They came to a steeply sloping area, and in the open area below they could see that a path had been made through the stalagmites—trampled, it seemed, with great hunks of broken stone scattered all about.
“The traveling will be easier,” Luthien remarked hopefully. He gingerly started down the slope, leaning back so far that he was practically sitting down.
Oliver grabbed him by the shoulder and tugged hard.
“Do you not even wonder what broke those things?” the halfling asked grimly.
It was a question that Luthien preferred not to answer, not even to think about. “Come along,” was all that he replied, and he resumed his controlled slide to the lower level.
“Wizard-types,” Oliver muttered under his breath, and with a last look back to the now-distant wall and the wizard’s portal, he shrugged and followed the young man.
When Oliver stopped his descent and looked up once more, he found Luthien standing very still, staring off to the side, looking over one broken stalagmite.
“What . . .” the halfling started to ask, but he got his answer as he came up beside Luthien. Pieces of skeletons lay broken behind the rocky pile. Both the friends looked about nervously, as if expecting some horrid and powerful monster to rush out and squash them.
“Human,” Oliver remarked as he moved over to investigate, holding up a skull that showed two eye sockets. “Not cyclopian.”
They pieced together three bodies in all, but only two skulls, for the third had apparently been smashed into a thousand pieces. There was little more than whitened bone, but it didn’t seem to either of the companions that these corpses had been here for all that long, certainly not four hundred years. One of the legs, buried under some rock, showed ligaments and pieces of skin, and the clothing, though tattered, was not so rotted.
“We might not be the first group Brind’Amour has sent in search of his staff,” Luthien remarked.
“And whatever was in here lives still,” Oliver added. He looked around at the toppled stalagmites and the crushed skull. “I do not think cyclopians could have done this,” he reasoned. “Not even a cyclopian king.”
First the melted ore along the wall, then the line of broken rock mounds, and now this. A sense of dread dropped over the companions. Luthien replayed Brind’Amour’s words about the cave in his mind. In light of these new discoveries, it seemed to Luthien that the wizard was indeed lying, or not telling the whole truth.
But what could Luthien and Oliver do now? The portal offered them no escape unless Brind’Amour widened it, and Luthien knew that the wizard would not do that until they had recovered his lost staff.
“If the staff is so valuable, then we should expect to find it among the treasures of whatever rules this place,” Luthien said determinedly. “And this trail of rubble should lead us to it.”
“How fine,” Oliver replied.
The trail soon led them out of the vast chamber and they moved down a wide corridor. Both walls were within the area of torchlight then, and they could see the ceiling as well. That offered them little comfort, though, for whatever had come through this passage had not only flattened stalagmite mounds but had broken short the hanging stalactites, as well.
The air seemed to be growing even warmer in here, and the walls shone a deep crimson. After a few hundred yards, the corridor dipped suddenly, turning almost vertical for a few feet, until it widened into a chamber on a more level but still descending slope. Luthien skidded down first, Oliver coming close behind.
They had come to the banks of an underground pool, its still waters shimmering a dull red and orange in the reflections of the light. The torch seemed much brighter in here, for the walls were lined with quartz and other crystals. Across the pool, the companions could see the entrance to another corridor, running generally along the same direction they had been traveling.
Luthien bent low over the water and reached out his hand slowly, tentatively. He could feel the heat of the rising steam, and he dared to gently touch the pool, retracting his hand immediately.
“Why is it so very hot?” Oliver asked. “We are high up in the mountains—there is snow on peaks not so far from here.”
“Are we?” Luthien replied, reminding the halfling that they really didn’t know where the wizard’s tunnel had led them.
Oliver stared at the lake. It was only a hundred feet across and perhaps twice that wide, but it seemed at that moment to be an impenetrable barrier. Perhaps even the end of the road, for it filled the floor of the chamber, and the halfling, who was not so fond of water in the first place, had no intention of swimming across.
“There is a way around,” Luthien noticed. He pointed to the left to a ledge running along the wall about ten feet above the water level.
Oliver did not seem thrilled by the prospect of the narrow ledge. He dropped his traveling pack to the ground and fumbled with its straps, ignoring the questions Luthien put his way. A few moments later, the halfling produced a long, thin, almost translucent cord and a three-pointed grappling hook.
The ceiling was not so high in here, no more than thirty feet in most areas, and it was broken and uneven, full of jags and cracks. Oliver put the grappling hook into a spin at the end of the rope, then sent it flying away, high over the lake. It banged against the ceiling, but found no hold and dropped into the water with a resounding ka-thunk.
Luthien stared hard at the halfling as the echoes of the splash died away, neither companion daring to move for several seconds.
“I only thought—” Oliver started to explain.
“Get it back,” Luthien interrupted, and Oliver began slowly reeling in the line. It came easily, and Oliver explained that he wanted it up on the ceiling so that he could carry the end as he crossed the ledge—in case one of them slipped, or they were forced to get away quickly.
The reasoning seemed sound to Luthien, and it appeared as if Oliver’s errant throw had not done any damage. The rope was still coming easily, and the grappling hook couldn’t be very far from shore. Then it stopped suddenly, resisting Oliver’s strongest tugs.
Luthien and the halfling looked at each other curiously, then Luthien took hold and pulled, too. The rope held fast seeming as though the grappling hook had snared on something along the lake bottom.
“Cut the line and let us be on our way,” Luthien offered, and Oliver, though he prized that fine and light cord and hated to lose any part of it, reluctantly reached for his main gauche.
Suddenly the halfling was jerked forward. He instinctively grabbed the rope in both hands, then, realizing that he could not resist the pull and would be taken into the lake, loosened his grasp. Only Oliver’s well-made leather gauntlets saved him from serious rope burns as the cord whipped along. The halfling looked back at the coiled and rapidly diminishing pile and began hopping all about, calling for Luthien to do something.
But what could Luthien do? He braced himself and bent low, as if trying to catch the flying rope, but never took the chance, knowing that he could not possibly break its tremendous momentum.
Oliver had started with over a hundred feet of the cord, and it was nearly gone. But then, without warning, the furious pulling suddenly stopped.
The halfling stopped, too, and stood staring at Luthien and at the cord.
“Big fish in this pond,” the halfling remarked.
Luthien had no answer, just stood staring out over the lake as the waters flattened to stillness once more. Finally, the young Bedwyr mustered the nerve to reach down and grab the cord. He pulled gently, taking in the rope hand over hand, expecting it to be pulled away again at any moment.
His surprise (and Oliver’s, as well) was complete when the grappling hook appeared, covered with brown and red weeds. Luthien lifted it up and cleaned it so that he and Oliver could inspect it. One of the prongs was bent a bit, but it showed no other marks and no sign of flesh or scales or anything else that might indicate what had taken it.