UNTEN
German, "below; downstairs; underneath"

But we sunk into water no creature can know
You dragged us both into the darkness that grows
-- The Amazing Devil, Battle Cries

In all her lifetimes Diarnlan had never experienced anything as unpleasant as that walk through the tunnels. The place played tricks on her mind. She kept thinking she heard distant voices and saw figures out of the corners of her eyes. She knew there couldn't be anything there. The tunnel was so narrow that two people couldn't have passed. There was nothing but herself and Karandren and Saungrafn.

She wouldn't have minded so much if Karandren hadn't been obviously unsettled too.

Saungrafn trembled slightly in her hand. She couldn't tell if she was shaking or if it was frightened. Either way, it guided them straight on through the tunnel. When they came to a crossroads or another flight of stairs, Saungrafn moved to point out which was the right direction.

All Diarnlan knew for sure was that they were going north. How far they'd travelled, where they were in the city, and whether or not the skrýszel was waiting overhead were questions she couldn't answer. She did her best not to think of them.

On and on they walked. Diarnlan's feet hurt. She didn't slow down or say anything, partly because she couldn't bear the thought of stopping here and partly to avoid showing weakness in front of Karandren. He was eternally at her elbow with his hand still on fire. After the first few near-heart-attacks she'd realised it was fake fire and couldn't set her coat alight.

He was oddly silent. It was a relief at first; she remembered only too well his non-stop talking in their last lifetime. But after what felt like an age of silence Diarnlan wished he would say anything, no matter how inane, just so she could hear a real person's voice.

Finally they came to a set of stairs leading up. Saungrafn swung round to point at them.

"This way," Diarnlan said. Her voice echoed weirdly in the tunnel. She was almost sure that there shouldn't be an echo of any sort in such a narrow space.

Karandren jumped, then nodded mutely. Diarnlan looked over at him. His face was drawn and his eyes were huge. The blue light of his fire made him look almost like a ghost himself.

Diarnlan put Saungrafn back in its sheath. She held the lamp aloft with one hand and kept the other on the wall to steady herself. The steps were narrow and uneven. She caught her foot on one and almost fell. Karandren caught her sleeve in time.

As they got closer to the top Diarnlan stopped and held the lamp at arm's length. A block of apparently-solid stone covered the exit.

"There must be some way to open it from this side," she muttered.

"Try the walls just under it," Karandren said. "I can't get past you to look."

She climbed onto the next step. Now the top of her head was brushing against the stone. Cold air hit the side of her face.

First she ran her free hand over the left wall. Then she switched the lamp to that hand and used the other one to check the right wall. That didn't work, so she tried pushing against the stone itself.

The cold air abruptly stopped. She distinctly heard something move overheard. The stairs shook.

Diarnlan's eyes widened. "Get back!"

She practically shoved Karandren back. He stumbled down the stairs. Diarnlan ran after him.

A roar split the air. The skrýszel threw the stone away.

After so long in the darkness the daylight hurt Diarnlan's eyes. She fell down and lay on the stairs with a hand over her eyes. The skrýszel's claws passed within an inch of her head.

Karandren cursed behind her. "How did that thing follow us here?"

Possible explanations circled through her head: Vanadel told it, it had heard or smelt them even with the earth between them, something in the tunnel had told it where they were... None of them mattered.

Apart from casting that magnetism spell on Saungrafn, Diarnlan had let her magic have a complete rest. Karandren's had come back, so why shouldn't hers?

She sat up on the stairs. The skrýszel was clawing at the sides of the entrance. It had long claws like a mole's. Dust and fragments of rock rained down on them. When it saw her move it stopped and glared at her with all eight of its eyes.

Diarnlan flung a cutting spell right at its eyes.

The brute recoiled with a roar of agony. Drops of its blood splashed on the top steps. They fizzed as the acid ate away at the stone.

Diarnlan scrambled to her feet. She turned. Karandren had moved further down the stairs.

"Run!" she yelled.

She'd dropped the lamp. There was no time to regain it.

The two of them fled down to the tunnel. Karandren cast his fire spell again. This time he cast it as a beam of fire that ignited the whole way along the tunnel floor.

Diarnlan didn't bother to unsheathe Saungrafn. She kept her hand on its hilt. It nudged against her palm to indicate which way they should go.

They ran all the way back, the path illuminated by the weird blue light.

"What do we do if the monster's waiting for us?" Karandren asked as they ran.

Diarnlan was too out of breath to answer. As they ran she played various scenarios over and over in her head.

By the light of the oil lamp the tunnel had seemed to run straight ahead with only occasional changes of direction. Now, with Karandren's fire running apparently the whole length of it, Diarnlan could see that the tunnel actually wove back and forth like a huge snake beneath the city. Sometimes she was almost sure it circled right back to where they'd started from.

She skidded to a halt in front of a flight of steps. This one led down to a lower level. Karandren's fire didn't reach down there.

He ran past her before realising she'd stopped. "What are you waiting for?" he demanded. "That thing's right overhead. I'm sure of it!"

Now that the noise of their footsteps had stopped, Diarnlan could hear a low distant rumble like very heavy footsteps.

"So let's not get any closer to it," she snapped.

She conjured up a fireball. Unlike Karandren's fire, this was real. Its heat almost scorched her face after so long in the cold. Diarnlan turned her head away. For a minute she simply held it above her hand to convince herself that yes, her magic was back.

Then she threw it down the stairs.

It illuminated the whole flight and part of the tunnel at the end. When it struck the ground it exploded like a firework. Diarnlan and Karandren covered their eyes. Then it disappeared.

"Anything down there will have run away now," she said, and started down the stairs.

Karandren lit another line of blue fire. It raced past Diarnlan, down the stairs and away along the lower tunnel.

This one must have once been a main street for the people who lived down here. Other passages lined the walls. Diarnlan was almost sure she saw eyes blinking out of them and shapes huddling away from the fire. Perhaps it was only her imagination. If there was anything there, it had the courtesy to leave them alone.

There were two main possibilities. The skrýszel was tracking them either by smell or sound. Now they were deeper underground, it would need a very strong nose and ears to find them. Of course, if Vanadel was watching their every move and directing it after them, then it was still following them. Diarnlan decided to be optimistic for once and assumed they'd lost it for a while. Now they just needed to find a way back up to the outside world where they could take it by surprise.

After ten minutes they came to a flight of stairs. It led up, and up, and up. Karandren sent his fire along it.

"That's much steeper than the last two. It must go right up to the surface," he said.

Diarnlan unsheathed Saungrafn. "Let's go."

They climbed more warily this time. A faint light showed at the top of the stairs. Half-way up they stopped.

"I don't hear anything," Karandren whispered.

Diarnlan listened intently. "Neither do I, but I don't want another nasty surprise. What about blowing the tunnel open?"

Karandren stared at her in a mixture of amazement and delight. He called the fire to him. It rose up and wound around him like a cocoon. Diarnlan sheathed Saungrafn. She took the precaution of casting a shielding spell to guard against the inevitable falling dust and rock that would follow the explosion.

The blue fire shot up to the top of the stairs. Diarnlan covered her eyes. Even so, the light was still blinding. The stairs shook underfoot. Strangely there was only a faint cracking noise. Little stones rattled down the stairs.

She lowered her hands and stared. The rock hadn't technically been blown up. It had been frozen. Ice still covered the walls. Frozen solid, she realised as she looked at all the fragments, and then broken.

Karandren shrugged in answer to her questioning look. "I'm not very good with fire spells, but ice?" He grinned.

"Let's get out of here," was all Diarnlan said.

She wanted to run out, but the ice on the stairs meant she had to tread very carefully. When she reached the exit she drew Saungrafn again and prepared for an attack. She poked her head through the opening and gave an involuntary exclamation of shock.

Karandren scrambled up beside her. His eyes widened.

They were in the main hall of the High Priest's palace.

"I had no idea," Karandren murmured. "Anyone could have sneaked right into my house and I'd never have known!"

Diarnlan climbed up onto the tiles. Her ears caught a distant roar. The skrýszel had probably figured out where they were. What should they do? How could they get it into the realm?

An idea struck her. "Your dragon!"

Karandren stared at her as if she'd grown another head. "What about it?"

"Use it to fight the skrýszel!"

He grinned like a toddler who'd been handed an unexpected present. He sped out of the hall. Diarnlan followed more slowly, examining all her surroundings and debating where to run if the skrýszel somehow got into the main palace.

Nowhere. There was nowhere to run. It would smash right through the walls as if they were made of paper. If this plan failed, she and Karandren would die again. And this time there was no coming back.

Who was she fooling? Of course they were going to die. They always had. Why break the habit of lifetimes?

Diarnlan glared up at the mural of a grinning skull. "I damn well wish I wasn't going to die here."

She'd never see her home again. She'd never win that prize for her tomatoes. She'd never see her teacher or her family again. Diarnlan suddenly felt a truly ridiculous urge to cry.

For a minute she closed her eyes and pictured her home. She could see it as vividly as if she was standing outside her own front door.

"Vanadel!" she shouted. Her voice echoed in the empty palace. "If I die again I will go back, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!"

There was no answer. She hadn't expected one. But she no longer felt as if she was about to cry. Diarnlan straightened up and walked out into the courtyard.

~~~~

Karandren had done a lot of work on his dragon in-between building the realm. It now looked like an actual dragon, with razor-sharp teeth and claws. Its limbs moved smoothly. It answered his slightest command.

He regretted that it would inevitably end up being destroyed in the battle.

He told it to lower its head. It obliged, and he patted it on top of its head as if it was a living creature. Then he gave it his orders.

"Go into the main courtyard. When the skrýszel arrives, attack it and don't let it pass."

The dragon obediently walked off. Karandren joined Diarnlan just inside the gates. He felt the magic of the realm's entrance beside them.

"When it gets past the dragon, we'll pretend to run back towards the palace," Diarnlan said. "It'll run straight into the realm. Then we'll destroy it."

The ground shook at the skrýszel's footsteps. It loomed above the walls. It smashed right through them without even pausing.

Karandren's dragon was so much smaller than the skrýszel. But it had its orders, and it could never disobey him.

It charged at the skrýszel.