The Emerald Flame by Frewin Jones Read Free Book Online

Griffith—do you know me?” But the frozen air blasted her words back into her throat, and there was no reply from within.
    Taking one last glance at the living and breathing world of light and warmth, Branwen stepped into the gloom.
    Her eyes gradually adjusted to the dimness, andshe found herself in a long tunnel. Brittle things snapped and cracked under her feet. Dry twigs? Bracken? She paused, staring down at the uneven ground. The tunnel floor was strewn with bones. She shivered. Mostly animal bones, she guessed, by the size of them. There was also a scattering of skulls: some no bigger than her thumb—rodent skulls with pointed teeth—and others huge and strangely noble even in such a setting—the tan-brown skulls of deer and boar and wolves.
    But there were human bones, too. An arm bone had fractured under one of her feet, the groping hand still attached to it by stretched and dried sinews. Close by she saw the broken lattice of a human rib cage. A half-crushed human skull, its jaw grotesquely askew, gaped at her with empty eye sockets.
    Terror took Branwen in its grip and she drew back, pressing herself against the cold stone wall. In the hateful darkness she could hear the blood pounding in her ears; she could feel her thumping heart bruising against the cage of her chest. Her legs were weak under her. She wanted to be sick, wanted to double up and crawl away on hands and knees, like some wounded animal.
    She will kill me. How could I have thought otherwise? Oh, my poor dead father! How did it come to this? Geraint—I’m coming; I’ll be with you soon. Mother—I’m so sorry…. I did my best…. I’m such a fool. Rhodri, dearest friend … and Iwan … oh, Iwan … I wish …
oh, I wish there had been the time to know you better….
    A strange sound echoed along the tunnel. A raw, harsh, scraping sound like stones grinding one against another. But it was more than that; it sounded almost as though the ancient stones were laughing. Yes! It was clearer now; within that dreadful sound Branwen could hear the joyless laughter of the closed throat and of the cavernous stomach.
    But appalling as the inhuman laugher was, at least it shook Branwen out of her despair.
    “I am sent by Govannon of the Wood,” she shouted. “What do you want of me?”
    The horrible laughter gurgled again, setting her teeth on edge, tearing at the inner walls of her skull. And then there was a groan—a deep, reverberating, desolate sound that all but stopped her heart.
    “Speak to me!” Branwen shouted.
    To me! To me! To me!
came the echo of her voice.
    “I will not go away!”
    Go away! Go away! Go away!
    “No! I will see you!”
    See you! See you! See you!
    Branwen walked forward over the grisly remains, trying not to notice the bones breaking under her step. A deeper darkness formed in the distance—the exit from the tunnel, a hole into nothingness.
    As she drew closer, she felt an uncomfortable tingling in her fingers, as though her jangled nerves were warning her of peril.
    She stepped into the darkness, horribly aware of alurking presence that watched her and waited for her.
    “What do you want of me?” she asked, her voice frail and weak in her own ears.
    She heard a sharp sound: stone clicking against stone. A feeble light ignited at the far end of the cavern. Branwen narrowed her eyes, and she saw it was the flame of a yellow candle set on the skull of some large animal. Behind it Branwen could make out a humped shape, like a black boulder, against the cavern wall. But it was not a boulder; the shape exuded malice and sleepless vigilance. Branwen fancied she saw eyes—points of flickering yellowish light—staring out from near the top of the shape.
    The cavern walls were daubed with crude black images, ugly shapes that might have been dredged from some horrible nightmare—not human, not animal, and yet somehow alive and aware and dreadful. And there were forms on the ground, brought to life as the candle flame