Chapter 17 #2
that gut-wrenching loss of gravity and the sudden awful certainty I was about to die. I trusted Dalila’s knot work, but my
heart hammered madly in my chest as I put my full weight onto the rope and began descending.
One hand over the other. It was okay until I made the mistake of glancing down, catching a glimpse of the deadly rocks that
sent the breath rushing from my body. Cold sweat broke out across my arms, and the rope grew slick in my hands as I gripped
it more tightly. But I forced myself to keep going.
Tinbu grabbed my waist when I was close, pulling me into the entrance and helping me find my footing on the stony floor. “Are
you all right?” he asked.
I nodded mutely and Tinbu released me. The tunnel’s entrance was cramped and dark. But in his natural form, Raksh gave off
a blue-gray glow like a puff of extinguished smoke, and it was just enough light to see how narrowly the rest of the tunnel
tapered.
“My God...” I said. “You came through that ? How? Crawling on your belly?”
“At times.” Raksh sounded no more enthusiastic than I did. “The cave itself is large, but this tunnel is wretched, like being a worm in a burrow.” He paused. “I should lick you.”
I veered away. “Excuse me. You should do what?”
“Lick you. Though I suppose kissing might work as well. I am feeling weak, and the path ahead is difficult. Perhaps if someone had bothered to sleep with me last night, my magic would be stronger—”
I shoved him forward. “We are not yet that desperate. Go.”
But the tunnel was miserable. We were forced to crawl on our hands and knees and then on our bellies in utter darkness. The
rock scraped every patch of exposed skin it could, and the hilts of my sword and khanjar thrust painfully into my hips. After
aching all day, my bad knee had gone numb, a development I assumed was not good. The close air was hot and putrid, and more
than once I needed to steady my breath to keep from being overwhelmed in the crushingly small space.
After what felt like an eternity, the tunnel finally expanded enough that we could stand up. Dalila bid us to stop so she
could light the lamps with her flint, and I took one gladly.
“It is just a bit farther,” Raksh advised. “You will know when we are out of the tunnel.”
Ducking to avoid a dripping rock formation, I asked, “How will I— oh .”
I have seen a great many astonishing sights in my life. Very few compare to my first glimpse of the great cave of Socotra.
Our lamps illuminated a space large enough to swallow a dozen Marawati s, and I had the sense that beyond the encompassing blackness it was even larger.
The cave looked like a scene plucked from a dream or brought to life by an artist’s paintbrush: lacy lichens, glittering crystals, and mushroom-like stone growths in every color of the rainbow covering the rocky walls.
Writhing formations in glittering minerals hung from the uneven ceiling, reaching down to touch their siblings bursting from the floor.
Water dripped into pools and streams both visible and unseen, the pattering of droplets filling the air with gentle music.
Just ahead, a vivid yellow waterfall poured from a break in the rocks to spill through a hole so distant there was no splash.
Besides the hush of our breath and pattering water, there was no other sound on the thick, heavy air.
Humidity and the aroma of rotten eggs aside, the cave was marked by a silence so profound it felt sacred.
“There’s so much water,” Tinbu marveled as we walked, holding out his lamp to illuminate a deep pool. It was beautiful in
an eerie, alien way, the water bright green against a shockingly white expanse of quartz. “What a miracle this place must
have been for the first people who discovered it.”
“I doubt any of your people got this far. There’s human graffiti on the walls farther ahead but—aye, do not touch that.” Raksh smacked Tinbu’s hand away from the pool. “Half the water in this place can melt your flesh like butter. Follow
my footsteps and do not stray.”
We did so, walking along skinny edges that loomed over pits that might have gone on forever and ducking under fallen rock
formations like the massive statues of deposed tyrants. We crossed silent fields of jutting silver shards that could have
been the abandoned swords of a vanished army and climbed steps of such perfect natural geometry that I whispered God’s praise.
It was a wild place, the darkness just beyond the flickering light of our lamps crushing, but slowly signs of human habitation
grew more frequent. Here and there, debris littered the ground, potsherds and crude tools alongside broken clay lamps and
dusty glass bottles.
Then around the next bend, as though plucked from Dunya’s notes, the markings began.
Sabaean, Ge ? ez, Greek, and a half-dozen other letters whose language I couldn’t identify. Intricate pictographs and hanging Indian scripts,
cuneiform wedges and dash marks. Some were names, some were warnings. More told stories I could not understand, stories in
tongues long forgotten. Beyond the ancient messages, there were drawings as well. Boats and handprints, odd cruciforms and
antlered creatures.
It was one thing to read about this place in a book, but to see the history of travelers and sailors such as me spread before us, their ghosts and the walls they touched, was another experience
altogether. I wondered at their lives and their time here. After a long sea journey, a cave offering relief from the sun and
plentiful water must have seemed a divinely sent respite or a perfect smuggler’s nook. Despite the circumstances, I was feeling
a bit whimsical, my storyteller’s fancy tickled.
Until we found the path blocked by a massive white snakeskin.
The shed skin was the color of bone, glittering with iridescent discarded slime, and wide enough that we could have walked
through the creature’s cavity without ducking. Just ahead was a split in the tunnel, the abandoned skin continuing into its
leftmost juncture.
“Well...” Tinbu swallowed loudly. “I must say: The chroniclers got the size wrong. The snakes are even bigger than the books made them out to be.”
Raksh gave the forked passage a leery look. “The tunnels are vast, but that skin was not here when I escaped.”
Dalila already had her knife out and was cutting and collecting as many shed scales as she could. I watched as she prodded
a crevasse with her staff and dragged out a fang the size of a femur. “This is... impressive,” she remarked. But even Dalila
sounded uneasy.
I slashed an opening through the snakeskin with my sword. “Let’s go. I would rather not be here if the beast returns.”
But the monstrous snakeskin proved to be an ill portent, for the farther we walked, the more alarming our surroundings grew.
No longer were there whimsical prints of hands and boats. Instead, bones and decaying shoes littered the path, alongside a
rusty knife and a saddlebag torn apart by claws. A complete set of yellowing human teeth jutted out from a rocky lodge, as
though its poor former owner had bitten down so hard the teeth had been ripped from his jaw.
Raksh had been leading us along the twists and turns, but shortly after we passed the horrifying teeth, the light of my torch fell upon a direction we were not headed. Cut into the stalactites and carved into the bedrock was a crude staircase.
A staircase? Here? How odd.
Curious, I stepped closer. A warm breath of air seemed to welcome me, smelling sweetly and impossibly of my mother’s perfume.
The familiar scent upended my heart, stealing my focus, and I had to reach out to brace myself. When I did so, I found I was
already standing on the first step. I attempted to regain my bearings, glancing up and peering through the darkness. At the
top of the staircase was a large brass door, the bright metal shining like a lighthouse in a foggy harbor.
As though bewitched, I drifted closer. My friends and mission suddenly seemed far away. A strange whooshing, whispers and
murmured sighs, pulled me forward, urging me on. Nearer now I could see the door was covered in carved images. Engravings
of warriors in braided skirts and kings in splendid headdresses looming over tiny bowed captives stripped of clothes and dignity,
their hands and feet shackled together. There were lion hunts and archery contests followed by brutal scenes of warfare and
slavery, scattered bodies and broken chariots. I lifted my lamp to illuminate a scene of musicians serenading a banquet. Beside
it was a tableau that turned my stomach: broken boats and screaming sailors. A general, or perhaps a king, given his large
stature, had his foot on the neck of a captive and was raising a mace over their head.
With a soft breath of warm air, the brass door opened. The opening was not wide, just a sliver of blackness between the shining
metal and the stone where there had been none before. It would be nothing to push the door open just a bit farther, to glance inside...
“ Get down from there .” It was Raksh, sounding thoroughly and uncharacteristically rattled.
I startled, jerking my hand away from the door: I didn’t even recall reaching out. And it was that realization—along with the fact that I was at the very top of a long staircase I had no memory of climbing—that made me stumble back, nearly tripping as I retreated down the steps.
Raksh waited until I was about halfway down to dart up the remaining stairs, grab my wrist, and pull me the rest of the way.
“Human fool,” he hissed. “I told you not to stray.”
I was trembling all over, a sheen of cold sweat erupting across my skin. “What is that place?”
My husband’s black gaze skittered to the brass door. “An ill omen.” He made what appeared to be some sort of warding motion
with his fingers, then glared at me. “This better not be a trap. I will carve out your heart if you think to trick me into
that sort of fate.”