“Why not just conjure it here?” Darius asked.
“Because the site would collapse into the hole left by its vacancy,” Angus said. “That would not be expedient excavation.”
“What does a collapse matter?” Darius asked, perplexed.
Colene interceded. “It matters,” she said. “I was on a dig once—it was only a one-afternoon class, sort of, but I learned some things. They don’t want to disturb anything until they survey it in, or it messes up the tally. They can learn things from the context, like what’s above and below it. But if things get hopelessly jumbled, that’s no good.”
“The one from the science world,” Angus said approvingly.
“Very welclass="underline" no disturbance,” Darius said, still not quite understanding the importance, but pleased that Colene had made an impression. “Where is this place?”
“Follow me,” Angus said, floating toward the door.
“Wait!” Darius cried. “Only Nona can fly. The rest of us have to conjure.”
“Then come here,” the giant said, holding out his hand.
Darius looked at Provos. She was already nodding, anticipating his query in the way she had. It was safe.
He conjured them in turn to the waiting hand, stepping each icon there: Provos, Colene, Seqiro, and himself. He might have done them as a group, but he remained in doubt just how safe that was, and there was no need at the moment. Nona floated independently, ready to follow.
Angus closed his hand gently about them. They each stood the height of one of his fingers: Darius matched the middle one, Provos the index, and Colene the little. Nona would have matched the next smallest finger. The horse’s head was higher than any, but that didn’t count: Seqiro had the giant’s other hand to himself, being too big to share the first one.
Angus floated out and up, with Nona trailing. They flew over the tremendous trees. “Like an airplane,” Colene breathed, unafraid. Provos also seemed to be enjoying the experience, remembering its safe conclusion. Seqiro could tell from the giant’s mind that no harm was intended. That left only Darius nervous, though he tried to conceal it. The travel along the filaments had been like icon conjuring, under his shared control, but this was different. If he should fall—
He felt a hand take his. Colene, offering comfort. As she had when they had first met, in her reality.
His love for her manifested explosively. She was young, and often hard to adjust to, but she was the one. Once they made it back to his reality she would not be his wife, but she would be his love. What a blessing that would be!
He felt her love returning. They were connected, by Seqiro’s ability, and she had received his feeling. That was all they needed.
Angus descended. The flight was ending, and Darius had entirely lost track of it.
They settled by an overgrown hillside. The mountain was honeycombed with caves, many far too small for Angus. It was becoming clearer why excavation was no easy matter; the giant would have to remove everything from the front of a cave to get at the back of it. But they, being so much smaller, could enter and go directly to the spot they wanted.
“I used an insect as a familiar and verified that there were small-world artifacts within this cave,” Angus said, setting them down before it. “I believe they are from your world, Oria as you call it. But I had no immediate need to excavate here, so left it undisturbed.”
Colene assessed the situation. “We’ll have to shore it up where we dig or take anything,” she said. “So it won’t fill in. We’ll need planks or something.”
“That did not occur to me,” Angus said, surprised.
“That is because your magic is not science,” Colene said smugly.
“I can make planks,” Nona said.
Colene peered into the cave. It was originally larger, but the base had been filled in by refuse so that only the top of it remained open. A man could walk inside if he stooped. “We can’t all go in there,” she said. “We’d just make a traffic jam.”
“A what?” Nona asked.
Colene made an image of metal boxlike objects with wheels at their bases lined up on a road, just sitting there. This evidently made no sense to Nona, but Darius was able to fathom it, having seen such vehicles in Colene’s reality. It seemed that at times there were too many of them for the road to hold. “We would get in each other’s way,” he explained.
“Then I will go in alone to fetch the instrument,” Nona said.
“No.” It was Provos. She indicated Darius.
“I’m to go with her?” he asked, but was receiving the affirmative before he finished speaking.
Darius looked at Colene. “The rest of us will stay out here and talk with Angus,” Colene said.
So it was decided. “Light,” Darius said, not liking the darkness in the depth of the cave. He had saved some of Colene’s matches, which were little science-sticks for making fire, but Nona made light simply by fashioning an illusion of a lamp.
Darius thought about that as they moved in. An illusion which cast real light. Wasn’t it then a real lamp? The point of a lamp was to make light; it didn’t have to be physical.
The cave wound into the mountain. He had not realized that it would be so deep. He discovered that he did not really like such confinement; he knew that the rock above was unlikely to collapse right at this moment, after being firm for perhaps thousands of years, but somehow he feared it might. He hoped to get the job done and go back out as soon as possible.
Something scuttled ahead. The light moved to illuminate it. It was a roach—half again as long as his foot. Darius was disgusted, and actually a bit afraid of it. It wasn’t that he thought it could hurt him, but that he didn’t want it to touch him. How could he get rid of it without contact?
“Can you make an image of a roach-eating creature?” he asked Nona.
“I can—but I don’t think they use eyes as we do,” she said. “It might not work.”
Nevertheless, a bird appeared, peering around as if searching out bugs. The bird hopped toward the roach, and its feet made a scotching noise as they touched the floor.
The roach spun about and scooted away.
Maybe it heard better than it saw, Darius thought. But he hadn’t realized that her illusions covered sound as well as sight. Queen Glomerula’s picture of Colene and Knave Naylor had been soundless.
“Oh, yes,” Nona said. “Sight, sound, and smell. But touch is harder to do, and it is more versatile when direct, instead of through a familiar.”
That helped explain it. The queen had had to use a spider or insect as a familiar.
They went on. The passage broadened into a larger cavern, with stalactites directly over their path. Darius didn’t like that either; they were too massive, too pointed, too close. Surely they would not fall—yet if one did, it would be devastating. They cast gross moving shadows across the cavern and each other.
The two of them came to the end of the chamber, and that was it: the end. There was no way out except the way they had entered.
The lamp brightened, illuminating the whole chamber. The floor was a mass of rubble and dirt and animal droppings. If the nether portion of the cavern had expanded as much as the upper section, the rubbish was several feet deep. How were they to find anything useful in that, without disturbing it and spoiling the giant’s archaeology?
“Look,” Nona said, pointing. “A psaltry!”
“A what?” But her meaning was coming through; he must have pulled the name out of a forgotten recess of his mind. A primitive type of harp.