“Big fish who do not so much like the taste of iron,” Oliver said with a halfhearted chuckle. “Let us get to the ledge and along our way.”
But now Luthien wasn’t so sure of that course. He eyed the ceiling and, seeing a spot where two stalactites were joined, forming an inverted arch, he spun the grappling hook above his head.
“Do not lose my so fine rope!” Oliver protested, but before he finished his thought, Luthien let it fly. The hook soared through the gap and came back down on the other side, and when Luthien pulled the cord taut, the hook stuck firmly.
“Now we can go across,” Luthien explained.
Oliver shrugged and let Luthien lead the way.
The path along the edge of the lake took them right to the ledge, and soon they were moving steadily, if slowly, along the ledge, ten feet up from the water. The lake remained quiet for a short while, but then Oliver noticed subtle ripples lapping gently against the base of the stone wall.
“Faster,” the halfling whispered, but Luthien was already moving as fast as he could. The ledge was no more than a foot wide in many places, and the wall behind it was uneven, sometimes forcing Luthien to arch his back so that he could slip around thick jags.
A moment later, Oliver’s urgency was reaffirmed as the two heard the water lapping harder at the base of the wall, and then a spot perhaps thirty feet out from the wall began to churn and bubble.
“What?” Oliver asked incredulously as a column of water rose half a dozen feet into the air, as though something beneath the surface was displacing a tremendous amount of the lake.
And then it smoothed, or seemed to smooth, until the halfling and Luthien realized that they were staring not at the surface of the lake but rather at the curving shell of a gigantic turtle.
The halfling squeaked, and Luthien tried to pick up the pace as the giant glided in. Its head, with a mouth big enough to swallow poor Oliver whole, lifted high out of the water eyeing the scrambling companions dangerously.
Ten feet from the ledge, the head shot forward suddenly on an impossibly long neck. Oliver cried out again and fell back, poking with his rapier. The turtle missed, biting instead a piece of the ledge, and actually chipping the stone!
The great reptilian body turned to keep pace with the halfling. It came forward again, and Oliver started to dodge, but he was grabbed suddenly as Luthien ran back the other way and scooped him into his strong arms.
The ledge was too narrow for such tactics, but Luthien had no intention of even trying to keep his balance. He leaped off and out, just in front of the rushing turtle head, holding tight to Oliver and holding tight to the rope. The turtle whipped its head to the side, but the angle for the snapping maw was not right, and though the head banged hard against Luthien pushing the companions on, the turtle could not bite down.
“Lucky turtle!” Oliver cried, braver now that he was fast swinging out of the monster’s reach. “I would make of you a fine soup, such as we have in Gascony!”
They swung in a wide arc, circling close to where they had first come down to the lake, then onward in a loop that took them all the way to the other side. Luthien was no novice with such rope swings; as a boy on Bedwydrin, he had spent his summers swinging out across the sheltered bays near to Dun Varna. He had wisely grabbed the rope up as high as he could before leaping from the ledge, but still the two would have dipped into the water if they had come near to the spot directly below the grappling hook. Only the momentum inadvertently given to them by the banging turtle head saved them from that fate, and still Luthien had to tuck his feet up to keep them clear.
As they rose on the backswing, Luthien slid a bit down the cord, extending their range. He had to let go altogether, taking a screaming Oliver with him, as they fell the dozen feet to splash into the shallow waters near to the yellowish spongy ground on the lake’s opposite shore.
Luthien scrambled up first, grabbing the rope and taking it with him as far as its length would allow. He tripped and almost lost it, instinctively swinging it hard toward a cluster of large rocks. Luck was with the young man, for the rope looped about these rocks enough so that it did not slide back into the water. Luthien regained his footing and his composure and went for the rope as Oliver ran past him toward the back exit.
Luthien skidded to an abrupt halt, though, as the turtle’s head came back out of the water not so far away. To the young man’s utter amazement, the creature opened wide its maw and breathed out a cloud of steam.
Luthien fell back to the ground, saved only by the surrounding boulders that protected him from the full force of the scalding breath. He came up sweating, his face bright red, and ran toward Oliver, who was signaling frantically from the exit. Into the corridor they ran, pausing just inside to look back toward the water.
The pond was still once more, with no sign of the giant turtle.
“My rope?” Oliver asked, looking at the cord, which was securely looped about the rock.
“On the way out,” Luthien replied.
“We may need it.”
“Then you go get it.”
Oliver looked doubtfully at the cord and at the deceptively quiet lake. “On the way out,” he agreed, even though both he and Luthien hoped to find a different way back to the wizard’s tunnel.
The halfling’s demeanor changed considerably when the two companions had put the lake farther behind them. The going was easier on this side, with the cave floors relatively flat and clear of stalagmites and rubble.
“Now we know what caused the problems to those who came before us,” Oliver insisted hopefully, even cheerily “And we have left the beast in a lake behind us.”
“A lake that we will have to cross once more,” Luthien reminded him.
“Perhaps,” Oliver conceded, “perhaps not. Once we have found the wizard-type’s most valuable staff, he will come to get us, do not doubt.”
“Have you considered that the staff might be in the lake?” Luthien had to ask. He did not think this the time for celebration or that all of the dangers had passed.
Oliver did not answer the pragmatic young man directly. He just began muttering about “lying wizard-types” and scoffing at the notion that this cave had been sealed to entrap a cyclopian king. The quiet tirade went on for many minutes as the friends crossed through several unremarkable chambers and adjoining corridors. Oliver even expanded his grumbling to include “merchant-types,” “king-types,” and several other types that Luthien had never heard of. The young Bedwyr let the halfling ramble, knowing that he really could do little to stop Oliver’s momentum.
But the sight that greeted the two as they entered one large, domelike chamber certainly did.
Oliver stood as if stricken, Luthien, too, as the torchlight was reflected back at them from a pile of gold and silver, gems and jewels, beyond anything either of them had ever seen before. One mound of silver and gold was as high as two tall men, dotted with glittering crystals and precious artifacts—goblets and jeweled serving utensils—probably dwarvish in make. As if in a trance, the two moved into the chamber.
Oliver shook the stunning surprise out of his head and ran toward the pile, stuffing his pockets, tossing coins into the air and climbing around with unbridled glee.
“We have come for something specific,” Luthien reminded him, “and we will never get out of here carrying much of this.”
Oliver didn’t seem to care, and Luthien had to admit that this all seemed too good to pass up. There were no other apparent exits from the room, and they had traveled along the most open and easily accessible trail. It seemed that this was either the turtle’s hoard—and the turtle showed no indication of following them—or the hoard of a long-dead king, perhaps the cyclopian Brind’Amour had spoken of. But “duty first,” Luthien’s father had always told him, and that advice seemed pertinent now with so many obvious distractions lying about.