To Light A Candle

“Ancaladar suggests we move back,” he told them. “And on the whole, I think we ought to be even more cautious than he suggests.”

They retreated to the edge of the little stream. By the time they turned back, Ancaladar had moved back as well, far enough from the cavern mouth so that he’d have plenty of room to launch himself into the air quickly.

Jermayan gestured. A spark of blue fire flew from his hand and vanished into the cavern mouth.

For a very long time, nothing seemed to happen at all. Then the ground beneath the horses’ feet began to tremble and shake, a long low shuddering rumble that went on and on. The Elven destriers shied madly, backing into a streambed that suddenly held ice but no water, as their riders fought to steady them. Kellen could see a plume of—smoke?—dust?—steam? issuing from the cavern’s mouth, as he did his best to reassure Firareth. The destrier might be tranquil and mild-mannered, but this was something wholly unexpected. But the shaking subsided fairly quickly, and the animals steadied, though they were still restless and unhappy.

The traps—there must have been a lot more of them than I saw, Kellen realized. And whatever spell Jermayan had used, it had set off every single one. The cavern mouth… well, it wasn’t there anymore. The ice that had covered the rock face had fallen away in large sheets, and there were deep raw cracks in the exposed granite of the cliff face as the mountain seemed to have… settled.

I hope for their sake all the Crystal Spiders got out all right.

“Look!” Ciltesse said, pointing.

High above where the opening of the cavern had been, the snow on the mountain began to shift. It meant nothing to Kellen, who had never seen either snow or mountains before this winter. But others knew better.

“Snow-spill!” Isinwen shouted. “Ride!”

The horses needed little encouragement to run. Kellen looked back and saw Ancaladar bound into the air. The snow was halfway down the mountain face by now, spreading like a fan.

A large fan.

He could hear it now. A roaring, like a waterfall, but faint and far-off—for the moment.

How much snow was on that mountain?

Was it all coming down?

If the entire army had not come this way the day before, breaking a deep trail in the snow that even another night’s snowfall had been unable to fill, they would not have been able to try to outrun it.

But “try” was all they were able to do.

The roaring now was as loud as the fury of a battle, and the wave of snow pushed wind before it. Kellen felt the rush of air at his back and braced himself even though he knew that it was the most futile of gestures—

Then he felt the spell as it was being cast, and saw two waves of snow as high as Ancaladar’s shoulder pass them by on either side, racing along beside them as fast as a running horse. A few hundred yards further on, the force of the snow-spill was spent, but without Jermayan’s spell it would certainly have been enough to bury them all.

The troop reined in—Kellen had been bringing up the rear—and stopped. Kellen looked back.

There was a deep sheltering “V” in the snow along their track. Beyond that, and to either side, the snow lay white and smooth—and deep. There was no sign of the cavern mouth—or even of the cliff face.

Ancaladar landed a few yards ahead. The dragon kicked up a great plume of snow with his landing, then settled deeply into the snow. Jermayan dismounted, and walked through the snow to Redhelwar. Kellen urged Firareth forward.

Jermayan bowed.

“It seems the cave was more extensively mined than anyone properly understood,” Redhelwar said.

“Ancaladar expected a… small snow-spill,” Jermayan admitted. “He has seen them before, when the snows have been heavy. And we thought—when I sent the wind to scour the caverns—that when the roof of the village cavern collapsed there would be some disturbance, but…”

Jermayan looked a bit shaken, and more than a little drained. Kellen was reminded, once again, that if Ancaladar’s storehouse of power was infinite, Jermayan’s energy was not. He wondered just how much energy it