precious teleport spell. He merely needed to twist it on his finger and envision a destination, and he would be out of here in an instant-an increasingly attractive option, the more time he squandered on his quest with the kender.
“Here we are!” Moptop finally announced brightly.
“What’s that?” Jaymes held the torch up as they stumbled into a small, circular chamber. He spotted at least four dark passageways shooting off in different directions.
“Well, here.” The kender helpfully raised his map and indicated a splotch on his parchment. The man couldn’t help but notice that the sheet had grown increasingly smudged and illegible as they had ventured deeper into the labyrinthine caverns. “It’s very clear. This is where we are, and we’ve been through here three times already. Well, I have; you’ve only been with me twice now. But that means there’s only one more of those caves leading out of here to check out. So we’re narrowing things down, which is good.”
“You mean-we’ve been spinning in circles? ” The marshal’s voice was very low and threatening.
“Not really.” Moptop shook his head, dismissing the idea as inane. He brandished his map as proof positive. “It’s more like a zig-zaggy square pattern. We were going north by northeast for a while, but then here we zigged straight west, and there we zagged west by southwest-or south by west-west, or something-and then we came back to north-north-east, and like I say, here we are.”
“In the same place we were before!” Jaymes’s voice rose a notch.
“Well, yeah. But now we’ve ruled out that way, and that way, and that way-and that way too-so we know that this way is probably the best way to go!”
“Probably! What makes you think that any of these damned passages leads to Solanthus?” demanded Jaymes.
Moptop looked at him in amazement, an amazement that suggested he had never been subjected to such a stupid question before. “Why, where else is left?” he asked. He plunged into the-presumably-unexplored tunnel before Jaymes could come up with a reply.
Surprisingly, this cavern seemed more passable than the others they had traversed. Right from the start the floor was smooth and relatively free from obstruction, though the occasional chunk of stone or rock had to be stepped around. Often they could discern, in the torchlight, where these obstructions had broken off the walls or ceiling. In combination, these facts suggested this place had once seen a lot of use, but it had been centuries, perhaps many centuries, since anyone had taken the trouble to clear the floor.
But there were other signs of onetime habitation as well. The narrow bottlenecks that had constricted so much of the rest of the cave network had been expanded in this cavern, even carved into regular arches and frames. The stonework was so flawless it looked almost like a natural extension of the bedrock.
“Do you suppose dwarves hollowed this out?” Jaymes asked as they passed along a section where both walls had been smoothly widened, so the warrior could easily walk without bumping his head or shoulders against the confining stone.
“Nope,” Moptop replied with certainly. “With dwarves you at least see some chisel marks. And they’re masons, for the most part, not carvers. They build with stones and bricks-those arches would have keystones, for sure, if dwarves made ’em. These look like they’re just the regular stone of the underground, but shaped somehow.”
The marshal had to agree with his guide. He was just about to say as much when the kender stopped so abruptly that Jaymes nearly bumped into him.
“Uh-oh,” said Moptop.
There are few phrases that arouse more alarm in a listener than when those very words are uttered by a member of the almost suicidally fearless kender race.
“What?” hissed Jaymes, holding the torch high, trying to peer into the shadowy distance. His free hand drifted to the hilt of his sword.
The narrow corridor opened abruptly into what looked like an underground hall that appeared to be lined with stone pillars placed at regular intervals on the right and left sides. The torchlight was inadequate to reveal the extent of the hall or to penetrate the galleries that yawned, dark and shadowy, behind the parallel rows of pillars. But the regular lines and careful right angles were clearly the work of some intelligent design.
Jaymes waved the torch and the resulting flare of light did little to illuminate the farther distance. It did, however, bring the nearer stone pillars into crisp focus. The warrior recognized that they were not columns at all, but statues-statues of warriors dressed in ancient garb and standing at rigid attention along both sides of this long hall.
They wore skirtlike kilts that looked to be carved models of originals that had been formed of metal strips, perhaps bronze. Their helmets were tall, with stiff plumes extending like cocks’ combs from brow to nape. Each warrior’s left hand gripped a small round shield to his breast, while the right held the shaft of a spear planted on the floor, with the stone tip rising slightly higher than the crest of the warrior’s helm. The stone spear shafts were slender and held close to the bodies but intact and unbroken despite their apparent fragility. At each statue’s belt was a short sword with a broad, crude-looking blade. This weapon, like the armor, was suggestive of an era before the blacksmithing of steel, and possibly even iron. The faces of the statues were impressively realistic, down to creases in cheeks and brows and the wrinkled skin of knuckles. Several were bearded, and the unremembered carvers had gone to the trouble to etch individual hairs in place. But, equally obvious, the faces were of stone, cold and lifeless and eternally immobile.
“I think maybe we should go back,” Moptop said quietly.
“Go back? To where?” growled Jaymes. “No, this is the way to Solanthus. You said so yourself, and I think were right. I can feel it now. We’ve got to continue on!”
“Do you think these guys really want us here?” the kender pressed.
“They’re statues. They don’t want anything!”
“All right!” the kender agreed. “If you say so. I just didn’t want the wizardress blaming me if something happens. Because you know something is going to happen.”
Again, Jaymes had to agree with the kender. There was an eerie sense of vitality about these very lifelike statues. He wondered how many of them there were, how long this hall could be. Jaymes raised the torch and waved it back and forth to fan the flames into brightness. There were easily eight or ten visible on each side; the existence of many more was suggested by his flickering, unsteady light. Their presence was distinctly uninviting.
“Here, hold this.” Jaymes handed the brand to Moptop, who took it without comment, watching as the warrior pulled the great sword from its scabbard on his back. Holding the hilt in both hands, Jaymes extended the weapon upward and held it poised behind his right shoulder. With a twist of his hands, he ignited the blade, bringing to life the blue flames that flickered silently but brightly along both edges of the weapon.
“Hey, I like that!” Moptop declared. “Can you do different colors?”
Jaymes ignored the kender. In the enhanced illumination, he saw the hall extended a very long way indeed- the terminus was still beyond his sight-and, as far as he could see, the two ranks of silent guardians stood at attention, facing each other across an open aisle perhaps a dozen feet wide extending down the middle of the hall. The shadows were inky, the cool light casting an azure hue over the stony faces. The ceiling was lost in shadow.
“Let’s go,” Jaymes replied.
Together they started down the hall, stepping cautiously but quickly, casting glances back and forth. The stone statues remained immobile, carved images yet seemed to threaten at any moment to step down from their pedestals and do battle. Steadily the two companions advanced past the silent guardians, the light from Giantsmiter’s blade showing the way. Jaymes had the sense of an immense room. How big was this hall?
He glided a little to the right, holding his sword high, letting the light spill between two of the statues. He spotted, illuminated by the surging flames, another row of stone guardians, apparently identical to the front rank and standing several dozen feet behind them. Though the light was insufficient to show anything else, he had no difficulty imagining a third row behind the second, and an unknown number more extending into the darkness beyond. The echoes of their steps suggested a very large space.
“It’s like a whole army!” Moptop said. “But frozen!”
“Let’s just hope they stay that way,” Jaymes acknowledged. “Move along, now-hurry.”
They picked up the pace. The cavern mouth from which they had emerged was swallowed by the shadows
