The witch's armpit

Previously: Freelance historian Esmiralda and her companions--Merrick, a member of the Ministry of Human Preservation (MOHP), Broo-Fang Tane, an Optimist Monk, and Seymuhr, a brutish but somewhat dim-witted warrior called the Skullsquasher, have fought their way into the lair of the mountain witch to uproot her evil, once and for all...


Inside, the wind stopped and the air pressed against us, dank and still. The smell of death was nearly tangible. I pulled my scarf over my nose.

"It wasn't me," Seymuhr said.

"This time," I allowed.

Broo-Fang Tane crept up the cavern and peered around a bend. What he hoped to see, I could not know. It was darker than pitch inside the cave, a blackness that had no beginning or end.

Behind us, Abilene's army of collected souls swayed, hissed and moaned, but did not follow us. Merrick was looking that way, too.

"What if they press in behind us?"

"I don't think they will," he answered me. He sounded grim. "I believe they have, for now, served their purpose. They will prohibit our retreat. We can only go forward now."

"We could fight our way out," Seymuhr said. "They are slow, clumsy and weak. And there aren't as many, now. I saw to that."

"We did," Merrick agreed. "My suspicion is the witch's black power controls those wretches. If we are successful in destroying her, that hold will be broken and those poor creatures will gain their eternal rest."

"And if we're not?"

He looked at me. "Then it won't matter."

I shuddered. Had those unliving things once held the same thoughts as we did? Had they come here seeking to end Abilene's evil? What a bitter irony, then, to be forced into her service.

"If it comes to that..."

"Don't worry," Seymuhr said with a mischievous grin. "I'll free you from the witch's embrace, no matter how many times I have to kill you."

"How gracious of you."

"I would expect the same of you."

I nodded with a thin smile. If Seymuhr fell to the witch, I would most likely run as fast and as far as I could, or invoke my Traveling Stone to escape. With power such as his at her command, what chance would we have? Nope. Escape, find a shoreline, steal a boat and set sail.

We foundered along, feeling our way through the darkness. I could see nothing, not even the shapes of my companions. We bumped into each other, struck walls and knocked our heads on low hanging rocks that felt like daggers that scraped our skulls. Now and again I heard the sound of one of Semuhr's maces striking the soft stone. Later he told me that he held one just above his forehead and used the other as a sort of beggar's cane to protect himself from roof and wall.

Merrick bit back a yelp of pain and muttered a string of profanities so long and foul I thought my ears would curl up and hide inside my head to escape the sound of it.

"Balliessen's bleeding bitch," he muttered at the end of it. I heard him rubbing his forehead faster than a carpenter trying to smooth a piece of pine without first removing the bark. "This armpit of a cavern is itself defeating us!"

I nearly hissed at him to be silent, but then realized our attempts to move quietly through the cavern should have been abandoned long before. We were probably making more noise than a carriage careening down a staircase--horses and all. We would have had a better chance of surprising the dark witch if we had crawled through the stagnant pools at our feet.

We decided to move closer together, our left hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us. Seymuhr took the lead, then Tane, then me and Merrick. Even so, our progress was slow and painful. I had already taken so many blows to the head that I felt dazed. The emptiness around me played tricks on my mind; I was certain I was falling forward, or sideways or backward. Were it not for Tane's steady, but improbably slender, shoulder to hold on to, I surely would have flopped around in the darkness like a beached pike gasping for air.

Then I noticed two things: there was no pursuit, no sound of a shuffling mob behind us. And the darkness was fading. Gradually, I could make out Seymuhr's squat, wide form, mace held high. Tane looked at me, a hopeful expression on his face. The walls took shape, gnarled and twisted and bumpy as a pox-ridden bull, framed in an eerie, flickering redness that beckoned from beyond a curve.

We were close. At last.