18. Chapter 18
Don’t move, It said, as I fumbled through the dark for a blade from my belt.
Another tap against the boulders, another wave of panic that threatened to pull me under.
It knows we’re in here.
I can tell, It retorted. If it wants you, let it rip the blockade away and take you. This is not a time for offense. If it can’t get around the rocks, the two of you can wait out the dawn and leave this place come morning.
A blood-curdling screeching noise bled through the cracks. Serich’s grip on me doubled, though I’d made no move to investigate further. What is it saying? I asked It, a tremble in my thought.
I don’t know. How the fuck should I know? It probably wants you to come out.
And you have no idea what it is? How can that be?
How much time do you think I spent in these woods?
Its temper was beginning to smolder. I didn’t live in them, I came here as a child.
I remember the general layout and can make educated guesses on what we might meet where, but I don’t know every single thing that ever has or ever will live here.
It’s so cold in this part of the wood that I’d assume few creatures would prefer it.
I have no idea what this is, and if it can’t get in then so much the better.
“What is it?” Serich breathed into my ear, making me jump. “Does It know?”
Something scraped against the boulders. Talons, a blade, fingernails filed into points. I had no earthly idea but my imagination conjured plenty of potentials. “He doesn’t have any clue.”
“How can that be?”
I’m not some all-knowing, ancient sage, It said. You want my advice? Stay put. Shut up. Wait till dawn.
“It says to wait till dawn,” I whispered into Serich’s ear.
So we did. I felt Serich’s heart thrash against my back every time we heard another inquisitive rap against the makeshift blockade; I felt It tense and pace just before the window of my eyes.
But nothing happened.
Foggy dawn eventually trickled through the cracks. Serich knocked me behind him as he kicked out the boulders and peered around the wood, but nothing except the fogs awaited us, not even a track or disturbance in the earth to prove anything had lingered in the night.
Get going, It said, the first time he had spoken in hours.
We left, alcerin racing through our veins. In the back of my mind, It muttered at the fogs looping and winding about me, but he offered no comment.
Our feet sank and slid as the frosts of the wood melted into gritty shades of black and green and gray.
Fallen leaves became waterlogged little ships scattered about the earth.
As the temperature grew warmer, our breath no longer trailed about our lips like toxic clouds.
The bulk of the fogs drifted back into the ground, and Serich and I cut quickly through the wood like animals who’d been born to it when the earth grew firmer.
Still, the silence persisted. It felt deceitful, cunning. Whatever had tapped so curiously against the blockade in the night could still be lurking, watching. Waiting for the right moment.
You forgot sleeping. Which is the most likely scenario. Most everything in this place is nocturnal.
“What do you think Hell looks like?” Serich slapped at some evil-looking nettles that had latched onto his cloak. “A great flaming cauldron of screaming souls?”
It snorted so loudly I rather thought he’d rupture something.
I started to tell Serich what It had told me, though I had few specifics and It did not seem to feel inclined to share any more, but I had barely begun to describe the gates and antechamber when Serich shuddered.
It laughed unkindly at that.
“A whole room full of damned souls milling about.” Serich held up a bent branch so I could duck beneath it first. “It’s ghastly.”
“You don’t have to come inside with me if I make it.”
“What shall I do then, wait outside the gates?” A half-smile lifted one of his cheeks. “I wouldn’t make you face that alone.”
I wouldn’t be alone, I almost responded. I am never, ever alone. But when I opened my mouth, the only words that came out were thank you.
“I need no thanks for doing what’s right.”
“I was taught to thank those who do me a kindness. Not many people would have volunteered for this. It means a lot that you did.”
The half-smile widened into a full one. “Perhaps it’s not all because of kindness.
Imagine the stories we’ll come back home with.
The things we’ve seen already. The information we can bring back to educate the community.
Most of what we thought we knew was wrong.
An overview of the range of the lands in this place; it’s even larger than we thought.
The plants that snap, those hideous mushrooms. I can accurately depict the effects of a succubus, having been under one’s spell.
What we saw with the faeries, how they move and fight.
The demon of the water—I couldn’t describe him, but you could.
All those potions and the herbs the hag grows in her garden, all the witchcraft she’s capable of. ”
“Must you tell them of Blathilde?” My heart sank a little at the thought of her details spreading like wildfire across the village. “She was kind to us. All she wants is a quiet life. There seems little harm in her.”
“Even though she took your youth?”
“I freely gave it.”
“That’s true.” I felt him gazing at my profile for a few moments.
“If you want to keep her secret, we won’t mention her.
” Then I felt a twitch, as if It were rolling his eyes.
“And what man living can say they’ve ever been to Hell and back?
” Serich continued with a rueful grin. “Truly, I would have been a fool to pass up the opportunity to see such sights.”
The alcerin goaded us onward for most of the day, a whisper of faster, faster, faster, rushing through our blood.
Is this like coffee? I wondered, and made a mental note to tell Livvy, should I ever see her again.
Alcerin made my eyes so wide they felt pinned open, my entire body screaming for movement.
The herb’s entire crusade boiled down to one thing—momentum—and it did not like to give it up.
We stopped for water though the alcerin wanted us to ignore the itching in our throats.
Damp black stone, reflective as a looking glass, shimmered all around us as we stood beneath an arched rock formation.
I flinched away from the image it threw back in my face.
I looked unearthly, like everything else in this wood.
So pale my veins glowed beneath my skin, my eyes as gray as the water demon’s puddles.
A smear of dirt I didn’t remember brushing against lay upon one of my cheekbones like a bruise.
The shirt beneath my cloak was tarred with mud.
God, I thought with a shiver. I’m like one of these weathered old trees in the wood. How soon can we leave these rocks?
You’ll be grateful for the rock soon enough. If you’re lucky it’ll be your shelter for the night. You see how wet the ground is? There were grottos here when I was a child. Several of them, if they haven’t caved in yet.
The dissonant harmony of a murder of crows heralded dusk.
We had come upon the grottos It had promised by then, but lurked outside for a while for fear they were occupied by something more menacing than bats and insects.
Serich had lugged a pile of boulders to the entrance so that we might have some cover once we were inside overnight, though it didn’t seem likely we could completely obscure the hole.
We wouldn’t have full protection from the cold.
We jittered from the alcerin, and the sky turned from a vicious violet to charcoal to ebony before anything happened.
How characteristically Hell, It said with perfect disdain as torrents of bats gushed forth from the grottos, spiraling blindly toward the sky. Their membranous wings beat the air silently, their little bodies silhouetted against an incandescent moon. Now get inside before anything smells you.
Inside, it was blacker and denser than I could have imagined, a darkness so thick I wanted to cut through it with one of my blades. I groped slowly along the jagged rock walls. How far would I get before hitting standing water?
Serich kept close but I wasn’t aware how close until he startled me with the proximity of his voice. “Should we risk a fire, just to get our bearings? I’ve got iron and flint in my bag, a few drying bits of wood.”
“All right,” I said, when It offered nothing but a tapping talon.
I felt Serich drop to the ground, rustling through his satchel.
When he’d managed a feeble flame, it threw orange tendrils everywhere, igniting icicles of dripping stalactites, serrated walls of rock, a small, still pond of water in the center.
The grotto was so deep the fire couldn’t illuminate the end of it; all I found was a gaping black gullet waiting to receive us.
I tipped my head back to rake the ceiling with my gaze, but no straggling bats clung to it, no glowing eyes glared back.
Nothing stirred from the throat of the cavern, but would it? Everything here was steeped in silence.
Serich looked up at me from the marshy earth. “What do you reckon? Should we stay?”
“This isn’t like I’d expect a bat colony to smell.” I tucked my arms around myself. “The musk, the urine—there is none. It’s too clean.”
They drink only blood, and they don’t excrete an ounce of it.
“Ah.” I realized I’d said it aloud when Serich, still kneeling upon the ground, quirked an eyebrow up at me. “It said they only drink blood. That’s why it doesn’t stink in here. They don’t make waste.”
Serich’s eyes pulsed orange in the flickering flames. “I find no issue with that if it means we won’t reek come morning.”
“Unless they come back home hungry a little early and find us,” I said, revolving on the spot to take in more of the grotto.
“Leave before dawn?” he asked. “Just to be safe?”