up and wedged among the rocks. It would make admirable firewood, if they could ever find a place where they could build a fire!
The gods, or fate, were not to be so unkind, however. After a few more furlongs of picking their way across the rocks and sliding through the mud, the cliff receded somewhat to her left and the river opened up before her. A white, roaring wall loomed up out of the rain, as if someone had torn a hole in the clouds and let all the water out at once. After a moment of blinking and trying to get her dripping hair out of her eyes, she realized that she was not staring at a torrent in the midst of the downpour, she was looking at a waterfall, and just on their side of the waterfall, there was a series of darker holes in the cliff wall that must be caves.
Tad spotted them at the same time, and shouted into her ear. “If any of these are deep enough, this is where we should stop! We may not be able to hear anything coming, but whatever tries to come at us from ahead won’t be able to get past the falls! We’ll only have to guard in one direction!”
She winced at the bellowing, since she was right beside the excited gryphon, but saw at once that he was right. That overcame her misgiving at camping in a place where the sound of an enemy approaching would be covered by the roar of the water. And as if to emphasize just what a good spot this was, a stunned fish came floating to their very feet to lodge among the rocks, flapping feebly. It had obviously been knocked silly by going over the falls, and Tad, who was probably starving, was on it in a heartbeat. Two gulps, and it was gone, and Tad had a very satisfied look on his face.
“See what else you can forage!” she shouted at him. “I’ll check out these caves!”
“Wait a moment!” he shouted back. Picking up a milky-white, smooth pebble from the rocks at his feet, Tad stared at it in concentration that she found very familiar. Then he handed it to her, gryph-grinning with open beak. The pebble glowed with mage-light.
She accepted it with relief; at least he had enough magic back now that he could make a mage-light again!
She didn’t have to go far to find their new shelter; the very first cave she entered proved to be perfect. It went back a long way, slanting upward all the time. For a few lengths, the floor was covered with soft, dry sand. Then there was a pile of driftwood marking the high-water line that past floods had also left behind; that was where the sand ended and dirt and rock began. A thin stream of water ran down the center of the cave, coming from somewhere near the back, cutting a channel through the sand and rock alike.
She made her way past it, holding the blue-glowing rock over her head to cast the best possible light ahead of her without dazzling her eyes. The cave narrowed, the farther she went back, then abruptly made a ninety- degree turn upward. This was where the stream of water originated. She put her head inside the hole and looked up. Besides getting a faceful of rain, she clearly saw the cloud-filled sky a great distance above. At one time, a real stream of water, perhaps a branchlet of the river that tumbled down the cliff further on, had cut a channel through here, forming the cave. Now, except perhaps during rain, that channel was dry. But it formed precisely what
“Blade?” Tad called from behind her, and she realized that although the sound of the waterfall did penetrate in here, it was much muted by the rock walls.
“Coming!” she responded, turning her back on the chimney and climbing back down to the driftwood pile. She smelled smoke, and indeed, a plume of it, ghostlike in the blue light of the bespelled pebble, drifted toward her and the chimney outlet. A warmer light up ahead greeted her; Tad had already started a fire with the driftwood, and she joined him there.
“The fish around here must not be terribly bright,” he said cheerfully. “Quite a lot of them ended up on the rocks a few moments ago. I got you some.” He pointed with his beak at a pair of sleek shapes at his feet.
“After you ate your fill, I hope?” she admonished. “You need the food more than I do; I manage quite well on that travel-bread.”
His nares flushed, and she judged by that and the bulging state of his crop that he had been perfectly greedy. Not that she blamed him, especially not after going on short rations for so many days. “You might as well put this under something, so we can sleep,” she said, handing him the pebble and shrugging painfully out of her pack. “If I’d ordered up a cave, I couldn’t have gotten a better one than this. We can even make a really smoky fire back there —” she pointed to the rear of the cave, “—there’s a natural chimney that’ll send it up without smoking us out. The only thing we don’t have is a nighttime signal. We need to talk about that.”
He ground his beak as he thought, his good wing half-spread in the firelight to dry. “I can’t imagine them flying at night—” he began, then laughed. “Well, on the other hand, since it’s me and you who are lost—”
“Skandranon will have night flights out if he has to fly them himself,” she finished for him, with a wry chuckle. Then her humor faded. She could not forget, even for a moment, that they were still being hunted. Until they knew by what, and for what reason, they should not assume they would be here to rescue when rescue came. Yes, they had good shelter now, and it would be very difficult to dig them out of it. But not impossible; not for—say—a
