even farther below the foundations of Castle di Caela. The tunnel now widened into a huge, vaulted hall littered with stalagmites and stalactites, both upright and broken, glistening yellow in the light of the lanterns.
Brandon gasped under Bayard's arm and stopped suddenly. Sir Robert, plodding along absently behind them, walked straight into their backs before Enid could stop him. All three men jostled, started…
Then stood still, looking down into the crevasse not a yard in front of them. A narrow bridge of rock, scarcely a toot wide, spanned the yawning gap in front of them and led away into the thick and climbing gloom.
They could not see the bottom of the pit in front of them. Sir Robert picked up a small fragment of limestone and tossed it into the darkness.
The sound returned with surprising speed, for the fragment dropped quickly into the bottom chasm. It was not thirty feet deep.
Then why,' Bayard asked aloud what they all were asking to themselves. 'Why does it seem so bottomless?'
All of them looked into the crevasse, seeing only a short way into its abiding darkness.
The room felt palpably colder. Somewhere in the distance, near the other side of the stone catwalk, there was a faint whirring sound, like a distant chorus of cicadas. Bayard squinted toward the source of the noise but saw nothing.
'It is the device, sir,' Brandon stated matter-of-factly, shielding his eyes against the lantern light and peering across the breadth of the chamber. 'By the gods, it could be nothing other.'
'I… I am afraid that the light in Raphael's hand has blinded me momentarily, Brandon,' Bayard said, flushing. 'Would you be so kind as to describe the device in question? I mean, for the benefit of those behind us.'
'It's… it's… glittering, shining, crafted of metal, I believe,' the young man ventured, 'though it is impossible to tell at this distance. No doubt of dwarven make, to have survived this long in the dampness of these caverns.'
'Of dwarven make, you say?' Sir Andrew huffed, joining the other Knights at the lip of the mysterious chasm. 'How can you tell from fifty yards?'
'A hundred yards,' Brandon corrected. 'And 1 cannot tell. My eyes aren't as good as they were when I was a boy.'
Andrew and Bayard glanced at one another, hiding embarrassed smiles.
Brandon smiled himself, shook his head.
'Then again, I'm quite the one for 'dwarven make' and 'cunningly wrought,' aren't I, gentlemen? As if the blasted thing is not fabulous enough just being down here.'
'Go on, Brandon,' Sir Robert urged. 'Describe the apparatus. This is no time to come down with a case of self-knowledge.'
Brandon Rus snorted in amusement.
'Well…' he began again, his eyes intent on the veiled shadows as the older men hung on his arm and words. 'There are concentric circles on the thing. Not unlike an archer's butt.'
For the first time, Marigold showed an interest in the conversation. Facedown in a bag of silks and cosmetics, her hair newly fashioned into the shape of a sailing ship, she looked up in passionate curiosity. 'Whose butt?' she asked innocently.
''Tis only an archer's term for a target, Cousin Marigold,' Enid explained curtly, never lifting her eyes from the murk beyond the huddled party.
'Oh.' Somewhat disappointed, the big woman sank back into contemplating her sundries.
'Or like an eye,' Brandon continued. 'Indeed, quite like an eye. About the target is an old stone painting, that of the scorpion who swallows his tail, the circle and cycle of life, as the old legends have it.' His voice rose in excitement at the mythology. 'It is the center of the thing that draws your attention, though. Within those concentric circles there is a dark, immoveable center, a darkness next to which the surrounding blackness is gray, almost light.'
'As if it led into absolute nothing,' Bayard murmured. Brandon nodded. 'As it well may, sir, what little I can make out.'
He turned, regarding Bayard directly.
'Whatever it is,' Bayard observed, 'it becomes more dangerous by the hour. It is set here to waken the worm, on that I'd wager. But as to how it will do so I can only guess.'
Enid took her husband's hand, as though she was about to guide him through unfathomable dark.
'Well, why in the name of the twenty-seven gods are we prissing here at the edge of this inch-deep chasm like a flock of embroiderers,' thundered Sir Robert, 'when we could see to our liking if one of us had the simple fortitude to take a closer look?'
And holding high a brightly glowing lantern, he stepped forward onto the footbridge, marching securely toward the sound ahead of him.
'Wait!' Bayard cried, reaching for the rash old man. But his leg gave beneath him and he started to fall, pulling Brandon with him. Sir Robert took ten steps, and fell suddenly from view as the rock gave way beneath him. Clutching the lantern, he tumbled in the dark like a small subterranean shooting star.
'Father!' Enid shouted and stepped to the rippling edge of the chasm.
'Be still, all of you!' Bayard cried out and, steadying himself against Brandon, grabbed for his wife and held her.
Behind them, Marigold trumpeted in dismay.
'Uncle Robert has vanished with my sausages!' she exclaimed. 'If we are trapped, I'll starve!'
Icily Enid stared at her most distant cousin as all about them, the men flinched involuntarily.
'Then I can only suggest you lower yourself into whatever lies in front of us, Marigold,' Enid said through teeth impossibly clenched, 'and retrieve them, casings and gristle and all. And do try to rescue my father if you can find the time.'
But Marigold had anticipated her. Already she was waist-deep in the chasm, lowering herself into the whirling darkness with the ungainly grace of a manatee. Soon the big girl had nearly vanished, complete with bag of cosmetics, as the lacquered ship of her hair sank into the murky country below them.
Sir Robert di Caela lay spread-eagled on a stone table, wondering how by all the gods it had managed to cushion his fall.
Even the light in the lantern was intact.
It was welcome to Robert, this sense of his life being spared. Instantly he felt younger-thirty or forty years younger, at least as young as he felt when, as a lean and dangerous swordsman, he traveled east from Solamnia, joining a band of Knights in the Khalkist Mountains, at a little pass called Chaktamir.
It was a feeling he had almost forgotten in the habits of his old age.
Robert breathed the gray mist eagerly. It was cool, harboring the clear blue smell of ozone and imminent water, as though, beyond all possibility, this chasm lay somewhere under the sea.
Was it a shipwreck around him? Robert squinted, struggled to his feet for a better view.
Above him there were shouts, as though all of his companions were speaking to him through blankets. Someone was descending. No doubt they were concerned for his well-being.
Which is better than it has been in decades, he thought with a smile.
About him, the landscape was littered with glass and barrel staves. A sour smell rose on the charged air, reminding him of centaurs, of singing.
What were the words of the song?
It was a wine cellar, or the remnants of one. Robert waded slowly through the rubble. At first, he leaned against a broken-down wine rack. Slowly he examined himself for bruises or breakage. Shadows swirled above him, and a form descended through the tumbling dark until he could make out its girth and its shape and its absurd hair.
'Marigold!' he breathed in exasperation.
Robert felt his own ancient limbs. He was surprisingly intact. For a moment, he thought there might be some restoring magic to this cellar.
What seemed to have happened was that the cellar had dropped. From its previous site at the base of the
