Following Hunter, wherever he was leading them, made the most sense.
CHAPTER
61
The rock roof of the cavern into which they ran formed a peak along the top. Mosses and plants hung from the stone roof, giving it a lush, living green softness. Pools of perfectly still water suddenly frothed as all the men ran right through them. The sound of all their boots and the splashing water echoed around the chamber in a deafening clamor. While some of the soldiers took the lead to make sure that the way ahead was clear, most of the men slowed and fell in behind to protect Richard and Kahlan from what was chasing them. Nicci, too, stayed close behind to protect them. Irena and Samantha ran close to him on the opposite side of Kahlan.
Richard looked back over his shoulder and saw in the dim light out through the opening behind them that the winged predators turned aside rather than enter the cavern opening with them. For some reason, they circled just outside like a dark tornado. They roared in anger, none of them daring to enter the cavern. Most rotated in the massive vortex of creatures, while some flapped their enormous wings to hold themselves in place in midair just outside the opening to the cavern. They lowered their long heads, peering in at where their prey had gone.
As eager as they had been before, Richard couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t come in after all of them, but he was more than glad not to have to try to fight them off. At the same time, he worried about why they wouldn’t enter. They had to be afraid of something. The cavern they were racing into was certainly large enough. It was larger, in fact, than the caves and cracks the creatures had been nesting in.
Up ahead, the short, peaked cavern opened out into a brighter area at the bottom of dark, sheer stone walls. Rock piled in the bottom of the chasm over the millennia had eroded away until it had become rounded. Now it was all covered under thick layers of vibrant green mosses. Vines climbed the walls to the sides. Trees had taken root in the mosses on the mounds of decaying rock, engulfing them in tangled masses of roots.
Water, lit from above, wafted down in streamers and mist. Ahead, thin chutes of waterfalls cascaded down to pools, creating clouds of mist. From there, the water looked like it drained into narrow cracks that carried it underground.
“Do you see where that little furry friend of yours went?” Richard asked Kahlan.
She pointed. “I saw him run up ahead—that way. I saw him stop up higher, on the rocks up there, making sure we followed him.”
“I wish I knew why he wanted us to follow him,” Richard said.
“Maybe he wants to help,” Kahlan said. “Maybe he knows this place and he wants to get us to safety.”
Richard didn’t think it could be that simple, but he didn’t say so. There was more to it. What more there could be, he didn’t know, but for the time being the small cat had gotten most of them away from what would surely have been a gruesome death.
The rocky ground ascended on stepped layers of fallen slabs and boulders. A tangled growth of shrubs with large leaves and small, lacy trees had taken root over and among the rock. The ascending floor of the chasm took them up ever higher over the stepped ledges. Ahead, Richard could see that the walls closed off overhead again, with showers of water falling on the far side like a wet curtain.
The whole place looked like a passageway to the good spirits.
Richard recalled what Zedd had told him about always appreciating the beauty of things. It was certainly beautiful down at the bottom of the chasm. The temperatures down deep in the gorges were likely moderated to an extent from the heat and cold up above. Protected as the place was from harsh elements, it allowed everything to grow green and lush in the temperate, wet climate.
The rock at the bottom continued its ascent up the floor of the chasm, making the canyon ever more shallow the farther they went. The more he was able to see of the landmarks off to the sides above them, the more he recognized where they were. Richard realized that they were finally coming out the far end of the maze.
An hour more of hard climbing at last brought them out of the deep canyons to the forest above. All around mountains ascended into low, dark, ragged clouds. The woods, though, were anything but a normal forest.
As the ground flattened out, they found themselves entering a woodland of the trees that were all some kind of gnarled hardwood. They looked something like oaks, but were not oak. Richard had never seen the trees before. The canopy of leaves created a kind of ceiling overhead, leaving it dark and somber at ground level.
The craggy, bare trunks all looked black in the dim light. Higher up on the trunks the wood became increasingly knobby and knotted. Twisted, misshapen branches rose from there up into the thick canopy of blackish green leaves. It almost appeared that they were entering a vast chamber with black pillars holding up the dark green roof. The only light that made it down to the mostly barren forest floor was a hazy gray-green color. As far as Richard could see off into the murky distance there were hundreds of the black trunks supporting the ceiling of leaves.