From Darkness Won - Jill Williamson [158]
They all had taken a short spill at least once. Most skidded a few paces, clinging tightly to the rope. But Noam had slipped and nearly vanished. Jax had only just managed to catch the wisp of a man before he shot between Jax’s legs. If only Gren would stop retelling the tale of his near demise, Averella’s heartbeat might return to normal.
Water springs ran down the tunnel walls in numerous places, both hot and cool. Every time Peripaso passed a cool one, he pointed it out and told everyone to drink their fill.
Averella raised her foot to find the next foothold and pushed herself up. Her head slammed against something sharp overhead, blinding her with circles of white light. How had both Peripaso and Sir Eagan missed that one?
The rope tugged at her hand. Her father’s voice drifted down from above, echoing softly in the stone cavern. “Averella? Are you well?”
“I struck my head.” She twisted her neck and raised her voice. “There’s a sharp rock hanging down. Go carefully!”
Not long after Peripaso stopped for their third night, he lit a torch. The light illuminated a round cavern and the dirty faces of their party. A trail of blood trickled down Gren’s forehead from a scrape on the tunnel’s roof. Averella opened her satchel and did what she could to stop the bleeding. She had used most of her supplies on the injured in Mahanaim.
Peripaso rationed out another meal of dried reekat. The greasy meat took Averella back to the underground river outside Xulon where a reekat had overturned their boat. It had been one of the most terrifying ordeals of Averella’s life.
She gasped at the sudden memory. No wonder she had forgotten this past year. So much of it had been horrible!
Gren’s soft voice drew Averella’s attention. “Is it much farther?”
“We’ll reach the top tomorrow,” Peripaso said.
Gren sighed. “My legs will fall off before then.”
Peripaso chuckled as he bedded down in the dark cavern. “Never you fear, Madam. All this hard work will pay off. For what goes up must go down, and going down will be much faster, much more fun, and no work at all, I promise you.”
Averella wanted to believe him, but the aches in her body disagreed. She lay on the hard stone floor beside Gren.
“At least there are no beetles in this place,” Gren said. “I hate any kind of pest.”
Achan had once called Averella a pest. He had been teaching her to swordfight. He’d named her sword Firefox, she remembered now. Told her she was a hero with her bag of herbs.
Memories assaulted her then, all at once, glimpses of her forgotten days.
Achan wrestling her to the ground, calling her a weakling, teaching her to pin someone, to punch someone, to sweep out their leg. Achan knocking the breath from her time and again, forcing her face into a mound of snow.
And Mother claimed Averella loved this man? She fingered the ring around her neck and frowned. How could she have possibly endured being treated in such a way? And yet that leg sweep had proved useful only a few days ago.
More memories came.
Averella stealing Achan’s food, pouncing and knocking him off a bench, slapping honey bread against his face. Knocking him down with a leg sweep. Swimming underwater and yanking his ankles so that he fell in. And back on dry land, drawing her dripping sword and poking him in the stomach.
The memories gave way to dreams laced with fear. She woke twice from someone else’s screaming. Gren, both times. It seemed that Darkness haunted them, even in sleep.
The temperature in the tunnel dropped, and when Averella woke, the ground was frosty. Once they got moving again, the frost melted under their hands. But when they stopped for lunch, they were sitting on icy stone.
As Averella gnawed on her reekat meat, Peripaso approached. “We’ll reach the ice soon, Lady Vrell. You mind helpin’ me wrap ever’one’s hands? It’ll keep ’em warm, and from stickin’ to the ice.”
“I do not have enough linen to wrap everyone’s hands.”
“Oh, I’m prepared.” His grin shifted the wrinkles on his face. “I got bits