Cat Tower, where a single flight of stairs had led from the light of the surface down no more than twenty feet to the finest wines in southern Solamnia, the cellar had tumbled, wine racks and barrels and all, into these depths.
Fragments of glass, covered with old wine, stuck to the soles of his boots. Nothing was intact here.
It must have fallen hundreds of feet, he thought. Almost by reflex, he looked above him, as if from this depth and this darkness, not to mention through the mist, he could see the walls of the cellar, left hanging when the floor dropped into the earth.
A clay pipe jutted from the floor beside him, rising out of sight into the darkness. But there, where pipe met floor and seemed to disappear into the rock, lay an enormous clay shield, gnomish letters inscribed on its circumference.
The well cap!' Robert exclaimed in delight. 'The cellar must have fallen through onto the damned thing!'
The well cap was cracked and moldy. Water seeped from the crack, and beneath its strained surface, Robert could hear the rumble of the mighty well.
This is a chamber of miracles, he thought triumphantly. Now losing the castle papers rests more easily on these poor old shoulders.
He looked up toward Marigold-still descending- toward his other companions, prepared to trumpet his discovery.
Someone-Brandon? Bayard? — signaled frantically. There was something dreadfully wrong up there.
Then Robert heard the yowling issue from the fissure walls. He looked about him and saw over a dozen slick white things as they crawled, orange-eyed and hissing, from the rubble and the dust and from notches and holes in the stone.
'Mariel's cats!' he marveled. 'By the gods, I was right!'
But this was no time for congratulating himself. Quickly he drew his sword and crouched, lantern held high in his left hand, his seasoned blade low in his other, but far too light to an experienced hand.
He looked down. His sword was broken.
Enid watched from above as the white forms crept closer to her father, wavering and wailing.
'What in the name of Hiddukel-' Andrew began.
'Enough speculation,' Brandon announced flatly. 'I'm going to kill them.'
The first bolt from the bow sailed through the rippling mist and pinned one of the things to an overturned barrel. It screamed like a child, that shrill, rending sound of something skidding across glass. Two of the others lunged toward it, reducing it to bone with quick, ravenous tearing and chewing.
Brandon started. He moved away from the edge of the fissure, as though the ground he stood upon had become suddenly too hot.
'Get back here, damn you!' Enid said through clenched teeth, clutching the young Knight's arm. 'Killing one doesn't stop the rest of them!'
Robert straddled the well cap, crouched in an old Solamnic battle stance. The cats flitted about him, between barrel and table and crate. He could not keep track of them, but the two that were feeding he could see quite clearly.
They were pale, hairless, with the skin of a grub or a rat's tail. Their ears were large, cupped, batlike, their orange eyes bulbous, too large.
Also too large were the fangs, as though lost in the subterranean darkness, the creatures had reverted to old generations, to the saber-toothed cats whose skulls miners and gravediggers found on occasion.
One of the creatures burst from a hole in the crevasse wall and hit the floor in stride, rushing at Robert, who raised the lantern in front of it.
The cat thing slowed, bent its path around the old Knight, and ran full tilt into the stone wall with a wet, crackling sound.
Robert looked once, looked away, then looked back. It had killed itself through its own momentum.
At once one of the cats was on the old man's left arm, biting, rending, burning in the white light of the lantern. With a quick, painful move, Robert broke the grip of the thing, hurling it across the room. It tumbled into a wine rack, then, dazed, scooted off into the dark.
Unfortunately, the lantern, too, went flying from Robert's hand as he fell. It clattered onto a shelf, rocked there for a moment, its wick sputtering, and then- miraculously-remained lit.
'Thanks be to Huma,' Robert breathed, then looked to his damaged hand as the cats circled slowly.
And unaware of the danger below her, Marigold set foot on the floor of the chamber.
They looked like ghosts from her vantage of height. Like phosfire or moonlight rippling on gray water.
And yet they are substantial, Enid thought. Brandon's bow had shown us that.
Substantial and fierce, for the one who latched itself to her father's arm had emerged from the shadows and weaved about him with the rest of its kind.
There were more of the things every time Enid looked. Though Brandon had fired again and again, dropping creature after creature with his flawless aim, it seemed that at least one more came to take the place of each one that fell.
She shook her head as Brandon fired again, the bolt passing through two of the screeching things below him. As for Robert…
Robert di Caela had stretched his injured hand toward the boiling rock beneath him, felt warmth, uncomfortable warmth and wetness, and drew his hand back.
Now up with the sword hand he reached, touching the hilt of the broken sword to the swimming surface of the rock. Across the floor, Marigold approached him, her skirts lifted, the square-sailed vessel nodding atop her head. One of the cats broke out of the darkness, rushed at her madly, then balked at her heft and her withering stare. It seemed that even starvation and generations of inbreeding had not deprived the animal of its most basic instincts of survival.
Robert snorted in amusement, scooted himself against the cap, which was warm but not uncomfortable against his back. The way up the rock face lay ironically at a distance over Marigold's shoulder, the cat-things milling behind her.
Soon they would have the numbers.
Wearily Robert drew up his gauntlets from where they dangled by a rawhide cord at his belt. He put on the iron-studded gloves, wincing painfully as the leather pressed against cut and blister.
I am beyond rescue, he thought. Even if Brandon and Bayard rise to their highest heroics, they cannot possibly get to me in time. And so these gauntlets, which will be better than bare hands when Mariel's cats close in.
He smiled and braced himself, and as the lantern dimmed, he silently prepared himself for Huma's breast.
Above Sir Robert di Caela, things unraveled steadily. His friends looked on as the floor of the chasm milled with white, larval creatures.
'What is going on down there?' Bayard muttered with a rising fury. He had been picking up stones, heavier and heavier, and dropping them upon the flitting pale things below him. Now, winded and clutching at his leg, he leaned against Sir Andrew, his eyesight spangling with pain.
Turning from Bayard and Andrew, Enid looked desperately to her father. He leaned against the well cap, smiling grimly, resolutely, as Marigold approached him and stood beside him bravely, giving but one sidelong glance to the possibly fatal sausages she had come to retrieve. Meanwhile, the white hissing things crawled nearer.
As Enid watched, the air seemed to go white about her, and for a moment, she reeled unsteadily at the edge of the chasm.
It was Raphael who reached her first, but he lacked the weight to pull her back from the ledge. Together, locked by the arms, the two of them hovered over the gray and pooling darkness. An eager chittering rose from the swarming things below them.
And Brandon Rus's strong arm closed about the boy, dragging the two of them to safety.
For a moment, the three of them, Brandon and Raphael, with Enid atop them both, lay in a shivering heap on the solid stone of the ledge. Bayard and Andrew rushed to them, lifting the woman to her feet as Brandon
