The Phoenix Endangered by James Mallory

their explorations take as long as that—for the way was straight and smooth, and ears and noses could guide a hunter when eyes could not. And Israf and Ardban would sense far more than even the sharpest-honed senses of the Nalzindar, though, like any sight-hunter, the ikulas preferred the light to the dark.
    Shaiara shivered once again in the cold, then sniffed at the air suspiciously and frowned, glancing at Kamar. He stepped to the nearest wall and ran his fingers over the stone, running the pads of his fingers together, and there did not need to be words between them for Shaiara to know what he had found. The stone was wet.
    Was there another Iteru here within the tunnels? Shaiara had once visited a spring deep within a cave, and the air had been wet in just this way. But for the first time since they had begun exploring the tunnels, Israf and Ardbanseemed eager to forge ahead instead of wishing to remain close at the heels of the five Nalzindar, and Abyaz and Zirah, barely out of puppyhood, were now straining at their leashes.
    “Go,” Shaiara said quietly, and with a bound, the two ikulas leaped ahead into the dark.
    A few moments later, Shaiara could hear stuttering high-pitched yips echoing back over the stone. She nodded, and Kamar unleashed the two younger ikulas. They bounded eagerly after their elders. Holding her torch high, Shaiara led her band of hunters after them at a swift ground-eating lope.
    They had barely covered more distance than might be compassed in three arrow-flights before strangeness abounded everywhere. The walls were no longer smooth, but covered with a web of root and vine, nor was the floor beneath their feet smooth stone either. It held a thickness of sand—far thicker than what they had found earlier in the tunnel—and not sand alone. Sand so mixed with water that it was as moist as uncooked griddle-bread, and so filled with the wet scent of plants that it was as if Shaiara stood in the middle of Sapthiruk holding a basketweight of figs and desert plums in the folds of her robes. All along the tunnel, where the floor met the walls, there were strange soft growths the color of the palest leather.
    When they reached the place where the ikulas eagerly awaited them, Shaiara saw that more of the strange pale things covered the wooden barrier. The water in the air had rotted it, as sunlight rotted cloth, for the ikulas’s sharp nails had dug away deep curls from the wood where they had attempted to dig beneath the barrier. A click of her tongue summoned the hounds back to sit at her heel, and when Shaiara put her hand to the metal ring—reaching carefully among the growths—it came away in her hand, leaving her fingers covered with sharp black flakes and a thick coating of red. She dropped it, and the ring struck the sand with a dull sound. Cautiously, she pressed at the barrier. It scraped inward a double handspan, then stuck.
    But no dangerous cascade of dry sand billowed out through the opening, and the ikulas were all but dancing with impatience to see what lay beyond. She passed the torch to Ciniran and set her shoulder to the door. Kamar and Natha joined her, and soon the barrier had been shifted enough that Shaiara could slip through. The four ikulas followed her immediately, and dashed off into the gloom.
    For it was only twilight here beyond the barrier, and not true darkness. She paused to help the others force the barrier the rest of the way inward—kneeling down to dig away the thick mast of spongy sand-and-plant matter that covered the stone so that the barrier could move freely. Kamar doused the torch by rubbing it out against the inside of the barrier, and the five Nalzindar walked cautiously forward.
    Only in the wildest tales exchanged around cookfires at the Gatherings of the tribes had she heard of anything remotely like this place, and those were of the “orchards” and “gardens” kept by the dwellers in the Iteru -cities. Here—impossibly—there was a whole