A pair of heavy steps sounded from the fork as Raeyadfourne started down the passage. Brianna opened her mouth to order the attack, then the torchlight outside suddenly dimmed.
“Don’t trouble yourself.” Claegborne started back toward Raeyadfourne. “I smelled something, but it was just brimstone blowing up the passage. This tunnel must connect to the bottom of the mine.”
The icy fist inside Brianna’s chest clamped down, squeezing so hard that she feared her heart would burst. Kaedlaw had already been without air for nearly two minutes, but she forced herself to keep her palm over his face as she listened to the firbolg withdraw. The thought that she might be smothering her own child left the queen shivering and queasy, but she would feel no better if the firbolgs returned to murder him before her eyes.
Finally, the heavy steps of the two firbolgs abruptly faded to muted thumps as they reached the fork and started up the opposite tunnel. Brianna pulled her hand from Kaedlaw’s face, ready to slap it back at the slightest hint of a grumble. When the child made no sound, she wet her fingers and held them before his nostrils, alert for the faintest stir of breath.
The queen felt nothing but the drift’s sulfurous breeze.
“Someone strike me a light,” Brianna commanded. “Thatcher, go to the fork and keep a watch for our enemies.”
A noisy rustling filled the cramped darkness as the front riders scurried to obey. Brianna placed her lips over Kaedlaw’s nose and mouth and blew a slow, gentle breath into his lungs. When he did not cry out, she pressed lightly on his abdomen to push the air back out, then repeated the process. As she worked, she heard the sharp crack of someone breaking a lance, then the shrill rip of cloth. A cork popped as it was pulled from a flask, then the pungent reek of torch oil filled the passage. Brianna silently begged her son to breathe, but he did not cry out or gasp.
A front rider scratched a flint across a striking steel, filling the tunnel outside with brief sparkles of white light. Forgetting about her own wound, the queen used both hands to raise her son’s chest to her ear. She heard a single, feeble thump, then nothing. “I need that light!”
The queen cradled her son in the crook of her elbow, then blew another gentle breath into his lungs. A tiny orange light flickered at the end of the passage. It gradually grew bright enough to reveal the form of a man squatting in the tunnel outside, blowing gently on a small pile of burning tinder. It took only a moment for the flame to grow steady enough for a second man to light the head of a makeshift torch. He passed the brand into the cockeyed drift, handing it to the front rider at Brianna’s feet.
As the torchlight fell over her son, the queen cried out in alarm. Kaedlaw’s handsome face was gone. In its place was an ugly round visage with brown eyes, a pug nose, and puffy cheeks. The infant’s lips had suddenly become meaty and bluish. He had a mouthful of snaggleteeth and a rolling double chin, and he looked as cold as a statue.
“What is it, Majesty?” asked Gryffitt. “He isn’t dead?” “I don’t know yet.”
The queen looked up and realized that she was the only one who could see her son’s new face. Gryffitt was standing on the low ground behind her, and the man at her feet had to reach across his chest to hold the torch for her. He could not look in her direction without staring directly into the flame.
Brianna placed her thumbs over her son’s sternum and began to press down in the rhythm of her own heart. Kaedlaw opened his mouth, unleashing a belch as deep and foul as an ogre’s growl. A blue sparkle appeared in his brown eyes, his meaty lips pursed out to suck a lungful of air, then, all at once, his heavy jowls disappeared, his teeth straightened, his nose lengthened, and once more he was her handsome young son.
The change puzzled Brianna only briefly, for she quickly decided what she had seen was an illusion. Those who lost too much blood often became disoriented and confused. The transformation had been no more than a hallucination of her blood-starved brain. The queen was sure of that.
“Majesty, what of the child?” Gryffitt asked. “Is he well?”
“He’s going to be fine,” Brianna answered.
All the front riders sighed in relief.
“Then perhaps we should see to you, Majesty,” Gryffitt suggested. “Unless we finish Avner’s work, I fear…”
The front rider let his sentence trail off, apparently thinking better of what he had almost said.
“It’s okay, Gryffitt. I’m no more anxious to make an orphan of Kaedlaw than you are. Take me into the tunnel.” Brianna clutched her son more tightly to her breast, then added, “And Hiatea have mercy on the firbolg that makes me cover my son’s mouth again.”
Tavis stood at the tunnel wall, peering into the black throat of a crooked, craggy-sided chimney that yawned overhead like the serpentine gullet of a famished wyvern. Mountain Crusher’s recurved tip pointed up the gloomy shaft at a slight angle. Only the high scout’s firm grip kept the weapon, still glowing with magical blue light, from flying up the hole of its own accord. Brianna was up there somewhere, at least if the bow’s seeking rune was to be trusted.
Unfortunately, that knowledge did not mean Tavis could actually reach his wife. The rune merely pointed in her direction, without indicating whether the route was passable. The chimney, which the miners called a raise, might end a dozen yards overhead. It might wander within a foot of the queen, only to turn in the opposite direction and leave the high scout farther from her than before. Or, it might lead straight to Brianna. The only way to find out was to climb.
Tavis tied his quiver to his hip and slipped Mountain Crusher over his chest. The tip of the bow swung around so that it pointed up the shaft. The weapon would have floated free if the string had not caught in the high scout’s armpit. Tavis gulped down a lungful of the tunnel’s sulfur-reeking air, then reached into the chimney and hauled himself up.
He barely fit. Though the raise was more than eight feet wide, it was not much thicker than Tavis’s torso. To pull himself into the cramped space, he had to wedge his back against one wall and press his palms against the other, keeping his elbows tucked tight at his sides. It was strenuous work, and the high scout still felt weak and dizzy from his injuries. By the time he had pulled himself up far enough to use his knees and feet, his muscles were burning with fatigue. The sulfur stench from the tunnel below made matters worse, filling his lungs and throat with such a scorching stink that he could hardly breathe.
Tavis forced himself to gulp down more air, then clenched his teeth and pushed himself up another few inches. It would be slow going, but he had few alternatives. Shortly after leaving Galgadayle, a group of firbolgs had seen his glowing bow and started rolling boulders down the slope at him. The high scout had been forced to duck into this tunnel, trusting Mountain Crusher’s magic to help him find his wife before her pursuers.
Nor were the Meadowhome warriors Tavis’s greatest worry. He had yet to spy any verbeegs or fomorians, but the high scout knew better than to doubt Galgadayle’s word.
Both groups were formidable foes.
The verbeegs were as organized as they were cunning. They would move quickly to seal every exit from the mountain, then begin a search of the entire warren-no doubt aided by the magic of their shamans and ingenious runecasters. If they captured Brianna before the virtuous firbolgs, they would not content themselves with killing her child. Almost certainly, they would also demand an impossible ransom for her release.
The fomorians posed an even greater danger. Although they were the largest and least intelligent of the giant-kin races, they were born to darkness. They could squeeze their peculiar, deformed bodies through holes half their size, and they walked through pitch blackness in utter silence, with the patient, slow movements of spiders on the stalk. When their hunt was successful, nothing delighted them quite so much as twisting their live prey into grotesque parodies of their own malformed bodies.