Elven Star – The Death Gate Cycle 2. Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

His fall ended abruptly and painfully. He opened his eyes. He wasn’t in water, but in a dark tunnel that seemed to have been hollowed out of the thick moss. A strong hand shoved him, a sharp blade sliced through his bonds.

“Go! Go! They are thick witted, but they will follow!”

“Rega,” Roland mumbled and tried to get back.

“I have her and the elf! Now go!”

Rega fell against him, propelled from behind. Her cheekbone struck his shoulder, and her head snapped up.

“Go!” shouted the voice.

Roland caught hold of his sister, dragged her alongside him. Ahead of them stretched a tunnel, leading deeper into the moss. Rega began to crawl down it. Roland followed, fear dictating to his body what it must do to escape because his brain seemed to have shut down.

Dazed, groping through the gray-green darkness, he crawled and lurched and sprawled clumsily headlong in his mad dash. Rega, her body more compact, moved through the tunnel with ease. She paused occasionally, to look back, her gaze going past Roland to the elf behind him.

Paithan’s face glimmered an eerie white, he looked more like a ghost than a living man, but he was moving, slithering through the tunnel on hands and knees and belly like a snake. Behind him was the voice, urging them on.

“Go! Go!”

Before long, the strain told on Roland. His muscles ached, his knees were scraped raw, his breath burned in his lungs. We’re safe now, he told himself. This place is too narrow for those fiends – – .

A rending and tearing sound, as if the ground were being ripped apart by gigantic hands, impelled Roland forward. Like a mongoose hunting a snake, the tytans were digging for them, widening the tunnel, intending to ferret them out.

Down and down the captives traveled, sometimes falling or rolling where the tunnel turned steep and they couldn’t see their way in the darkness. The fear of pursuit and the gruff “Go! Go!” drove them on past the limit of endurance. And then a whoosh of exhaled breath and a crash coming from behind him told Roland that the elf’s strength had given out.

“Rega!” Roland called, and his sister halted, turning slowly, peering at him wearily. “Quin’s had it. Come help me!”

She nodded, having no breath left to speak, and crawled back. Roland reached out a hand, caught hold of her arm, felt her trembling with fatigue.

“Why have you stopped?” demanded the voice.

‘Take a look . . . elf!” Roland gasped for breath. “He’s . . . finished … All of us. … Rest. Must. . . rest.”

Rega sagged against him, her muscles twitching, her chest heaving. Blood roared in Roland’s ears, he couldn’t tell if they were still being pursued. Not, he thought, that it mattered.

“We rest a little,” said the gruff voice. “But not long. Deep. We must go deep.”

Roland gazed around him, blinking back fiery spots that were bursting before his eyes, obscuring his vision. He couldn’t see much anyway. The darkness was thick, intense.

“Surely . . . they won’t come . . . this far.”

“You don’t know them. They are terrible.”

The voice-now that he could hear it more clearly-sounded familiar.

“Blackbeard? That you?”

“I told you before. My name is Drugar. Who is the elf?”

“Paithan,” said Paithan, easing himself to a crouched position, bracing himself against the sides of the tunnel. “Paithan Quindiniar. I am honored to meet you, sir, and I want to thank you for-”

“Not now!” growled Drugar. “Deep! We must go deep!”

Roland flexed his hands. The palms were torn and bleeding where he’d scraped them against the moss tunnel’s rough sides.

“Rega?” he said, concerned.

“Yeah. I can make it.” He heard her sigh. Then she left him, and began to crawl again.

Roland drew a breath, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and followed, plunging down into the darkness.

CHAPTER 20

THE TUNNELS, THURN

THE ESCAPING CAPTIVES CRAWLED THROUGH THE TUNNEL, DELVING DEEPER

and deeper, the voice behind them urging, “Go! Go!” The mind soon lost all awareness of where it was or what it was doing. They became automatons, moving through the darkness like windup toys with no thought of where they were or where they were going, too exhausted, too dazed to care.

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