companion had been sitting, he was startled to feel that the bedrock was still warm. Perhaps he hadn’t been as defenseless as he first thought.
“Thanks, old friend,” he said quietly.
He was stiff and uncomfortable when he rose to his feet and felt like an old man as he hobbled back to the war party, only gradually working the kinks out of his joints and limbs. The battle with the monstrous ogre had taken a toll on him that he would feel for days, he felt certain.
He found the group of warriors stirring, though most of them, too, seemed to be suffering the aftereffects of the fight-all except Slyce, who moaned under the influence of an obviously thudding hangover.
“That’ll teach you to steal good warqat!” snapped the Highlander.
“Never no more,” agreed the gully dwarf lugubriously.
“Ah,” the warrior said, his tone softening. “It’ll wear off with a few good miles under your boots.”
“We go on the same way?” Barq asked, squinting into the dark passage Kerrick had scouted.
“No other choice,” Moreen said. She addressed Kerrick. “Will you lead the way?”
“Sure,” he agreed as Bruni fired up a torch. All along the file other brands flared, until the war party looked as if it were escorted by a legion of huge, smoky fireflies.
With his back to the blazes, Kerrick found he could see pretty well. The walking was easy here. The passage was obviously a natural cavern, with stalactites on the ceiling and stalagmites rising from the floor in many places. Here and there the walls showed signs of chisels and hammers, where the ogres-or their slaves-had widened the route to allow for easier traversing. The floor was for the most part level, though not infrequently there were periods of steep descent. These were invariably carved with steps that, even if they were a little tall for a human’s stride, made for relatively easy descent.
Nowhere did the cavern narrow to the constricted route that had marked the entrance. Kerrick speculated that the mouth of the gate had been left thus to make it easier to defend, while the interior had been widened and made smooth to allow for easy marching, possibly by a large contingent of ogres. The air throughout was warm and moist, much like the air in the caverns below Brackenrock. They knew this was the result of subterranean heat sources that would-also like Brackenrock-ensure that Winterheim maintained a comfortable and constant interior temperature even during the worst ravages of the Sturmfrost and the sunless winter.
For hours the party trudged along, mostly in silence, though there were occasional hushed observations from some of the humans, awed by the vast sweep of a chamber ceiling or an exotic column of stone that seemed to have been formed from solidified mud. They came to the longest stairway of the route, a series of thirty steps that carried them steadily downward, with a broad landing after each ten tiers. At the bottom they entered a very large chamber, and Bruni and the others held their torches high. The light barely reached the walls but reflected back from enough slick surfaces to reveal a cavern that was nearly the size of Brackenrock’s great hall.
The air was slightly cooler in here, and it felt moist against Kerrick’s skin. He looked around in a moment of silent awe and heard the gentle trickling of water. Crossing the room he found a small pool, with a stream flowing into it from a gap in the opposite wall and a little channel leading away, eventually passing through a hole in the far side of the cavern where it undoubtedly continued its descent toward the sea. Beside the pool was a wide, flat expanse of fine-grained sand. Here they decided to take an extended rest.
“Look-blindfish!” Moreen exclaimed, pointing into the shallow, clear pool.
Kerrick saw a number of the cave dwelling swimmers, including a pair that were a good foot and a half long. Quickly he nocked an arrow into his bow and with a few well-placed shots was able to pull two of the largest fish out of the water. The shiny creatures wriggled and flopped until, with a few swipes of his knife, he filleted and cleaned them. Bruni gathered pieces of driftwood that had collected here.
Several Highlanders took up positions along the riverbank with light spears, while others held torches, the light reflecting in erratic glimmers from the rippling surface. In short order they had plucked dozens of fish from the stream, while still more of their comrades set about cleaning and cooking the aquatic delicacies. They grilled the fish and ate some of their dried bread, while sharing a few companionable sips from their dwindling supply of warqat.
Moreen and a dozen Arktos offered to stand the first watch, giving the others a chance to sleep. It was hard to tell how long they remained here in the lightless grotto, each of them standing a turn at the watch, but some time later they were all awake, refreshed, and ready to continue.
Barq gently probed his battered face. “Doesn’t hurt as much now,” he said. “Still swollen, though. Right?”
“No, really, it looks much better,” the elf suggested, disingenuously. He didn’t say better than what.
They continued along the cave. The party formed a long column, each warrior staying within a few paces of those marching before and behind. They passed through an array of caverns, some narrow with low ceilings, others vaulting high overhead. Water became common, mostly in small streams or clear pools.
“How far do you think we’ve come?” Moreen asked when they stopped for what they guessed to be a midday rest.
“Hard to tell with all the winding around, but counting yesterday, I think we’ve gone at least ten miles,” Kerrick speculated. “That must be half way to the main citadel, judging from where we saw the mountain outside.”
“We’d better stay alert,” Barq noted grimly. “There’s bound to be more of those big brutes waiting up ahead. They ain’t gonna let us walk right into their city like this.”
The others nodded, though Kerrick was not so sure. He was beginning to think that the ogre Broadnose had been right, that this was pretty much a forgotten and remote route into the ogre citadel, not a place that any citizen of Winterheim would use for a practical purpose.
“We should be coming to that place, the Moongarden, somewhere along here,” Moreen said. “Do you suppose we’ll know it when we find it?”
In another hour their question was answered as they came through a narrow arch in the cavern passage to find themselves in a chamber much, much larger than any before. There was no way for the torchlight to reach even halfway across the huge cavern, but neither was it necessary. Indeed, Bruni quickly extinguished the light, and the companions looked around in awe.
“It’s like a forest of mushrooms,” Moreen said, gesturing to the floor of the cavern some fifty feet below them. Everywhere grew massive clumps of fungi, some the size of bushes or boulders, others as big as cottages.
Throughout the clumps of mushrooms they could see streams, some rippling over rapids, others swirling or marked by still, deep pools. Flying creatures dived and spun through the air some distance away, and Kerrick pointed out that they looked like bats-a swarm of a thousand or more.
“It’s underground,” Moreen said, gesturing to the lofty ceiling rising to a shadowy definition overhead, “but we can see everything!”
“The walls,” noted the elf, inspected the stone surrounding the arch through which they had entered. “This is a glowing lichen here, and it seems to extend all the way around this place.”
Indeed, the illumination was soft, greenish in tint, and very pleasant to the eyes. It cast no shadows but instead provided a gentle and uniform light that resembled a summer night, when the skies were clear and the white moon full with the solstice light. It struck them all at the same time, as they looked at each other and nodded in understanding. It was Barq One-Tooth who articulated the general realization.
“I think we found the Moongarden,” he said.
There was a stabbing pain in his right side. Vaguely, over a long time, he realized that his arm was twisted behind him, almost impossibly bent. Probably it was broken, he thought glumly.
Karyl Drago had very good cause to be glum. He was wedged between the walls of the crevasse, an unknown distance far below the lip.
The big ogre uttered a groan and tried to shift his body around. It was his massive belly that had lodged him here where the chasm walls leaned close together, he realized. In so doing his great girth had saved his life. He had thrown enough loose rocks into this crevasse over his years of duty here. He well knew that it was virtually bottomless. If he had slipped past this spot-he could feel by kicking his legs that the gap was much wider just below-he would have plummeted an unknown, fatal distance.
How had they managed to knock him down here? He reflected on the question, not used to analyzing his own
