Seven Into the Bleak Read Free Page A

band.
    "Gone? Or dead?" he demanded.
    I looked into his eyes. "Just gone, Karn."
    No more was said and we ate a cold meal before sleeping in shifts, as if it were our first night in this hell.
     
    . . .
     
    We five continued on, poorer for having lost our companions and lovers and friends. Deeper we pushed, seeing mysteries and wonders that the good folk on the surface never dreamed existed. Pulsing orange rivers of molten rock and diamond-studded cliffs became commonplace. We encountered creatures so strange that they made the fiends of the upper Bleak seem normal. And the horror that came with fighting them became accepted, as well. We survived, but mere existence is not life.
    A new danger threatened us, though this challenge was from within. With time, I had hoped we would regain our cohesion as a group, but the Bleak seemed to invade each of our souls, driving wedges between us. Each of the small flaws that had been laughable in a tavern a year before now became insurmountable differences.
    A simple choice of paths made this clear. For once, we had come across a split in the linked caverns and corridors: one crooked path going up in a gentle rise, the other plummeting steeply down. With something like euphoria, we chose the first, snatching at any possibility that we had found the beginning of our way to the surface. We had nearly gone out of sight of the fork when Galdur turned around.
    "Harlan?" the old man called. We stopped and looked back. Harlan, his thumbs hooked in his sword belt, was looking into the hole where it disappeared into the pitch black of the Bleak. "Catch up, boy. You'll be lost."
    The knight-errant swayed in place, but continued to stare down into the darkness. I hurried back, my mind still racing at the thought that we might have found our path to the surface. To home.
    As I reached his side, I scowled suspiciously down into the blackness, afraid he had seen some new demon ready to trail us to our deaths. When I saw nothing, I turned my scowl on Harlan. "What is the matter, squire?"
    He didn't answer. I felt a tingle along my spine and took a step back, putting a hand to my dagger. Death had worn many faces in the Bleak and I had lived this long through nothing but luck and suspicion. If Harlan's mind had been taken by something none of us had noticed, I was not going to be the next victim.
    But the knight to-be simply shook himself and looked at me. His gaunt face had an earnest expression and his eyes were bright. "Tamik. This is the path for me."
    "What are you talking about, boy?" Galdur said, as the others reached us.
    Still speaking to me, Harlan continued. "My fate, Tamik. It's not merely to crawl out of the darkness to the world above. I was sent--commanded--to battle the evil that afflicts the Bleak."
    "We've been battling it, Harlan," Filki said.
    "No, Filki," he said, turning to the elf. "We've been surviving. Holding on. This is not the same thing as fighting. Evil has won because we've been complacent, allowing it to hound us. It is time to face the evil and denounce it."
    "You're mad," Karn said with a grunt.
    "No, Karn. I'm seeing things aright for the first time," Harlan said, his voice almost ringing. "Join me, friends. Let us triumph over this evil place by attacking it, for once, instead of allowing it to decide the time and place of our demise."
    I have to admit, some sliver of the knight-errant's madness infected me. I am a thief and a liar, a skulker and an assassin. But I had grown tired of being hunted, of dying by pieces. What it would feel like, I wondered for a brief moment, to charge headlong into the Bleak and demand satisfaction? To either face my end bravely or taste victory against the bastard creations of the deep?
    But the answer, of course, was...against whom would we battle? What single fight could we possibly have that would cripple the evils that had haunted us? None. There was no more "vanquishing" the Bleak than there was pulling down the sky or drinking all