Cautioning the girl and the kender to follow him as silently as they could, he slipped off the path and headed south.
Piper’s gusty sigh of relief made Lavim’s ears pop.
Horror crawled all over Stanach with clammy, plucking fingers. Trapped in the one-eyed derro’s magic, he wasn’t breathing well, nor was he thinking well. Like the echoes of dreams, he heard voices, thin and distorted.
No clear blue sky stretched above him now, only a rough, low ceiling of stone, smelling like mud and the river. Stones dug into his shoulders and back as he lay on a rocky floor. Though his hands were not bound, he could not move.
No, he thought, it wasn’t that he couldn’t move. He hadn’t the strength to move, or he didn’t want to move. Like thick, wet fog, lassitude seemed to have seeped into his muscles, his very bones.
Light, soft and fading toward gloaming, shimmered around the edges of the cave’s mouth. Stanach didn’t remember coining here. He had no memory of anything beyond the cold glitter in the Herald’s one black eye, the sudden, wrenching sickness that accompanied a transport spell, and a long, sickening slide into sleep.
And the distant voices.
They wanted Stormblade.
A dwarf, thin and holding an arm stiffly at his side, moved into Stanach’s field of vision, cutting the soft light with shadow. Wulfen they were calling him. Stanach knew him as one of the Theiwar whose blood he’d wiped from his sword in the grass on the side of the road to Long Ridge.
A cold lump of fear lay heavily in Stanach’s belly. He saw hunger for revenge in Wulfen’s eyes and heard it in his low, vulpine laughter. Stanach was no mage, as Piper had been. He had nothing arcane with which to defend himself. He had only his ragged strength and the hope that his companions would not try to rescue him.
Tyorl, he thought, get the Kingsword out of here! Find your rangers and get it to Thorbardin!
But would he? Or had he finally counted his friend Hauk as dead?
Aye, maybe. But Kelida hadn’t. Stanach had made sure of that. He’d given her a brave ranger to love, and she didn’t know that the ranger was dead. Stormblade would come to Thorbardin and Kelida would carry it there. The elf would go where she went.
Stanach stared hard at the roof of the river cave. He would not lose Hornfel’s Kingsword again. He’d do what he had to do, as Kyan Red-axe had, as Piper had.
Wulfen rumbled low in his throat. Stanach told himself that he was no longer a swordcrafter. He was a merchant, one who was in the business of buying time.
The cache was empty. Tyorl and Hauk had helped store the quivers of arrows, the swords, and daggers the night before they’d set out for Long Ridge. By the signs, Finn had been here only recently to gather supplies. Tyorl wished again that he knew where the rangers were. An empty cache place meant they’d had a need for the weapons. They were fighting somewhere and he’d seen no sign that any battle had taken place nearby. Damn! he thought. I need them and they’d likely appreciate my bow. Where in the name of the gods are they?
Tyorl smiled wryly. Likely Finn knew about the dragon-army supply bases by now anyway; likely the dragonarmy knew about Finn and his Nightmare Company by now, too.
The cave wasn’t high enough for Tyorl to stand comfortably and only deep enough for him and Lavim to enter. Kelida stood watch. Tyorl listened for her footstep scuffing on stone, caught a glimpse of gold-shot red braids, and turned to Lavim.
“There’s no way back to the river from here,” he said irritably. The kender nodded vigorously, his long white braid bobbing on his neck. “There is, Tyorl. It’s, urn, just behind the back wall.”
“Lavim, there’s nothing behind that wall but dirt and stone.”
Tyorl ran a hand over the rock, his thumb over the cracks forced there by the thick roots of the pines that lived on the cobble above. The place smelled of rich, dark earth and stone. Tyorl missed the warm fall of the setting sun’s light. Caves were fine for secreting stores of weapons, but they were too dark and heavy with the weight of the earth for the elf’s taste.
Lavim squeezed past Tyorl and dropped to his heels before the widest of the fissures. He shoved his right hand into the crack and curled his fingers around the stone as one would around the edge of a door. He smiled up at the elf, green eyes gleaming.
“There’s air moving back there, Tyorl.”
Lavim ran his left hand along the wall at arm’s length and shoulder height and followed the thin crack he saw there down to the floor. He peered up at the ceiling, squinting mightily, and saw a narrow fissure there as well. His smile became a grin as he eyed the distance between his outstretched arms. “We could fit through here easily.”
“Aye,” Tyorl drawled, “if we could walk through stone.”
“No, we don’t have to do that. There’s …” Lavim cocked his head as though listening for something, then nodded. “I think I hear echoes. Kind of like water—the river—and if we can get this stone to move, we can get right to the water. The cave back there runs … uh, the river smell means it heads straight and straight is east and … uh, that’s probably where Stanach is.”
“Guesses, kenderkin.”
“Oh, no, they’re not guesses I—” Lavim cleared his throat and nodded.
“You’re right. They’re guesses. I hear the river, Tyorl, and I can feel the edge of this stone.” He withdrew his right hand and held it up for Tyorl’s inspection. “This wall’s no thicker than my palm, and the edge of the crack is smooth. I’ll bet if we can just get this stone to move …”
Lavim pressed his shoulder to the wall and shoved.
“Lavim,” Tyorl sighed heavily.
The kender braced his feet against the stone floor and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, all his weight behind his efforts.
“Lavim, I don’t think—”
The kender grunted. “Could you stop thinking for a minute, Tyorl, and give me a hand here? Or a shoulder? Put your weight against the right of the stone.”
If only to disabuse the kender of his foolish notions, Tyorl lent the weight Lavim asked for. Almost immediately, the stone began to move. Air, dank and heavy with earth smells, moved lazily through the opening. Beneath the scent of dirt and stone drifted the odor of the river: fish, silt, and decaying vegetation.
“Bandits’ caves!” Lavim cried. “See! We—I was right!”
He dove for the opening, and Tyorl quickly caught him by the collar of his shapeless black coat. “Wait, Lavim!”
But the kender was waiting for no one. He squirmed away from the elf’s hold and darted into the newly opened cave.
Tyorl called quickly for Kelida. She slipped into the cave, eyed the dark, narrow doorway into the earth and then the light over her shoulder. She looked as doubtful as Tyorl felt.
“Where’s Lavim?”
Tyorl jerked a thumb at the fissure. “Where you’d expect. Ready?”
Kelida nodded.
“Stay close then, and let’s see if we can catch up with the kender.”
He hadn’t meant it as a jest, but when Kelida’s emerald eyes lighted with a sudden spark of laughter, Tyorl smiled and stepped aside as though ushering her into a safe and comfortable chamber. Unthinking, she laid her hand on his shoulder as she passed. He felt the light touch of her fingers long after he’d left the opening and the faint light behind. Three!
Stanach clung to the idea of the cipher through another red-hazed spin into darkness. They’d snapped three of his fingers. Seven, he thought, seven to go. Or two if they only want to leave me one-handed. Seven or two …
The lethargy of the sleep spell had worn away, but he still couldn’t move. It was as though invisible bonds held him to the stone floor. More of the Herald’s work, he thought.
The red star, the ember from Reorx’s forge, hung low in the purpling sky. The only thing Stanach could move were his eyes. These he kept fixed on the star.