Fifty feet or more down we finally hit a sloping floor and were able to relax a bit. This tunnel had a small stream running along one side in a channel about three feet deep, and as the rest of the tunnel got lower we started wading through the stream for extra headroom. After a while this degenerated to our having to wriggle through pretty tight, mostly water-filled spaces; believe me, ordinary claustrophobia is nothing compared to the fear you have to fight back when you’re hundreds of feet under solid rock, possibly about to get stuck in a water-filled passageway miles from any help. Without warning, I rounded a corner—it was my turn to lead—and dropped over the edge of a small waterfall, plunging into an icy pond over nine feet deep. I heard Jodi splash down about the time I came up and felt the water of that impact douse me again. Fortunately our sealed lights still worked, so we were able to flounder our way to mostly dry rock and get our bearings.
“We’ve got a ways to go.” I said wearily.
Jodi flopped down beside me. “Well, I’m beat. If we don’t rest, it won’t matter if we get there or not. Time for dinner and some rest.”
I couldn’t disagree with that, so we took the time, and gave ourselves a few hours’ rest. When the electronic whine of the alarm went off, I painfully dragged myself upright, seeing Jodi do the same. My face ached terribly, and from Jodi’s expression I knew it must actually look worse now than it had before; bruising often works that way. “Once more unto the breach.”
We passed through several caves filled with subtle ornamentation of flowstone and stalactites, waded a shallow underground lake with green water as clear as glass, climbed a twenty-foot chimney, followed a set of narrow crawlways for a long distance, then scrambled up a huge dome and wriggled through a short passage into a winding tunnel just far enough across for us to walk single-file.
With a startling suddenness, the tunnel opened onto a wide, flat shoreline of a watercourse that extended, ruler-straight, as far as our lights could see. Nowëmosdet was huge—a great semicircular hallway nearly two hundred feet wide, with even, flat banks about thirty feet wide on either side of the glassy-smooth emerald-glinting water. It felt slightly warmer here, and there was a hint of air moving.
We stared at it for long minutes, our breathing steadying after all the effort we’d gone through. Then I reached into the pocket of my pack. “Guess it’s time.”
Jodi got out her vial.
We struggled a bit with figuring out just how they opened, but eventually realized they had to be squeezed and then twisted before pulling off. That over, we stared at each other for a moment. Then I shrugged and tossed the elixir down my throat in one swallow.
I immediately regretted that. Not that it felt bad—it was in fact the opposite. The taste of mikhsteri H’adamant was like nothing I’d ever tried before, and I tipped the vial back again, letting the last drop of it linger on my tongue. Sweet, cool, sharp, subtle, cold and warm at the same time . . .
“Clint . . .” Jodi’s voice held something close to awe. “Your face!”
I touched my face. I could literally feel the scabs falling away, leaving new skin where there had been raw wounds minutes ago. More than that, I felt exhaustion falling away from me as well, as though I had just put down a hundred-pound backpack. I felt I could jump across that entire giant reflecting pool. “Yeee—ha! Try it, Jodi, you’ll love it! Shoot, now I’ll have to see if Rokhaset’s got any other goodies like this in his recipes!”
Jodi swallowed her elixir, and now I got to gape. You could literally see the change, the head lifting, eyes shedding their tiredness, cuts and scrapes fading away like bad dreams. Jodi looked more gorgeously alive than she’d ever looked before, worry lines smoothed away, uncertainty lifted. I knew that I must look the same way—confident, happy, and ready for anything.
“Oy! I’d start a war to get more of this stuff. I’m surprised you Slades didn’t get yourselves killed.”