Tirke flicked a stone over the edge. It fell whitely through the torchlight and then was gone. The listeners waited silently, but no sound came back to record the end of its journey.
Tirke swallowed nervously.
‘Keep your torch alight, dear boy,’ Gavor said to Isloman, hopping to the edge of the drop. Then, before anyone could speak, he had launched himself into the darkness.
There was another long silence until he returned. ‘It’s a long way down, and very wide,’ he said.
‘Did you reach the bottom?’ Tirke asked enthusiasti-cally.
Gavor shook his head. ‘I’m not a bat, dear boy,’ he said with mild irritation. ‘And flying in the dark’s not much fun you know.’
Dar-volci ended the discussion. ‘Come back,’ he said. ‘And turn that torch off.’
As the group retreated from the edge, Isloman did as he was bidden and once again they were plunged temporarily into utter blackness.
Slowly the faint glow and the subtle shadows came back to them. A murmur of questions came with them.
‘Look now,’ Dar-volci said over the growing hubbub. His voice was full of strange excitement.
All eyes turned again to look out into the darkness beyond the cliff edge. But nothing was to be seen. Nothing except more shadows within shadows, perhaps far below, perhaps far away.
‘It is a landscape,’ Isloman said. ‘We’re looking out over a huge area. It’s like being high in Anderras Darion.’
From somewhere in the dark distance came a faint noise that might have been the call of an animal.
‘Where are we, Andawyr?’ Hawklan said, his voice a mixture of curiosity and concern.
‘I don’t know,’ Andawyr replied. ‘But we must move on. It’s not our place.’
‘Some day… ’ said Isloman, before Hawklan could pursue his question.
‘Some day quite possibly, carver,’ Andawyr said. ‘But this day and until we see Him perish, we must keep moving forward.’
He waved his hand for silence; it was a faint white blur in the shimmering darkness.
No one either spoke or moved until eventually An-dawyr said, ‘This way,’ and, striking his torch, moved off again.
The others fell in behind as before, but Hawklan strode alongside Andawyr.
‘What do you mean, it’s not our place?’ he asked. ‘I don’t understand.’
Andawyr cocked his head on one side as if he were still listening to something while he answered. ‘It’s just not our place,’ he said again. ‘It’s… old… very old. From before… ’ He waved his hand again. ‘Ask me no more, healer. I can’t answer you, and it’s… difficult for me here.’
Hawklan laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and stepped back.
‘Dacu,’ he said. ‘All of you. Make sure our route is well marked.’
Encased within the dome of their own torchlight, the group continued on in comparative silence for some time, the main disturbance being Dar-volci, who kept chattering and whistling to himself.
Suddenly Jaldaric, who was carrying the rear torch, cried out in annoyance.
Hawklan turned to see the Fyordyn flailing his free arm as if to beat off some irritating insect.
‘Douse the torches!’ The command was loud, urgent, and unequivocal, and it was Dar-volci who gave it.
It was also effective, and the group found itself im-mediately in darkness yet again. But this time the soft diffuse radiance did not return. Instead they found themselves almost immediately underneath a cloud of vague, fluttering lights.
‘Sphrite!’ cried Dar-volci, his voice a bizarre mixture of surprise and delight mingling with a concern that verged on panic. ‘Don’t touch them!’ he shouted. ‘Get down on the ground. Get down! Right down and stay still. Now!’
‘Do as he says,’ Hawklan shouted, unnecessarily.
As he himself crouched down, someone pushed him off-balance and fell on top of him as he went sprawling. He heard a scuffle nearby and an oath from Andawyr. He was about to push the offender away when he realized that whoever it was, was deliberately protecting him with his own body. Loman’s amused taunt returned to him. ‘You have a bodyguard now,’ together with its unspoken corollary, ‘Whether you like it or not.’
He lay still.
Glancing upwards he saw that the fluttering lights were flying insects of some kind. He could hear the sibilant thrum of countless tiny wings beating as the creatures pursued whatever errand it was they were on.
‘They’re like butterflies,’ Yrain said.
‘Andawyr…?’ Hawklan began.
‘I don’t know,’ replied the Cadwanwr, his voice muf-fled and irritable.
Abruptly there was a grunt of effort nearby, and Hawklan became aware of Dar-volci leaping high in the air, his sinuous body twisting dark against the flickering lights. As he reached his peak there was the resounding snap of his jaws closing on something, and he was chewing audibly and with relish as he thudded back on to the ground.
Hawklan noticed that the shifting cloud scattered and rose a little at Dar-volci’s intervention.
‘Ssphride!’ said the felci, speaking with both satis-faction and his mouth full. Then, more clearly, and still urgently. ‘Keep down. Keep still.’
Twice more he leapt, each time catching something, and each time with the same effect on the hovering insects, then quite suddenly, they were gone. Hawklan looked up to see a hazy cloud of yellow golden light receding into the distance. He displaced his protector and rose into a kneeling position.
Out of the darkness came a loud belch. ‘Oops, sorry!’ Dar-volci said repentantly.
Someone struck a torch.
‘Put it out,’ hissed Dar-volci furiously.
The torch flickered out instantly.
‘I’ll tell you when it’s safe to strike it again, but when you do, keep it very dim,’ Dar-volci went on.
‘Dar, what’s going on?’ Hawklan and Andawyr asked the question simultaneously.
A further, stifled belch and a mumbled apology preceded the felci’s reply. ‘They were sphrite, they were sphrite, they were sphrite,’ he babbled, excitement overriding his alarm. Hawklan could hear him running about and bumping into people.
‘Dar!’ Andawyr shouted ferociously.
Regardless of the felci’s injunction, he clicked his torch into life. ‘Dar!’ Andawyr shouted again. Shadows etched out the lines in his mobile face as he waved his torch about angrily. ‘What in thunder’s name is going on? What were those things?’
‘Put that damn thing out,’ shouted Dar-volci.
‘No!’ Andawyr replied equally loudly, though at the same time he dimmed it.
‘Look, they are like butterflies,’ Yrain said again, cutting across the brewing quarrel. ‘There’s one on the ground here.’
The torchlight revealed her bending forward to-wards a small fluttering red shape on the ground. She had removed her glove and was reaching out gently to touch the insect with an extended finger.
‘No!’ cried Dar-volci.
In almost the time of a single heartbeat, Hawklan saw Yrain’s smile begin to change to a look of horror as the sphrite clambered on to her finger and closed its wings rapturously; saw Dar-volci leap forward and knock away the ecstatic insect with an extended claw; then saw him seize the woman’s wrist in his powerful claws, and close his dreadful teeth around the finger end.
He was spitting the bloody stump out and shouting, ‘Seal the wound, seal the wound!’ before Yrain’s piercing scream reached her lips.
Hawklan snatched the torch from Andawyr and, turning its dim yellow light into a glowing red heat, held it against the spurting finger end. The acrid smell of burning flesh rose up into the cold subterranean air. Yrain’s scream of fear and pain rose past its peak and descended into one of monumental anger.
Quickly handing the torch back to Andawyr, Hawk-lan reached out to put his arm around Yrain’s shoulders but, with a snarl, she brushed him aside, and snatched a knife from her belt. Her eyes turned, gleaming, towards Dar-volci but, recovering his balance, Hawklan seized her wrist and, spinning swiftly on his knees, twisted round, to take her gently but inexorably face down on to the ground.