The Underworld

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Rowan plummeted through the darkness, her body palsied with terror. Any moment, the ground would catch her, shred her bones! If there was a bottom, and she wasn't just falling to hek...to land at Hekki's feet.

But the bottom never came. She was hurtling through ropes of sticky white silk, tumbling and thrashing in it. Until she wasn't falling anymore, but dangling, swaddled in web. Upside down and helpless.

Gasping, she twisted and fought, but the icky stuff was like adamantine silk—impossible to break. It took her a moment to realize that she was only making it worse by panicking. Every time she thrashed about, the swinging earned her more sticky threads. She stilled, trying to calm herself as she scanned the darkness. Air sawed in and out of her lungs in great gulps and her blood thundered in her skull. Her fear tasted acrid in the back of her throat. She wanted to vomit.

She bit down hard on her bottom lip, forcing her mind to calm down. She was alive. There was hope yet! Thank the gods for warg vision, or she'd have been nothing but a hanging joint of meat. Though there was little natural light down here, there was some luminescence coating the cavern walls, delineating the rocks in an eerie blue glow. It was nothing the human eye could see, though, she was sure. Poor Meera would be blind down here. Unless Thresh had given her the night gift.

"Meera!" she called, searching the ropes of white goop strung haphazardly across the neck of the hole they'd fallen through. But there were no other bodies hanging. No other goopy cocoons struggling in the dark. She was alone in her horror.

"Calm down, Rowan!" she seethed, needing to hear her own voice. But it was garbled in the flood. The water was a violent cataract, gushing down over her, into her eyes and mouth. From what she could see, it emptied into a frothing underground river below that disappeared beneath a rock ledge. Farther up on the higher ground, there were fresh drag marks in the mud disappearing into a tunnel. Meera and the other two! They were alive! The jagged drag marks implied kicking and struggling. That was a good sign.

She scoured the underworld for other signs—anything that would aid her escape. The rock seemed roughly carved around her, and that tunnel below was a giant burrow of some sort. It didn't look like a natural cave chamber, with no stalagmites or stalactites. But what manner of beast could carve rock like this? The vishwa, of course.

She gave a shiver and tried again to free herself. Directly below, the mirok dagger was gleaming in the mud and water. Little good it did her down there. Her wolf amulet, nixrath chain and all, lay out of reach, too, having slid off her neck in the fall.

The dagger wasn't the only weapon down there, either. Swords and axes and all manner of broken blades were strewn about the floor. Some were old and rusted, and it looked like the rock was slowly subsuming the iron. Beside her dagger lay Merritt's thick chain of nixrath silver. Beside it, the soldier's vambraces had been ripped off and discarded, too.

She wished those items were all that lay within view. But the cavern floor was bestrewn with bones and old skin. Human bones, too! Matted hair draped over yellowed skulls, jaws askew and teeth missing. There were other beasts she couldn't name. Desiccated femurs jutting out of the mud, old clothes, and rotted leather boots. Wherever she was, it smelled putrid, even with the water streaming in. Again, her stomach heaved with hot vomit.

It seemed she was swinging over an open grave that was guarded on one side by violent water. She squinted towards the tunnel with the drag marks. Only one way out...if she didn't count that growling river below.

There was no sign of fresh blood that she could sense. No smell of recent death. Whatever had happened to Meera and the other two, they weren't dead. Not yet.

She took a deep breath and let it rush out of her lungs, expelling some of her panic. With minute movements, she managed to get her hands free of the sticky silk. The iron clamped to her wrists seemed slightly resistant to the web, and she carefully used that to her advantage. Getting her legs free, however, was proving impossible. All the while, the water roared in around her to join that infernal river below.

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