The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson [39]
They had nothing in common. Shaera was refined and educated as Meisha never would be. The girl had never experienced the kind of hunger that was an acid in the belly, blighting any other rational thought.
Perhaps it was simply that Vatan didn't care. Her teacher had the capacity for kindness; she had seen glimpses of emotion behind his power, but ultimately, the willwas not there, Meisha thought.
Twice now, she'd been disappointed by those she'd chosen to trust. Yet here she was, groping in the dark after a stupid girl who hadn't sense enough to take a companion on her fool's errand.
Meisha picked up her pace, aware of a downward trend to the passage. At first she hadn't felt it, and if the rate of descent didn't change, she might have miles of tunnel to cover before she reached the bottom.
She stopped briefly to eat cold meat and a biscuit she'd taken from the stores. Before discovering the lower tunnels, Varan had kept a well-stocked food supply that often included fresh fruits and vegetables Meisha had never seen before. She hadn't thought to ask where they came from, until they were gone.
When she resumed her walk, Meisha discovered an abrupt end to the tunnel aftet roughly twenty feet. The passage fell away again, but this time, instead of being sheer, jagged rocks riddled the drop-off.
Meisha leaned over the edge to touch one of the rocks with her fingertip. Filed, she thought, to a razor edge. She drew her hand back and smeared the dot of blood away.
The architect of the Climb had gone to a great deal of effort to make the descent from the spider to the star as long and as treacherous as possible. If it were the wotk of the Howlings, to guard their stronghold, how had the dwarves ever traversed such a passage? Surely, there must be an easiei way to move between both sets of caverns.
But if such a path existed, Meisha thought, even Varan did not know of it.
Removing a length of rope from her pack, Meisha tied one end around the nearest protruding stone spike. She looped the other end through her belt and slowly fed out the rope as she walked down the slanted wall.
At the bottom of the short climb, she found the remains of the ttap.
A ptessure plate smeared with blood sat crookedly at the base of the wall. Meisha touched the plate and found it sticky. The ttap had triggered recently. She examined the immediate area. Following a line of fissures in the rock, she saw that the release of weight had caved in a false ceiling directly above the plate, spilling a hail of large rocks down on the passage.
Meisha ctawled amid the rubble, shoveling stones aside with her bare hands. Dust rose in dry clouds. Her eyes burned and watered. Meisha scraped an arm across them and worked mostly by touch.
Finally, her hands encounteted something soft. She uncovered a spill of red hair, and gradually Shaera's upper torso came into view. Blood had dried in a mask over half her face. Meisha put her fingers against the girl's neck and found a beat. Miraculously, she had survived the trap.
The heat from Meisha's hands seeped into Shaera's cold flesh. The girl stirred, moaning when she tried to lift her head.
"Be still," Meisha hissed. She ran her hands along Shaera's spine. "Your back is broken, at least. I don't know how many other bones."
She hadn't expected injuries this extensive. Varan would be able to tend her, but Meisha didn't think she could risk moving Shaera far. Even with magical aid, the jostling would likely kill her.
"What do I do?" she whispered, gazing back and forth down the empty tunnel. She didn't know if she were speaking to herself, Varan, or the ghostly presence that had aided het. In any case, she received no answer.
Meisha sat down beside Shaera, who had lapsed into unconsciousness again. Meisha listened to her breathing in the silence and detected a faint gurgle she didn't like.
"Where are you,