Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [72]
The whitish membranes, like a heaving flower or a mass of writhing tripe, slowly turned red, a color that spread among the membranes to the edges of the pit.
Han and Chewie fled past, the path narrowing among crater after crater filled with the carnivorous pit-mold, which rippled furiously and reached for their feet with snakelike tentacles. Behind in the darkness more shrieks resounded, but Han dared not look back to see what other creatures were emerging from the darkness in pursuit.
At the top of the path, in the circle of pillars, was a well.
A low curb surrounded the ten-foot hole. Below, Han could hear the rushing of water, feel the relative coolness of the rising air damp on his burned face. By the white glow of the luminator he could see the things shambling up the path behind them, mouths open and shrieking from hairy, scarred, madness-twisted faces. Some still wore the rags of what had been clothing, and waved makeshift knives and clubs. Some had been human.
Their eyes were crazed blanks. Drub McKumb’s eyes.
They were coming fast. What had been a Gotal got too close to the edge of the path and was seized by a tentacle from the pit-mold alongside; the others didn’t even look back as it was dragged screaming into a mountain of shuddering membranes. Chewbacca’s first shot with the blaster rifle took out a hirsute skeleton that had been a Whiphid; his second missed and blew half-cooled mud from a minor crater like an explosion of steaming goo over everything in sight. The ground shook again, like a sullen warning. Flame sprang up from the mud pits and hot liquid began to creep out in glowing trickles.
None of the attackers even noticed.
Even with both of them shooting, Han knew, they’d never hit them all before they were overwhelmed.
There was no path down from the mound.
“Down the well!”
Chewie roared in protest.
“Down the well! There’s a way out, that water’s flowing, I can hear it …”
Whether the way out included space to breathe was problematical, of course.
A horrible Devaronian fell on Chewbacca, its arm already torn off by blaster fire, rending at him with a chunk of broken steel. Chewbacca flung it back into the others, fired another blast to cover them while Han sprang up on the well curb and flashed the light down at the water.
Five meters or so. As he’d thought, it wasn’t a well so much as a shaft into an underground stream.
He stepped off the edge and dropped.
The water was hot, just below scalding—only contrast with air superheated by the surrounding rock had made the updraft feel cool—and the current vicious. Han clung to the worn stone of the low arch in the well’s side until he heard Chewbacca’s heavy splash and reassuring growl. Then the water tore his grip free, swirled him along in utter blackness, pounding him against rock, pelting like a millrace to smash him breathless on some unseen obstacle.
Bars. There were bars across the stream’s course.
Water slammed into his face, and he felt/heard the splash of something else striking the bars. He groped and felt the reassuring touch of soaked fur.
Chewbacca congratulated him on the excellence of his escape arrangements.
“Don’t get smart on me, Chewie, I got us out of the cave, didn’t I?” As he spoke he felt for a foothold, a handhold, anything he could find in the bars, stretched and felt his way up along the corroded metal. The bars ended in a slit in the rock ceiling a half meter above the surface of the water, a slit into which he could barely fit his hand. As he worked his fingers in, they brushed something leggy and chitinous that moved sharply, and he jerked his hand back with a cry of disgust. “Let’s try down the other way.”
Taking a deep breath, he turned over, climbed down the bars. They went deep, deep, the current crushing his body against them, always more blackness, always more water …
What was he going to do if they went deeper than he could climb on a single breath?
The thought made him panic, drag himself down and farther down.
Rock. And a space of about thirty centimeters, gouged