“Nah, lad. We’re already here,” Oarly said as he shouldered the rope, snatched up his pack and started back down into the cavern. “I’ll let that fargin thing die a while longer before I pull my pick out of it. We can look a bit deeper while we wait.”
They didn’t have much of a choice other than to chase after the dwarf. Brady, whose sword was still embedded in the dead beast, looked at it a moment, then with a curse followed after the group.
The tunnel twisted and began angling downward, and before long a faint light could be seen ahead of them. As they neared the slightly illuminated area they saw that the tunnel opened up into a great chamber that was lit from above. A dying ray of evening light cut through the vast space at a nearly horizontal angle, one side of the visible line was a few shades darker than the other. A huge hole in the upper reaches of the chamber was easily big enough for the old dragon to fly in and out of. With the light of Hyden’s magical orb, and Oarly’s torch, there was just enough illumination to show them that they didn’t want to proceed just yet.
“There’s your fargin spiders, lad,” Oarly said. “Red Feasters, meanest spiders a digger ever came across.” Oarly was holding his torch so that the flickering flames lit up the edges of a nearby crevice that had been webbed over. The spiders themselves were bigger than a man’s fist, and black with wicked red splotches. Phen winced at the sight of them.
Hyden surveyed as much as his eyes could take in. Stalactites and stalagmites reached toward each other at the edges of the main opening, but the large central area was clear of obstruction. Another, larger, tunnel could be seen across the opening, leading downward and away from the vast space. The opening was mostly covered by another web. The black and red-colored spider resting at its center was as big as a water barrel. When Oarly lit a second torch, and hurled the one he had been carrying out into the cavern, more webs could be seen further down the shaft. A good way up above them there appeared to be a scallop of shelf where a third tunnel possibly led away. Neither place could be investigated without provoking the severe looking arachnids, and Hyden found that a relief.
“From midmorning to just after midday,” said Oarly as he looked up at the opening above them. “That’s when the light will be best for us. We’ll have to burn them out, lads.” He turned toward the companions. The blood that ran from his mouth, and the gash on his chest, had matted everything from his beard down and made him look very near to death. “Unless you want me to go take care of them now?” The determined grin on his macabre visage held no hint of jest.
Brady shook his head in disbelief.
“Nah, nah,” Hyden said with a shiver. “Let’s go get your pick, and Brady’s sword, and we’ll burn them out on the morrow.”
Hyden studied the layout of the cavern a moment then started back out of the tunnel after the others. He would do some exploring with Talon later, he decided. There was plenty of room for the hawkling to maneuver. He’d eliminate a whole lot of wasted effort if he could find a sign of Barnacle Bones’s ship without putting the others at risk.
Back at the camp, Phen used a minor healing spell to close up the gash on Brady’s head and bring the swelling down. Phen tried to work the spell on Oarly, but the now thoroughly intoxicated dwarf wouldn’t have it. The two wounds on his back were not as bad as they had originally seemed. The thick padded leather vest he always wore had taken the brunt of the damage. The tear in Oarly’s shoulder looked terrible though. It was deep, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding, even after they compressed it with cloth for a time.
Oarly almost came to blows with Master Biggs when the seaman poured a good dollop of his liquor into the wound. They all assumed that the anger was from the pain until Oarly swore that if the man ever wasted that much drink on something as trivial as a minor injury again, there would be a scuffle. Oarly then proceeded to take a dagger, the blade of which had been heated to a glowing red in the campfire embers, and with a grunting huff, laid it across the wound. He seemed more concerned with not burning his beard than he did with the searing heat, at least until his flesh sizzled. He slung the dagger away then, and gave a primal yell. Then he gave Phen a curious look, grunted something no one could understand, and passed out completely.
Hyden was thankful when Biggs ordered the three fidgeting seamen to stand guard over them for the night. Oarly and Brady were already asleep, and Phen was yawning between his dozing nods. Hyden was as nervous as the crewmen, which was just as well, because before he went to sleep he wanted to fly with his familiar.
A half-moon lit the night sky to a silvery blue. The the area around the dragon’s remains was the only place Hyden could see that hadn’t been overgrown. He was glad for it. He climbed to the top of the dragon’s mound and sat down, marveling at the liveliness of the stars until he was relaxed enough to seek out Talon’s vision. Then he took flight.
The hawkling was circling high overhead. Hyden felt the sated sensations the bird was feeling, and the added weight of the meal it had eaten. Talon’s presence in his mind was welcome and comforting. The encounter in the tunnel had been terrifying. He hadn’t thought about it much yet, or said anything to Oarly about it, but the dwarf’s charade hadn’t been appropriate. Hyden had buried many close companions in his short time, and he found no humor in that sort of thing. He would tell Oarly what he thought, but he would do it when the time was right. At the moment he was curious about what they had seen today.
It didn’t take Talon long to find it. The gaping hole was midway up the far side of the rocky hill that rose out of the jungle beside them. As Hyden hoped, the cavern opening faced the southwest. Oarly was wrong: It would be midday or after when the sunlight lit the chasm best.
Talon spied a steep fall of rock near the cave mouth. At the bottom was a dark jumble of broken trees and scree. The stuff would have continued falling into the sea had it not wedged itself in to a section of narrowly formed rock.
Up the slope from the cave mouth there was a scattering of wind-blown trees clinging to the rocky soil with all they had. Above that, ominously silhouetted in the moon’s light, was a jagged looking ridge. If he could have stood at the base of the cave looking south, Hyden knew that all he would see would be ocean. Far below Talon, the sea churned and sprayed as it slammed into the rocky shoreline.
Eventually the hawkling flew into the opening. The side of the mountainous formation that faced the sea seemed to be only twenty or thirty feet thick. Talon felt as if he were flying into a hole that had been chipped into a giant egg. From what Hyden remembered of the inside of the great cavern, the spider-web tunnel led back toward the middle of the island. The scallop higher up had to be fairly shallow. No light had crept through that area when they were inside, so he was certain that it was nothing more than a suspended shelf. It occurred to him, as Talon circled back up out of the opening and perched on the lip, that it wouldn’t take much to fracture and crumble that whole side of the cavern. What bothered him most, was that looking down through Talon’s eyes, he could tell the area they had been standing in earlier was a good bit below the level of the sea. If the rock ever did collapse, the ocean water would come rushing in and flood everything inside.
He doubted any of that was going to happen, so he sent Talon soaring down into the maw to search for signs of the ship. Talon wouldn’t go near the webs, and saw nothing resembling a pirate ship anywhere else. Disappointedly, Hyden decided that they would have to burn the spiders out, as Oarly had suggested, and then see where the lower passage took them.
Talon was growing weary, and Hyden still intended to use his minimal magic to heal the dwarf while he was asleep. Calling Talon back to him, he opened his eyes and made his way back to the camp. Inside his tent he fondled his medallion and noticed the same strange tingle it had given off in the serpent’s lair. He watched as the prismatic leaps of light swirled and darted away from the jewel. They seemed to flare to life, and burn out, all within a foot of the dragon’s tear. Some leapt in arcs, some in zigzagging streaks, others in curling loops. It was hypnotizing, and it didn’t cease as he made his way into his bedroll.
He had meant to tend Oarly, but found himself in a mesmerized trance. When he lay down he held the medallion out in front of his face. He watched it until it carried him into a dreamy state where the static hum of magical energy seemed to surround him as if he were submerged in it. Out of the dancing lights a familiar figure began to form, just as it had formed out of the great water fountain at Whitten Loch. With a sad smile, and wide open arms, the White Goddess turned to face him and spoke.
“Hyden Hawk,” she started in her sweet musical voice. Hyden found that, even though she was made of nothing more than a swirling white mist, her full, voluptuous figure flustered him. “Be wary Hyden,” she warned.
