Calvus made a globe of her hands. There was a glimmering through the chinks. The flesh of her fingers themselves became translucent. She opened her hands and a glowing ball swelled out of the hollow to spin away from the woman at a walking pace. The ball continued to expand as it rolled through the air toward the far wall of the chasm. Its smooth outlines were still visible in the daylight as it blurred into the rock a quarter mile away.
Calvus quivered and came out of her trance. “A little effort involved in that,” she said, slowly turning her palms to Perennius. The skin was unmarked by the cold light, as his conscious mind had known it would be. His subconscious still could not accept the fact. “But practical at a safe distance. And you’ll need the light, my – Aulus.”
Perennius noted the hesitation. Sliding his own sword home in its scabbard, he said, “You were going to say weapon ?
“I was going to say ‘friend,’ ” Calvus replied.
“Well, let’s go kill things,” the agent said. The last word was muffled by the bronze mask. He closed it over his face and waited for Calvus to lace it shut.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Donning the face shield again was itself like entering the passageway to Hell. Perennius paced down the trail steadily, but with the caution required by the drop-off to the side. He could see very little of his surroundings in general and nothing at all of his feet. The mask eliminated normal downward vision. The way it locked to protect his throat kept him from bending his neck sharply enough to repair the deficiency. The abandon with which the agent had flung himself into the chasm initially had been required by the circumstances. It would have been out of place now. Winning in battle requires a willingness to die; but the combatant who seeks death is almost certain to find death without victory. Perennius was determined that when he got the chop, it would be because the other bastards were better – not because he himself played the fool.
Gaius’ mail swayed before the agent like a banner slung from the dogwood staff. Unlike a normal banner, its shifting weight seriously interfered with balance. Every step became a doubled effort – first a motion, then a stiffening to damp the rustling iron. When the trail sloped eastward, Perennius held the shirt before him. When the trail switched back to the west, as it did twice before turning finally toward his goal, he slung the pole over his shoulder and allowed the armor to swing behind him. It was not a perfect shield, even against the first blast; but the extra armor was one more factor to concern the Guardian. From previous experience, the agent judged that the chitinous monsters did not react well to the unexpected. The fact of his own survival, however, had not made Perennius contemptuous of the thunderbolts.
The mouth of Typhon’s Cavern flared upward like the wide-spread jaws of a snake. The open sky was now almost three hundred feet above the agent. As Perennius plodded forward, what remained of the dome arched overhead. The rock under his feet was smooth. Acidic ground water percolating through the limestone had dissolved away a great bubble until the roofing layer grew too thin to support its own weight. At the bottom of the cavity, the water had polished and widened the fissure through which it had drained toward the bowels of the Earth. It had formed this cave, this track to a mythical Hell … and to a real horror quite as fearful as the imaginary one, if Calvus were to be believed.
Perennius continued to descend carefully. Already he was beneath the level of the gorge proper, though there was no sense yet of being within a cave. It was more as if night were falling around him, darkening his surroundings without physically enclosing him. Still further beneath the agent, at the point at which the cavern did narrow significantly, was a pillared, rectangular shrine. It had no roof. The natural curve of the wall protected the chapel interior perfectly, even though that curve was fifty feet above the transom.