CHAPTER 27 #3
They both stopped, because something like a stag, but four times the size and different in the way that mammoths were different to elephants, walked across the path right in front of them. The flaring of the salt light slung its shadow in three directions, a tri-partite monster.
Lady Hringen slammed both hands over her eyes.
It was white, almost lost in the blinding light, and it must have bent its head to graze close to a pool, because tangled in those branching antlers was a string of ivy, and in the ivy, salt had crystallised into gems.
Avelyn stared, eyes streaming under the mask.
The great not-stag went by slowly, unbothered by them, or that it was in a mine, and around it the salt light parted, the tiny particles veering away before they reached it.
That gave it a dark halo. It had left gigantic prints pressed deep into the path.
He could smell it too, salt and warm fur, and a rich animal musk.
He remembered he was holding the camera. He held it up, but she smacked it out of his hands. It fell the length of its strap, which was still over his shoulder, and thunked painfully into his hip.
“No!” she shouted at him, as though he had suggested hanging around to photograph the Devil. “Brocken! It’s a dream of the King. If his dreams are walking this far up the mine, then so are his nightmares! What do you think I have to do if I think one will reach the surface?”
He wouldn’t look at the sledgehammer pinned to the support pillar. He wouldn’t. “I need proof, or my Witan will never understand.”
The mask made her unreadable and hard. “You’re mad. Your nailed god has driven you mad.”
Then she ran after the other miners.
The stag seemed not to mind having its picture taken.
Avelyn caught the photograph the second the camera rolled it out this time, slipping it into his inside pocket straightaway.
As he did, the light flared again, infernal now, and he had to cover his eyes.
Before he did, he saw the bones inside his own fingers.
Time to go. He felt grimly pleased that Lady Hringen had left him behind. Maybe they were even now.
Somewhere further into the forest, something shrieked. It was an unearthly noise, and unlike anything he had heard any person or animal make before. There was something rotting in that noise, and maybe even something insane.
When he tried to take his hand away from his eyes, it was instant agony.
He bumped back against a tree and realized with some disbelief that he’d lost track of which way he was facing.
He was standing in the roots of a tree, he could feel that through his boots, and the crunch of acorn cups and twigs.
For at least a few seconds, he only felt annoyed with himself.
This was silly. Jericho was going to laugh at him and Annunciata was going to make some creative joke about blindness, and he’d stand there and laugh along with them, because even with a long history of being a bit stupid sometimes, this was surely extra-stupid.
It was little by little that he understood he couldn’t find a way to gauge where he was. With one hand on the tree trunk, he stretched out with the other, trying to find the next tree—the trees were close together, surely he would find it in a second—but he couldn’t.
North, where was—was it behind him? No. He’d lost track.
The thing screamed again.
He tried to open his eyes again, and again, it was like trying to stare directly into a lighthouse lamp four inches from his face. Green and purple blots burst across his whole field of vision, even after he had pressed both hands over his eyes again. His head was pounding.
Panic slammed into him head-on. He had no idea what to do, which way to try, whether to go blindly or stay still, and somewhere very close now, he could hear a terrible rasping that he was afraid was breathing.
He eased away from the tree, stepping over the roots, hoping he was going to find something that would help, dreading touching something alive, but all he found was air—it was so hot now even through his gloves—and the brush of a falling leaf on his sleeve.
The cavern was so quiet he heard the tiny snick as the leaf settled on the ground.
When he stepped on fallen acorns, the little cracks were like gunshots. Water was rushing somewhere, and . . .
Something heavy was walking. He didn’t think it was the stag.
Help me. He didn’t dare say it aloud, but he thought it, and he was not talking to God, nor Christ, nor Mary. Help me help me please help me.
His hand shaking so badly he almost couldn’t find the button, he held the camera out blind in front of him, towards the awful sounds—scrape, scrape, like claws—and took a picture.
The cluck of the camera sounded enormous.
Whatever the thing was, it crowed, a noise that nothing that big had made for thousands of years, since the last of the dragons died.
He caught the photograph and shoved it inside his shirt. At least if the thing killed him, there would be a record of what it was.
Help me please help me.