"Want to come on patrol with me?" she asked, in a non-commital sort of way.
It was about the last thing on Will's mind at that time of night, but he was intrigued because he had seen so very little of her and thrilled that she had offered. Drake spoke of her skills with such respect, telling them she had achieved a level of skills of "field craft," as he called it, that Will and Chester would have to work very hard to attain.
"Yeah… great," he gushed. "What gear do I need?"
"Nothing much — I travel light," she said. "Hurry up, then!" she urged, since Will showed no sign of moving.
He returned to the room, where Cal hardly seemed to notice him as he continued with his exercises, and got dressed in a mad flurry. A minute later, he went back to Elliott in the corridor. She offered him one of the pads of cylinders that Drake always carried with him.
"Are you sure?" Will hesitated, recalling the incident at the Place of Cross Staves.
"Drake seems to think you'll be sticking around, so you're going to have to learn how to use them sooner or later," she said. "And you never know, we just might bump into some Limiters."
"To tell you the truth, I don't even know what these things are," he admitted, attaching the pad to his belt, then looping and knotting the stay around his thigh.
"They're stove guns. Bit more basic than this," she said, lifting up the long rifle. "And you should try this out, too." She handed him something else.
It was a device consisting of a larger and a smaller tube alongside each other, the two looking as though they had been melted together so that the join between them was barely detectable. The whole device was made from a rubbed, dull brass, its surface covered in tiny scratches and dents, and it was about a foot and a half long, with caps on either end of the larger of the two cylinders.
"It's a scope, isn't it?" Will said, glancing at her rifle, which had an identical device mounted on top of the barrel. The only difference was that his version had two short straps attached to it.
She nodded. "Put your arm through the loops… makes it easier to carry. OK then, let's go." She turned to face the exit and, in the blink of an eye, had swept into the shadows at the end of the corridor.
Will went after her, shinnying down the rope to find he was submerged in total darkness as he reached the bottom. He listened by could hear nothing. Unclipping his lantern, he turned it up a notch.
He was startled when the light fell on Elliott — she was several feet away, standing still as a statue.
"Unless I say so, that's the last time you use an orb on my patrol." She indicated the scope on his arm. "Use the scope, but just remember to shield it from bright light, as it'll frazzle the element inside. Also, be gentle with it — they're rarer than slugs' teeth," she said.
He extinguished his lantern and unhooked the device from his forearm. Flicking up the metal caps at either end, he held it up to his eye, looking around him.
"Wicked!" he exclaimed.
It was amazing. As if illuminated by a pulsing, slightly diffuse amber glow, the scope cut through the pitch-blackness. He could see the tiniest detail of the rock wall across from him, and when he pointed it down the length of the tunnel he could see way into the distance. There was an eerie glow to the floor and walls, making them appear as if they were shiny and wet, even though everything in the immediate area was bone-dry.
"This is so cool. It's like… like everything's in a weird daylight. Where'd you get these?"
"The Styx snatched someone from Topsoil who could make them. But he escaped and came down here to the Deeps. He brought a whole load of the scopes with him."
"Oh, right," Will said. "And what powers it? Batteries?"
"I've no idea what batteries are," she said, pronouncing the word as if it were foreign. "In each scope there's a small light orb that's been joined to some other things. That's all I know."
Will swiveled slowly on his heels, peering through the contraption toward the other end of the lava tunnel. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of Elliott's face.
In the ethereal amber glow, her skin was smooth and radiant, as if bathed in the softest sunlight. She appeared beautiful and so very young, her pupils shimmering like twin points of intensely sparkling fire. Even more striking was the fact that she was smiling, which he'd never seen her do before. Smiling at him. It filled him with a kind of warmth — a sensation that was new and unfamiliar. He involuntarily took a sharp breath, then, hoping she hadn't heard, managed to control his breathing again. He continued to move the scope in an arc toward the other end of the tunnel, as if he was getting used to the device, but his thoughts were a million miles away.
"Right," she said gently, coiling the shemagh around her head. "Follow me, partner."
They trekked along the lava tube, pausing briefly in the golden cavern to protect their gear in a small waterproof satchel Elliott was carrying before they swam through the sump. Once on the other side, they stopped again to get themselves organized.
"Can I give you a piece of advice?" she asked as he was tying the pad of stove guns back onto his thigh.
"Sure. What?" he replied, not knowing what was coming next.
"It's the way you move. When you tread, you're like the others — even Drake. Try to use the ball of your foot… stay up on your toes longer, before you lower onto your heel. Watch me through the scope."
He did as she told him, observing how she took each step, moving like a cat sneaking up on its prey. Through the scope, her pants and boots, drenched from the water of the sump, glimmered with a shifting green of pale yellow light.
"It cuts down on the noise and even the tracks you leave, a little."
Will watched her legs as she demonstrated, marveling at what seemed to be second nature to her.
"And you'll need to learn about foraging," she said suddenly, noticing something on the rock wall beside her. "There's plenty of food around if you know where to look. Like this, a cave oyster."
She went over to what he thought was merely a piece of rock jutting from the wall. With the blade of her knife, she began to pry around it. Then she resheathed the knife and put on a pair of gloves.
"The edges are sharp," she explained, tucking her fingers into the gap she had made. Bracing herself, she pulled with both hands and, with a slow sucking noise, the rock gradually came away from the wall. With a final sound like an egg being cracked open, it suddenly came free and she staggered back a couple of paces.
"There!" she said triumphantly and held it up so he could see. It was roughly the size of half a football, and as she flipped it over, Will recoiled. The underside was leathery and pulpy, with a band of small filaments rippling at its circumference. It was an animal of some kind.
"What the heck is it?" he said. "A giant limpet or something?"
"I told you — it's a cave oyster. They feed on the cinder algae around water holes. It tastes disgusting raw, but it's OK boiled." As she poked her thumb into the middle of the pulpy mass, it heaved and the animal began to extend a large, fleshy trunk, like the foot of a snail but many times bigger. Elliott stooped to carefully prop the animal upside down on its shell between two stones. "Should keep it from straying until we get back."
Their journey across the Great Plain was uneventful, although they were forced to cross several canals using the narrow lock gates as bridges. Will worked hard to keep up with Elliott, who moved at an astonishing speed. He practiced treading as she'd shown him, but it wasn't long before his insteps began to ache so badly he had to give up.