Severed Souls(122)

Richard spotted flocks of small birds darting under the stone bridges. The walls probably provided relatively safe nesting spots for a variety of birds. The canyons were alive with small wildlife, everything from gnats and birds in the air, to centipedes and voles on the ground. He knew that where there was such wildlife, there would be predators.

The growth at the bottom of the chasms, while similar to the forests above, was denser. The daylight down in the bottom was limited by the towering walls, so the trees grew more slowly. Ancient, monarch spruce created brief areas where the forest floor at the bottom of the chasm was open among the massive trunks, so that they could see the walls off to either side. The thick beds of brown needles made for a spongy mat to walk on.

In other places, the space between the walls narrowed and smaller hardwoods and brush held sway. The maples made for a denser forest, with tangles of young saplings crowding the ground where older trees had fallen, providing some precious light. Soldiers pushed small, slender trunks over with their boots to make it easier for those following behind. The ground was deep in places with drifted leaves and debris that had accumulated between boulders and rocks, and because of how wet it was, it smelled of rot. In a few flat areas, the water standing in long, stagnant stretches was alive with bugs atop and under the water, and snails around the edges.

The walls above them seemed to continually weep water. Long green streaks of slime grew down the walls where it looked like water almost continually seeped down the rock face, staining it black. In other spots, where the rock walls higher up tilted inward, water dripped in thin rivulets from hundreds of feet overhead, splashing on the ground, creating either bare spots on the rock floor or in other places thick wonderlands of mosses growing in shapes like fuzzy, miniature cities. In a few spots the water fell from such towering height that it mostly turned to mist before reaching the bottom.

All of that water running and falling down the walls meant that travel along the bottom of the chasms was a wet, miserable trek either through a jungle of wet undergrowth or over stretches of sloping granite ledge with sheets of water running over a surface of slime that made it extremely slippery. At times the fall of water echoed, and at other times it roared.

Richard didn’t like having to travel through the chasms. He knew that it was dangerous to be in such a confined space. They could usually deviate a little if need be, but in this case, down in the canyons, they had no choice but to get through or turn back and spend days going around.

Richard knew that he and Kahlan would not live long enough to go the long way around. He knew they were running out of time.

The thing he didn’t like about having to go through such a place, though, was that if they needed to escape any kind of predator that hunted the canyons, they had nowhere to run and rarely anywhere to hide or seek cover. If they were killed by a predator they would be just as dead as dying from the poison. At least the thick growth in most places would prevent the flying predators they had encountered before from easily getting in at them.

Richard shielded his eyes from the falling drizzle of water to look ahead into the various fractured slivers of passageways, divided by thin walls of rock. Some of those slim walls had collapsed, leaving jumbles of boulders and debris filling the narrow canyons. As they made their way farther in, they saw that in places the thin rock walls had disintegrated, leaving holes going back and forth between adjoining canyons.

The farther in they went, the more immense those holes became. In some areas they formed shallow caves. In other places they led a short distance through darkness to mossy rocks at the bottoms of towering cliffs in adjacent chasms on the other side.

To be able to continue on, they had to make their way up and over stacks of granite slabs littering some of the canyon floors. Some of the huge pieces of stone had been worn down and rounded over by the continual fall of water. As the granite eroded over time, it crumbled away to create gravel beds. Mosses, ferns, and small shrubs grew thick and green in the maze of passageways and tunnels. Vines clung to rocks and climbed the walls, making some look more leaf than rock.

Richard snatched Kahlan’s arm just before she stepped on a green snake stretched out along folds in the moss. She let out a sigh of relief as she went around the snake. The men passed word back to be careful of it. Richard didn’t know if it was poisonous or not, but he and Kahlan already had enough poison in them and Richard wasn’t about to test his luck.

The way ahead offered a choice of winding, forested chasms and enormous caverns. Many of those caverns were passageways interconnecting the chasms. Looking through as they passed, they were offered views through the short stretch of darkness at light and lush growth at the other side.