Her apology was spoiled somewhat by a few lingering giggles.
A sharp grinding noise, like rock scraping across rock, echoed down the tunnel. It seemed to be coming from just ahead of them.
"Is that the wagons?" Lycus asked. He sounded more hopeful than convinced.
"I don't think so," Simon said. He just wished he had a little more light. As it was, if-well, when-he had to fight something else, he would have very little warning. "We should be getting close to the entrance by now, though," he said.
Neither of the children said anything, but the longing looks on their faces made him hope desperately that he was right.
As they continued to walk, the grinding noise repeated itself periodically, growing steadily louder as they approached the source of the noise. A feeling gnawed at Simon, telling him that something was different now than when he had come down the tunnel the first time. At first he thought it was the lack of light-surely they would see the light from the entrance soon-but after a while it dawned on him. The tunnel was sloping down.
He took a glance back down the tunnel. The light was too dim for him to see far, but he hadn't been mistaken. It was obviously an downward slope, not a way out. Had he made some kind of mistake? No, there were no other side passages he could have accidentally taken. This was really the only way out. Maybe the tunnel had changed after all. But did it still lead outside?
The Agnos siblings were pushing one another as they walked, Andra with a smirk on her face, Lycus with a serious scowl. He couldn't tell them; they would just worry. Besides, what would they do when they found themselves in the same main chamber as before? He hadn't seen any other ways out. So forward was as good a direction as any.
Simon tightened his grip on his sword until his fingers ached. He would get these children out of here if it killed him. He would.
Then the tunnel opened up on another chamber, and he found out what had been making that grinding noise.
This chamber, as much as he could make it out in the shadows, was shaped like an enormous ball. They stood in an entrance about halfway up one wall. In the bowl beneath them, huge rock-worms lay tangled like mating snakes. Thousands of them, twisting and twining together. The pile was mostly still, though occasionally one shifted slowly, producing the grinding noise Simon had heard earlier. Asleep? Or did these things just naturally move that slowly?
The bottom of the chamber was so intimidating that Simon almost didn't notice something else: the chamber held none of that luminous moss. It was bathed in a soft blue-white light, but a paler shade than he had seen so far.
It took him a few seconds to recognize moonlight, pouring in from a crack high in the opposite wall.
Simon's breath caught. It was a way out. Maybe for all of them; the crack looked big enough that they might be able to pass. Of course, it was across the room from those rock-worms. And even if it hadn't been, he wasn't at all sure he could make it up the sides.
Then again...he stuck his head out of the corridor and took a closer look at the walls around him. The stone was rough and knobby, not perfect for climbing, but similar to the rocky bluffs around Myria. Those weren't too hard to climb. And the wall underneath the moonlit crack seemed a bit flatter than the rest of the cavern. It could be an illusion of shadows and soft light, true, but he had his prizes from the House. Maybe, with enhanced strength and reflexes, he could make it.
If the hole was big enough to let him through. If he could get through the rock-worms without waking them. If the land outside was any safer than what they found in here. Far too many ifs.
The children, understandably, kept shooting anxious glances at him. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for them to back up into the tunnel. If enough of those rock-worms woke, they were dead for sure. It just wasn't worth the risk. There had to be another way out of here.
With one eye on the brother and sister and one on the writhing mass of giant worms, Simon almost didn't hear the distant call, drifting to them on the gentle air of the cave. A woman's voice.
"Lycus! Andra! Andra, please..." It was so faint, he almost couldn't understand. Almost.
The way the children stiffened showed Simon they had heard just as well as he had. They stared at him with wide eyes and gestured frantically, as though he didn't understand what they wanted.
Silently, Simon cursed whatever twisted fate had brought them their mother's voice. No hope of safely turning back now; they would balk at every step. How had the woman's voice reached this far, anyway? He would have called it impossible.
Still, it proved one thing: that hole up in the wall did lead to the outside after all. And probably to safety, if they could make it soon.
Simon leaned his face down between the brother and sister. He spoke in a voice that should have been barely audible even from inches away. "We're going to try and climb out through that hole, but that means we have to cross the floor." He pointed with his sword.
Andra choked back a nervous laugh, holding a hand to her mouth. Lycus trembled as if he had asked the boy to stack his own funeral pyre, but his face was as hard as a child could make it. He nodded, as if granting permission.
"I can only take you one at a time," Simon continued. He wasn't sure he had it in him to finish two trips, but then again he wasn't sure he could finish one. "You have to be quiet. If those things wake up..." They nodded vigorously. At least he wouldn't have to explain that.
The trouble began when he asked who wanted to go first.
"Take him," Andra whispered. "He's younger." Lycus shook his head firmly, face fit for a magistrate passing sentence. Silently, he nudged his sister forward, but she stepped back. They gestured silently to each other, clearly arguing.
Simon sighed. Quietly. "Whoever goes first has the best chance. And whoever's second has to wait here alone until I get back."
Andra nodded. "Right. So it should be Lycus." Lycus shook his head and gestured toward his sister.
"I'll be fine," he said.
Simon hoped the shadows hid his surprise. He had been sure they were holding back because of fear, but...were they each trying to give the other a better chance? That was impressive and admirable, but he still had to decide who to take.
Simon's father would have taken the girl first. Kalman had been a chivalrous man, and he would expect any son of his to do whatever it took to bring a woman out of danger. But Simon's mother had been of a more practical bent, at least when sane. She would say to leave the one who could hold their head best alone, male or female. In this case, Simon thought his mother had a better point.
Simon locked eyes with Andra. "Will you be all right alone?"
Her answering smirk had a bit of the gallows in it, but her firm gaze made her look five years older than Simon, not four younger. "I was doing fine before you got here, wasn't I?" That wasn't how Simon recalled it, but he shrugged and scooped up Lycus, tossing him over his left shoulder.
The boy struggled, of course, whispering his protests, but at least he didn't scream.
"Stay low," Simon told Andra. "Don't make any noise. I'll come back for you." If I can, he added silently.
Simon peered over the ledge. A patch of bare rock rested between a pair of giant worms, twenty feet below. Icy silver crept into his veins as he called on the vial of steel; his lungs filled with the cool rush of Nye essence.
And he stepped off the ledge.
Filled with essence, Simon felt time slow to cool honey. It seemed to take ten seconds to reach the cavern floor, not less than one. When his feet touched rock, he kept his knees bent, absorbing the impact. It hit him with shivering force, like he was being pressed with a great weight. But the liquid steel hardened his muscles, supported his bones. His legs held.
His slowed vision registered a ring of dust blasted away from him by his impact. In his view, it drifted away on a gentle breeze.
So far so good. Simon kicked forward, leaping over prone figures, sliding past, keeping one hand on his shoulder to lock Lycus in place. It must be incredibly uncomfortable for him, tossed and jostled about like a sack on a galloping horse, but Simon tried to move as smoothly as possible. Slowing too much might kill them both.
Once Simon had to squeeze between two rock-worms, edging along sideways, inches from one of the worm's giant face. It was sleeping; he knew that now. Its broad face held a wide, craggy mouth, like a horizontal canyon, and its eyelids were rounded plates of granite. It looked as though someone had hewn a rough frog's face out of solid rock.
As Simon slid past, silent and quick as a breath of wind, Lycus let out a grunt. That was all. As uncomfortable as it surely was on Simon's shoulder, it was a wonder he hadn't made more noise than that, but one grunt was all it took.
The worm's granite eyes slid open, revealing eyes of burning blue.
Simon was out of the rock-worm's vision immediately, vaulting over another sleeping figure with legs powered by Benson's liquid steel. Still, as he kept running, Simon caught a glimpse of the awakened worm raising its head, twisting it this way and that as it searched for whatever had startled it awake.
The far wall loomed over Simon, that one blessed hole leaking moonlight. The wall was smoother than most of the rest of the chamber, though what little curve it did have actually made the climb easier. He threw himself at the side, both feet and one hand clutching at handholds, one keeping Lycus firmly attached.
Without his Traveler's gifts from Valinhall, he would never have made it. He would have needed both hands and both feet to climb a face like this even without a boy on his shoulder, and with Lycus there he would never be able to bear the weight. As it was, it almost felt like flying.
Simon hurled himself upwards, feet and hand touching the wall only to seize protrusions and push up again and again. Every time he kicked off, he threw himself another five or six feet up the wall, the grace of the Nye keeping him from overbalancing and tipping over backwards. Or else cracking his forehead open on the wall.
It had been hard to tell from across the chamber, but the hole itself could hardly have been in a worse position. Instead of in front of him, moonlight spilled from almost above him, as the wall began to curve into the ceiling. Simon stopped on a ledge, gathering his strength, coiling his legs and arms, building the strength of the steel vial inside his blood.
"Hold on," Simon said. He didn't bother to keep his voice low. Lycus murmured something back, but Simon didn't listen; he launched himself upward, straight at the hole.
Though time moved slowly to him, the roof of the cavern approached with terrible speed. The hole rushed forward to meet him, but he had miscalculated. He was going to miss the center of the hole by two or three feet, slamming into the side of the hole like a melon dropped from a tall tree. At this speed he would crush both himself and Lycus to death on the roof of the cavern, leaving only their lifeless corpses to feed the worms.
Panic and terror surged through him, and his limbs acted almost without his permission. With a speed that blurred even the edges of his Nye-enhanced vision, his hands shot out and seized the edge of the hole. In the bare, shaved second before he smashed into the rock, his arms flexed. Liquid steel and Nye's breath blazed in him, a thousand pinpricks of cold that burned his flesh like winter's own dagger. And with a mighty heave powered by everything he could draw from Valinhall, he pulled himself toward the hole and through. With an inch to spare, they emerged into the night instead of crashing into the ceiling.
The moonlight was so bright compared to the dim moss-lit cave that it almost burned his eyes, but he slid on his belly onto a surface of dusty rock. From Simon's back, Lycus leaned forward and vomited back into the hole. Some of it struck the rock and splattered onto Simon's trousers, but at the moment he wouldn't have cared if the boy had spewed all over his face. They were alive. And they were outside. The wind on Simon's face felt like a mother's embrace.
Simon let out a breath that flared briefly with light as the Nye's essence leaked out of him. His body felt almost uncomfortably warm and heavy as his twin powers faded, leaving him panting. And trembling. Another fraction of a second...
Lycus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry," he said. Shame made his voice very small.
It took Simon a moment to figure out what the boy was apologizing for. If he could have spoken, he would have told Lycus not to worry about it; no sensible person should have been able to control their stomach in that situation. But Simon was trembling too much to say anything.
Part of it was the reaction from losing both strength and reflexes at the same time, and so suddenly. Part of it was. But the rest...he had come close to dying tonight. Perhaps as close as he ever had, though his first few nights in the House had surely come near.