The Chasm of Lights, Part I

eyond the city, solid rock stretched forever in all directions. The city-dwellers had dug mines, and the mines connected to caves, but however far they dug they would only ever touch more caves and more rock. The city was the world, a habitable void in a universe of solidity. That was what Zanik believed. She hadn't been taught it, exactly, but whenever she discussed the theory with her classmates, the teachers would just smile and nod, so it must be right.

Zanik was in the caves now, clambering easily through a sloping tunnel that would have been too low for most adults to pass. Behind her she could hear Dorgan scrabbling inexpertly in the dark. She had explored these caves countless times but it was better to share her adventures with someone else.

Dorgan stopped, catching his breath. Zanik looked back and saw the boy's round face bobbing in the light of the lamp she had been pushing ahead of her.

“We shouldn't be out this far,” he said. “We ought to go back.”

Zanik laughed. “Oh, don't be boring,” she teased. “Those rules are for children, and we'll be full adults next year. I've been here loads of times.”

Dorgan didn't answer, but when he started moving again it was forwards rather than back. Zanik laughed again and scrabbled ahead of him. “It's not far now - wait and see!”

Their little tunnel opened out quite suddenly. Zanik sprang to her feet and ran into the middle of the circular cave. She put the lamp down carefully, right under the apex of the domed ceiling, trying to find the exact position she remembered.

Dorgan was standing beside her. “What are you doing?”

She grinned impishly but did nothing to explain, instead grabbing his lamp and setting it down next to hers. She lay down next to them, motioning Dorgan to lie beside her. The floor was smooth stone, very slightly damp; it had a smell of lichen. Above them the domed ceiling faded as she dimmed the lamps. There! The ceiling was black, but with just the right light level, tiny specks appeared – quartz crystals catching the light. She lay back and let her eyes adjust, listening to Dorgan's breathing as he did the same. There were maybe a dozen bright specks and hundreds of dimmer ones, seeming to twinkle in the flickering lamplight. With the ceiling so dark, her eyes lost all sense of distance. It was easy to imagine the cave was any size – even the size of the whole city – and the reflections were perfect white lamp-orbs suspended in the dark space. It was beautiful; it was like nothing else she had seen.

“It's nice,” Dorgan said at last.

Zanik shot him a look of mock-indignation. “Nice?”

“It's lovely,” he hurriedly corrected himself. “I really like it.”

Zanik laughed, and settled onto her side to look at Dorgan past the cosy glow of the lamps. Dorgan suddenly broke eye contact, and pulled a little cloth bundle out of his pocket. “I, um. I got you something.”

Zanik unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a necklace, a big disc-shaped pendant of blue glass with a silver pattern. She span it on its chain, watching the irregular facets catch the lamplight and cast their images on the roof. Zanik didn't much care for jewellery, but she was touched by the gesture. She put it on, and tucked it inside her top for safety. “Thank you,” she said. “It's pretty.”

Dorgan smiled shyly. “Just pretty?”

Zanik leaned over and kissed him.

The lamps wobbled and almost fell. There was a rumbling sound.

“What was that?” said Dorgan.

Zanik sprang to her feet excitedly. “Earthquake!” Earthquakes were rare; only a couple of small ones had happened in Zanik's lifetime, and there hadn't been a major one for generations.

“What will we do? The cave will collapse!”

Zanik had already grabbed her lamp and was on her way back down the tunnel, feet first in a controlled slide. Dorgan called for her to wait.

She emerged from the bottom and raised her lamp high. The little crawlway to her quartz-crystal cave was at right angles to an artificial tunnel, its ceiling reinforced with curving bone supports. It led back to the city in one direction and to a disused mine section in the other.

There was something else now. A little way from where she was standing, a set of supports had collapsed and a crack had opened in the wall. She dashed off to look at it, just as Dorgan was emerging from the crawlway.

“That...that wasn't here before?” Dorgan panted.

“The quake must have opened it.” Zanik crouched down next to the crack and shone her light inside. The walls were solid, but the floor was a mess of debris. She couldn't see how deep it went into the wall.

Zanik frowned, noticing something. She pulled the lamp out of the crack and put it by the wall, then leaned back into the crack, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the blackness.

“What are you doing?” Dorgan fretted.

“Shh!” Zanik concentrated. She shouldn't be able to see anything, but a patch of gravel was picked out by a very faint light, just on the edge of vision. If it wasn't her imagination, there was a light coming from somewhere above.

Zanik shifted onto her back and began pulling herself into the crack. The rock above her was totally dark, but with her fingers she could feel the roof getting higher. The stones under her back shifted uncomfortably. She could just see a glimmer of light.

“Zanik! Come back!” Dorgan's voice was hushed and intense, as if a loud noise could cause another earthquake. “It's not safe!”

“I'll be okay,” said Zanik distractedly. She was sure she could see something now: a light picking out details in a wall towering above her. She must be at the bottom of a chimney in the rock, with some kind of light at the top of it. If she could just get a bit further in, she'd be able to see the light source itself.

The rocks beneath her shifted again. Zanik's heart pounded and she pushed herself further into the crack. She knew she should go back, but she was sure that just one more push... She saw it! A sliver of blue at the top of the chimney, she had no way of knowing how high up. She held her breath and edged herself just a little further in, hoping to see it more clearly. It was bright blue, mottled with some kind of uneven whiteness.

The rocks beneath her shoulders shifted and were gone. She made a desperate scramble back towards the tunnel, but too late. All the debris began to move and she slid backwards. She could hear Dorgan screaming her name as she was consumed by the dark.

Rocks fragments pelted her from all sides as she was carried downwards – not so much falling as riding on top of a steady collapse. It was several panic-stretched seconds before she came to a stop, rock dust settling onto her skin. She lay still, expecting any movement to set off another collapse.

When no collapse came she very carefully climbed to her feet. She ached all over but no bones were broken, and even Dorgan's pendant had survived. It was pitch black and her imagination surrounded her with all manner of hostile geology: she was one step from a sheer drop, or the rocks above her were on the verge of falling, or a carnivorous monster was opening its huge, drooling mouth...

She pulled her spare torch and tinderbox from her belt and forced her shaking hands through the familiar routine of making light. It took her several increasingly frantic attempts before the flame caught.

The floor and ceiling of the cave were smooth and quite solid, and there was no monster to be seen. Rubble lay in a heap where it had spilled out from the crack in the wall. She leaned into the crack and looked up but she couldn't see the light. The collapse must have carried her along as well as down.

“Dorgan?” she called out, surprised at how frail and uncertain her voice sounded.

“Zanik!” Dorgan was practically crying with relief. “Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” Zanik shouted.

“Wait there! I'll go get help! I – I won't be long.” She heard Dorgan's footsteps receding into the distance.

Zanik looked around, breathing deeply to calm herself. The cave sloped down away from her and narrowed into a tunnel that led off into the blackness. It would take Dorgan at least half an hour to get to the city and back, and now that she knew she was safe her urge to explore was returning. After a few moments of uncertainty her curiosity overcame her caution. She might be the first person to see this tunnel for centuries! She would go just a little way and then come back.

The tunnel was smooth-walled and it never branched; Zanik guessed that a now-extinct river had carved it out of the rock. It curved back and forth so that she could not see even to the extent of her torchlight, always sloping gently downwards. With the tunnel so featureless she found it hard to guess how far she had gone. She was on the verge of turning back when she saw something that made all her exploring worthwhile.

Nebulous shapes, glowing with soft blue light, floated back and forth in a seemingly endless void. Each one was perhaps the size of a person, roughly spherical but always shifting in shape and size. There was a swarm of them, all circling and approaching and retreating in a marvellously complex pattern. Sometimes a few would break off and spin together before rejoining the group; at other times two would merge and pulse brightly as the others swarmed around them, before separating and re-joining the flock. All around, Zanik thought she could hear voices singing - tragic and lonely voices, and yet serene.

Zanik stepped forward, mesmerised. The tunnel emerged onto a wide ledge on the edge of a chasm, over which the lights floated effortlessly. The ledge ran along the chasm wall in both directions, and a little way to Zanik's left she could see something like a huge coil of thick green rope. It lay at the mouth of another tunnel or cave, from which issued the gentle sound of running water that Zanik had taken for singing.

Zanik approached the coiled thing. It was a creature of some sort, its skin covered in tiny green scales like those of a cave crawler. It expanded and contracted very slowly, as if breathing.

The creature shifted and let out a snort, making Zanik jump. A smooth reptilian head emerged from the coils and looked Zanik up and down.

“Go away,” it said.

Its voice was soft but resonant, seeming to come from every direction at once. Its tone was not unfriendly, or even particularly interested, just weary. Zanik stared in disbelief, but the creature's words hung in the air and demanded reply.

“No,” she said.

The creature snorted again and rested its head on its coils. “You Dorgeshuun do not interest me,” it said. “Not one of you is worthy to enter this cave. Go back to your city and let me sleep.”

Zanik had barely noticed the cave behind the creature. It wasn't very large, but as the floating lights drifted past the opening she could see water trickling down the walls and disappearing into the floor. It didn't look particularly remarkable, but the creature's patronising speech made her desire to enter it intense. “Maybe I am worthy,” she said.

“You are not. All of you are the same: living your tiny lives, never looking outside your city; shutting yourselves off from the world above. Yours is a civilisation defined by a fear of the unfamiliar.”

Zanik was only half-listening; she was sizing up the jump. Part of the entrance was blocked only by the end of the creature's tail. As it spoke she ran forwards and leapt–

Her face smacked into a wall of cold scales. With a movement so fast it was invisible, the creature was there in her path. She landed heavily on her back, only centimetres from the edge of the chasm. The creature was rearing over her, its whole body writhing with barely-restrained rage.

“And now your heritage asserts itself,” the guardian continued. Its voice was now full of power and authority, and Zanik felt sure that it would be utterly impossible to enter the cave without its permission. “You take what you want by force. Your race was created for violence; it is your purpose and your sole destiny. But no violence will gain you entry here. If you attempt to pass me again, I will send you to the bottom of the chasm.”

The creature relaxed and began to coil itself, finally taking its eyes off Zanik. Zanik stood up, tasting blood in her mouth, and picked up her torch. The guardian was ignoring her; it seemed to be going back to sleep. She sat down next to it and watched the lights float back and forth in the darkness.

“You are still here,” the creature said at last.

“I'm not scared of you,” Zanik lied.

“Your kind has always gone running back to your city when I showed them my power. Perhaps you are a rare individual.”

“Tell me what you are,” said Zanik.

“My name is Juna,” the creature said. “I am a servant of the almighty Guthix. My lord honoured me with this task, to guard the cave that contains his tears and to choose who is and is not worthy to enter.”

“Who is Guthix?” asked Zanik. “How can his tears be in the cave?”

“Guthix is the true owner of the world. All nature is his domain: every plant that grows, every creature that moves and breathes. He is the greatest of all the gods.”

“A god?” Zanik spluttered.

“The greatest of all the gods,” Juna repeated.

Zanik looked at the creature in disbelief. “Don't be silly! The gods aren't real. They're just a story made up to scare children - 'You mustn't go too far or the gods will see you.'”

“That is what you believe?”

“Of course! No one really believes in gods.”

“Then the folly of your people has grown even greater. To reject your god and to hide from him, that is blasphemy; that is a betrayal of all that you are and should be. But to deny that the gods exist...there is not even a word for what that is.” Juna pointedly turned away from Zanik and buried her snout in her coils.

“I'm sorry,” said Zanik. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

“Leave me,” said Juna, not looking up. “Go back to your city. Barricade the tunnel and put up warning signs, as you have every time before. Forget about me and leave me to my vigil.”

“Barricade the tunnel? You mean people have been here before?”

“I said leave me!”

Zanik stood and walked back along the ledge, a little shaken by the conversation's abrupt end. She reached the dead river channel and paused. There had been no barricade at the top, or warning signs, and that meant Juna had been talking about a different tunnel. She continued on.