He raised the shell in both hands above his head like a chalice, then brought it to his lips and tilted it back, his gorge rising even as he gulped down the slick, stinking liquid, gulped it and swallowed, tilting the egg until the black ooze ran down his chin, down the front of his shirt, down his throat, heavy as oil as it filled his stomach. He paused, gasping, savagely wrestled down the urge to vomit, to pour his guts out on the floor, then forced the shell to his lips once more, sobbing mindlessly as he did, slurping and struggling, the slime thick as marrow in his throat.
When there was no more to be had, he collapsed backward, his head against the nest, heart struggling to leap from his chest, skin ablaze, mind a bright spike of pain. Moaning filled his ears, a terrible, wounded sound. He tried to shut it out before he realized that it was coming from his own lips. He curled into a ball, his knees to his chest, while his stomach rolled and seized. This was death, he realized, this was what death felt like, and he squeezed his eyes closed and wished it would hurry up.
After a time—he had no idea how long—he realized the moaning had stopped. His stomach still kicked, but he could straighten out, could sit up. He eased himself back against the wall, then raised a hand, stained splotchy black with the remnants of the egg. He had dropped his torch. It lay on the cold stone a few feet away, still burning. He tried to remember what Shaleel said before she sent them down into the Hole, tried to guess how long he had stumbled in darkness before finding the egg. Pain still gouged at his forearm, but it was the bright pain of an honest wound, not the sick, gnawing burning from before. He took a tentative breath, then a deeper one. His heart seemed to have calmed itself. Once again he considered his black and sticky hand. The feeble torchlight danced across his outstretched arm and fingers, flickering and enigmatic. The light moved, but the hand was steady. For what seemed like the first time in his life, he smiled.
“Hull,” he said, saluting the shadows of the hall. “If you’re listening—next round’s on me.”
And then, as though the darkness itself had heard him, the cavern roared.
Valyn stumbled to his feet, snatched up the rapidly dwindling torch, and wrenched a short blade from its sheath. Slarn didn’t make that sort of sound, at least not the slarn he’d encountered. Nothing made that sort of sound. The bellow came again, a hideous roar of rage and hunger that echoed off the hard stone walls, filling Valyn’s brain, reverberating inside his skull. He forced his legs into motion, lurched toward the nearest passageway a dozen paces distant. Again the roar. Closer this time. Valyn risked a glance over his shoulder and glimpsed, in the distant recess of the cavern, in the fickle penumbra of the torch, a monster carved straight from the bloody dark of nightmare: scales, talons, teeth, all black as smoke steel, a dozen unnatural joints flexing in the shadow. And the size of it … It made the slarn he’d fought in the tunnels above look like puppies.
The king, he realized, dread lurching in his stomach. The underground river had dragged him to the lair of the ’Kent-kissing king. Without another thought, he turned toward the tunnel, praying desperately it was too small for the monster to follow, and fled blindly into the labyrinth.
*
By the time the torch guttered, flickered, then failed, Valyn knew he was getting close to the surface. He’d been climbing for what seemed like hours, always following the upward path whenever there was a choice. Also there was a tang to the air, the faintest hint of sea salt. He hadn’t noticed it when he descended, but now, as he approached the sun, and sky, and freedom, he flicked out his tongue, tasting it.
Without the torch, the blackness swallowed him once more, just as he had been dreading. To his surprise, however, the absolute pitch no longer seemed quite so terrifying. Rather than an infinite void in which he was destined to wander forever, it felt more like a blanket, still, and soft, and familiar. He paused, trying to get his bearings, and realized he could feel faint hints of movement in the still air, echoes of hints of breezes, the memory of a dream of wind, tickling the hairs on his neck and arms. As he worked his way down the passage, he found that he could anticipate the side corridors, could almost see them in his mind, invisible tunnels of draft snaking away into the blankness.
“Stay down here long enough,” he muttered to himself, “and you might come to like the place.”
As he climbed, the scent of salt grew stronger in his nose. He thought he could even hear the reverberating crash of waves at points, although that was impossible. Holy Hull, he realized, a smile creasing his face, you made it. You’re Kettral now. Of course, he’d have to avoid the other slarn. Avoid them or kill them. The prospect seemed less daunting, however, now that he had purged his veins of the throbbing toxin, now that he was moving steadily toward the surface of the Hole, rather than deeper into the blackness. Hadn’t he already killed three of the bastards? And half-crazed while I was about it.
A slight flicker in the draft brought him up short. There was something toppled across the tunnel, he realized, something impeding the natural flow of air. He knelt carefully and reached out. So close to the end, so close to victory, he didn’t want to break his arm crashing over a pile of rubble. He imagined Lin grinning at him, and Laith, and Gent. Shit, after what he’d been through, he’d even be happy to see Gwenna. Surely they’d made it through as well. Surely they’d found a way to survive.
His fingers came up against something soft, something giving. Cloth, he realized, running his hand along it. Then, with growing unease: A body.
In a few moments he’d found the neck and fitted his fingers to the artery. The skin was cold and clammy. No pulse. Fear mounting inside him, Valyn found the mouth, put his cheek right to the lips and waited, his heart thudding. He could feel the main draft from the sea on his skin, could feel the faint crosscurrent from a fork in the passage a dozen paces ahead, but from the lips, nothing.
“Shit,” he swore, scrambling over the body, trying to get into a position where he could press an ear to the heart. “’Shael take it!”
But Ananshael had been there already, he realized with a wash of cold sorrow. While he’d been struggling for his life in the catacombs below, the Lord of Bones had come and carried off the soul of one of the other cadets, here, so close to the surface. It seemed cruel beyond cruel, but then, neither Ananshael nor Hull promised kindness, not even to their adherents.
With tender, trembling hands, he felt along the body, trying to coax a name from the sprawl of limbs, from the texture of the skin. The blacks were the same, of course, everyone wore blacks, but the body beneath the fabric was a woman’s. Annick? Gwenna? The cloth was rent in dozens of places and sodden with blood. She had died fighting, whoever she was. She had died fighting hard. He felt for the head. Gwenna’s hair was curly, but the hair of the corpse was straight, fine. Black hair, he realized, though the darkness was absolute as ever. He had seen it a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, had seen it wet with salt water, had seen it tossed by the wind as they flew along strapped to a bird’s talons.
He was crying, sobbing in great, silent gulps. He moved his fingers to her face, traced the soft curve of her cheek.
“Hull have mercy,” he choked, pulling her to him, but Hull had no mercy. The gods of mercy would have offered meager trials.
“I’m sorry,” he moaned, gathering her up in his arms. “I’m sorry, Lin. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
They told him later that when he emerged from the Hole, the first thing people noticed was Ha Lin’s body, limp and lifeless, sliced and bleeding, draped in his trembling arms. He was crying, they said, sobbing uncontrollably, his entire body shuddering with the tears. But the Kettral had seen death before; they had seen sorrow. It was his eyes that everyone remembered, eyes that had always been the dark brown of charred wood, but that somehow—fathoms beneath the earth and the ocean, buried in the Owl King’s own temple—had burned past char, past ash, past the blackest hue of pitch or tar until they were simple holes into darkness, perfect circles bored into the night itself.