She put the striker into a sack and looped it over her shoulder, then pulled the white gauntlets on and fastened them. They were too big for her, but would have to do. Then she withdrew one of the gleaming teeth from the case. The etching flashed in the light.
"Can you feel its power?" he asked.
"It"s alive," she said. "Thinking. I can feel it through my hand."
"What does silver think?"
"This isn"t just silver, remember? It"s a weave."
"Indeed," he said. A weave, just like him.
"Well," she said. "I suppose it"s time."
"The quicker, the better."
They stepped around the cold stream and entered the cave with Sugar in the lead. Talen walked behind, holding the torch out to the side to minimize the shadows he cast before her.
The breeze fanned the flames on the torch. "It"s going to make them burn fast," said Talen.
"Then we"ll have to walk quickly," said Sugar.
She pa.s.sed the spot where she"d crouched earlier. The torchlight revealed walls wet with water and slime. She tried her best to keep from stepping barefoot in the water; the cave was cool and the last thing she needed was to chill herself to the point where she could barely move.
Sidestepping the stream worked for a while, but the dry earth soon ended, and they came to a spot that was black, icy water from wall to wall.
Talen held the torch out. There was no way around it.
So be it. Sugar stepped into it. At first it only came to her ankles, but then it deepened and she found herself wading in spots up to her thighs, hoping with each step that the ground didn"t completely drop out from under her. Her feet quickly began to ache from the cold. She had calluses built up from walking barefoot all summer, but they were not proof against the water and sharp points of the rocks.
She stumbled, caught herself, then stumbled again. She did not want to lose her grip on the tooth, and so let her knees take the brunt of the fall. This time she struck the sharp rocks below with her knees and cursed at the pain.
"Lords," said Talen.
"I"m fine," she said.
"No," he said, "not that. Look." He held the torch higher.
She pushed herself up and looked ahead. The pathway ended in a wall.
"Are you sure this is the right cave?" he asked.
"I"m sure," she said. But then her courage faltered: maybe the thing climbed the walls. Furthermore, in many places the torchlight did not reveal this wall"s total height. Maybe the creature"s lair was up, not forward, and they"d already walked past it.
She took the torch from Talen and splashed forward. When she got to the wall, she held the torch up. The jagged wall stood perhaps twelve or fifteen feet high. Water dripped down from the ceiling. She could hear water splashing from above like a brook cascading over rocks. She reached out and felt the slippery rock of the wall. There was no way they could scale it.
"There," said Talen and motioned to the right. "We can get up that way."
On her right the rock face was broken and free of slime. From below it looked like a narrow ledge joined up with the area above the wall.
"How are you going to get up that?" she asked.
"You go first then pull me up with the rope."
She looked at him. "I don"t know if your lame carca.s.s is worth it."
"Oh, it"s worth it," said Talen.
She looked back up into the blackness. "It"s going to be up there waiting for me."
"Maybe," said Talen.
"And I can"t climb that with one hand."
"No, you can"t. But I"ll hold the light for you."
"You"re a big help."
He shrugged.
"I"ll carry the torch in my teeth," she said finally and put the hag"s tooth back into its case and slipped that into the bag at her side. She didn"t take off the gauntlets. If something was up there she wouldn"t have time to retrieve the case and put them on. When she finished tying the case to her, she put the stem of the torch between her teeth and began to climb.
If the creature caught them now, they were lost.
There were plenty of foot and hand holds, but they were not as dry as they seemed. And her dripping clothes only added to the problem, but even if it had been dry, her feet and legs were still stiff and hurting from the icy water. Nevertheless, she rose. It was slick and slow going and she expected the monster to appear at any moment.
But then she reached the ledge. It was perhaps two feet wide and more than enough for her to sit on. She clambered over the edge, and then took the torch from her mouth and held it to see farther down the pa.s.sage.
The ceiling seeped. Long stalact.i.tes and stalagmites had formed, looking like huge caramel teeth. Further down, water poured out of a rent in the side of the corridor then tumbled over the wall. Beyond that was blackness.
This ledge did indeed join that pa.s.sage.
She untied the case, placed it on the ledge beside her, then threw down one end of the rope.
Talen tied the remaining torches into a bundle, and she hauled them up. When the torches were resting next to her, she held the light out for Talen.
"I can do it without a rope," he said.
"It"s slicker than it appears," she said.
"I can feel that," he said. "Especially where you dripped."
Then he began to climb, gingerly at first, careful of his shoulder, then more quickly. Soon he was almost to the top "Ha," he said. "Lame indeed." But at that moment his footing slipped and he lurched to the side, then backward. He tried to catch himself with his bad arm and winced. Sugar reached out for him, but instead of grabbing her hand, he reached out wildly and grabbed a thick handful of her hair.
His grasp caught her off guard and she was yanked toward him. They were both going to pitch over the ledge.
Talen shouted his dismay, his eyes wide.
Then Sugar caught a seam in the rock on the ledge with both hands and pushed back. It was like a man trying to tug a donkey, except in this instance Talen was the man, holding onto a fistful of her hair, and she was the donkey.
He swung left, and for a moment she thought his weight would pull them over, but then he got a secure foothold. The change in balance was enough for her to reach up and grab his arm, and then with a mighty tug, pull him over brink and onto the ledge.
Talen finally let go of her hair and pulled himself to sit with his back against the wall. He held his shoulder and grimaced.
Sugar felt her scalp. "You couldn"t have grabbed my outstretched hand?"
"I tried," he said.
"Goh," she said. "I don"t know who"s going to kill me first-you or the monster."
"I"m doing my best."
The way he said it made it sound like he was doing his best to kill her. She looked over at him, and a surge of hilarity welled up in her, and she began to laugh long and loud. It was surely her nerves, but she couldn"t contain it. Nor did she want to: it felt too good.
Talen looked at her like she"d gone mad.
"If you"re going to dispatch me, Hogan"s son, you"re going to have to try a lot harder than that."
Talen finally got it and grinned.
"I guess we could look on the bright side," she said. "If it wasn"t already aware, your yelling and my laughter have certainly alerted the monster to our presence. So that will save us some walking."
"We"re brilliant, and we don"t even try," he said. "Now give me the torch. If I"m going to meet my death, it"s going to be with thawed toes."
That was a good idea, and they both turned and sat crossed-legged facing each other with her holding the torch between their bare feet, Talen"s back facing the main corridor beyond.
The warmth was wonderful.
"That"s going to be a b.u.g.g.e.r going back down," he said.
"No. Next time, seeing how poor a climber you are, we"ll just be sure to use the rope. I think I"ll tie it around your neck."
He grinned again.
Something sounded in the corridor behind Talen"s back, and they froze.
"The torch," he said and motioned at her.
Sugar handed the torch over then fetched the Skir Master"s case and withdrew the hag"s tooth. There was not enough room to stand up, and she doubted whether the monster could fit on this ledge, but that didn"t mean it couldn"t climb along the face of the ledge.
Talen held the torch out to illuminate the pa.s.sage. "I don"t think anything"s there," he said.
"Goh," she said. "I wish there were. Then we could at least get it over with."
"Well, we won"t get over anything squatting here," he said.
She looked at him. He was not some strapping armsman. Not a formidable warrior. But she was happy he was with her.
"What?" he said.
"I"m just glad I"m not doing this alone."
"That was never an option," he said. The torch spat and guttered. It was getting low. He said, "Looks like we"re going to have to light another."
"Let me go first," she said. "The last thing I want is for the monster to s.n.a.t.c.h you and leave me trying to strike it in the dark."
"What are you going to do? Crawl over me?"
"Yes," she said.
When he saw she was serious, he lay on his belly. She crawled over him, careful to not to touch his ribs or shoulder, then moved along the ledge until it joined the main pa.s.sage and she could stand up.
Talen scrambled after her. When he joined her, he lit another torch and held it up. Gone were the stalact.i.tes. The walls here rose up to an arched ceiling in smooth lines carved with patterns that complimented the geometric pattern of different-colored stones at their feet.
"This is stone-wight work," Talen said.
"Do you think this monster is one of them?"
"Who knows?" he said "Where"s the bat dung?" she asked. Most caves like this were heaped high with beetle-infested guano, the stench of it a.s.saulting the nostrils. But there was no dung. No bats. No cave vermin. Just dust.
Talen held the torch higher to get a good look at the floor. "Look," he said and pointed to a spot on the tunnel floor. "And there."
Sugar followed his finger and saw a brief series of regular markings on the floor. They were partial foot prints. Not a human"s. But something two-legged that was large and twisted its right foot slightly as it walked. "I"ve seen this before," she said. "We"re in the right place. You keep your ears perked."
Talen nodded, looking down into the darkness, and let Sugar take the lead. He made sure he kept to the side of her so the torch would illuminate a greater area. They preceded down the corridor this way, the inky dark only a few strides away.
They pa.s.sed many carvings. One was of a great tree with all manner of beast in it. Another of a bear carved with such fine detail she could see individual locks of its fur. Yet another contained a panel of ancient writing carved from top to bottom.
They came to a large chamber and pa.s.sed through a number of pillars carved out of the rocks. Other pa.s.sageways branched from this chamber, but the tracks of the monster led straight ahead.
They entered the pa.s.sage at the end and continued forward, and then she heard something. She froze, waiting for the creature to come running out of the shadows. Talen froze behind her. The silver hag"s tooth gleamed in the torchlight. The tooth was long and felt well-balanced for throwing, but she couldn"t risk a long throw. After seeing the battle with the Skir Master, she knew she"d only have one chance.
They waited for some time, then she decided the sound was some trick of the cave, and moved forward, following the tracks the creature had left behind. With every step she became more certain that their names were going to be added to the list of those fools who had been swallowed by the ancient Stone-wight ruins. Soon the second torch burned low. Talen lit the third. Not long after that they arrived at a fork, but there wasn"t a lot of dirt or dust here, and there were no tracks to tell them the way to go.
They walked down the right a few paces, found nothing, and turned back. A few paces down the left pa.s.sage, Sugar found another half print.
Talen sniffed.
Sugar sniffed as well and realized she could smell it too: an odd mixture with sulfur, pine, and iron in it.
"I smelled that when it took Uncle Argoth," Talen said.
"Aye," she said. "That"s the scent. The monster"s up ahead."
Talen swallowed.
Sugar gripped the tooth tighter, the gold studs of her gauntlets gleaming in the torch light, and took a step forward.