The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson

Meisha felt a stiff bandage encasing her abdomen, which seemed to be the source of the herb scent. But she could tell at least some of the bones in her wrist had reknit while she slept. Whoever had treated her had done so with some magical aid, but not much.

She examined her surroundings. The chamber around her was wide, with a low ceiling that dipped almost to the ground in some corners and fluted upward sharply in others. This place Meisha recognized. She'd made her pact to become Varan's apprentice here, over a pit of flames.

As an apprentice, she'd taken meals here or used the space for study that did not involve casting. Despite the cold and damp of the underground environment, Varan had had the chamber richly appointed. Placed in the center of the room was a round, cherry wood table—with thicker legs than her own—surrounded by soft, wingback armchairs. Two couches with tasseled silk pillows had flanked a bookcase wedged along the wall. All of it had huddled around small fire pits, with Varan's ventilation magic handy to carry the smoke away through one of the carved flues in the ceiling.

But now the chamber was stripped of all furnishing. A sagging length of rope hung around her pallet and held a stained sheet for privacy. Meisha could make out dozens more of the boxed-off areas around the chamber. Distorted shapes moved within them like a complex shadow play. People, Meisha thought—a fair number, at that.

She could hear their voices, sometimes whispering in low tones, other times pitched loudly to carry across the chamber.

"I'm tellin' ye, pick one day for butchering, and we won't have that awful stink to wake to."

"Five toys just today—that's got it, my time's coming up. Always does when yer five times as likely to lose an eye."

"Where's Iadra? Somebody'd best tell her to be puttin' the mark up."

Footfalls tramped on the other side of her sheet. Meisha tensed, but the male voice that drifted over the thin cloth was somehow familiar.

"Tymora's best odds, all I'm saying. Tymora's best odds she don't live through the night."

"You said as much last night," an overly patient female voice answered him. "Return it, please."

"She's not gonna care! You didn't see this blood pool, Har. I pulled her out—no one else was there with her to do the honors. She'd want me to have it."

"Get out of my way, Talal."

"Fine. At least let's nudge her and see—see if she's still kicking."

Hands flung the sheet aside to reveal a pair of large eyes surrounded by a nest of dirty blond hair that had not been combed with anything more elaborate than fingers and spit for many years. The boy couldn't have seen more than two decades of life, and they'd been lean years. His wrists were the breadth of broom handles, and he crouched like a frog, his spindle legs thickening with muscle at the thighs, as if he squatted and crawled more often than he walked. He wore a baggy shirt and breeches. When he moved, the odor wafting off them made Meisha gag.

"It's awake," the boy said, too brightly, as if he were hiding disappointment. "See?" He pointed at her triumphantly, her Harper pin clutched in one dirty hand. "Did that last time. Thought she was dead and whew!" He waggled his fingers and pulled a ghoulish face at the woman who was attempting to push him aside with her hip. "Back to life again." The boy didn't seem to notice the woman's exasperated shoving. "No one dies reliably these days."

Meisha's hand came up, snagging the boy's wrist like a snake after a mouse.

"Ho, there!"

"That's mine," she croaked, squeezing the mouse until the boy dropped the pin on the ground.

"Got 'im worms for wits, but Talal doesn't mean any harm," said the woman. She was much older and not nearly as dirty as the boy. Her hair was stark white in the dim torchlight, and so thin Meisha could see patches of skin through the wispy strands. Her eyebrows had worn away long ago, but she had a quick, affectionate smile for the boy even as she chided him.

"Are you in great pain?" she asked Meisha. The same pungent herb smell wafted from her hands as she probed Meisha's bandage.

"Only when I move," Meisha grunted. Truth was, she hurt all over, but part of that was from the cold. Despite the blankets piled on and beneath her, the cavern floor was colder than Meisha ever remembered it being. Not all Varan's enchantments were working, she thought, and her heart sank a little. "Who are you?" she asked, stopping the woman in her ministrations. "Where's Varan? What's happened to this place?"

"Easy," the woman said. "One at a time. I'm Haroun." She pointed to the boy. "This one's Talal. Your wound is healing. The knife managed to miss everything vital. Still, you were far gone when Talal brought you in. We're allowed only a small number of healing draughts, and we had to use two just to keep you from death."

"You have my thanks," Meisha said with feeling. She sat up gingerly, and with Haroun's help, got to her feet. "My attackers, do you know who they were?"

"Yes." Haroun's voice was strained. "The Shadow Thieves. They come through the glowing doors once every few tendays—the time varies. They don't want us to know when to expect them. She leaned closer, her milky eyes intent on Meisha's. "Tell me, child, did you come through the doorways? Do you know how to open them?"

Meisha shook her head, and the woman's eyes dimmed. "I came by . . . other means." Before Haroun could ask, she said, "I can't return the same way, but there is a main entrance. It's kept hidden, but I can show you."

Haroun was shaking her head before she'd finished. "No need. That way is closed."

"Closed?"

"Tunnel's sealed off," Talal spoke up. "Bastards caved it in, put something on it when we tried to dig out." He made scooping and filling motions with his hands. "We dig—stays full."

"An enchantment," Meisha said, remembering the wizard from the raiding party. "Probably activated from the other side of the cave-in. All it would require is a new casting each day, perhaps not even that often." She looked at the boy. "They trapped you in the Delve? How long have you been here?"

Talal and Haroun exchanged glances. "I'll show her," the boy offered, shrugging.

Haroun hesitated, appearing almost upset, but finally she nodded. "Go. She'll need to see the places where it's safe to walk. Show her gently, Talal. Do nothing foolish."

The boy flashed an indignant, "do I ever" look and offered his sleeve to Meisha in imitation of a grand lord escorting his lady. Meisha suppressed a groan, selected the cleanest possible scrap of cloth to grasp, and they were off, weaving among the cubed warrens to a cleared central path that led to an attached passage.

Talal yanked a torch from the wall sconce. He ignored the shouts of dismay from the corner of the cavern subsequently plunged into darkness. "This way."

They walked a short distance down a passage Meisha remembered. It led to a series of carved out alcoves fitted with thick wooden doors.

When Varan had first come to the Delve, he'd used the spaces as storage, but later they became small, private quarters for the apprentices. The wizard's domain was only a small part of the tunnel system. Varan's magic had placed the age of some of the lower tunnels as contemporaries of Deep Shanatar. The wizard speculated the Delve might even have been an outpost of that great dwarven realm.

Talal tugged on her arm. Absorbed in her thoughts, Meisha hadn't noticed when they'd stopped. Framed by a pearly, flow-stone waterfall, Talal pointed behind her to a stretch of wall. Meisha turned and blinked.

Numbers covered the stone from floor to ceiling, arranged in neatly ordered columns like a moneylender's account. All were dates, marked with the change of month and the change of year. They ended Marpenoth 3 of 1374 DR.

"Iadra marks a new one every day," said Talal.

"1370," Meisha read from the top of the first column. "Eleasias 20. Four years ago."

"Date we found the entrance. Wish we hadn't," Talal muttered.

"You—all of you?" Meisha shook her head. "Impossible. Varan shields the entrance with magic and places a ward on the perimeter."

A shadow passed over the boy's face. "There was no magic. The way was just sitting there, open as you please. We wouldn't have gone in, but the brigands had started to circle. There were too many of us not to be noticed out in the open."

"What were you doing all the way out here?"

"Running," Talal said.

Meisha waved an impatient hand. "From brigands, yes, but what—"

"No—from Esmeltaran."

"Esmeltaran?" Meisha echoed. Then it hit her: 1370. Meisha didn't need to do the calculation. She knew. "The ogres," she said, and Talal nodded. "You're refugees from the war."

"We were headed for Keczulla when they started shadowing us."

"The men from the portal?" Meisha asked.

Talal actually laughed. "No, the brigands—soft bellies by comparison. There were a lot more of us then. We moved in a group, tight as Tyr's arse. Only thing kept us alive—they didn't want to take on the whole bunch of us. But they smartened up, the longer they stayed with us. Picked off the stragglers, set traps—that sort of thing. We never saw any of the cowardly bastards. Thought we could wait them out in the caves. We should've known something was wrong if damn brigands wouldn't follow us inside."

"Did you explore? Was there anyone living in the caves?" Meisha wanted to know.

Talal hesitated. He swung the torch at one of the alcoves.

Meisha went for the door, but the boy caught her wrist.

"Don't burst in like that!" he hissed. "You want to kill us all?"

"It's Varan, isn't it?" Meisha said. At his blank look, she pressed, "You found a wizard here."

Talal's lip curled. "Pity us, yes."

Meisha freed her arm. "He's the man I came to see—my teacher! He can get us all out of here."

The boy stared at her. "Certainly, Lady," he said, bowing her mockingly toward the door. "You go right on in and ask him to do that."

Dread welled inside Meisha, but she pushed past Talal. The door scraped the stone floor as she wrenched it open, dripping dirt and cold sediment down on her. She ignored it in the face of what lay within.

The room was littered with garbage. Broken bits of junk covered every available inch of floor space, like the aftermath of a child's tantrum. Varan sat in one corner of the squalid room, his back to her, arms moving as if in the midst of a complicated spell. Small, white maggots swarmed over an uneaten plate of meat and bread on the floor next to him.

Meisha slowly circled the rear wall, putting herself in the wizard's periphery so he would know she was there. Varan held an object in his hands, an opaque sphere caged in a knot of iron bands. Within the sphere, tiny lights winked and danced like trapped stars. Wherever Varan touched the bands, the lights would gather, drawn zipping across the empty space to swirl around his fingertips. The collected magic in the room was so intense it hurt Meisha's head to concentrate too closely on any one point. And the Art did not issue only from the sphere.

Meisha uttered a quick word and swept a fanning gesture the length and width of the room. As the spell took effect, the light nearly smote her blind. Most of the intact objects on the floor, with the exception of the food, contained magic—slight in some instances, dangerously strong in others.

"Varan, what have you been doing?" Meisha whispered, but no one answered. She glanced behind her, but Talal had not followed her into the room. He stood, framed in the crack of the half-closed door, watching Varan. His expression showed a mixture of hatred, awe, and fear.

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