The Sword of Retribution

The Caves of Shanathin - Part 5

     He was woken up in the middle of a rather nice dream by Diana shaking his shoulder. “Wake up,” she said. “Charlie’s given us fifteen minutes to have some breakfast and get packed up before we leave.”

     “Aaargh!” complained the wizard, rubbing his eyes. “That monster’s a slave driver...”

     He stopped abruptly when he realised what he was saying. Slavers were indeed slave drivers, subjecting vast numbers of slaves of all species, including humans, to a life of unbearable suffering and misery in their deep underground cities before killing them by literally sucking their organs out. He blushed in shame. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Every so often, I find myself thinking of it as a person, as though it were a human being, like us.”

     “Me too,” replied Diana softly. “If only it thought of us as people.”

     “Not much chance of that,” said Thomas, climbing out of his sleeping blankets and looking around to make sure it wasn’t within earshot. “We’re just animals to it, to be slaughtered or put to work. This one seems nice enough at times, but if it wasn’t for the threat of the Shadowarmies...”

     He broke off as the slaver re-entered the cave, followed by Jerry, Lirenna and the trogs, all yawning and stretching, still tired after such a short rest. The creature looked at him, its proboscis pulsing and throbbing as it coiled and uncoiled, and Thomas remembered with a shock that it was almost deaf, that it ‘heard’ what other people were saying by means of its highly developed telepathic senses. Did it hear what I was saying? he wondered fearfully, and if so, how would it be likely to take it?

     To his relief, though, it simply turned away from him and went over to examine the passage leading from the cave. Either it didn’t hear me, he thought, or it didn’t find anything I said particularly insulting which, considering its nature, it probably wouldn’t. He resolved to be much more careful in future, though. Another mistake like that could get not just him, but all of them killed.

     They hurriedly ate a light breakfast, packed away their sleeping blankets and prepared to leave. Jerry, having the smallest blankets, had them packed away first and then tried another bit of illusion art while waiting for the others to finish. He had improved considerably on his first attempt, and was now able to control up to a dozen simple geometric shapes at once. The others watched in fascination at first, but then remembered the slaver and returned to their packing.

     “I wonder if we could take a few of these with us?” said Matthew, holding a crystal bug in his hand and watching as it slowly waved its legs, still trying to walk as though it were on the ground. “If Charl... the ambassador says its light is very dim to him, then it would make an ideal light source for us. Bright enough for us to see by without hurting the ambassador’s eyes.”

     “No,” said the slaver. “Without the minerals in the rocks on which it feeds, it would starve to death in only a few hours, and these minerals are only to be found locally in this cave. That is why they have not colonised the entire World Below.”

     “Oh well, it was just a thought,” said Matthew, putting the bug back down on the ground.

     “A thought?” said the cthillian sarcastically. “Wonders will never cease. Come now, it is time to go. We have a long way to go before we stop again.”

     It left the cave, and the others followed, Thomas and Diana pausing for a last look at the crystal cave and its strange inhabitants before they left it behind.

     The tunnel they were in now was about the same size as the one they’d followed the day before, but sloped downwards at a much greater angle, varying from one in three to one in one, and even becoming almost vertical in some places, the river roaring down a series of stepped waterfalls up to twenty feet high and soaking them to the skin with spray. It must originally have been a treacherous tunnel for potholers to try to descend, with sharp, jagged outcrops of rock and sheer drops that could only be tackled with the aid of ropes, pitons, spiked boots and a great deal of luck and skill, but someone had carved flights of steps in the worst places, and there was a reasonably flat, ten foot wide path everywhere else so that the questers were able to make their way as easily as though they were merely descending from the top of a tall castle to the basement, as the slaver had promised. Thomas wondered which race of subterranean creatures had done the work and after a moment’s thought decided to ask the cthillian, but the slaver replied that it neither knew nor cared.