"They didn't seem so formidable on the grounds," she scoffed. "From what I heard, the humans and Wikuni had their way with them."
"They were dealing with some of the best fighters in the world, Jesmind, and they were heavily outnumbered," he said bluntly. "Once their magic and their invulnerability was taken away from them, they found themselves in a serious bind because they were facing humans and Wikuni that were just as formidable as they were, and facing a lot of them. The humans and Wikuni there were crack veterans, and the only Demons that could really fight back were the cambisi. And they killed nearly three times their number before they went down," he reminded her. "And if it hadn't have been for the Legions, they would have lost alot more," he added. "They're experts in large formation fighting, and they served as an anchor for everyone else."
"I'll take your word for it," she said in a low tone. "How long do we wait?"
"We'll be here until dark," he told her. "The map shows that there's a cave not far from here that leads under one of the mountains and lets out on the other side. It'll save us some time if we take it, and we'll be alot harder to find if we use it. We're going to pause there a while so I can figure out some way to keep the Demons from finding us, then we'll be on our way again."
"I don't think I'm going to argue about that," she nodded. "If we have to crawl through the snow the whole way, we'll get to the other side sometime next year."
"A little time invested now is going to save us a whole lot later," he affirmed.
They retreated into the grove, and spent the rest of the day fearfully scanning the skies as the snow piled up around them. The dark clouds dumped nearly two spans of snow on the ground as they waited for dark, and the storm seemed to intensify as the day went on, the winds becoming stronger, the air colder, and the snow heavier as sunset approached. By the time the dark clouds above did start dimming with the setting sun, they were in the teeth of a full-blown blizzard, with howling winds that bent the trees and driving snow that reduced the visibility to almost nothing.
"How are we going to find our way in this?" Jesmind demanded as they ventured out to the edge of the grove as the light around them became very murky.
Tarrin took hold of his amulet and chanted one of the spells that Camara Tal had taught him, a priest spell that would lock in on a certain location and guide him to it unerringly. He felt that strange surge of power rush through the Weave and into him, then release through him into the real world. Immediately, he knew that the cave entrance was seven longspans away, a thousand spans higher than his current position, and it was almost due east of them. The spell also showed him the easiest way to get there, telling him that he would have to go northeast around a peak and approach the cave entrance from the north.
"I can find it now," he told her. "Come on, let's get there before we're buried."
The going was very difficult. The snow was deep, and the wind caused deep drifts to form. He could barely see five spans in front of him, and he often had to plow through the snow to give his shorter mate a path to follow. The fierce wind was like a knife cutting into them, so cold that even he could feel it, and he paused to Conjure heavy fur coats for them to wear, tying them tightly at the waist to keep the wind from tearing them off of their backs. The coats got the wind off of them, but its force made them exert their inhuman strength to keep from being blown off course by it as Tarrin led them around the peak and towards the mouth of the cave. The wind was an ally to him, however, and he knew it. The stiff wind would even keep a Demon from flying, keeping the skies clear of them while they made their dash to the safety of the cave.
That seven direct longspans of distance turned out to be nearly fifteen lonspans of travel, and it was such slow going that it took them most of the night. The cold was getting to Jesmind, and she staggered along behind him, her teeth chattering as her effort was exhausting her regenerative ability. They stopped frequently to rest behind anything that served as shelter from the wind, but things improved greatly when they finally got around the peak, and the peaks mass served as a partial break to the wind. It still swirled and howled around them, but it was a wind that had been forced to turn up the small box-end valley in which the cave mouth was located, so it didn't have half of the raging force that it had had in the main valley. Once they reached the box canyon, they moved with more speed and confidence, and though the snow was even deeper, coming up to Tarrin's waist in some places, he had little trouble bulling a path through it in which his mate could follow.
Just before sunrise, as the main force of the savage snowstorm seemed to be abating, they finally reached the cave mouth… at least horizontally. The cave mouth was set thirty spans up a sheer rock face, a hole in the red rock wall of the mountainside, and it was a small hole. In a way, it reminded him of the hole that Sarraya had made for him in the side of the Cloud Spire, the hole that let him get into the lava tube that led up to the top and into the city. This one was considerably larger than that one, but it was still going to be quite an acrobatic display of flexibility to climb up there and squeeze in while hanging thirty spans off the ground.
"That's it?" Jesmind demanded as she pulled down the hood of the fur coat he'd Conjured. "I'm going to lose all my clothes and half my fur trying to get in that!"
"It's bigger than it looks," he told her as he pulled off his coat and handed it to her. "We'll have to take off the coats and throw them in in front of us, but we should make it." He put his claws in the stone and started up. "I'll go first. Let me get in, then come up. Make sure you take your coat off first and throw them in to me when you get there."
"Why not leave them here?" she asked. "We won't need them in the caves."
"Because I don't want to leave anything behind they can use to find us," he said calmly as he scrabbled up the icy stone.
The opening truly was bigger than it looked, and to his delight, it immediately opened into a rather large irregular chamber whose ceiling was populated by quite a few hibernating bats. The interior was murky, even to his eyes, as the minimal light that got through the clouds above only had one small hole to filter into the chamber. Tarrin wriggled in quite easily and dropped down to the floor of the chamber, layered rather unpleasantly with bat droppings that felt were disgustingly squishy under his feet. He waited under the opening until the two coats flew into the chamber, him catching them before they fell into that unpleasant mess on the floor, and Jesmind slithered in effortlessly head first and dropped down to the floor.
"Ewwww!" she complained, picking up a foot and putting it back down. "Tell me that I'm not standing in what I think I'm standing in!"
Tarrin pointed up, and Jesmind followed his eyes. Then she glowered at the eerie carpet of brown furry bats coating the ceiling. "I don't think I'm ever going to groom my feet again!" she said with a queasy look.
"Then they'll be crusty and smelly," he said absently, reaching within, through the Cat, and touching his Druidic power. A small ball of faint glowing light appeared over his outstretched paw, and he held it up and surveyed the room. "There's the opening that leads down into the mountain," he said, pointing at a small, roughly triangular opening on the far side of the chamber, which was only about two spans high.
"It's pretty narrow in there," she frowned, bending down and looking across the chamber. "I hope we don't have to crawl the whole way."
"Have you ever explored a cave?"
"Not really, why?"
"Because we just might have to crawl the whole way," he said. "Cave tunnels can be any size or shape."
"You're making this trip better and better," she said acidly as she padded over towards the opening. "First you freeze my tail off, now you want me to be an earthworm."