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INTO THE HOLLOWS

Every hollow is a mystery, no matter how often you have traversed its caverns and paths.

Where once the path was clear, licht may now lie in waiting.

Where the tunnel was once empty of all but echoes, wild beasts of bygone eras stalk.

Be awake always, on your toes and ready to face the unknown head on.

~ Notes of the Self-Exiled, Shiya vel Hintenvishnar

* * *

The hollow was dark and dry.

Esterra trudged through without any source of light, testing the ground before her with the toe of her boot.

The pale sunlight of late afternoon had only reached a few dozen paces into the cave, before she had turned a corner in the path.

Now she slid forward, step by cautious step, in pitch darkness, arm stretched forward, feeling nothing.

The unlit torch in her pack called to her, but she wouldn’t light it for a little while yet.

She wanted to keep her eyes open for any trace of the licht.

It was as certain a means as any for predicting a hollow’s traits.

She continued on this way, dilated eyes scanning the nothingness before her.

She adjusted the curved knife in her belt.

The blade brought her comfort, not only for its sharp edge.

It was her one tie to the past, the one thing she never even considered trading away.

Many in the Trader’s Circle had made offers.

While a bronze blade was not as coveted as steel, it was cheaper, and the fact that a world-weary tractwalker bore it indicated decent quality.

But she refused every time.

Finally satisfied that no licht lurked in the hollow, Esterra pulled the torch from her bag.

Kneeling with the base of the wood propped between her knees, she struck flint with the ever-dwindling nub of steel she kept for that purpose, barely longer than her finger nail, scarred by a thousand strikes.

Sparks scattered into the darkness, and she adjusted her position.

Scratch, scratch, scratch! A flicker of light caught on the tallow-drenched cloth of the torch, and it gave birth to a glowing flame.

She rose, and let the fire envelop the cloth, taking the time to inspect the hollow.

Sandstone stretched away to either side.

Rust-red and crumbling, the tunnel seemed mostly natural, with sharp ridges where the earth had shifted in its uneasy rest.

The floor was rough, maroon sand filling the small crevices and cracks.

No grass or weeds grew here.

That was not always the case.

Sometimes the hollows were full of plant life, and sometimes creatures lived there.

They cowered in their caves like small children from abusive parents, eking out their lives in pitch darkness, safe from the lichtvallen and the tract-changes, so long as they avoided the mouth of the hollow in the dawn and dusk. Their offspring would mutate, not through any magic but through the pure vicious reality of nature, into beasts which cherished the shadows. These would usually become predatory and bloodthirsty, driven insane by the mental chains they wound about themselves.

Thankfully, there were no signs of such creatures in this hollow.

There were, however, what seemed to be old bootprints, but the sand had shifted into them, and they did not look recent enough to cause any concern.

The cave went through the tawil with gradual undulations, rising for a few hundred paces, dropping back in the next.

The licht had not forged this one.

It was natural.

Still, none of this ensured her safety.

After some time, she spotted some clearer bootprints, where the sand had gathered in a little depression in the sandstone.

They were the very same boots as she had seen in the previous half dozen tracts.

A little larger than her own, square-toed, heavier pressure on the left foot.

A man with a limp, then.

Same conclusion she had drawn the first dozen time.

She rose, and leaned against the wall, looking down at the patch of coarse yellow sand.

A limping tractwalker. Few citizens of Verpace travelled through more than two or three tracts, their only real motivation for movement being the avoidance of any lichtvallen. Security and stability were too important. Traders had their secret paths, two or three travelling together, armed to the teeth with bronze and the reputation of the Traders’ Circle to protect them from thieves, but it was simply not feasible to venture further with a group or people, and it was far too dangerous alone. Instead they usually settled down in a tract that was a little less corrupt than another. These places, like the Circle, the slave tracts baed -ways, the Wooded Realm, the harsh autocracies of the farms closer to the Valley, all survived in one way or another, with varying levels of enforced law and chaotic freedom. Power would switch hands, people might abandon one tract and drift into another, yet somehow humanity held on, scraping an existence in even the harshest environs.

But so few dared explore the true expanses of Verpace.

And even fewer truly understood the dangers of the hollows.

Hollows were rarely inhabited.

Most people moved on, or died inside the hollow during dusk or dawn.

Hollows were especially perilous during those times.

The sun had still been above the tawil when she entered, so she had perhaps one, maybe two hours to make it through.

She picked up her pace.

Her boots kicked up puffs of sand, with here and there a crushed bone.

A tiny skull peeked out from one little dip in the floor, some kind of rodent. The back of its old head was crushed, by stone or tooth she could not decide.

Esterra passed narrow cracks in the sandstone walls and floor, a chill wind and darkness issuing from the depths with the chill of fingers from a grave.

No one really knew how deep the hollows went.

Esterra had heard water dripping in other hollows, the echoes rising so faintly from fathomless depths.

Once she had spied the glow of fire far, far below, so faint that she still did not know if she had merely imagined it.

Sometimes she considered throwing something down just to hear it reach something at the bottom, but years of tractwalking had taught her better than to disturb whatever might be sleeping there, and so she always passed by such tunnels quietly, and the darkness continued as it always had, holding its secrets close to itself.

At least my arm is quiet, she thought.

No licht here.

She absolutely abhorred the licht, and hated her curse.

At night she thought she could feel it twisting within her bones.

It would infuse them like water filling a sponge, saturating them with tremendous tenacity, then snap! The bones would twist, a pain deeper than any imaginable, and she would wake with cold sweat on her brow and terror flooding her heart.

She would not sleep the rest of that night, the fingers of her left hand pressing the cold white flesh of her right arm where it went from lichtridden to human, searching for any sign of change, of her humanity fighting back against the invader.

She never found any, but her hope persisted, though it seemed very distant in the emptiness of the night, with the cold solitude of the wastes all about.

Esterra realised she had let her guard down, the monotony of walking sending her deep into her own musings.

She ground to a halt and surveyed her surroundings.

There, very faintly… the smell of smoke.

A wood fire.

She did not move, her ears pricked up for the slightest sound, nostrils flared.

Meat.

Fat dripping into the fire. Someone was cooking. She closed her eyes, and took in shallow breaths. Her own heartbeat seemed terribly loud, but her focus eventually rewarded her. Quiet singing echoed through the tortuous caverns. The words were as yet indistinguishable. The sound was human, at least, though that did not necessarily mean they were friendly. She checked her knife in its sheath, the cold bronze and curved edge a comforting sensation under fingers. The smell of meat set her mouth watering, and she continued forward with a carefully contained hope.

As she slipped through narrow, twisting tunnels, the blur of words came more clearly.

It was some dialect of the Valley, Archan but with sharper edges.

The intonations were odd, with the vowels chopped short, the consonants rougher than normal.

Many of the more remote tracts developed their own dialect.

The farther from the Circle she travelled, the more strange they became.

Old languages from other ancient lands mixed with the original, sometimes so much so that they became completely unintelligible to persons who spoke either of the original tongues.

The song was, quite appropriately, about food, and Esterra licked her dry lips.

It had been a full day since her last meal.

While she was accustomed to fasting, it never became a habit or some monkish pleasure.

She did not think she had ever met someone who did not enjoy food.

And meat uncontaminated by licht, disease, or other blights was particularly rare.

She prayed to whatever gods might be out there listening that this meat was clean, and the person cooking it too.

The words of the song came bursting through the tunnels with increased fervour, and she could pick out three voices, singing sometimes alone, sometimes together.

Oh for meat so tender and fresh

We’ll eat only those cuts which are the best

With our hands and teeth, the prey we’ll snatch

And shall feast like wolves in Algarest!

Firelight glimmered warmly ahead, the welcoming glow of the hearth, hot orange against the maroon sandstone.

And with the sight, as if in tandem, beckoning with ever increasing fervour, came the mouth-watering aroma of seared mutton and the comforting smoke of a cooking fire.

But three people, that was a slight worry.

She had fought many battles when outnumbered, but not without wounds, some serious.

She noted that the curved knife in her belt was useless so long as she held the torch.

The light might give her away, too.

She doused it in the sand. It hissed and died with a splutter, greasy smoke filling her nostrils. She stored it in her pack, the hot top sticking out. Need to re-grease that, when I have time. With her hand on the hilt of her blade, she rounded the corner. The firelight was still some way down the hollow, but she moved forward with quiet footsteps, ready for anything.

The tunnels twisted and turned.

Esterra stopped at every split, every side tunnel, ever checking the direction by the firelight.

Yet the orange glow never seemed any nearer, and every new turn it seemed the fire had moved further down the tunnels.

She blinked, and swore.

She pulled her blade free, loosening her wrist.

The music continued further down, but the theme had changed.

Lead them, lure them, keep them keen

Show them what they cannot see

When the little rabbits come near

Cut their throat from ear to ear

Esterra felt a shiver running up her spine, and bit back a curse.

She had heard tales of tricks such as this.

There was no campfire ahead, no humans, no roasted meat.

The smell of the food had vanished with the thought, and even the light dimmed.

Stars, why was I so naive? She berated herself, then crushed the self-pity under her boot.

She had wandered into this trap like a blind sheep, and she would have to fight her way out if she did not wish to be something’s dinner.

“Why does it hesitate?”

A crooning voice whispered from ahead.

“Fresh meat, cooked to a perfect tendernessss.

Come and join us, hungry one.”

Esterra’s nose was filled again with the insistent smell of steak, and her mouth salivated.

She spat it out and fought the raging desire for food.

Her body knew nothing but what its senses told, and her mind was bewildered and frightened.

A spell was being woven over her instincts.

Only her long experience and cold knowledge held her back.

Reason fought with passions, but her discipline won the day.

Now all I need is to survive to see another sunrise , she thought to herself.

Her mind raced back through the passages she had traversed till this point.

She tried to recall a side-tunnel, an alternate path, a way to bypass this danger.

But almost every dark crevice was either a dead end or a blind fall into the depths.

The rest were filled with unknown horrors, sensed only through instincts honed over the course of her life.

Her lichtridden arm gave her the uncanny ability to find the correct path through hollows with some certainty, though not necessarily safety.

And it told her that only the path ahead would lead out, unless she was willing to flee back through the foundations of the tawil in a blind panic.

A thought struck her, and her heart quickened.

The sun was setting within the hour.

Sweat lined her brow, the deep unease shifting into full terror, clawing up through the recesses of her mind till it claimed the entirety of it as its new home.

The last tract is too far behind .

Her mind conjured up horrible images of herself running through ever-narrowing passages.

Her ears picked up imagined creaking sounds in the stone around her.

“Don’t panic,”

she muttered, running her hand across the wall to reassure herself.

“At least half an hour more.”

“Half an hour, half a day, half a lifetime,”

the voices echoed back with mocking tongues.

A sharp scrape of claws on stone followed after.

“Are you a mishtaan? A caracan?”

“A mishtaan or caracan, maybe.”

The claws scratched across sandstone.

“Come and see, hungry one.

Fresh meat, can you smell it?”

She refused to answer, but cursed under her breath.

The creature tittered in the twisting tunnels ahead.

She stayed put, as did the creature.

Mishtaan, caracan, shiitaan, or possibly an as-yet-unnamed demon.

Never had she met any tractwalker who had seen these mythological things.

Sometimes she heard them spoken of.

Always in whispers. And, as with all things in Verpace, facts blurred into myths and legends in untraceable ways. They were preternatural creatures whose existence had become the kind of story to scare children into behaving, to tell to wide eyed fools around a firepit. She frowned. The only way to discern the truth was to sift through the tales with finer and finer combs. The few threads which might survive such a combing were about as close to reality as anyone could come.

“Come and eat, little one,”

the creature whispered.

The odd voice was a characteristic of all the stories told about the old beings.

Yet certain elements stood out here.

The hissing was common to only mishtaan and caracan, according to the stories.

It sounded like water splashed on hot coals, forced into bitter words.

Esterra had only heard it once before, and then only from a distance, in echoes, so far away that she had sworn she had imagined it.

She now realised the truth.

Hearing it so close caused her gut to rise, a sickly feeling forming just below her stomach, her intestines lurching. Think, damn it. The stories said caracan only imitated sounds, as opposed to understanding and constructing full sentences in human tongues. So you’re a mishtaan. Not much better. Maybe worse .

She had heard tales of mishtaan.

Creatures born from some magic other than the licht, from a time well before the First Lichtvallen, before any recorded history, according to the rumours.

There were many varieties of power in Verpace, though the licht was the most recognisable.

She had encountered a dark magic many tracts ago, in an underground city.

But this creature was of a different kind, an almost grey kind of magic.

It came from Verpace itself, a survivor from some ancient time.

Tales told of its cunning and deception. And its many, many teeth.

She wracked her memory for advice about how to deal with such a being.

Some old woman in a dying tract had whispered the story over a campfire.

Words of wisdom that she had dismissed as fancy at the time, but had retained nevertheless.

Nothing was useless in these dark days.

Not even fairy tales.

A few moments passed, while the mishtaan sang more idiotic verses in its grisly song.

Despite the foul words, the magic which twisted through them half-convinced Esterra’s senses that food lay ahead.

Saliva flooded her mouth, and her nostrils sucked in the sweet smoke, heavy with melting fat and salt.

Mesmerising, but she had fought that battle, and conscious thought prevailed.

With a growl, the mishtaan ceased its tricks, and simply scraped its claws on the hollow’s walls.

It knew when clever ruses had failed.

The smells faded, and with them went the temptation.

Esterra found a memory that seemed like that which she sought.

Match deception with deception.

Magical creatures often underestimate humans.

She sighed.

Worth a try, I suppose.