Meek

Chapter 10: A Glimmering

Eli heard his bone snap and felt the teeth rip the flesh from his foot. Agony. A thousand nails hammered into his skin and the pain flooded his mind and turned the darkness into flashing white, bringing him an inch from fainting, from falling at the clister's claws, but his fingers caught the ledge and he heaved himself onto the mossy surface.

He rocked in pain, moaning and swearing until the numbness dulled the agony. So apparently it wasn't a test of courage against an imaginary monster.

But what was he supposed to do once his ankle healed? Fight a lizard-monster in the pitch dark, naked and unarmed?

After a time, he couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed. He couldn't tell if he was sleeping or awake. He'd spent too much time in the dark lately. Yeah, that was a nasty habit he'd have to break. Better to browse through scrolls in the archive, or check the fences of the farflung fields with the hayward, with the midday sun warming the back of his neck and the light so bright that he saw shining patterns even after he closed his eyes. He remembered them, blotches of light moving behind his eyelids, tiny motes shifting and spinning. Like the memory of the sun or--

"Oh!" he breathed, sitting up on his bed of moss.

He'd slept, then woken, and now he was detecting traces of light. Not in his memory. In the chamber around him, he was seeing ... something, faint gray shapes.

His eyes were adjusting to the darkness.

Except when turned his head, the gray shapes didn't move. He reached behind himself, and smacked his hand against the nearest gray shape--the rock wall.

"Oh," he said again.

Behind himself. He was seeing behind himself, and his vision didn't shift when he turned his head, because he wasn't seeing through his eyes.

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He was seeing through the spark.

"You're back," he said.

With a flicker of thought, he sent the spark floating in a lazy circle around himself. Now the gray shapes shifted. He closed his eyes and still saw them ... and over the next few hours, he saw them clearer and sharper.

The spark roamed the length of the ledge, then dipped down into the chamber proper. Not far from him. No more than a couple of yards. Still, after he crawled to the very edge, he could inspect the jagged wall and the floor beneath. He even saw one of the stone spears, more like a lumpy pillar, shining with water that dripped from the ceiling.

By the time his ankle had knit fully back together, he was even seeing hints of color in the darkness. The green of moss, the gray of pillars, the splattered dark-red of his blood on the wall below him.

He dragged the spark against the floor, trying to shift the loose rocks and shale. Trying to make a little noise, lure the clister from its lair. But the spark was weightless, just a bead of mist.

Eli climbed down from the ledge to the chamber, sweeping the spark in an arc, as far as possible from himself, back and forth, back and forth, alert for the first hint of motion in the fringes of his vision. Looking outward, away from himself, but also back toward himself. The spark saw in all directions at once. He crouched and put his hand on a loose rock he'd spotted. Which meant he wasn't going mad and imagining things: the spark had led him to the right place.

Then he tossed the rock across the chamber.

When it clattered to the floor, the clister moved. From the right-hand wall, Eli heard scrambling and scratching toward the noise. Then the spark gave him a faint impression of motion as the creature trundled forward.

The clister stopped abruptly, turned toward him, and charged. He scrambled up the wall--a hundred times easier now he could see the handholds--and was on the ledge before the clister got within five yards, hissing angrily.

"Well, you're an ugly lizard," he said.

It looked about the size of a billy goat, though wider and lower to the ground, with stubby legs tipped with dagger claws. That didn't bother him, but the creature's mouth was vertical, split down the center, so the jaws opened sideways, which disgusted him for some reason. Not as much as its teeth, though, which looked like rows of curved needles for pulling flesh off bone.

It hissed again.

"Learn to climb," he told it.

The clister scratched at the stone but couldn't seem to raise its head to look at him.

After the clister finally trundled away, Eli took his own advice. He checked the walls for outcroppings, hoping he could cross the chamber without touching the ground. It looked possible, at least near the ledge, though the spark couldn't travel far enough from him to show him much of path.

Still, better than trying to beat that thing to death with his bare hands.

So when he was sure the clister was gone, he crept down from the ledge again. His heart started hammering. His eyes opened wide even though they couldn't see anything. He used the spark to check every step as he moved silently to the wall--the left-hand wall.

He found a handhole and climbed upward. Not high, just six or seven feet. Then he started sideways, moving at a pretty good clip, surprised at his own strength.

Until the wall sloped inward, toward the center of the chamber. Dammit. Even with his new strength, he couldn't dangle from his hands as the wall turned more horizontal. He paused there for a time. Exactly opposite from the clister, clinging to the wall like the world's stupidest spider.

The spark drifted around him, picking out shapes. More stone pillars dangled from the ceiling, pointing downward. Only a few of the pillars were on the floor in this area, half of them narrow and broken. No doubt from a previous rite, when some young troll with armored hide and actual claws had battled the clister.

Probably easily, like an armored human fighting an angry sheepdog. Unlike him, a naked human fighting an angry lizardbeast.

He wasted a few minutes hating his fingernails before he realized the obvious: those stone pillars on the floor looked exactly like heavy stone spears.

Makeshift weapons.

So he crept to the floor. Quieter than ever. Too far from the ledge to retreat. Maybe, maybe, he could climb the wall before the clister reached him. Maybe not. He took one step every five heartbeats. Then waited. Then another step. Then he reached the closest spear.

More of a club, actually. A bit longer than his forearm, but about the same width.

He closed his hand on the narrower end. The stone was wet but not slippery. Rougher than he'd imagined. And heavier, but he was stronger than he'd ever been. The surprising heft only meant he'd hit harder.

Now he just needed a defensible place to fight--and a clear line of retreat.

Sticking close the wall, he started back toward the ledge. He considered trying for the exit, but Mist-Beneath said he needed to do this three times, and he didn't want to get trapped between two of these scaly beasts, one in front and one behind.

Eli took four steps--and from across the chamber the clister hissed.

He started to trot, and the spark spotted the beast behind him. Moving fast on those stubby legs. No time to panic. He needed to stay calm, stay calm ... and use the spark. Use his ability to see in a complete circle around himself. A complete sphere--he saw the floor and the ceiling too, he knew exactly where to put his feet, exactly how far in front of him the ledge was, and how far behind him the lizard was.

He knew the location of every stone pillar around him--and he knew he wouldn't beat the clister to safety. So he sprinted five more steps, then veered to the side, inches after he passed a pillar.

The clister hissed and snapped toward him. Those needle teeth missed him by a handspan, then the creature skittered past, claws struggling for purchase, but Eli was already spinning, using the pillar as a pivot point in the crook of his right arm and using the force of the spin to lash out with the club in his left hand and catching the beast with a powerful blow to the base of the tail.

The clister hissed again--in pain that time.

Eli shouted and swung again, but that time the wounded beast dodged. The club glanced off its hide and its claws dug into the rocky floor and it whirled like a snake.

Not good.

The spark showed him a glimpse of the creature's jaws opening sideways and Eli threw himself forward and pain flared in his hip as the clister's claws dug three long rents from his hip to his knee, and without turning his sightless head Eli lashed out behind him and the tip of the club smashed the creature's snout.

A few of those fearsome teeth sailed through the air.

Eli would've laughed but he was too busy fleeing. No time to wait for the numbness. He limped fast, zigging behind the stone pillars at every gleam of motion the spark showed him, and he hit the ledge wall and threw the club overhead and scrambled to the mossy shelf.

The pain in his leg finally burned through his fear. Agony scalded him. The cuts almost reached the bone but ... but he didn't lose himself to the pain.

Not this time.

He sent the spark toward the clister that was hissing and snapping at the base of the ledge, and he saw blood dripping from its snout. When it finally lumbered away, there was a hitch in its movement, too, and its tail didn't quite swing freely.

Okay. The spark didn't just let him see in the dark, it let him see everything around himself. The troll-blood made him a little stronger, a little faster--and healed him shockingly quickly. Plus, apparently his left hand was as strong and adept as his right, now.

He could do this.