“What’s that?” the king asked.
“These caves, they’re not old enough for dripstones to form. It takes tens of thousands of years. These…” He looked around, pursing his pudgy lips. “These tunnels are young. I doubt they have existed for more than a few thousand years and most of that time this was underwater from a powerful river. That’s what carved the walls and rounded the rocks. You also need limestone and this isn’t that kind of cave. Actually…” He paused, then stopped to pick up a rock. As he weighed it in his hand, a puzzled look came over his face.
“What is it?” Mauvin asked.
“The rocks here are from the surface.” He shrugged. “Perhaps the river carried them.” He continued to stare, licking his teeth, for several seconds before dropping it and moving on.
They entered another narrow space but not nearly so tight as before. This was an irregular passage about the size of a typical second-story castle corridor. Low ceilings caused them to duck and rough ridges made them step around, but the way was considerably easier and more comfortable than those previously encountered. The passage was in a constant descent, growing more pronounced with each step. They followed the glow of Royce’s lantern and kept track of the back of their procession by the bob of Hadrian’s. As on the previous day, Arista walked in the middle, her robe glowing softly.
They heard a rush, as if someone far away was beating a drum. The sound echoed, making it hard to determine what direction it was coming from. They all paused, looking around nervously. Arista felt a slight breeze forming and realized what was coming. At the same instant, she knew that outside, the sun had just risen.
“Here they come,” Hadrian called out.
Arista crouched down, pulling the hood of her robe up over her head as through the corridor swept the same multitude of bats that had frightened her in the shaft the evening before. The world around her filled with squeaks and flutters; then the wind passed and the sound moved away. She stood up and peeked out and saw the others lowering their arms as well. A few slow strays continued to fly by when one not far from Myron was snatched from the air. The monk staggered backward with a gasp and fell in front of Elden, who picked the monk up as if he were a doll.
“Snake,” Wyatt announced. “A big black one.”
“There’s dozens of them,” Royce explained.
“Where?” Alric asked.
“Mostly behind you on the walls.”
“What?” the king said, aghast. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Knowing would only make traveling slower.”
“Are they poisonous?” Mauvin asked.
They could all see the silhouetted shoulders of Royce’s shadow on the far wall shrug.
“I demand you inform me of such things in future!” Alric declared.
“Do you want to know about the giant millipedes, then too?”
“Are you joking?”
“Royce doesn’t make jokes,” Arista told him as she looked around, anxiously hugging herself. Immediately her robe brightened and she spotted two snakes on the walls, but they were a safe distance away.
“He must be joking,” Alric muttered quietly. “I don’t see any.”
“You aren’t looking up,” the thief said.
Arista did not want to. Some instinct, a tiny voice, warned her to fight the impulse, but in the end she just could not help herself. On the low ceiling, illuminated brightly by the robe, slithered a mass of wormlike bugs with an uncountable number of hairlike feet. Each was nearly five inches in length and close to the width of a man’s finger. There were so many that they swarmed over each other until it was hard to tell if the ceiling was rock at all. Arista felt a chill run down her back. She clenched her teeth, forced her eyes to the floor, and focused on walking forward as quickly as possible.
She promptly passed Alric and Mauvin, both moving quicker than normal. She reached Royce, who stood outside the corridor on a boulder at the entrance to a larger passage.
“I guess I was wrong. Looks like I should have told you earlier,” Royce said, watching them race forward.
“Are there…?” she asked, pointing upward without looking.
Royce glanced up and shook his head.
“Good,” she replied. “And please, if Alric wants to know these things, fine, but don’t tell me. I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing they were there.” She shivered.
Everyone scurried out of the corridor except Myron, who lingered, staring up at the ceiling and smiling in fascination. “There are millions.”
They entered another chamber, a smaller cavern of dramatic boulders that thrust up and out. Arista thought they appeared how the timbers of a house might look if a giant stepped on it. As soon as they entered, they faced a mystery on the far wall, where three darkened passages awaited, one large, one small, and one narrow. The party waited as Royce disappeared briefly into each one. When he returned, he did not look pleased.
“Dwarf!” he snapped. “Which one?”
Magnus stepped forward and poked his head into each. He placed his hands on the stone, groping over the surface as if he were a blind man. He pressed his ear to the rock, sniffed the air in each opening, and stepped back with a perplexed look. “They all go deep, but in separate directions.”
Royce continued to stare at him.
“The stone doesn’t know where we want to go, so it can’t tell me.”
“We can’t afford to pick the wrong path,” Arista said.
“I say we choose the largest,” Alric stated confidently. “Wouldn’t that be the most sensible?”
“Why is that sensible?” Arista asked.
“Well-because it is the biggest, so it ought to go the farthest and, you know-get us there.”
“The largest might not remain that way,” Magnus replied. “Cracks in rock aren’t like rivers. They don’t taper evenly.”
Alric looked irritated. “Okay, what about you?” he asked Arista. “Can you do anything to-well-you know-find which is the right one?”
“Like what?”
“Do I need to spell it out? Like…” He waved his hands in the air in a mysterious fashion that she thought made him look silly. “Magic.”
“I knew what you meant, but what exactly do you expect me to do? Summon Novron’s ghost to point us in the right direction?”
“Can you do that?” the king asked, sounding both impressed and apprehensive.
“No!”
Alric frowned and slapped his thighs with his hands as if to indicate how horribly she had let him down. It irritated her how everyone seemed so disgusted by her talent and yet was even more upset when they found her ability lacking.
“Myron?” Hadrian said softly to the monk, who stood silently, staring at the passages.
“ Three openings. What to do? ” Myron said eerily.
“Myron, yes!” Alric smiled. “Tell us, which way did Hall go?”
“That’s what I am reciting to you,” he replied, trying to hide a little smile. “ ‘Three openings. What to do? I sat for an hour before I gave up trying to reason it out and just picked. I chose the closest.’ ”
Myron stopped, and when he failed to say more, Alric spoke. “The closest? What does that mean? Closest to what?”
“Is that all Hall wrote?” Arista asked. “What came next?”
Everyone crowded around the little man as he cleared his throat.
“ ‘Down, down, down, always down, never up. Slept in the corridor again. Miserable night. Food running low. Big-eyed fish looking better all the time. This is hopeless. I will die in here. I miss Sadie. I miss Ebot and Dram. I should never have come. This was a mistake. I have placed myself in my own grave. Feet are always wet. Want to sleep, but don’t want to lie in water.
“ ‘A pounding. Pounding up ahead. A way out maybe!
“ ‘Pounding stopped. I don’t think it was from the outside. I think someone else is down here-something else.
