“My task for you is simple,” the wizard explained. “I have lost something—you are to go to the caves and retrieve it.”
“It?” both friends asked together.
The wizard hesitated.
“We must know what we are looking for,” Luthien reasoned.
“A staff,” Brind’Amour admitted. “My staff. As precious as anything I own.”
“Then how did you come to leave it in this cave?” Oliver wondered.
“And why did you seal the cave?” Luthien added.
“I did not leave it in the cave,” Brind’Amour replied rather sharply. “It was stolen from me and placed there not so long ago. But that is another story, and one that does not concern you in the least.”
“But . . .” Oliver began, but he quieted as soon as Brind’Amour’s dangerous scowl settled on him.
“As for the cave, it was sealed to keep its inhabitants from roaming Eriador,” the wizard said to Luthien.
“And what were they?” Luthien pressed.
“The king of the cyclopians and his mightiest warriors,” Brind’Amour replied evenly. “We feared that he would ally with the Gascons, since we knew that they would soon be on our shores.”
Luthien stared hard at the old man, not sure he believed the explanation. Oliver was even more doubtful. Gascons hated cyclopians more than did Eriadorans, if that was possible, and any potential alliance between the people of the southern kingdom and the one-eyes seemed unlikely at best.
Also, Luthien could not begin to fathom why such extreme measures would have been taken against a race that had been savaged not so long before that. Bruce MacDonald’s victory had been complete, bordering on genocide, and as far as the young Bedwyr knew, the cyclopian race hadn’t fully recovered to this day.
“Now, with any luck, the cave is uninhabited,” Brind’Amour said hopefully, obviously trying to press on past that last point.
“Then why do you not go there and retrieve your so precious staff?” Oliver asked.
“I am old,” Brind’Amour replied, “and weak. I cannot hold open the portal from here, my source of power, if I go through the tunnel to that other cave. And so I need your help—help for which you have already been, and will yet be, well paid.”
Luthien continued to study the wizard for some time, sensing that what the man had said was not true, or not the whole truth. Still, he had no more specific questions to ask, and Oliver simply sat back in his chair and patted his tummy. They had ridden far that day, fought on the road, and eaten well.
“I offer you now the comfort of warm and soft beds,” Brind’Amour promised, sensing the mood. “Rest well. Our business can wait until the morn.”
The companions readily accepted, and after a quick check on Threadbare and Riverdancer, who had been put in an empty chamber to the side of the library, they were soon nestled comfortably in featherbeds, and Brind’Amour left them alone.
“Four hundred years old?” Oliver asked Luthien.
“I do not question the words and ways of wizards,” Luthien replied.
“But does not this magical stasis intrigue you?”
“No.” It was a simple and honest answer. Luthien had been raised among pragmatic and solid fisherfolk and farmers. The only magic prominent at all on Bedwydrin were the herbs of healing women and premonitions of weather conditions offered to the captains of fishing boats by the dock seers. Even those two rather benign magic-using groups made Luthien uncomfortable—a man like Brind’Amour put the young man totally out of his element.
“And I do not understand why a cave holding nothing more than a cyclopian—”
Luthien cut Oliver off with a wave of his hand.
“And who would steal a wizard’s staff?” Oliver put in quickly, before Luthien waved his words away once more.
“Let us just be done with this task and be on with our—” Luthien began, and then he paused at an obvious impasse.
“With our what?” Oliver prompted, and wondered, and young Luthien wondered, too.
What would he and Oliver Burrows, who called himself Oliver deBurrows, get on with? Their quest? Their lives? The road to continued thievery and, perhaps, worse?
The young Bedwyr had no answers—either for what would come, or for what had just passed. Ever since the arrival of Viscount Aubrey and his entourage in Dun Varna, Luthien’s world had been turned upside down. He had left Dun Varna in search of his brother, but now he was beginning to get a feel of just how big the world truly was. Over the last couple of days, Oliver had explained to him that ships left the Avonsea Islands for Gascony by a dozen different ports, from Carlisle on the Stratton River to Montfort. And Gascony was a bigger place than Avon, Oliver assured his unworldly companion, with hundreds of cities larger than Dun Varna and scores larger even than Carlisle. And Duree, the land of the war Ethan was supposedly going off to fight, was over a thousand miles south of Gascony’s northern coast.
A thousand miles!
How could Luthien hope to catch up to Ethan when he didn’t know what course his brother might take?
Luthien never answered Oliver’s question, and the halfling, soon snoring contentedly, didn’t seem anxious to know.
10
White Lies?
The first thing that Oliver and Luthien noticed when they exited Brind’Amour’s new magical tunnel was that the cave they had entered was uncomfortably warm. And it was huge. Luthien’s torch reflected off of one wall only, the one they had exited, and the two could barely see the crystalline glimmer of the sharp-tipped, long stalactites hanging ominously far above their heads.
There came a flash from behind them, and they turned to see Brind’Amour’s portal beginning to shrink. At first, the two scrambled for the light, thinking the wizard meant to desert them. The swirl continued, diminished to the size of a fist, but its light was no less intense.
“He only wishes to make sure that no cyclopians, if they live, could come through,” a relieved Oliver remarked.
“Or to make sure that we do not come through until we have found the staff,” Luthien added. “He has that crystal ball and will watch our every move.”
Luthien moved over to the wall again as he spoke, studying its curious texture. He hadn’t been in many caves—only the wizard’s and the sea caves along the rocky coast near Dun Varna—but still, this one seemed somehow strange to him. The rock of the walls was coppery in color and rough, as Luthien would expect, but interwoven with it were lines of a darker hue, smooth to the touch.
“Melted ore,” Oliver explained, coming to join him. The halfling looked up and all around. “Copper, I would guess. Separated from the stone by some very large heat.”
Luthien, too, studied the area. “This must be where the wizards sealed the cave,” he decided. “Perhaps they used magical fires to create the avalanche.” It seemed to be as much a question as a statement.
“That must be it,” Oliver agreed, but he, too, did not sound convinced. He tapped the stone gently with the pommel of his main gauche, trying to gauge its density. From what he could tell, the wall was very thick. That, in turn, led him to the conclusion that something on this side of the wall had caused the heat, but he kept his thoughts private.
“Come along,” the halfling muttered. “I do not wish to be in here any longer than is necessary.” He paused and looked at Luthien, who was still studying the melted ore, and got the feeling that the intelligent young man’s reasoning was following the same trail as had his own. “Not with so many fattened purses awaiting my eager grasp in Montfort,” he added a bit too loudly, for echoes came back at him from several directions. His words took Luthien’s thoughts from the wall, though, as he had hoped.
No sense in worrying, Oliver believed.
The floor was uneven and dotted by rows of stalagmites, many taller than Luthien. Even though this area was a single chamber, at times it seemed to the two as if they were walking along narrow corridors. Shadows from Luthien’s flickering torch surrounded them ominously, keeping them tense, continually glancing from side to side.