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Chapter 4 - Underground
Over the next few days Taren led them straight and out of the basin, and then right when a cluster of hills became visible on the horizon. On the afternoon of the third day a clump of dark shapes seemed to materialize in the distance, getting larger as the four neared them. As the quartet came closer, the dark blur became clearer and the four columns became visible.
An hour later the four young people reached the towering, upright stones. Ice coated the monoliths, and, on brushing it aside, the Sith found strange carvings on the base of the stones.
The girls had crouched down inside the cluster, out of the biting wind.
Taren looked at his fellow Sith. "All right, this is as far as I can take us."
Jalekk looked at him. "Are you sure this is where your half of the map ends?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"Good." Then Jalekk gave a wry grin. "Well, then it is time for us to start digging," They had been on better terms since the gerr attack.
Trying to keep the puzzled look from showing on his face, Taren asked, "Digging?"
Jalekk's voice hardened. "Who passed on to hell and made /you/ my echo? I remembered my half of the route. Now do as I say and help me clear the ground here. I don't want to have to spend more time here than necessary; do you?"
"No . . . No I don't, Jalekk." Taren dropped his pack and followed into the circular space between the black monoliths. The girls moved aside as the other Sith snapped harshly at them.
Suppressing a sigh, the brown-haired Sith started scooping snow aside with his gloved hands. The other boy crouched down a distance away and followed his lead, packing the icy white mass to one side.
"I wonder what they're doing," Koja said to Kairal as they watched the two Darksiders working.
The other shrugged. "I really don't know . . . Maybe we're staying here for the night or something."
"Yes, at least it's sheltered from the wind."
"Koja . . . Will we ever get away from here?" Kairal suddenly asked.
She met the girl's eyes. "I honestly don't know. Maybe somebody will come and get us," she sobered. ''Maybe not."
"I don't like it here, Koja. When I'm with Jalekk there's not really much time to think about home and the people I knew there, but when we're walking during the day . . . I think about all that very much."
The Jedi sighed inwardly. She knew exactly what Kairal was talking about. Not knowing what else to say, she murmured, ''Tell me about your home."
"I come from Hapes - it is a warm planet, with many tropical woods and oceans, not like this one - and I lived next to one of the seas with my mother, sister and brother. From the house one could see the blue-green Orona Ocean and the floating vessels on it . . ." Kairal paused, as if pulling the pictures from her memories. "The house has pale brown walls and is built on stilts, so that the incoming sea does not flood it.
"My room was small but /so/ comfortable, and there was a big window that faced towards the ocean. Every evening I used to watch the sun setting. It was beautiful and big, not like here . . . And every morning I used to get dressed and went out to feed the meriggah, those are a kind of water mammal, and then I went to eat the morning meal. Mother always made the best tseapf . . ."
As Kairal spoke of her home, her planet, her family, friends and pets; Koja remembered her own friends and Retsama. She missed them all very much.
In addition to the homesickness, this place was already affecting her adversely - perhaps it was the cold and the predators, the gloom. The way the whole situation slowly wore away at the nerves. And when the ysalamiri crystal got removed from around her neck, she would constantly feel the feral shadows of the Dark Side as long as she stayed here. Koja was not sure what exactly would happen to her because of this, but she did not want to find out. Even though she had been at many other Sith strongholds, she had never gotten used to the dismal atmosphere, and never would.
Koja hoped that she and Kairal would get back home, even though the chance of that was small.
Taren's hands where going numb in their mittens and he tried using a Force-aided technique to shunt the pain away. They had cleared away almost a whole two square meters of the deep snow, and he hoped that Jalekk would be satisfied soon. He paused when the other Sith stopped digging and moved to the patch of frozen ground they had cleared. He started patting the flat soil, examining it closely.
Taren wondered if the cold hadn't numbed Jalekk's brain. Just as he started pondering this notion, the other youth growled in his direction, "Hey, give me a hand here!"
Blinking, Taren wiped the grin off his face and walked over to him. "What is it?"
"Here. Help me lift this."
'What?' Taren crouched down and squinted to where Jalekk's hands rested. His fingers were latched in what seemed to be impressions in the ground, and he was straining to lift it up.
"It's a trapdoor, you son of a heavy-G planet inhabitant," Jalekk hissed. "Now help me heave!"
Ignoring the insult, Taren studied the ground carefully and noticed the rectangular outline in the soil, and observed that the texture seemed to be much smoother than that of real earth. Quickly, he grabbed at one of the cavities and pulled hard.
They strained, and ponderously the section of 'ground' started lifting with the grinding sound of stone on stone. Taren was sure that with some effort a single person could have lifted it. With the soft hiss of falling snow and dirt, a dark shaft became visible as the trapdoor opened wider. Eventually, the door stayed in an upright position, and there was now a deep rectangular hole in the ground.
Jalekk confirmed what Taren had been expecting. "We go down there,"
The two slaves stood silently, staring at the shaft.
"Well, come on,'' the blond Sith motioned to them. "We can't stay out here all night." The sun was already dying in a fiery display of glowing backwash.
Kairal followed him into the gaping hole, and Taren looked at Koja through visored eyes. "Let's go."
"I can't."
"Why not?" he asked, moving towards her.
"I . . . I have this fear of enclosed spaces. Cramped places are one of the few things I am afraid of."
"Come on, Koja. I'll help you, I promise. I'm sure the shaft isn't that deep."
She took a shuddering breath. "All right. I'll come . . ."
The narrow passage was damp and the rickety metal ladder leading down it was narrow and slippery. Taren pulled the trapdoor shut, trying to suppress the fear he felt himself. What if Jalekk hadn't remembered his instructions properly? What horrible dangers awaited them beneath the earth?
Keeping his voice strong, he said softly to the girl a rung or two below him, "Hold on tight. Don't hurry. Concentrate on the ladder." He hung on himself, even though he could use the Force to break his fall.
Hooking one arm around a rung, he pulled a small flare torch from his pack. He lighted it and secured it to his wrist, hoping that their journey down wouldn't be so long that the torch would burn his arm.
Slowly, he moved lower.
Half to calm his own fears, he asked Koja, "What trees are there on your world?"
She took a moment to reply. "T - taranat, kooracg, and . . ."
"Does the taranat tree have fruit?"
"Yes."
"Good,'' the Sith said, stepping a rung lower. ''Now imagine that you are climbing down a taranat tree using a ladder.'' He paused, hoping that he remembered his botany lessons well enough. "And the ladder is made from wood, like the tree. You are holding a taranat fruit between your teeth, and the sun is warm on you back.''
As they climbed deeper into the ominous gloom, the young Sith went on with his tale of tall trees and ladders and open air and warm suns; and he hoped that most of it was an accurate description, since he was still considered too young to travel to other worlds. Worlds that had mild weather and high trees . . . After a while he asked her to describe what a taranat fruit tasted like, what texture and uses wood had.
"We've reached the bottom!" Jalekk's voice drifted up from somewhere below. "There's a big cave down here."
Five tense minutes later Koja and Taren too stepped from the last rung of the ladder onto the hard, almost even floor. He lifted up his flare torch to survey the large room the shaft had led them into. It was indeed a large vaulted chamber, and looked natural, unlike the tunnel that had brought them here. The roof was about four meters above them, and the damp rock walls glistened in the pale torch light. Pointed stalactites hung from the vaulted ceiling, like the iron spikes of some torture apparatus. On the far side of the cave, almost opposite the ladder, a black hole marked the beginning of a shadowy passage.
Kairal was standing on the far side of the chamber, studying one of the arching walls.
"Jalekk,'' she called softly. "Come here please."
"What is it?'' he asked, coming towards her. Then, on reaching her, he turned around to Taren. "Hey, come here."
The Sith, who had been studying the cave in awe, quickly crossed the floor to where the other was standing. Jalekk gestured to the dark gray wall, "Look."
There was dark red writing on the wall - the barbed symbols that were the ancient Sith script. There were about forty characters, printed in five lines with painstaking precision.
Koja, who had come up to stand next to Taren asked, "What does it say?"
"Shh,'' Jalekk muttered. "Give us a moment."
Taren pointed at the first symbol. "This is 'nor', which is 'you'. I am certain of it."
"And this is 'krnit' - 'have'," the other Sith added. "I wish I'd paid more attention to my kriffin' Ancient Speech studies."
"I don't know the next word, but the one after it is 'reached', so now we have 'You have reached' . . ."
"This is 'the', and then we have 'jikrron', 'next' . . ."
About a half an hour later the two Sith initiates finally deciphered the short message on the cavern's wall, substituting likely guesses for symbols they couldn't recognize. They weren't at all pleased with the result. Instead of useful information, encouragement or good news, the entire simplified message was:
/You have successfully reached the next step of your Initiation Trial. If you reach Irrchanor Kag again you will be sworn to silence, for no information about these caves or the way to them may be given to any minor student. Severe punishment awaits the one who does not keep his oath. May the spirits of these caverns be kind to you.
Written by Lihrem Dracon, first Head Master, in the spring of year one./
"Great. Just /great./ We get one crummy message from more than a hundred years ago telling us not to spit out any secret to the little brats, and 'oh, just by the way, there are some monsters here, too' as a bonus! KRIFFING HELL!" Jalekk spat, glaring at the faded symbols angrily.
"Yes." Taren said calmly. "The last part worries me too. What did he mean with 'spirits of these caverns'?"
Jalekk sighed. "We'll find out soon enough. Let's get going, I want to get home." He gestured to Kairal, who had, together with Koja, moved carefully away after his previous outburst.
Taren nodded and took his slave by the arm, letting the other Sith lead the way out of the cavern.
The passage that followed was narrow but just high enough for them to stand in without stooping. They had all removed their parkas and the males had even taken off their gloves and scarves. It was warmer in the cave - the air was cold and still, but nevertheless warm compared to the numbing bite of the wind on the surface.
The passage wound around a corner and then remained almost straight until they reached yet another cavern an hour later. At least, that was the time measurement according to Jalekk's chrono. Down under the ground time stood still. There was no sun to tell the time by, and an hour passed like a few minutes and days seemed like months.
"We can stay here tonight," Jalekk spoke up, holding the flare torch high to examine the cavern. It was larger in a horizontal scale, but the ceiling wasn't as high as the one they'd started in. Mercifully, this cave also looked a lot drier.
Everyone wearily agreed. It had been a long day.
The two young men erected a square cage-like framework from the shelters in the hope that the heat from the glow torches would get trapped within its walls - by tying the canvass covers over it. The top and one side of the framework were open. The girls spread the groundsheets, blankets and cloaks to opposite sides of the structure, and the glow lamps were placed a distance away from the makeshift beds. The Sith got the water boiling and everyone seemed at ease.
A few moments later the four sat crouching around the glow torches drinking tea and eating a stew of dried meat and vegetable-powder. It was very warm and much of the damp clothing had been laid on the ground between the lamps to dry.
"Jalekk,'' the other Sith student said, "How long do you think it will be before we get out of here?"
All eyes on him, the blond youth thought for a moment before replying, "It's hard to say. Maybe three, four days . . ." He shrugged uncertainly. "But there's no need to worry. There is a lot of water down here and we won't freeze to death, either. We also still have enough food."
The others nodded, and then Koja and Taren started packing their eating utensils.
* * *
Koja Jime awoke as she felt something nuzzling at her neck. Slowly, the haze of sleep cleared her mind, and she realized it was Taren, gently kissing her throat. She was about to turn around when his warm hand slipped in under her shirt, moved upwards. The Jedi tried to stifle the moan that rose in her throat when his probing fingers found her nipple. She wanted to sleep; she was tired! But his ministrations had already cleared all chance of that.
Koja lay still as his fingers circled her breast, and pretended to be asleep . . . Suddenly she knew why he had woken her up. Quiet moans and whispers broke the cozy silence in the pitch dark, and she realized that the other couple's lovemaking must have roused Taren.
Her hand found his roving fingers and she gasped against his lips when he slipped something smooth and elliptical onto her tongue. Grabbing his shoulders, she swallowed the pill and allowed him to do as he well pleased.
Chapter 4 - Underground
Over the next few days Taren led them straight and out of the basin, and then right when a cluster of hills became visible on the horizon. On the afternoon of the third day a clump of dark shapes seemed to materialize in the distance, getting larger as the four neared them. As the quartet came closer, the dark blur became clearer and the four columns became visible.
An hour later the four young people reached the towering, upright stones. Ice coated the monoliths, and, on brushing it aside, the Sith found strange carvings on the base of the stones.
The girls had crouched down inside the cluster, out of the biting wind.
Taren looked at his fellow Sith. "All right, this is as far as I can take us."
Jalekk looked at him. "Are you sure this is where your half of the map ends?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"Good." Then Jalekk gave a wry grin. "Well, then it is time for us to start digging," They had been on better terms since the gerr attack.
Trying to keep the puzzled look from showing on his face, Taren asked, "Digging?"
Jalekk's voice hardened. "Who passed on to hell and made /you/ my echo? I remembered my half of the route. Now do as I say and help me clear the ground here. I don't want to have to spend more time here than necessary; do you?"
"No . . . No I don't, Jalekk." Taren dropped his pack and followed into the circular space between the black monoliths. The girls moved aside as the other Sith snapped harshly at them.
Suppressing a sigh, the brown-haired Sith started scooping snow aside with his gloved hands. The other boy crouched down a distance away and followed his lead, packing the icy white mass to one side.
"I wonder what they're doing," Koja said to Kairal as they watched the two Darksiders working.
The other shrugged. "I really don't know . . . Maybe we're staying here for the night or something."
"Yes, at least it's sheltered from the wind."
"Koja . . . Will we ever get away from here?" Kairal suddenly asked.
She met the girl's eyes. "I honestly don't know. Maybe somebody will come and get us," she sobered. ''Maybe not."
"I don't like it here, Koja. When I'm with Jalekk there's not really much time to think about home and the people I knew there, but when we're walking during the day . . . I think about all that very much."
The Jedi sighed inwardly. She knew exactly what Kairal was talking about. Not knowing what else to say, she murmured, ''Tell me about your home."
"I come from Hapes - it is a warm planet, with many tropical woods and oceans, not like this one - and I lived next to one of the seas with my mother, sister and brother. From the house one could see the blue-green Orona Ocean and the floating vessels on it . . ." Kairal paused, as if pulling the pictures from her memories. "The house has pale brown walls and is built on stilts, so that the incoming sea does not flood it.
"My room was small but /so/ comfortable, and there was a big window that faced towards the ocean. Every evening I used to watch the sun setting. It was beautiful and big, not like here . . . And every morning I used to get dressed and went out to feed the meriggah, those are a kind of water mammal, and then I went to eat the morning meal. Mother always made the best tseapf . . ."
As Kairal spoke of her home, her planet, her family, friends and pets; Koja remembered her own friends and Retsama. She missed them all very much.
In addition to the homesickness, this place was already affecting her adversely - perhaps it was the cold and the predators, the gloom. The way the whole situation slowly wore away at the nerves. And when the ysalamiri crystal got removed from around her neck, she would constantly feel the feral shadows of the Dark Side as long as she stayed here. Koja was not sure what exactly would happen to her because of this, but she did not want to find out. Even though she had been at many other Sith strongholds, she had never gotten used to the dismal atmosphere, and never would.
Koja hoped that she and Kairal would get back home, even though the chance of that was small.
Taren's hands where going numb in their mittens and he tried using a Force-aided technique to shunt the pain away. They had cleared away almost a whole two square meters of the deep snow, and he hoped that Jalekk would be satisfied soon. He paused when the other Sith stopped digging and moved to the patch of frozen ground they had cleared. He started patting the flat soil, examining it closely.
Taren wondered if the cold hadn't numbed Jalekk's brain. Just as he started pondering this notion, the other youth growled in his direction, "Hey, give me a hand here!"
Blinking, Taren wiped the grin off his face and walked over to him. "What is it?"
"Here. Help me lift this."
'What?' Taren crouched down and squinted to where Jalekk's hands rested. His fingers were latched in what seemed to be impressions in the ground, and he was straining to lift it up.
"It's a trapdoor, you son of a heavy-G planet inhabitant," Jalekk hissed. "Now help me heave!"
Ignoring the insult, Taren studied the ground carefully and noticed the rectangular outline in the soil, and observed that the texture seemed to be much smoother than that of real earth. Quickly, he grabbed at one of the cavities and pulled hard.
They strained, and ponderously the section of 'ground' started lifting with the grinding sound of stone on stone. Taren was sure that with some effort a single person could have lifted it. With the soft hiss of falling snow and dirt, a dark shaft became visible as the trapdoor opened wider. Eventually, the door stayed in an upright position, and there was now a deep rectangular hole in the ground.
Jalekk confirmed what Taren had been expecting. "We go down there,"
The two slaves stood silently, staring at the shaft.
"Well, come on,'' the blond Sith motioned to them. "We can't stay out here all night." The sun was already dying in a fiery display of glowing backwash.
Kairal followed him into the gaping hole, and Taren looked at Koja through visored eyes. "Let's go."
"I can't."
"Why not?" he asked, moving towards her.
"I . . . I have this fear of enclosed spaces. Cramped places are one of the few things I am afraid of."
"Come on, Koja. I'll help you, I promise. I'm sure the shaft isn't that deep."
She took a shuddering breath. "All right. I'll come . . ."
The narrow passage was damp and the rickety metal ladder leading down it was narrow and slippery. Taren pulled the trapdoor shut, trying to suppress the fear he felt himself. What if Jalekk hadn't remembered his instructions properly? What horrible dangers awaited them beneath the earth?
Keeping his voice strong, he said softly to the girl a rung or two below him, "Hold on tight. Don't hurry. Concentrate on the ladder." He hung on himself, even though he could use the Force to break his fall.
Hooking one arm around a rung, he pulled a small flare torch from his pack. He lighted it and secured it to his wrist, hoping that their journey down wouldn't be so long that the torch would burn his arm.
Slowly, he moved lower.
Half to calm his own fears, he asked Koja, "What trees are there on your world?"
She took a moment to reply. "T - taranat, kooracg, and . . ."
"Does the taranat tree have fruit?"
"Yes."
"Good,'' the Sith said, stepping a rung lower. ''Now imagine that you are climbing down a taranat tree using a ladder.'' He paused, hoping that he remembered his botany lessons well enough. "And the ladder is made from wood, like the tree. You are holding a taranat fruit between your teeth, and the sun is warm on you back.''
As they climbed deeper into the ominous gloom, the young Sith went on with his tale of tall trees and ladders and open air and warm suns; and he hoped that most of it was an accurate description, since he was still considered too young to travel to other worlds. Worlds that had mild weather and high trees . . . After a while he asked her to describe what a taranat fruit tasted like, what texture and uses wood had.
"We've reached the bottom!" Jalekk's voice drifted up from somewhere below. "There's a big cave down here."
Five tense minutes later Koja and Taren too stepped from the last rung of the ladder onto the hard, almost even floor. He lifted up his flare torch to survey the large room the shaft had led them into. It was indeed a large vaulted chamber, and looked natural, unlike the tunnel that had brought them here. The roof was about four meters above them, and the damp rock walls glistened in the pale torch light. Pointed stalactites hung from the vaulted ceiling, like the iron spikes of some torture apparatus. On the far side of the cave, almost opposite the ladder, a black hole marked the beginning of a shadowy passage.
Kairal was standing on the far side of the chamber, studying one of the arching walls.
"Jalekk,'' she called softly. "Come here please."
"What is it?'' he asked, coming towards her. Then, on reaching her, he turned around to Taren. "Hey, come here."
The Sith, who had been studying the cave in awe, quickly crossed the floor to where the other was standing. Jalekk gestured to the dark gray wall, "Look."
There was dark red writing on the wall - the barbed symbols that were the ancient Sith script. There were about forty characters, printed in five lines with painstaking precision.
Koja, who had come up to stand next to Taren asked, "What does it say?"
"Shh,'' Jalekk muttered. "Give us a moment."
Taren pointed at the first symbol. "This is 'nor', which is 'you'. I am certain of it."
"And this is 'krnit' - 'have'," the other Sith added. "I wish I'd paid more attention to my kriffin' Ancient Speech studies."
"I don't know the next word, but the one after it is 'reached', so now we have 'You have reached' . . ."
"This is 'the', and then we have 'jikrron', 'next' . . ."
About a half an hour later the two Sith initiates finally deciphered the short message on the cavern's wall, substituting likely guesses for symbols they couldn't recognize. They weren't at all pleased with the result. Instead of useful information, encouragement or good news, the entire simplified message was:
/You have successfully reached the next step of your Initiation Trial. If you reach Irrchanor Kag again you will be sworn to silence, for no information about these caves or the way to them may be given to any minor student. Severe punishment awaits the one who does not keep his oath. May the spirits of these caverns be kind to you.
Written by Lihrem Dracon, first Head Master, in the spring of year one./
"Great. Just /great./ We get one crummy message from more than a hundred years ago telling us not to spit out any secret to the little brats, and 'oh, just by the way, there are some monsters here, too' as a bonus! KRIFFING HELL!" Jalekk spat, glaring at the faded symbols angrily.
"Yes." Taren said calmly. "The last part worries me too. What did he mean with 'spirits of these caverns'?"
Jalekk sighed. "We'll find out soon enough. Let's get going, I want to get home." He gestured to Kairal, who had, together with Koja, moved carefully away after his previous outburst.
Taren nodded and took his slave by the arm, letting the other Sith lead the way out of the cavern.
The passage that followed was narrow but just high enough for them to stand in without stooping. They had all removed their parkas and the males had even taken off their gloves and scarves. It was warmer in the cave - the air was cold and still, but nevertheless warm compared to the numbing bite of the wind on the surface.
The passage wound around a corner and then remained almost straight until they reached yet another cavern an hour later. At least, that was the time measurement according to Jalekk's chrono. Down under the ground time stood still. There was no sun to tell the time by, and an hour passed like a few minutes and days seemed like months.
"We can stay here tonight," Jalekk spoke up, holding the flare torch high to examine the cavern. It was larger in a horizontal scale, but the ceiling wasn't as high as the one they'd started in. Mercifully, this cave also looked a lot drier.
Everyone wearily agreed. It had been a long day.
The two young men erected a square cage-like framework from the shelters in the hope that the heat from the glow torches would get trapped within its walls - by tying the canvass covers over it. The top and one side of the framework were open. The girls spread the groundsheets, blankets and cloaks to opposite sides of the structure, and the glow lamps were placed a distance away from the makeshift beds. The Sith got the water boiling and everyone seemed at ease.
A few moments later the four sat crouching around the glow torches drinking tea and eating a stew of dried meat and vegetable-powder. It was very warm and much of the damp clothing had been laid on the ground between the lamps to dry.
"Jalekk,'' the other Sith student said, "How long do you think it will be before we get out of here?"
All eyes on him, the blond youth thought for a moment before replying, "It's hard to say. Maybe three, four days . . ." He shrugged uncertainly. "But there's no need to worry. There is a lot of water down here and we won't freeze to death, either. We also still have enough food."
The others nodded, and then Koja and Taren started packing their eating utensils.
* * *
Koja Jime awoke as she felt something nuzzling at her neck. Slowly, the haze of sleep cleared her mind, and she realized it was Taren, gently kissing her throat. She was about to turn around when his warm hand slipped in under her shirt, moved upwards. The Jedi tried to stifle the moan that rose in her throat when his probing fingers found her nipple. She wanted to sleep; she was tired! But his ministrations had already cleared all chance of that.
Koja lay still as his fingers circled her breast, and pretended to be asleep . . . Suddenly she knew why he had woken her up. Quiet moans and whispers broke the cozy silence in the pitch dark, and she realized that the other couple's lovemaking must have roused Taren.
Her hand found his roving fingers and she gasped against his lips when he slipped something smooth and elliptical onto her tongue. Grabbing his shoulders, she swallowed the pill and allowed him to do as he well pleased.