‘Meaning other parts do?’ Isloman said.
Andawyr shot another dark glance at Dar-volci. ‘Nowhere that we’re going,’ he said. ‘Our most serious problem would appear to be a wilfully provocative rodent.’
Dar-volci chuckled and, with a gleeful whistle, plunged into the stream and disappeared from view.
Later, he returned as the group was preparing to camp. Andawyr gave him a reproving look as he wriggled into the shelter and curled up in front of the radiant stones.
However, the felci spoke before Andawyr could begin any reproach.
‘I think we have an ally in our search for the Vrwys-tin,’ he said, closing his eyes.
Andawyr’s face became serious. ‘No more of your antics, Dar,’ he said. ‘My sense of humour’s not at its best, and none of the rest are happy underground.’
Dar-volci opened his eyes and looked up at An-dawyr. Then he unwound himself languorously and wriggled round the glowing stones until he was at the Cadwanwr’s feet. Andawyr reached down and stroked him.
‘Dar-volci is not joking,’ said a voice.
Involuntarily, everyone in the shelter looked around.
‘Alphraan,’ Hawklan said, part question, part state-ment.
‘Hawklan,’ came the reply.
‘How long have you been with us?’ Hawklan asked.
‘Since you came from the silent place.’
Hawklan’s forehead furrowed. ‘The silent place?’ he echoed.
‘The place of the Cadwanol,’ said the voice, its words filigreed around with subtle meanings full of wonder and awe. ‘We cannot enter there. All is echo. It is a mighty fortress.’
Hawklan nodded. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘We wish to come with you,’ replied the voice. ‘We wish to help and guide you.’ Then an unexpected harshness came into the voice, nerve rending, like a myriad tiny glittering edges. Everyone in the shelter winced. ‘We wish to seek out the Vrwystin a Goleg… ’
Hawklan raised his hands as if to protect himself from an assault, so full of hatred was the sound whose glowing centre was the words ‘Vrwystin a Goleg’. He was not alone. Everyone in the shelter was reacting in distress.
‘Take care, Alphraan,’ Hawklan cried out. ‘You for-get the power of your speech.’
Immediately the shelter was filled with sounds bear-ing the images of regret and remorse.
Hawklan smiled and shook his head. ‘Alphraan, quiet yourselves, and remember the… crude simplicity… of our speech and our hearing.’
‘We are sorry,’ said the voice with an obvious effort. ‘But the Vrwystin is an ancient and dreadful foe whose waking is an abomination. You will need our help both to find and to slay it.’
Hawklan looked at Andawyr, who nodded.
‘Come with us then, sound weavers,’ Hawklan an-swered. ‘We welcome your help.’
Tiny dancing sounds of excitement and happiness rang round the shelter. As they faded, Hawklan said, ‘But do your… ways… come so far north? Soon we’ll be into regions uncharted and unknown to both men and felci.’
The sounds returned, full of laughter, and with faint hints of some far distant age, long gone. ‘It’s true that not all the ways are easy, Hawklan,’ the voice said. ‘But they are everywhere, everywhere.’
Hawklan opened his mouth to ask another question, but Andawyr laid a hand on his arm. ‘Leave it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Even if they could explain, I doubt we’d understand. Just accept their help and be grateful.’
‘Gratitude is not necessary, Cadwanwr,’ the voice said. ‘Nothing we can do would repay what Hawklan and the Orthlundyn have done for us… ’ The voice trailed off into sounds which told of their Heartplace and of the renewal and rejoining that was there. And light and the Great Song…
Hawklan looked at Andawyr and raised his eye-brows in amused resignation. ‘Good night, Alphraan,’ he said. ‘We must rest now.’
‘Good rest, all of you,’ the voice said.
Hawklan slept well through what his body told him was the night, though once he woke, disturbed by something. He glanced around the shelter, lit by the subdued light of the radiant stones. Nothing was untoward, but Dar-volci was gone. He closed his eyes again; he felt no sense of menace, and the felci came and went as he pleased. As he felt sleep closing over him again, he heard the sound of ringing laughter far in the distance; laughter and song? and the fluting whistling of felcis?
The journey continued uneventfully for several days through the endlessly varying and complex cave system. They found themselves fording swollen streams; scrabbling over tumbled heaps of rock such as might be found strewn across a mountain face; walking through echoing caves that were like great columned halls where massive stalactites and stalagmites had met and fused; wandering, more unhappily, through spaces which, for the taller, were less than head height but whose walls were beyond the reach of their brightest torchlight.
On one occasion they were held silent and spell-bound by a chamber that was filled with billowing outcrops of white rock poised like a great frozen ocean.
‘Douse the torches,’ Isloman said suddenly. With some reluctance this was done after a little further urging, and for a few moments the group stood motionless in the total blackness. Then, as eyes adjusted, the huge wave formations began to appear again, now not only white, but shot through with many colours, and shining as if from intensely bright light buried deep below. They were hauntingly beautiful. ‘One day… ’ Isloman was heard to mutter softly again before he struck one of the torches.
Several times they heard great torrents of water nearby but though they came across many streams, they found no rivers. They did however, come upon a massive waterfall, tumbling from some unseeable height above into some unfathomable depth below.
All the larger chambers that they passed through provided them with several exits, and in the narrower tunnels they encountered innumerable side tunnels and elaborate junctions and branches. Dacu supervised the marking of these and the recording of them in the journals.
His concern amused Andawyr who twitted him gently about it.
‘There’s no point coming back this way,’ he said. ‘Believe me, no one is going to answer a knocking at that door.’
‘They’ll open it for you, and you’ll be with us,’ Dacu replied, giving him a ferocious scowl and striking a bold mark defiantly on a nearby rock. Andawyr laughed.
Eventually however, his sure choice of route began to falter until finally he stopped and shook his head.
‘From here it’s only my rock sense that’s going to guide us,’ he said. ‘And Dar-volci’s.’
‘And ours,’ said the Alphraan.
‘And yours,’ Andawyr confirmed. He grinned at Dacu. ‘Make sure the marking and the journals are kept well, Goraidin. We’ll need this route well recorded when we get back,’ he said.
Dacu gave him a look of theatrical disdain.
That night, however, the atmosphere in the shelter was subdued, though, ironically, the sense of the awesome weight of the great mountains looming above them was less inside the close confines of the shelter than outside.
‘We could wander about down here forever,’ Tybek said eventually. His tone was unemotional, but he voiced the fear lurking in all of them.
Andawyr looked at him. ‘We walk towards danger whatever path we take,’ he said gently. ‘You know that. It’s been so since we decided on this errand.’ He leaned forward. ‘But understand this, all of you. Whatever fate is waiting for us, it will not be a lonely dying of starva-tion down here. Aside from the Alphraan and Dar here, I’m a Cadwanwr; born to dwell under mountains as easily as above them. I came out of Narsindal, walking exhausted through the endless unlit darkness, through ways I could not possibly know, and afraid to use the Old Power which should have sustained me. And I came through whole. So will you all. We’ve good lights, and supplies to take us well into Narsindal, and if need arises we’ve many other resources between us.’
‘There’s fish,’ Dar-volci interposed, helpfully.