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Pain exploded in his shoulder. As the multi tool was ripped from his hands, he went tumbling downward, thudding painfully. Seth had no idea what the hell had hit him or what he was falling down. None of that mattered as much as the fact that he couldn’t see a thing.
When he finally skidded to a stop, he lay unmoving for a moment, coming to terms with the pain and slowly realizing that he could, thank the gods, actually see. For a second, he had thought himself blinded.
He had tumbled down a long, rocky slope into a deep cavern. Sunlight, dimmed by the growing sandstorm outside, bled sluggishly down that slope, fading into the darkness. Seth’s impact must have been with the rocky edge of the cavern’s huge mouth as the bandit rode through, trying to scrape him off.
Hoof beats pounded away through the cavern, but Seth had no time to despair his lost horse and gear—because other footsteps, human ones, were pounding his way. No yell came with the attack, only silent determination as the bandit lunged for him with a knife.
Seth was not so quiet. He leaped up with a shout, catching the man in the gut with his uninjured shoulder. Seth flipped the bandit over his head then spun to meet another attack as the man scrambled to his feet.
The bandit slashed with the knife, but Seth dodged and struck out with a left-handed punch, catching the bandit on the jaw. As the man staggered, Seth swung in with his right, forcing himself through the pain to land a heavy blow to the man’s sternum.
As the bandit staggered further, Seth caught his wrist and wrenched the knife away. With a yell, Seth struck the blade into the bandit’s neck. The man collapsed. His mouth worked automatically for a second, then he went still, dead eyes staring at Seth.
Seth rolled his shoulder, testing it. The pain burned hot but lacked the sharp bite of a fracture. His shoulder guard had prevented that at least.
Seth looked past the bandit’s body to the shadowy belly of the cavern. His horse was long gone, but there was one piece of luck. The bandit had fallen because—between the damage wrought by the wire’s barb and the extra strain of Seth’s weight—the saddle had broken. It, along with Seth’s saddlebags and all their valuable contents, lay in a heap. Seth laughed, dizzy with relief.
At least it hadn’t been for nothing.
With the danger gone, Seth took in his surroundings. He was in a vast cavern with tunnels branching in every direction. It wasn’t as dark as he had first thought, now that his eyes were adjusting. Dust-clogged daylight filtered down in places. There must be other slopes, other entrances to what seemed to be a network of tunnels.
Wind whistled outside, and dust blew into the cavern from the wide mouth. Seth made his way up the slope until he could see the surrounding landscape, dimmed though it was by the blowing dust and sand. Seth squinted against the grit.
Damn it.
There would be no trekking back across the desert through this. Hopefully it would soon pass and allow him to backtrack to the caravan. Until then, he was stuck.
As Seth walked down the slope into the cavern, unhurried now, he took stock of his injuries. His left knee didn’t feel a lot better than his right shoulder, but it was manageable. A bandage would serve the cut he’d gotten from the thrown knife. A scimitar had cut him in the initial fight back at the caravan. That slice should probably be stitched, but he could ignore it for the moment. He was more concerned about his gear.
Seth worked the multi tool’s harpoon-like barb from the broken saddle then retracted the line and folding prongs into their housing. The saddlebags were intact, their contents largely undamaged. (Except for the figs. Those hadn’t fared well.)
Digging out the arcane lamp, Seth turned it on to full intensity and hooked its ring onto the multi tool, which he hung from his utility belt. After a double check of his weapons, he slung his saddlebags over his good shoulder. He couldn’t risk them being found by any returning bandits.
Leaving the broken saddle, Seth headed into one of the branching tunnels to get a sense of where he was—and because he loved to explore strange places. He’d been in more dusty tombs and forgotten temples than he could remember. He’d uncovered artifacts so old that even the scholars of the Arcanum couldn’t explain them. He’d found mummies in ancient wrappings and bare bones of every description.
Not everything he’d stumbled across had been dead or inanimate, however. Seth had wrestled with, and barely escaped, a humanoid crocodile in a murky pool. He’d tracked a white light through a dark jungle only to have it vanish into the canopy with a laugh.
Having faced many uncanny dangers, Seth knew what it meant when his scalp prickled—and it was prickling now.
No human had dug these tunnels.
There would be gouges in the rock where they’d sought minerals or precious stones. There would be writing or symbols. There would be left-behind tools and other detritus.
Water, perhaps, could have carved these tunnels. Seth had seen strange landscapes wrought by ancient floods. But …
There was something almost organized about the branches. And they were too smooth, lacking the wavy patterns left by water. They were too perfectly cylindrical—except for the deep groove cut into the ceiling.
Seth directed the lamp’s glow onto the floor. Something white and flaky was dusting his boots. He crouched and rubbed some of it between his fingers. It crumbled to nothing.
Spotting a larger fragment of translucent white, he picked it up. He had a brief moment to think that it looked like a flake of skin or maybe a scale before it, too, crumbled to powder.
CHAPTER 23
THE SANDSTORM WAS whipping up more strongly by the second. As soon as Raider had seen that it would worsen, he’d dismounted Umae, relieved her of his weapons and saddlebags, and turned her loose. She had run back to the caravan, where they would keep her safe, binding her nose and eyes with damp cloth to protect her from the scouring sand.
Raider was slower on foot, but he knew where the bandit had been heading, and he was far enough behind that by now either Seth or the bandit was dead anyway. If Seth was alive—and he’d better be—Raider needed to get him away from those caverns.
With his hand and kaffiyeh shielding his face from the worst of the debris, Raider peered into the storm with only his left eye. Once again, that damn arcane implant was useful. Without the eye’s ability to filter input, to zoom and focus, Raider would be running blind.
