Indigo - Inferno Part 13

Brackish water splashed against Indigo's face. She tried to protest but her vocal cords wouldn't obey her; all she could do was turn her head in an effort to evade the a.s.sault, but it did little good. There was an insistent, muted thundering in her ears and the ground under her seemed to be shaking. And she could smell something dense, heavy, metallic, clogging her nostrils.

"More."

She knew the voice but couldn't give it a name. Someone she had- Another shock of water hit her, and nausea erupted from somewhere deep down. Instinctively she rolled, just managing to turn her head aside before a foul mixture of bile and sputum poured from her throat. Retching, she dragged herself backward on her elbows, still disoriented and reluctant to open her eyes.

"All right: that's enough. She's conscious now. Turn her over."

Hands pawed at Indigo's body but she didn't have the coordination to fight them off. Then a shadow fell across her and her cheek was slapped, lightly but with purpose.

"Saia Indigo. I would suggest that you look at me. There seems little point in prolonging this farce unnecessarily. "

Her eyelids fluttered, opened. For a moment her eyes refused to focus; then abruptly the scene about her resolved.

She was in some kind of building, a rough, windowless hut made from sheets of carelessly cut and rusting iron. The air stank, and by the greasy light of the lamp hanging from a ceiling hook she could make out the crude table and two chairs, the board on the wall with its chalked lists of figures, the piles of slates and notched lead tally-sticks in one corner. The office of a mine overseer, crowded now with some half-dozen men. They must have brought her down into the valley while she was unconscious, and now the noise, the stink, the polluted dust clogging the air told her she was in the heart of the mining region, completely cut off from any hope of rescue. And in the midst of her captors, his mutilated smile ghastly in the murky lamplight, was Quinas.

A vicious oath whistled between Indigo's lips, Quinas was dead meat; she had left him in the gully, unable to move, waiting only for the sun to rise and blister the last of his life away. He couldn't have turned the tables on her.But the impossible had happened, and now Quinas presided over the group of men from some kind of makes.h.i.+ft litter. A bandage hid his bald scalp and ruined eye, and salve had been smeared on the lesser burns, giving his face a slick, oily sheen. A smile of unadulterated triumph cracked his scorched mouth.

"Well, saia." He spoke gently, an obscene parody of affection coloring his tone. "We have, it seems, apprehended a sinner in the act of s.h.i.+ning, so to speak."

His companions grinned unpleasantly. To judge from their clothing and demeanor Indigo surmised that they, too, were mine officers, overseers like Quinas perhaps, or foreman, or gangers. Each wore the glowing badge of a Charchad acolyte, and each suffered in some small way from the Charchad sickness: flaking skin, falling hair, webbed fingers, a nose that was beginning to crumble... One carried a whip with a plaited thong; it was this, she realized, that had cut her face, leaving her cheek sore and bleeding, and Indigo didn't doubt that at the smallest provocation the whip's wielder would take pleasure in using it again.

Fool! a voice in her brain railed. You should have killed him! You should have plunged your knife into his corrupted heart and watched him vomit out his life at your feet! You should- Someone caught her by the hair and dragged her into a sitting position so suddenly and violently that her head swam again and the self-recrimination collapsed under a fresh wall of sickness. This time she held the spasm back, refusing to lose the last pathetic shards of her dignity, and her teeth clenched hard.

"I should have slaughtered you...."

"Indeed you should." Quinas inclined his head.

"That was your weakness, dear Indigo. But wis.h.i.+ng isn't the same as doing, is it?"

Her head was clearing now, and in the wake of physical recovery came something else that she couldn't yet quite grasp. Charchad. She had come to... but no; that wasn't it. Something else. Something Grimya had said. She had seen Grimya, on a ridge near the peak of Old Maia. Or had she dreamed that part of it?

"You have offended us, Indigo." Quinas's soft, cajoling voice intruded on her efforts to remember. "And though we of Charchad are merciful, those who persistently offend must be punished.

You understand. Don't you?"

His words were meaningless. There was something else, something far more important....

Nemesis.

"She doesn't hear you, Quinas," someone said laconically.

"Oh, but she does. Don't you, Indigo?'

1.

The brooch. Grimya had said something about the brooch.

"Don't you?" Fingers took her jaw in a pincer hold, and in the same moment she remembered.

The brooch. Nemesis.

"No-o!" It was a cry of pain and anguish and bitter regret as the last bonds of Indigo's thrall shattered and she realized what she had done. Grimya! her mind shrieked silently. Grimya-Jasker-I betrayed you, I failed- The scream dropped away into cold silence. With a great effort Indigo forced herself to look at Quinas's face again, and what she saw made her quail as she realized that his desire for revenge drove just as deep as her own. She, more than anyone, was responsible for the ruin that had been worked on him and which meant that he must face the rest of his life as a mutilated hulk. Now, through her crazed stupidity, he had turned the tables on her. He, and her Nemesis. And now that she was his victim, he would see to it that her suffering more than matched his own.

And all for a worthless piece of base metal...

One of the overseer's mutilated hands reached out to touch her cheek as lightly as a falling leaf.

She saw the fused stumps of his fingers, and her gut recoiled at the caress. Quinas smiled.

"You are a sinner, Indigo. It grieves us to witness such sins as you have committed against Charchad, but we know our duty." Other voices murmured a.s.sent. "Sin, Indigo. Sin. And what is the punishment for sin?"Silence. They waited for her to answer, but she couldn't, dared not- "The vale. The road to the ultimate enlightenment." The stunted fingers stroked her face again and she shut her eyes tightly. But she couldn't shut out the voice, the gentle, mocking persuasive voice.

"You sought our master Aszareel, Indigo. You sought him, when only the chosen of Charchad are privy to such an honor." A terrible quiet hung in the air momentarily, then Quinas's soothing voice continued.

"But we have decided to be merciful." Something brushed her eyelids and it was all she could do not to scream. "We have decided to grant you the enlightenment you crave. It is a privilege given to few, but we believe that you have earned it. Are you not grateful?"

Someone sn.i.g.g.e.red, quelled it. Indigo opened her eyes again and saw that the overseer was leaning over her. His face bore an obscenely sepulchral smile.

"You are to make a journey, my dear. A journey from which there will be no return."

Another breath of laughter, like poison in her ears. Quinas's hideous smile widened. "To the deepest reaches of the pit of Charchad, Indigo. To look, in the moment before you die, upon the face of our lord Aszareel!"

*CHAPTER*XIII*.

They forced her to drink from a battered tin cup, clamping her jaws open and pouring the bitter liquid into her mouth when she tried to fight them. It took three of the Charchad acolytes to hold her down and she still managed to spit most of the draft back in their faces; but nonetheless enough went down her throat for the drug it contained to take effect.

The numbness came first. She felt it beginning in her hands and feet, creeping slowly along her limbs toward her torso, and though she exerted all her willpower, she could do nothing to stem it. Ten minutes after swallowing the draft she was pulled to her feet, and when she tried to struggle, her muscles simply refused to respond. She could still stand unaided, but beyond that she had no more physical self-control than a doll; and as her captors dragged her to the hut door in a grotesque, loose-legged parody of walking she felt her mental faculties also starting to lose their grip as the drug's potency worked in her veins. Sick, soul-numbing terror was lodged like a parasite in her gut, but she couldn't respond to it; she felt remote, as though she were watching herself from a distance that increased with every moment.

Yet on another level her senses were still painfully her own, and working at fever pitch. And overriding all else in her mind was a sense of utter desolation and remorse.

She had tailed. Driven by emotions that she hadn't had the wit to examine or control, she had opened herself to the ultimate folly of recklessness, and Nemesis had been waiting to exploit that folly.

She should have seen the danger inherent in Chrysiva's brooch, the correlation between its dull silvery sheen and the ever-present threat of her demon. And when Grimya proved wiser than she was, she should have listened.

But should and if were of no use to her now. She had scorned her only friends for the sake of blind, vain fury, and that vanity had led her to the mad belief that she could face and conquer the evil of the Charchad Vale without them. Now her eyes had been opened, but it was too late. She couldn't even hope for the relatively swift death that lay in store for her fellow captives: immortal as she was, her suffering would have no end. And she had no one but herself to blame.

In its dark, astral realm of poison thorns and black stars, Indigo thought, Nemesis must be laughing.

The door swung open, banging against the iron wall and making the whole hut shake. Oily smog swirled into Indigo's face; her eyes began to water and she tasted sulfur and burnt dust at the back of her throat as she was hustled out into the eerily glowing nightscape of the mines.

She was met by a battering chaos of noise. The filthy air pounded with the near-subliminal thunder of machines, from the great cranes on their towering booms to the gape-mouthed diggers and vast hammers worked by teams of sweating men as they attacked the rock faces. More straining slavegangs hauled lines of ore trucks along a rattling, rumbling network of rails; these men chanted as they toiled to keep their steps in rhythm, a doleful, groaning dirge like some h.e.l.l-inspired shanty. Steam hissed and roared, disembodied voices shouted orders; somewhere, someone screamed in pain or fear or both.

Through the grim miasma the beacon torches flickered on their high poles, their light diffused by the smog into shapeless and ghostly smears in the churning night.

Indigo was dragged over the rough ground. Her eyes were streaming by now and she could see no more than a few paces ahead. They pa.s.sed under the tall gantry of one of the torches, and in the sudden flaring brilliance she made out the blurred shapes of other figures who seemed to be waiting for them.

Someone who carried a whip and whose accoutrements glinted metallically strode out of the glare to meet Indigo's captors. Words were exchanged, but the background din buried them; the only recognizable sound was a bark of laughter. Then hands shoved her roughly forward; unable to control her muscles, she fell sprawling among booted feet and was instantly hauled up again. Metal clanked; she felt something clamp about her ankles and realized with dull shock that she was being shackled to one end of a crocodile of ragged men. She tried to protest, but her frozen throat could only utter a peculiar mewling sound that drew no more than a brief, apathetic glance from the captive next in line.

More clanking, and a second set of shackles locked on her wrists. Her arms were released; she stood upright but only just, blinking confusedly at her tormentors. There was a movement among the group of overseers, then Quinas appeared, supported by two of his cohorts who had carried his litter from the hut.

"Well, saia Indigo." The familiar, hated voice slid like a cold knife into the tangles of her thoughts.

She didn't have the wherewithal to turn her head, and someone had to take hold of her chin and wrench her around until her eyes focused vaguely on Quinas's face.

"It is customary at these moments to offer the Charchad's blessing to those who are about to receive enlightenment." In the hot glare of the torch overhead Quinas's disfigurements made him ghoulish.

"Your companions have already partaken of that sacrament; but it seems, sadly, that you are not in a fit condition to share their boon."

She continued to stare at him, but even if she had been capable of speaking she couldn't have thought of anything to say.

Quinas smiled. "It seems something of an anticlimax that our final parting should be shorn of the proper ceremony: but I've learned to view such small disappointments philosophically. So it only remains, Indigo, for me to bid you farewell. For the last time." And he nodded to the waiting jailers. "Take them on to the vale."

An overseer at the head of the line of prisoners jerked hard on the chain he held, and the men shambled forward. Indigo was pulled along with them, her head wobbling on her shoulders. For a moment the h.e.l.lish scene tilted as she almost lost her balance, then as she managed to right herself she caught one last glimpse of Quinas before he turned away. His face was in shadow, out of range of the torchlight, and she couldn't see his expression. Only his remaining eye caught a stray reflection, and it glowed like the eye of a reincarnated demon.

Indigo's teeth chattered, a convulsive, involuntary reflex. She couldn't speak, but as the line of captives shuffled into the darkness her lips moved slackly to form a single, silent word that sounded as a confused and desperate plea in her ravaged mind.

"Gr... Grimya...?"

Before they set out, Jasker gave Grimya the last of his food. The she-wolf protested that she was too worried to be hungry, but he insisted. The supplies, he said, would be rancid long before they could hope to return, and they needed to sustain themselves for the work ahead. He had already eaten enough for his needs; now Grimya must take what was left.

At last, though reluctantly, she gave way. While she ate, Jasker sat poring by the light of a candle over a small map, the result of six months' exploration of the tunnels, shafts, and galleries that riddled the volcanoes. It was a crude effort, drawn with a paste of soot and oily wax onto a smoke-dried animalskin, and by no means complete: in his underground wanderings Jasker was well aware that he had explored no more than a minute fraction of the vast network. But the map would be sufficient to guide them to their destination. What might happen beyond that point was a subject he preferred not to dwell on, aware that matters would by then be in greater hands. But-and he glanced obliquely at Grimya, who in spite of her protestations was now licking the platter clean-if luck went against them and this proved to be a oneway journey, at least they'd be spared the ignominy of dying hungry.

With a sigh, Jasker folded the map and tucked it into a small hide sack which he settled over his shoulder. He didn't want to burden himself unnecessarily, but to go into the volcano network empty-handed would be suicidal, and he had packed a few basic essentials such as rope, candles, knife, together with a full waterskin. He'd committed the first part of their route to memory; there was no further need for delay.

Grimya was eager to set out, but was surprised when instead of setting off through the cave's interior tunnel Jasker led her out into the hot night and away up a steep and difficult path that she hadn't seen before. The path was formed from a vein of obsidian, fused to gla.s.slike smoothness and perilously slippery; Grimya struggled gamely to maintain a foothold and keep up, but when finally they reached the top, she was panting heavily.

Jasker pointed to a low, dark crack in the mountain wall ahead. "There's a cave on the other side of that gap, which leads to a pa.s.sage. That's where our way lies."

Grimya didn't like caves. Her natural element was the cool openness of forest and plain; confinement distressed her, and although she had adjusted as best she could to the claustrophobia of Jasker's hideaway, she found its atmosphere oppressive. The thought of wriggling through that narrow gap into stifling, sulfurous darkness made her heart quicken unpleasantly, and despite her determination to be courageous, she had to admit that she was afraid of what lay ahead. She would have given a great deal not to have to continue this journey, but forced the thought from her mind even as it took form. For Indigo's sake, she must go on.

Jasker had already dropped to a crouch and was squeezing through the rock slit. Grimya looked up at the t.i.tanic cone of Old Maia towering into the evilly glowing sky, and her hackles rose involuntarily.

The greatest and oldest of Ranaya's Daughters, a sleeping but lethal giantess. And they were searching for her heart.

A soft call, echoing from the crack, told her that Jasker was safely through. Grimya shook herself from head to tail, attempting to slough off more than the p.r.i.c.kling heat of the night; then she flattened her body to the ground and squirmed through the gap in Jasker's wake.

They walked for an incalculable time in almost perpetual darkness. Early on, Jasker took a candle from his sack and attempted to ignite it; but the tunnel soughed and echoed with strange, hot drafts, and the guttering flame refused to stay alight for more than a few moments at a time. At last the sorcerer abandoned his attempts to keep the candle burning. For a moment he considered calling a salamander, one of his little brothers of fire; but to summon and contain the elemental would take power, and he dared not risk depleting his resources in however small a way. For the time being at least, they must do without light. It was an eerie journey. The air smelled of sulfur and tasted like iron; its oppressiveness grew as the tunnel wound and twisted ever downward. At times the pa.s.sage roof rose so high that their footfalls created unnerving echoes; at others the walls closed in so that they were forced to squeeze sidelong through a barely negotiable gap. Now and then a dim and distant flicker of orange-red light would erupt from some adit in the runnel wail and hurl their shadows briefly onto the rock before dying away, and from somewhere far below came a constant, rumbling vibration that even Grimya's sensitive ears couldn't quite hear, but which they both felt in the core of their bones.

The she-wolf couldn't disguise her fear. The smallest untoward sound, the slightest movement of air, was enough to make her jink and cower, and the deeper they penetrated into the mountain, the worse her feelings grew. They traversed a natural gallery, moving cautiously along a narrow ledge that overhung a huge, dark drop; then through another tunnel whose bizarre acoustics made their footfalls sound like the tramping of an army, and on over a spine of basalt spanning a vast fumarole that blew hot,sulfurous winds into their faces and glowed with a molten life of its own. Several times Jasker paused to consult his map, but it was merely a precaution; memory and instinct were proving sure guides, and he knew that they were drawing closer to their ultimate goal.

The sorcerer was well aware of Grimya's terrors, and in truth he shared them; these subterranean tunnels were no place for any living creature, animal or human. He only hoped that it would be possible to reach their eventual destination. He had seen the place once, during his original exploration, but since that first unplanned visit he hadn't had a reason-no, he corrected himself sternly; he hadn't had the courage-to return. There was no merit in deluding himself about that, and every justification for the dread he felt. But now that he must face it again, he prayed silently that in the intervening time some natural event hadn't rendered the place inaccessible, for if it had, his plan would have no more relevance than a handful of volcanic dust.

He wondered how near Indigo was now to the deadly vale. Much, he knew, would depend on whether she still had Quinas with her. If the overseer lived, his presence would slow her progress and that improved Jasker's chances of reaching his destination before she reached hers. But if Quinas had succ.u.mbed to exhaustion, or if Indigo had simply lost patience and killed him, it might already be too late.

Unconsciously, he quickened his pace, forcing Grimya into a rapid trot to keep up. To the best of his knowledge-and Jasker was prepared to admit that his knowledge, and the map, might be flawed-they were now very close to their goal. The air in the pa.s.sage through which they hurried was foul with the reeks of dust and hot rock and semimolten metal: beneath their feet, and not too far beneath, the natural laws of geology were being twisted out of kilter by the colossal heat of the volcano's boiling core. He was trying to calculate how much farther they must have to go when abruptly Grimya'& ears p.r.i.c.ked forward.

"Light!" she said hoa.r.s.ely. "I s-see light!"

In the tunnel's darkness Jasker had been concentrating on keeping his footing on the uneven floor, and the she-wolf had glimpsed the first telltale glow before it registered on his mind. Now, though, his eyes caught a faint, flickering reflection on the wall ahead.

They had arrived. Old memories lurched to life in Jasker's mind, and he felt a thick, clagging sensation at the back of his throat that wasn't caused by the stinking air. He wanted to swallow but couldn't induce saliva, and he halted, staring at the angry glow and touching one hand to the rock beside him.

The wall's surface was hot and he could feel a slow, insistent pulse vibrating through it. The light ahead of them illuminated an acute curve in the tunnel, and just beyond the turn, he remembered, the roof had caved in to create a sloping wall of rubble whose only egress was a narrow gap at the top. Beyond that barrier was the tunnel's end, and their destination.

The sorcerer took four slow, steady breaths, trying to calm his uneven heartbeat. Then, with a brief glance to ensure that Grimya was following, he walked on to the curve in the tunnel.

Nothing had disturbed the fallen rocks. The hot light shone lividly through the gap at the top, throwing the slope into deep shadow and making it hard to judge distances and angles for an ascent.

Grimya eyed the rubble uncertainly.

"Can you climb it?" Jasker asked her.

She dipped her head. "Y-ess. But... what is that light? And the noises? They are... not good."

Jasker had been trying to ignore the disturbing sounds that were impinging on him from beyond the barrier, but Grimya's question forced his awareness to focus. If he closed his eyes and allowed his imagination free rein-something he wasn't overly anxious to do-he might easily have believed that the discordant stirrings were a kind of unearthly music, the sound of alien souls singing in a scale and a tongue that no human mind could hope to interpret. Strange harmonies that defied comprehension, impossible whisperings, s.h.i.+vering cadences without pitch or rhythm yet containing their own eldritch integrity.

Logically, Jasker knew that the sounds were nothing more than the s.h.i.+fting of random air currents through huge honeycombs of rock; but logic couldn't combat the effect of those chilling echoes, nor could it banish the conviction that had gripped him on his first encounter with this awesome place: that what he was hearing was the vast, unhuman voice of Old Maia herself. Grimya, unhampered by the flaws of thehuman ear, must be hearing that voice in her marrow....

He spoke softly. "It's nothing more than movement of air, Grimya. There's no need to be afraid."

"Grimya?" Nervous impatience gave Jasker's voice an edge; if the climb and what lay beyond it must be faced, he didn't want to prolong the ordeal longer than necessary.

Grimya growled, an uneasy rumble in her throat, but she didn't look at him.

"Grimya! What is it?"

At last the she-wolf turned her head. Her eyes, lambent with reflected light, looked feral and suddenly alien, and she drew back her lips in a snarl.

"Something is wrr-ong!"

Cold, phantom teeth bit into Jasker's stomach. "Wrong?"

"In my mind. A... disturbance. I... h-heard it! But now it has gone."