Ruins of Camelot (28 page)

Goodrik nodded slowly, resignedly.  "Then we will prepare you for your journey.  You may embark as soon as you desire."

Gabriella looked aside at Helena, but the woman was still seated, not seeming to pay attention.  She had retrieved Gabriella's empty teacup from the floor and was peering into it, studying the dreg of tea leaves scattered on its bottom.

"Yes," the woman answered slowly.  "Go to Coalroot.  Speak to
it
.  But if you are pursuing this mission in the hopes of saving your child, you may wish to reconsider."

Gabriella frowned worriedly.  "Why do you say such a thing?"

"Because," Helena said, looking up from the teacup and smiling tightly, "your son is not at Herrengard.  Neither is the woman Sigrid.  It would seem that they heeded your advice after all."

It was on the tip of Gabriella's tongue to ask how the witch could know such a thing, but the answer was obvious.  She had divined it simply by peering into the strew of leaves at the bottom of Gabriella's cup.

Helplessly, gratefully, Gabriella smiled.  She drew a great, shuddering sigh.

How very nice it must be,
she thought in the midst of her relief,
to be a witch.

I
t had been a short visit, and not entirely pleasant, and yet Gabriella felt far lonelier setting off on her own again after her encounter with the strange witch and wizard.  Even over the short course of her journey, such mundane comforts as a chair, hot tea, and friendly voices had become seemingly distant memories.  Experiencing them in the unexpected dimness of the cavern had only succeeded in making her feel acutely homesick.

This was only worsened by the knowledge that, for now at least, there was no home to return to.  Her castle would now be virtually empty, as would be the streets and cottages around it.  Perhaps they would soon fill again, and life would go on as always, but Gabriella did not expect this.  In the deepest, unspoken part of her heart, she feared that things had changed irrevocably and forever.

She walked on, her footsteps now making the only noise in the cavernous dark.

Goodrik and Helena had given her a few things to assist her on her journey.  The first one had been the fire that Goodrik had conjured.  Goblinfire, he called it, attaching it to a club of driftwood to form a torch.  The flame, he explained, would burn magically, consuming nothing so long as she did not wet it.  Even magical fire, it seemed, could not withstand a dousing.  The torch was exceedingly light in her hand as she walked on, casting its flickering brilliance in a pool around her.  The only odd thing about the goblinfire, she noticed, was that its flames moved rather slower than normal fire, like something glimpsed in a dream.  Its sparks drifted up and skirled away ahead of her.  She followed them.

"The sparks will lead you to Coalroot," Helena had explained.  "After all, every fire seeks its own.  Follow the sparks, and you will find what you are looking for."

A flutter of wings buffeted Gabriella as she walked.  Featherbolt soared ahead of her, arcing from side to side in the still air.  He had chosen to come with her, apparently of his own free will.  The goblinfire and Featherbolt, however, were not the only things that Gabriella had gained from her meeting with the magical folk.

"Take this," Goodrik had said as she'd turned to leave.  When she had looked back, he had been holding a thin shaft of wood.  It was a wand, though not his own.

"But I am not a witch," Gabriella had replied, meeting his eyes.  "I am only a human."

"You are not
only
anything," Goodrik had countered.  "Take it.  The magic of the sigil that accompanies you is unfocused.  This old wand may serve as a sort of focussing point for it if ever the need arises.  I expect it will only work once, but if at any point you require a certain…," he shrugged vaguely, "
magical flux
, you may attempt to use this."

Gabriella had taken the wand and then merely held it curiously.  It felt like nothing more than a cast-off stick.  "How?" she had asked, looking up at the wizard.

He had merely shaken his head and smiled cryptically.  "I cannot say.  I wish you good fortune on your quest, Princess.  I am tempted to join you myself, but alas…"  Here, he sighed deeply and looked back at Helena, who watched the proceedings with sombre eyes.  "We have vowed not to meddle in the affairs of men.  It is work enough, I am afraid, to manage the realm of witches and wizards."

Gabriella had thanked them sincerely, if dolefully.  Then, without another word, she had set off.

It was a long trek through the subterranean world of the Barrens.  Gabriella quickly realised that had she not encountered the witch and wizard and received their direction, she would indeed have become hopelessly lost in the interconnected maze of caverns and tunnels.  The light of her torch soothed her eyes, making a dome of golden warmth around her, and the ever-present flutter of Featherbolt was a far greater comfort than she could have expected.

The first time he alit on her shoulder, clicking his talons on her armour, she had been so startled that she had nearly dropped her torch.  Shortly, however, she came to appreciate his subtle weight and the warmth of his feathers as they brushed her cheek.

She began to talk to him.

"I don't even know what watch of the day it is," she commented darkly.  "Or even if it is morning or night outside.  At this rate, it would be easy to walk on and on, not even realising one was tired until
one
dropped from exhaustion."

Featherbolt ruffled his chest feathers and then polished his beak on his wing, not seeming to care.

For a long time, Gabriella did not feel hungry.  She wondered if the constant darkness was having some strange effect on her appetite but chose not to worry about it.  Her store of food was nearly gone.  She welcomed anything that helped her preserve what little she had left.

Then, for the first time, she wondered about the falcon.  Would she have to feed him as well?  Shortly, however, this was answered by the bird himself.  He launched from her shoulder violently, darting forwards and soaring low over the ground.  With a flick of his tail, he seemed to pluck something from the stony floor.  Circling back, Gabriella saw the wriggling grey body of a rat clutched in the bird's talons.  She shuddered as he landed on a nearby boulder, dipped his beak, and happily eviscerated the creature.  She stopped whilst he ate but refused to watch.  She had always detested rats.

"Ugh," she said, shuddering.  "I can hear you.  It's still squeaking, isn't it?"

Featherbolt clicked his beak and then tore at the rat again, apparently enjoying his meal.

The journey progressed, passing through wildly different areas of the Barrens underground.

Sometimes, Gabriella and Featherbolt followed the course of the underground river, even as it crashed through rocky rapids and waterfalls or widened into eerily calm doldrums.  The water always glowed with its freight of illuminated fish.  At one point, the river widened into a massive lake so broad that its distant shores were invisible in the darkness.  Here, ephemeral, blue shapes plowed the abyss slowly and rhythmically, like silk scarves caught in a spring breeze.  The stillness of the lake was like glass so that Gabriella could see the creatures clearly, despite their obvious depths.  Streamers of deep purple followed behind the shapes, forming whip-like tentacles.  There seemed to be hundreds of them fading away into the unimaginable deep.

At other times, however, Gabriella and Featherbolt angled away from the river, following the ever-present sparks of the goblinfire torch.  They would find themselves in narrow shafts so close that Gabriella could easily touch both walls, and so low that she had to duck.  These would progress for hundreds of feet only to open up onto great cathedrals of stalactites and stalagmites standing as regal as pillars and soaring into lofty darkness.

Once, the sparks led them into a sort of avenue with an unnaturally flat floor and complicated shapes looming on the walls.  Raising her torch, Gabriella saw that the walls were in fact carved into rows of doorways and windows, steps and entries, forming a silent tableau of forgotten civilisation.  She wondered how old the strange underground city was.  There were words engraved over many of the entrances, but they were strange and completely indecipherable.  Near the end of the avenue, a mass of stalactites formed an eerie growth against the building façade.  Hidden within it, nearly buried inside the ancient formation, was a strew of bones.  With a shudder, Gabriella saw that there were several skeletons, none of them exactly human.  The heads were too big, the bodies far too small.  Dwarfs, she thought, or gnomes.  There was no way to tell for sure.

She hurried on.

Eventually, she stopped.  She had finally become hungry.  Featherbolt landed on a nearby ledge as Gabriella opened her pack.  She was down to her last crust of stale bread and strip of venison.  Feeling eerily calm, she ate most of the remaining food.  The last few bites, she wrapped in a cloth and replaced in her pack.

"That's it," she told Featherbolt, sighing as she stared into the goblinfire.  "Only one more little meal left."

There did not seem to be anything further to say on the subject.

Weariness stole over her.  She had not planned to sleep yet, but now it seemed inevitable.

Without getting up, she merely rolled onto her side, tucked her pack beneath her head, and closed her eyes.  A minute passed, and then two.  Her breathing slowed.

In the darkness, spiders scuttled out from beneath the rocks and trickled down from the dim ceilings, using the stalactites like highways.  They approached Gabriella, many as pale as bones, some as large as a man's hand, and surrounded her.  Featherbolt watched this warily, his golden eyes flicking over the scuttling assembly, prepared to strike.

Finally, having collected in their dozens, the spiders turned away from Gabriella.  They formed a ring around her, their alien eyes turned outwards, watching the cavern darkness.

Featherbolt saw this.  After a moment, he relaxed.

Eventually, even he slept.

The next day, Gabriella finally found Coalroot.

She had spent the morning (not that she could tell if it truly was morning or not) descending a long, straight shaft ever deeper into the earth.  The walls of the tunnel had grown increasingly taller and narrower as she walked, so that she felt like a mouse crawling within the walls of a cottage.  The air had become warmer as she progressed and was now quite hot.  Sweat trickled into her eyes, and she swiped it away with the inside of her wrist.

There was light as well.  Unlike every other glow that she had encountered in the caverns, however, this light was neither blue nor cold.  It was a burnished red, growing gradually brighter as she progressed.  The sparks of her torch streaked ahead, following the course of the tunnel as if in the teeth of a hard wind despite the perfect stillness of the air.