Jaleigh Johnson - The Howling Delve

Her gaze fell on the open chamber door. Meisha knew she'd closed it tightly before going to sleep.

She leaned forward, toward the crack of light filtering through the gap between the door and its roughly worked frame.

In the passage beyond, the dwarf stood quietly watching.

Icy needles crawled up Meisha's back. Every night, she saw him-sometimes passing her in the narrow halls, sometimes in her room, standing at the foot of her small cot.

"What do you want!" she cried, raking her hands through her short hair. "Speak, or leave me be!"

But the ghostly apparition had already vanished. Meisha dropped her head into her hands, fighting the urge to run from the room. She fought the same internal battle every night. She longed to run to the wizard, to demand he return her to Keczulla, or Waterdeep, or to the frozen North for all she cared. Anywhere that was not the Delve, where she felt buried alive.

A knock at the door made Meisha jump.

Shaera, apprentice of air and one of Varan's older students, came into the room. She cradled a candle in one hand. "Did you call me?" she asked.

"No," Meisha said, her customary sullen gaze snapping into place. "Why would I want you?"

"Why, indeed?" the girl murmured. She walked right past Meisha, ignoring her hissed curses. "I came to leave you this." She crouched next to the cot and spoke a soft, breathy word.

A small column of fire rose up from the floor, floating in midair as if suspended from an invisible wick.

"Just until you learn the spell yourself," Shaera explained. "Always carry a light down here. If nothing else, light frightens the rats away." She smiled encouragingly. "You'll grow used to the Delve. We'll help you."

"You think I need your help to make fire," Meisha said cuttingly. Her eyes rounded, and the flame soared higher, almost touching Shaera's belt.

The girl's smile didn't falter. "He said you were powerful. I'm impressed. But can you make the fire last the whole of the night?"

Color rose in Meisha's cheeks, matching the slow-burning flame. She said nothing.

"I thought not." Shaera paused at the door. "If you get scared again, you can sleep in my room."

"Get out!" Meisha yelled, mortified that the girl had heard her distress. "Leave me alone!"

Shaera nodded and closed the door behind her.

Meisha seethed. Never on her worst night in Keczulla had she cried out, not when she'd been beaten by the Wraiths for holding back food, not when she'd been starving because they'd denied her for a tenday afterward. Through it all, she'd never made a sound.

How dare she, Meisha thought, how dare she come into her room uninvited? What would Varan think of such an invasion of privacy?

She snorted. Varan had probably sent the girl.

"Maybe you'd like the favor returned," she muttered. Her fear pushed aside by anger, Meisha slammed her door and headed for Varan's chambers.

She listened at the doors to each of the apprentices' rooms: Jonal, the water student; Prieces, the earth apprentice. Shaera and Lima were both air, and shared a room across the passage. Meisha had never bothered to learn beyond their names and elements.

Each room was quiet, the occupants undisturbed by her earlier shouts.

Did none of them feel the unnaturalness of the Delve? Meisha wondered. Or had they been in the place too long? All the apprentices here were at least two years older than Meisha and more advanced in their training. Perhaps they had grown used to the underground setting.

The thought of ever growing accustomed to life without sunlight made Meisha's skin go cold. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms.

That would never happen to her, she swore. She would always crave the Morninglord's touch.

When she came to Varan's door, she hesitated. A thin, green beam of light limned the crooked wooden planks. Enspelled globes, she thought. Varan used them in place of torches to light various parts of the Delve.

She reached up to rap on the wood and felt a tingle of electricity race down her arm: strong magic-dangerous, if she disturbed Varan in the middle of a casting.

The spell glow died away. Varan's muffled voice came through the wood.

"Come in, Meisha."

Scowling, Meisha dragged open the door to the chamber Varan used as a workroom. Her mouth fell open.

"Close the door, please," the wizard said crisply.

Meisha shut the door and turned a slow circle in the chamber, the better for her eyes to take in the writing scribbled on every wall's surface.

She could decipher only a handful of the arcane phrases. Inscribed and illuminated with green light, the writing blurred her vision if she stared at it too long. As if that were not disconcerting enough, Meisha swore she saw the writing move, rearranging itself as she tried to read.

"You couldn't sleep?" Varan inquired, when Meisha continued to gape at the wall of power.

She shook her head. "What is all this?" she breathed, her earlier anger forgotten.

"Some of we poor practitioners still have to rely on spellbooks — the written word-to fuel our Art," Varan explained, "especially when we create new magic."

"Do you often?" Meisha asked. "Create new magic?"

"As often as I am able," Varan replied. "Creation, as I see it, should be the ultimate goal of all who study the Art. That and teaching apprentices are the only ways our magic truly lives on. It matters not if the magic is used for protection or destruction, as long as it exists and can be turned and forged into something new."

"And you think I will be your destructive force," Meisha said, turning at last to regard the wizard.

"I've decided to reserve judgment in your case," he hedged, "as you so often surprise me. But I do not think I will be disappointed, whichever path you choose to take."

He waved a hand, and the light faded from the writing. "So you're having trouble sleeping," he mused. "It may be my stirrings of the Art woke you. In such a confined space, the magic has few places to go. The Delve is old, and the walls are worn with the imprints of old magic and the tread of feet-human and otherwise."

"Why do you live here then?" Meisha asked. With no chair in the room, she settled on the cold floor. "If the Delve is so old, aren't you afraid one day it will collapse?"

Varan chuckled. "From what I've been able to discern, the Delve has withstood far more than an old wizard's spells and come out intact. Now it is my sanctuary. The walls will hold." The wizard shrugged into a thick robe and plucked up a crooked staff as he spoke. "But we haven't solved your problem; you need sleep."

He ushered her out into the hall, spell-locking the door behind them. "When I can't find calm, I work until I'm weary, and I still have a task to finish before I seek my bed tonight. This task will weary both of us, if you'd care to join me?"

Meisha nodded eagerly. Anything would be preferable to returning to her boxlike room in the dark, even with the flame burning all night. The weight of the Delve still pressed down on her, but in Varan's presence the feeling seemed to diminish.

She followed the wizard down a side passage typically forbidden to the apprentices. Meisha recognized the boundary of Varan's wards inscribed on the tunnel wall. They walked right past the sigil, led by the glow from Varan's staff.

They entered a wide-mouthed, bell-shaped chamber that Meisha saw was entirely submerged in water. The cavern's ceiling reflected unbroken across the clear surface of the water, making it impossible to tell where the bottom lay.

Varan released his staff, causing it to hover over the center of the calm pool. "Fresh water source," he said. "Something we're always in need of down here. Close, too, so I'm considering extending the wards."

"So other creatures won't intrude on the watering hole," Meisha surmised.

"Correct-ordinarily-but I've observed this particular watering hole is rarely used by wandering creatures," Varan told her. "Can you guess why?"

Meisha looked at him sharply, at the same time taking a step back. "What dwells in the water?"

"Very good," Varan said, "and to answer your question, something big."

"So I'm to be your bait?" Meisha asked sullenly. She'd thought Varan would let her attack the thing.

Varan laughed. "Hardly, little one. I am not an ogre, or a Red Wizard, with apprentices to squander-and a waste it would be, for the creature that lives beneath the surface would rend you unrecognizable. Besides," his eyes glinted, "I do not require bait."

"How, then?" Meisha asked, intrigued. The wizard's enthusiasm infected her. She trailed his steps around the rim of the pool.

"First, I'll need your aid." Varan twirled a finger, and his staff inverted, shining the light close to the water's surface. "For all its might, the creature is shy and comes to ground only to hunt. It will need an inducement to reveal itself."

He waited, and Meisha realized he proposed a test. Varan wanted to see how she would solve the problem.

Meisha squatted next to the pool and placed her hands above the water. The words came to her haltingly. She envisioned the words dredged up from the bottom of the pool like so many buried coins, humming with power and warmth. She spoke faster, and the power turned to heat. She felt the glaze of it along her palm, a blown-glass ball she shaped using only her mind.

A bubble popped on the pool's surface. Next to her, a small, blind fish with twisted horns floated to the surface on its side. Another followed, and still Meisha let the heat build. Her calves ached from holding the same crouched position, but she dared not move or risk breaking the spell. Steam brushed her face. She heard another loud pop, and the water churned. Meisha thought it was the spell, but suddenly a fleshy mouth broke the surface of the water, followed by twin webbed claws.

Meisha threw up her hand in automatic defense, realizing she might lose the appendage in her foolishness. Spiky teeth closed around her wrist, but Meisha felt no pressure, no severing of bone or tissue.

With a hissing cry of pain, the creature released her and thrust back, churning water in its wake.

Meisha realized her hand was smoking. She'd burned the creature with her touch.

Varan stepped in from of her when the creature came around to attack again. Filmy eyes dominated the ripples of flesh that made up the creature's head. Below them, the mouth gaped from a nest of four tentacles. The creature's body tapered from a humanoid trunk to that of a serpent or an eel. Meisha couldn't tell from above the water.

Varan's hands traced the air in a scythe-cut. Slashes of light streaked across the chamber, cutting into the monster's flesh. Black ichor shed into the still-boiling pool.

Meisha crawled to a safe corner to watch the grim spectacle play out. She had no doubt Varan would win the battle. He stood so confidently; Meisha wondered if he'd ever lost a duel, with a creature or another wizard. The power he expended seemed immense. Her own spell had drained her completely. The heat she'd created in the chamber, blending with the flashing light, mesmerized Meisha. Her last sight of the mysterious creature was bathed in that light, sharp against the black blood. Her vision dimmed, and she passed out.

When she awoke, Varan knelt beside her, supporting her head. His hard expression softened when he saw her eyes open and aware.

"I feared you would not wake," he said.

"And you would have wasted an apprentice after all," Meisha said faintly.

Varan did not smile at her jest. Gently, he helped her sit up and gave her a long draught from his waterskin.

"You passed every test but one," he said, after she'd collected herself.