“No, Biggar. You’ve short-circuited again. That was Oz. Oz isn’t a real place. It’s a make-believe place.”
“With the wizard and all? With the witches and the flying monkeys? That wasn’t a story. That was real.”
“It was a story, Biggar! A story!”
“All right, Horris, all right! It was a story!” The bird clacked his beak emphatically. He thought a minute. “Okay. How about going to the place with the little people with the furry feet?”
Horris turned red. “What’s the use!” he hissed furiously. He strode past Biggar without looking at him, headed for the trees. “Let’s just report back and get this over with!”
He moved away again, disappearing back into the forest, leaving the Heart behind. After a moment, Biggar followed. They passed out of the sunlight to where it was dark and cool, even at midday, and shadows draped their intricate patterns like spider’s webs across the woodland. They traveled without speaking, Horris striding on determinedly, Biggar hopping from limb to limb, now flying ahead, now winging his way back. Locked in a brown study, Horris pointedly ignored him.
Less than a mile from the Heart, where the light was all but screened away by the interlocking branches of the trees overhead, they descended a steep slope to a dense thicket of brush backed up against a rocky overhang. Easing their way past the brush, they came to a massive flat stone into which symbols had been carved on both sides and across the top. Horris stared at the stone, sighed his weariest sigh, reached up, and touched various symbols in quick succession. He stepped back quickly as the door opened, stone grating on stone. Biggar landed on his shoulder again and together they watched the black opening of the cave beyond come into focus.
Rather reluctantly, they entered. The stone door grated shut behind them.
There was light in the cave to guide them back into its farthest reaches, a sort of dim phosphorescence that seemed wedded to the rock. It gleamed like silver ore in scattered patches and random streaks, breaking up the gloom sufficiently to allow a relatively safe passage through. It was hot within the cave, an unpleasant sort of warmth that suffused the skin and left it damp and itchy. There was a distinctive smell in the air, too. Horris and Biggar recognized it immediately and knew where it came from.
They reached the deepest part of the cave in moments, the part where the light was brightest, the heat hottest, and the stench rawest. The cave widened and rose some twenty feet at this point, and a scattering of stalactites jutted down from the ceiling like a medieval spear trap. The chamber was empty save for a rickety wooden bed set to one side and an equally rickety wooden table on which a metal washbasin sat. The bed was unmade and the basin unemptied.
Next to the wash basin sat the Tangle Box.
From the deepest corner of the cave came a stirring. “Did you do as you were told?” a voice hissed menacingly.
Horris tried to hold his breath as he spoke so as not to inhale any more of the smell than he had to. “Yes. Just as we were told.”
“What was the response?”
“He said he would think it over. But the wizard and the scribe are going to try to convince him not to let me stay.”
The speaker laughed. It shifted in the gloom, a lifting of its body, a straightening of its limbs. Really, it was hard to tell what was happening, which was very disconcerting.
Horris thought back again to when he had laid eyes on it for the first time, realizing suddenly that he was already unsure of what it was he had seen. The thing that was Skat Mandu had a way of showing only part of itself, a flicker of body or limb or head (never face), a hint of color or shape. What you were left with, ultimately, was a sense of something rather than a definite image. What you were left with, inevitably, was unpleasant and harsh and repulsive.
“Do I frighten you?” the voice asked softly. In the smoky gloom something gleamed a wicked green.