you.'
Shiara's head appeared beside the dragon's. 'You're right; it's not nearly so bad when you can see the bottom.'
'If you drop the bundles Morwen gave us, I can catch them,' I said.
'Then you can climb down and we can get started.'
'All right.' Shiara's head vanished for a few seconds, then reappeared, along with a pair of hands and a bundle. 'Ready? Catch.'
Nightwitch was more of a problem than the bundles. I got a few scratches catching her. As soon as I had everything, Shiara climbed down.
We picked up our things and moved into the tunnel while the dragon took care of the rope, and then the dragon jumped down.
'That was easy!' it said.
I thought about sliding down the rope in the dark and didn't say anything.
Shiara looked from me to the dragon and back. 'Well? Are you going to stand there until the wizards show up again?'
'We have to decide what we're going to hold on to first,' I said.
'Daystar, we have to carry everything ourselves anyway,' Shiara said.
'What difference does it make?'
'I don't think that's what Telemain meant,' I said. 'There are all sorts of ways to lose things in the Caves of Chance if you aren't paying attention, but if you have something in your hand all the time and never set it down it's less likely to disappear.'
'If you really believe that, you'd better carry the sword,' Shiara said.
'The only thing I don't want to lose is Nightwitch, and she can take care of herself.'
'You're right,' I said doubtfully. I didn't really want to march through the Caves of Chance with the Sword of the Sleeping King in my hand, but I certainly didn't want to lose it. Finally I decided to take the sheath off my belt and carry the sword and sheath together. I had some trouble doing it, though, and Shiara had to help.
'Are you sure this is necessary?' she asked. 'Why can't you just wear it?'
'Magic things are particularly easy to lose here,' I said. 'And Mother told me to take care of this sword.' I tucked the sheathed sword under my arm and picked up the silver lamp and the bundle Morwen had given me.
'Let's go.'
The tunnel slanted down for a long way, then leveled. Every now and then we came to a dark opening in the wall that led to a side passage, but we ignored all of them. Telemain had been very specific about that. Not that they were particularly tempting. The silver lamp had no difficulty lighting up our part of the tunnel, but it didn't penetrate into the side passages at all.
After a while, the tunnel we were following jogged sharply left, then right again, and suddenly it opened out into an enormous cave. The walls were crystal, and they seemed to have hundreds of different-colored lights shifting behind them. I stopped abruptly, staring, and the dragon bumped into me from behind.
'Excuse me,' I said automatically.
'You shouldn't stop so fast,' the dragon complained. It craned its neck to see around me. 'Hey! This is nice!' It stretched upward, and a minute later it was clinging to the crystal wall several feet above us.
I backed away hastily. I didn't want to be underneath if the dragon slipped.
'Where are we supposed to go from here?' asked Shiara, ignoring the dragon.
'This must be the Cave of Crystal Lights,' I said. 'Telemain said to walk straight across. There ought to be three passageways on the other side, and we want to take the left one.'
'I see them,' the dragon said. It squinted across the cave, then climbed down and sat beside us. 'They aren't straight across. They're over that way a little.' It waved toward the right.
I looked at the dragon. 'I think we should follow Telemain's directions.
The Caves of Chance are even trickier than the Enchanted Forest. I don't want to risk getting in trouble if we don't have to.' I didn't mention that the last time we had taken the dragon's advice we'd run into the fire-witch and Shiara had gotten turned into a statue, but I was thinking it. Shiara nodded in agreement.
'All right,' the dragon said sullenly. 'But I think you're being silly.'
We started walking again, trying to go straight across the cave. The walls curved in and out, and the floor humped up in low mounds and ridges. Between that and the shifting colored lights, it was hard to be sure we were going straight. Shiara and I backtracked a couple of times, just to check, and every time we did the dragon grumbled.
Finally we got to the other side and saw the three openings. The dragon stared at them, then looked around suspiciously. 'Where did these come from? These aren't the ones I saw!'
'Well, then, it's a good thing we followed Telemain's directions,' Shiara said. 'Otherwise, we'd be lost. Come on, let's go.' She scowled and headed for the left-hand passageway.
I started after her, and right away I tripped and fell.
'Ow!' I said. Shiara looked around, then came back to help me up.
'What happened now?' she asked.
'I tripped,' I said. 'I've still got the sword, but I dropped the lamp.
Where is it?'
'I don't see it.' Shiara sounded a little worried. She had reason to be.
Without the lamp, we wouldn't be able to see anything once we got out of the Cave of Crystal Lights.
'It can't be very far away,' I said, and we started hunting. Shiara went one way and I went the other. About half a minute later, I saw something glittering. 'There it is!'
'No, it's over here,' said Shiara. She bent over and picked something up from behind a rock. 'It's still burning,' she said, sounding surprised.
'It lights up more space than it ought to, too,' I said over my shoulder.
'Morwen probably put a spell on it.'
'where are you going?' Shiara said.
'I saw something over here, and I want to know what it is,' I said.
'Especially since it obviously isn't the lamp.'
Shiara started to object, but right then I saw the glittering thing again and I bent to pick it up. 'Here it is,' I said. 'See?' My fingers touched metal, and a fountain of sparks shot up from the floor of the cave where my fingers were.
I yelled and fell backward. The fountain hissed and sizzled angrily, getting bigger and brighter and hotter every minute. I scrambled back toward the others. Blue and white and purple sparks started falling around us, and all of us ran for the left-hand tunnel. Nightwitch yowled as one of the sparks hit her, and Shiara scooped her up and kept on running.
We made it to the tunnel, but no one stopped until we were well inside, not even the dragon. When we finally got out of reach of the falling sparks, we stopped and panted for a while. Fortunately, Shiara had hung on to the lamp as well as to Nightwitch. When she set Nightwitch down, the kitten glared back toward the mouth of the tunnel, then began determinedly washing a spot on her back where the fur was a little singed.
'what was that?' Shiara asked as soon as she had her breath back. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I was just trying to-' I stopped. I was holding something in my right hand. I didn't even remember grabbing it. 'It went off when I picked this up,' I said, and I opened my fingers.
I had three pebbles of various sizes, a little sandy dirt, and a small gold key. A tingle ran down my back as I looked at the key, and I jumped. 'Now what?' said Shiara.
'I felt something,' I said. 'Sort of like the sword when it's finding magic, but not the same.'
'Is it magic?' the dragon asked.
'I don't know.'
'Well, find out!' Shiara said impatiently. 'I thought that was what the stupid sword was for.'
I sighed a little and shifted all the things I was carrying until I could put my left hand on the hilt of the Sword of the Sleeping King.
I didn't feel any tingles, but the key started to glow.
We all stared at the key for a minute.
