The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson [121]
Kail stood at the base of a tunnel that slanted upward until it was almost vertical. Stone platforms jutted from the walls to form uneven rungs.
"I'll lead," Kail said. "Meisha and Talal come behind me, then Dantane and Garavin. Morgan, take Botl and bring up the rear."
"Slow going," Dantane commented, "with a dog and an injured dwarf."
"Then we go as slowly as necessary," Kail said. He pulled himself up onto the first stone ledge.
Meisha floated globes of shimmering fire ahead and behind them, so they would be unencumbered by torches. She could see nothing of Kail beyond his boots and the tail of his cloak, but she could sense the urgency in his movements.
"What will you do once we reach the surface?" Meisha asked. "Aazen and the Shadow Thieves will be long gone."
"Cesira," Kail said, hauling himself up another rung. "They'll be going for the house. I have to be there."
"And Varan?" Meisha asked.
"The Shadow Thieves will have him," Kali said. "They won't give him up easily."
Neither will I, Meisha thought.
Below them, Garavin succumbed to a fit of coughing that echoed through the shaft. Kali stopped the group.
"How are you doing, old friend," he called down.
Motgan answered him. "He's spitting some blood, Kail. That silver light messed him up bad."
"Hang on just a little longer," Kali said. "We're almost out of this shaft." He closed his eyes and murmured a prayer to Dumathoin.
Don t forsake your servant now.
Kail looked up. He could see an obstacle ahead. He motioned for Meisha to send a fire globe up so he could see.
"Son of a god's cursed whore," he hissed under his breath.
Stating him in the face was a rusty shield floating in a cloud of viscous fluid. The fire globe drifted higher. Kail could make out the edges of a gelatinous cube suctioned to the walls of the shaft.
"Is it alive?" Meisha asked. She touched the oozing substance dribbling down the walls.
"Alive or dead, it can still suffocate us, depending on how far up the shaft it teaches," Dantane said.
Kail leaned closer to the cube. The slime distorted the objects within-relics of the creature's last victims-but he could make out enough of the stone handholds inside the cube to pull himself through.
"Morgan, I need your rope," he called down.
Morgan unhooked an end of silk cord from his belt and tossed it up to Kali. Tying one end-of the rope around his waist, Kali handed the other to Meisha.
"When I pull the cord in three quick jerks, it means I've reached the other side," he said. "The next person uses the rope to climb up. We pull Garavin and Borl up last." He looked at Talal. "Big breath," he told the boy.
Talal muttered, "Already drowned once today, why not twice?"
"Hold it in tight," said Kali, "You don't want a lungful of what's up there. You won't come back from it."
Secured by the rope, Kali positioned himself in a crouch on the stone ledge and thrust up from the knees, into the gelatinous cube.
Sound and light instantly disappeared. Kail tried to lift his arms, but it was as if someone had attached sandbags to his muscles. His muscles burning and stretching with the effort, he gripped the next rung and climbed.
His face brushed something hard that felt vaguely like fingers-a lost gauntlet, perhaps, all that was left of one of the cube's victims. Kail would have shuddered, if his muscles could have responded to the impulse.
His lungs burned. The rough stone grated against his injured hands. They would be raw and bleeding again soon. With a desperate shove, he broke through the slimy surface and hit his chest against a stone platform.
Coughing and spitting slime, Kali hauled his lower body out of the cube and onto the stone platfoim. He lay on his back gasping for a moment.