She gazed further into the torch-lit, glowing depths and saw a dozen men sitting before a wall of the cave. The thing before her precariously raised a long, spiraled, goat horn ear trumpet to the nob on the side of its head. Suitably equipped for conversation, it pointed an arthritic finger toward the men and spoke in a strangely heightened voice.
“There sit prisoners unchained save by their ignorance. See how they stare giddily at the wall, entranced by shadows? They came as looters, yet they stay by their own free will. Do you, Aragranessa, do better? Do you know when the unreal is real, and the real is but a shadow? … And what of your stewards?”
Stewards? Cadence physically jumped. The drums in her mind thumped in rapid beats. She read on:
Ara replied, “Of stewards I have none, for I carry myself and all that I need. What the mists of things-to-be may bring, I know not. Such is beyond the vision of our kind.” She gazed at the “looters,” ragged and long-bearded, and saw that much of the light etching the shadows came from a side chamber. From there also protruded a scaled tail. The very breath of some long-sleeping, lesser dragon was the source of the light that shackled these men to a false world. So would they all stay. Men tethered by bonds as solid as clanking iron yet tenuous as untested superstition.
The unbeheld dragon did what unbeheld dragons do best, furnishing unto men false shadows and the spell of its glow until, at some moment, in some tale long hence, it would inexorably awake and visit itself upon the world.
She turned to the figure before her, and their discourse, if such it was, has been lost from this chronicle, save the now-famous wisdom he imparted to her. “Of all beliefs, a vow is the most precious, because it is the giver who must believe.”
Aside from the path down which she fled to arrive in this cavern, there was only one way out. The opening which pulsed with the glow that fed the fantastical shadows. As she watched, they expanded and contracted like inky, vaulting phantoms. She left the misshapen creature, ear trumpet still poised, and walked toward the glow. She passed by the prisoners, saw in their glittering eyes and cracked smiles the way of self-delusion and false paths. She hurried ahead, toward the slowly pulsing light of the worm’s breathing. An undercurrent smell of something nasty and revolting hung in the air.
In a moment, she stood next to the entrance to a side tunnel, its sides worn smooth by the passage of immense, granite-hard coils. The sounds of picks and hammers and creaky wood wheels and gears came from here. The smell was worse.
She paused, Hafoc still on her arm, then braved a step over the protruding trail to look inside.
It was impossible to comprehend all that she saw, so intense and varied was the activity. Nonetheless, its elements were clear. The dragon was wound on itself. Coil upon coil, edged back into the formless darkness. It lay still, except along one of its sides there opened and closed a vent of scales and flesh. From this came light and heat, timed to the cycle of beats of its many hearts. What astounded her was all the activity, oblivious to the danger. Scores of dwarves toiled on and around the worm. They had erected scaffolds, and metal gear wheels, and a massive maul, designed after the engine of a catapult. It pounded the rock with shuddering impact. They were mining at the very foot of the beast, reckless to their peril. The rock they mined was festooned with glistening treasure.
It was not rock such as men knew. The worm had vomited up a foul cement to protect its treasury during its long slumber. Hundreds of dwarves were working the stinking debris with picks and hammers. Jewels and gold, weapons and coins and silver crowns were in piles next to their work.
She thought them as foolish as the prisoners. They would doubtless delve here till they awoke the dragon.
Hafoc fluttered from her arm and sailed in slow wing sweeps into the darkness of the main tunnel ahead. She ran after him, oblivious to peril or time or direction.
A day or days later, Ara emerged from the cave on the south face of Everdivide. She was ravenous. She recovered in a dell of warm sunshine that preserved on the bushes a few berries. Fearful of time, she soon was on a pathway beneath golden-leafed aspens. In those groves the leaves fell lazily, like a gentle, season-changing rain of endless yellow drops. The air was full of flashes of color as the leaves floated like butterflies through the dappled sunlight. The carpeted trail welcomed them. Her feet made a swoosh-swoosh sound to mix with her laughter.
Her thirst grew in this glen, and she came upon a freshet splashing over rocks into a pool. It was smooth and reflected the light and color about her. She bent to drink, watching the water sport bright fans of red and gold.
And she saw in its depths a wonder: a young woman’s face peering back at her in amazement.
“That’s it! That’s me!” Cadence shouted, causing the other passengers to jump up and the bus driver to pump his brakes and regard her sternly in the mirror. Cadence knew that was Ara looking right at her in the pool. Cadence liked Ara, more and more. She felt a courage she could admire. She was confident she could stay to a path and detect a wolf-like presence, man or beast, as well as her halfling counterpart. She felt, finally, that she had embarked on her own journey. It would lead somewhere.
Her stop was coming up.
Chapter 25
OCTOBER 26. 3:44 P.M
The more Barren thought about it, his training days at Riker’s Island had been invaluable. He moved quickly to complete mastery of the guise and mien of residents of this clamorous village. It was all in preparation. He told himself he would, as always, complete his duty without hesitation or mercy.
His base skill set — stealth, lying, assassination — was fully intact. Long practice in the arts of concealment in the service of evil had honed these talents to the acute focus of an exquisitely sharpened blade. And yet, just yesterday, he had stayed his hand. Never before had he done such a thing. He knew that such weakness, once indulged, could infect its host with corrosive sentiment. So while he reprieved Cadence’s life for a few days, it was but a temporary stay.
He stood drab and unnoticed in a knit pullover cap, once again outside the West Forty-Fourth Street entrance to the Algonquin.
Cadence emerged, a plastic shopping bag in hand. Following a mere step behind her, he naturally assessed the quick kill he might execute without a break in his stride. But that was not the instruction for this errand. No.
Bind her, trembling and quick-lipped, to the place of your choosing. There answers may be taken as to the hiding place of these writings.
Cadence, all but oblivious to his presence, rubbed the annoying tingle at the nape of her neck. She walked for another block, finally reaching Fifth Avenue. She bounded up the steps to the New York Public Library.
Barren followed, almost at her side, just another patron impatient to enter. He passed the stone lions, bemused by their inert and ineffectual presence. They were hardly the watchful gateway sentinels of the Valley of Shadows.
As he watched her, she checked at the information desk and then struck out, maneuvering hallways and perusing door numbers.
Cadence scanned the door numbers. There it was. 229. The office of the library’s paleographer. As long as she was subjecting herself to Les Inspecteurs, she was going to get more opinions. She knocked politely, heard a voice invite her in, and turned the door handle.
As she entered, a man in his late twenties, tall, lean, and wearing horn-rimmed reading glasses, got up from a desk and came to shake her hand. “Ms. Grande? Bossier Thornton.”