Iced On Aran by Brian Lumley

for that. No time for caring or for anything else now, for events were rapidly drawing to a close.
    Eldin stepped quickly to where Hero crouched sobbing and stabbing at the sliding rim of the quaking hole in the floor. “Lad?—David?—we have to get out of here, now! Can you walk?”
    Hero didn’t answer, seemed not to have heard. Up and down went his knife; the blade broke where it struck rock at the edge of the hole, and still Hero’s arm pumped like some mad mechanical thing. But what was he stabbing at? The spider-thing was gone now.
    As the cave shuddered yet again, Eldin thrust his torch down into the hole and waved it about. It seemed to him that monstrous shapes, distorted faces and figures, drew back down there. Shadows, most likely. But he couldn’t be sure.
    â€œLad?” he said again. And getting no response, he simply kicked the broken knife from Hero’s spastic hand. It made no difference: still the younger quester’s empty, clenched fist pumped, still he sobbed and raved. Eldin cuffed him hugely on the side of the head, grabbed him in one hand as he crumpled, then half-dragged,
half-carried him out of that hellish place and along the exit tunnel to dreary daylight.
    Behind them as they emerged, the tunnel went down in a fall of rock, venting pressured dust thick as smoke as that entire section of the quarry face crashed vertically down in massive blocks, filling in the main area of subsidence …
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    Hero came to when he was dumped jarringly on his rump at the top of the ramp. Down below a seething mist lay on the floor of the quarry, with nowhere a sign of what had passed there. Up here, where a pale sun was striving to break through rising vapors, the whole thing might have been a dream within dreams—except that Hero knew it had been real. His chafed wrists and ankles were ample proof of that. Eldin sat close by, panting like a bellows, his wary eyes on the younger man.
    At first there was a glazed look to Hero’s eyes, but this gradually disappeared as a very little of his color returned. Then he gave a start, sat up straighter, gazed all about. “Inquanok!” he gasped, as if suddenly realizing where he was—and as if the very word tasted bad in his mouth.
    Exhausted one minute, he seemed galvanized the next. He shot to his feet, set off at a fast if wobbly pace eastward. They’d hidden their tiny sky-yacht in a copse of evergreens on Inquanok’s very border when they first arrived here. Since their invitation to Inquanok had been other than strictly official, that had seemed prudent. Now Hero was obviously in a hurry to get airborne again and out of here. Which would suit Eldin well enough, except:
    â€œWhat of the quest?” he asked, hastening to catch up.
    â€œIt’s over,” said Hero, his eyes scanning ahead.
    â€œOver?” Eldin’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean … in that cave back there … Augeren?”
    Breath burst from Hero’s lips in a hiss. He turned swiftly, his eyes burning, and bunched up Eldin’s jacket front in a tight knot in his two fists. “Don’t!” he warned, shaking his head jerkily. “Just … don’t.” Then he turned away, hurried on.
    Eldin stayed a little to the rear after that. “You don’t intend to report your … findings to those Inquaknackers who asked us here?” he carefully inquired after a little while.
    â€œKuranes can do that,” Hero grated, “after we report to him. As for questing, to hell with it!”
    â€œThis is your last?”
    â€œIt is,” Hero nodded, “while I’ve still got my sanity. If I’ve still got it.”
    Eldin came up alongside but a little apart. “I expect you’ll tell me about it,” he said; and immediately followed up with: “—in your own time, of course.”
    Hero looked at him and some of the harder lines fell from his wan face.