“Are you all right?”
They collapsed into each other’s arms, clinging to each other until the worst of the trembling passed.
“I couldn’t have left you, certainly not to save myself,” Roric said quietly.
She couldn’t answer, her face pressed against his chest.
Above them they could still hear deep, angry rumblings from the dragon, but it did not seem able to follow. “If nothing’s broken,” said Roric after a moment, “let’s follow this passage a little further and see if we can find a way out. Maybe if we go slower we won’t have any more surprises like that one!”
“Roric, please! I can’t crawl through any more dark tunnels. I just can’t!”
“Then I’ll go ahead, and you can wait for me.”
“No, please don’t leave me!” She was sobbing now. This was entirely her fault, from the decision to try to find Valmar to the decision to descend into the firelit room under the rocks in search of the Witch of the Western Cliffs, and if they starved to death here it would only be an appropriate end to their story.
He held her again, rocking her like a child. “I won’t leave you behind if you don’t want,” he murmured into her hair. “But feel how smooth the floor is here. And someone built that fire in the dragon’s den, and I doubt it was the dragon. Don’t you think some of your faeys might have found a way to live close to it?”
At the thought of the faeys she sat up straight, peering about in the blackness in search of the faint green light cast by their lamps. She still saw nothing, and she realized that no faeys she had ever known, either the ones in Hadros’s kingdom or the ones here, had used open fires. But imagining this was a faeys’ burrow gave her courage. She took a deep breath. “Let’s go then,” she said.
Roric went first, crawling with his sword in one hand, feeling his way in the dark. The surface under their knees and hands remained level. “ Someone certainly must live here,” he said over his shoulder.
“Of course someone does,” said a deep voice in front of them.
Karin reached forward to grasp Roric by the shoulder. The voice was good-natured and deeper than the voice of any faey, but with a detached, almost weary note that reminded her oddly of Queen Arane. “Are you-” she began tentatively, addressing the darkness and already knowing the answer, “are you a faey?”
There was a chuckle then before the voice continued. With the echoes, it was impossible to judge distance, but it sounded very close. “I have been called many things, but never that.”
Karin squeezed Roric’s shoulder tighter. It was very strange speaking to someone she could not see, someone who, she told herself, had to be human. “Then who are you?”
“Some call me,” said the voice, “the Witch of the Western Cliffs.”
2
“We’d like to see you if we could,” said Roric when Karin fell silent.
“Then keep coming,” the voice replied. “You will be able to see me-and I you-by the light of my fire. Though I must say I had thought mortals had more sense than to blunder into a dragon’s den after I set the fire beacon there to warn everyone away!”
Roric crawled on, Karin right behind him. The tunnel curved around a corner, and the dark lightened to the level of dimness. The tunnel opened into a room with a high ceiling. Here again a fire was burning, and something enormous and squat reclined before it.
He came out of the tunnel and rose slowly to his feet, his sword still in his hand. “Do not fear me, Roric No- man’s son,” said the voice.
All creatures of voima, it seemed, knew his name. Considering how little use his sword had been against the dragon, he doubted it would be much more use here. Their best hope was that this witch really was as friendly as it wanted to sound, and he would not learn that by threatening. He gritted his teeth for a moment, then shrugged, sheathed his sword, and put an arm around Karin as she came up beside him.
He could feel her trembling, but she spoke clearly. “We have come a long way to find you. The Mirror-seer in my father’s kingdom said that you would know the way into the Wanderers’ realm.”
The massive shape by the fire shifted but did not answer at once. It did not look human in spite of its voice. Yet the firelight glinted from a pair of eyes, human eyes. As the flame licked high for a second it bounced images from an enormous mirror on the far wall.
“Are you perhaps a Mirror-seer yourself?” said Roric politely. But he asked himself with a tightening of his lips whether all of this, their entire trip to the Hot-River Mountains, might be some sort of Seer joke.
“No, nor a Weaver,” said the shape. It was impossible to place the being’s voice as either man or woman, any more than it was possible for the Weavers. “Although, as you see, I too weave.” Roric saw then that there was a net across the far side of the room, tightly tied, full of knots and tangles.
“But can we reach the Wanderers’ realm from here?” asked Karin again, a desperate edge in her voice.
“ Everything beneath the sun is ruled by those you call the Wanderers,” the Witch of the Western Cliffs replied. Roric had yet to see a mouth but thought it must be enormous to match the creature’s bulk. “At least for now, all lands are the realms of the lords of voima. But the upheaval is coming soon…”
“The Weaver back home,” said Roric, “also spoke of an upheaval.”
“And the faeys as well,” said Karin quietly.
When the witch again fell silent, Roric tried to focus on the mirror. It seemed to show people moving, maybe even fighting, but too dimly to identify any of them even if he knew them.
“Come and sit beside me, Roric No-man’s son and Karin Kardan’s daughter,” said the witch then.
Karin had not reacted when the witch first called Roric by his name, but she lifted her head sharply at hearing her own. “How do you know us?” she demanded.
“I expected you,” said the witch, again with a low chuckle. Roric thought that this witch, whoever he or she might be, sounded like someone who had been alive much too long ever to hurry again, or even to worry, but was prepared to observe with interest whatever came its way. “After all, your Seer sent you to look for me; did you think I would not have seen that?”
“Then you know what we want,” said Karin.
“And I also know that you are both exhausted, bone weary, and famished. I have watched mortals long enough to know one has to be careful with them sometimes-there was a time I watched them very closely. Sit with me by my fire before you try to find other realms than this one.”
There was no way to judge the passing of time in the darkness of the cave of the Witch of the Western Cliffs. They ate bread and cheese and drank ale; Roric wondered briefly where the witch had gotten it but knew better than to ask. After a while, even sitting in the dark with a witch who must be twenty times the size of either of them stopped being disturbing. Karin commented that this large room was much more comfortable than the cramped burrows of the faeys.
The dragon seemed far away, and then even farther away as the ale went to their heads. They had not heard any of its rumbles since they entered this room. Karin said something about tiny islands of security, but Roric was too tired for it to make much sense. Then they slept, lying on the sandy floor by the fire, their heads pillowed on what appeared to be a leathery roll of the witch’s belly. They woke again to find the flames still flickering low.
The witch was working on its weaving, pulling and tugging at strings, seeming to make them even more tangled, humming quietly as it worked. It was difficult to see clearly for the shadows moved with it, but the witch almost appeared to have more than one pair of arms, like a huge spider.
Not wanting to disturb its work, Roric and Karin whispered together. She told him about the renegade king and his embittered woman, and how she had gotten out of their castle. But he did not tell her, not yet, that he had killed Gizor. For the last day he had been too involved in keeping first himself and then the two of them alive to think much on it, but he was carrying a massive blood-guilt.
“So, you two mortals have not yet had enough of the Wanderers?” asked the witch above them. “From what I heard, I thought you had turned against them.”
“What have you heard?” asked Roric cautiously. This being was the first, including the humans, who seemed to realize that mortals needed food and rest, the first since they had left the isolated manor and its strange blue- eyed lady, and it inspired him-almost-with a feeling of trust. But he had never trusted anyone absolutely, except maybe Karin, and he had no reason to trust a creature of voima.
