by Dan Willis
She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. “Then we’ll just have to go by faith, won’t we?” she said gently. “Now let’s get these people moving. We want to put as much distance as possible between us and that mist.”
Erus, or Reorx, or whoever it was had given that compass to him for a reason, and he felt sure that reason still existed. But he had let everyone down by losing or dropping it. Some leader he was.
Bradok turned to the survivors. Anxious faces looked up at him. They had heard some of the discussion and were apprehensive about the loss of the compass. He tried to adopt a strong, stoic mask.
“All right, everyone,” he called out. “The danger is behind us, but we should probably make as much distance as we can today, so let’s get going.”
“Very diplomatic,” Tal whispered, falling in beside Bradok as the group began to move. “Just like a true leader.”
Bradok shook his head. “They know the compass is gone,” he said. “They’ll have to hear the truth sooner or later.”
The fight had taken a lot out of him. Bradok felt age and pain as they walked. He listened to the conversations around him. A young couple, whose names Bradok couldn’t remember, were taking turns carrying their toddler daughter, telling her all about the wonderful things they would do when they got to where they were going. Where was that? Bradok wondered silently. Where would they all end up? Had Reorx intended some destination for them? What if Tal was right and the whole world was gone? What then?
Seerten Rockhide, an armorer from Everguard, was exchanging forging tips with Kellik. Much was walking alongside the pregnant Lyra and fussing over her and her daughter, Jade. She must bring out the grandfather in his old friend, Bradok thought.
Everywhere around him, the survivors were walking and talking and letting some of the tension slip away. After two days of desperate hunger, it felt good to hear their voices again.
Several hours later, they emerged into a small, round cavern. With the exception of the hole Bradok had made in the wall, it was the only change in the long fissure since they had left the beach almost a week before. Much consulted his watch and pronounced it a good time to stop and camp and review their plans in the morning.
The chamber had a smooth, featureless roof and rounded sides, like a bubble of air in a sea of stone. Two passages exited the little cave, both appearing to continue on for some distance.
Everyone had eaten so much that no one felt particularly hungry. Instead, Chisul told everyone about the gory fight with the mushroom people. He had a rapt audience. Although Silas’s son embroidered his own bravery, he also gave credit to everyone else in the battle. Bradok found as he sat listening, cross-legged on the rocky floor of the cave, that he quite enjoyed Chisul’s version of the fight; it made them all seem heroic.
During the story, Rose and Tal sat next to Bradok.
“Was it really like that?” Tal whispered at one point.
“Pretty much,” Rose said, rubbing her arm where Tal had bandaged it.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Let it heal.”
Everyone agreed that those who fought to protect them should be allowed to get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Bradok had taken first watch every night since they started on their adventure, so he didn’t mind a little break. As the others continued to talk about the exciting events of the day, he quietly rolled himself in his cloak and almost instantly went to sleep, snoring softly.
By the time he awoke the next morning, Rose and Chisul were already up and arguing about which of the two passages that exited the little chamber offered the best prospects. Tal glanced meaningfully at the arguing pair as Bradok took a swig from his waterskin to wash the taste of sleep from his mouth.
“I think they need a leader,” Tal whispered.
Bradok stood and shook the dirt out of his cloak before wrapping it around his shoulders and hitching the metal clasp across his chest. Some of the dwarves had dug a small privy down the tunnel, just beyond the range of the light. Taking a deep breath, Bradok headed down the tunnel to relieve himself.
It took Bradok’s eyes almost a full minute to shrug off the darkness and find the privy in the empty tunnel. It had been dug far enough back along the tunnel that the argument still going on behind him had faded into incomprehensible echoes.
As he stood there doing his business, trying not to think about the decisions that lay ahead, he heard a strange sound. His senses tried to grab hold of it, identify it.
It sounded like a giggle.
Thinking that perhaps one of the children had followed him, Bradok turned his head back up the passage. Finding it as empty as he’d left it, he spun forward again. His eyes swept the black depths and, for a moment, he thought he spied something. Out on the edge of his vision, he could have sworn something shifted, melting back into the darkness as his eyes passed over it.
He stared, fixedly, at the spot, but it remained unchanged, just a blank face of rock that made up one side of the fissure. Still, Bradok couldn’t shake the feeling that he had seen something move there, something that had retreated when he noticed it.
The memory of the cave spider skeleton lurched into his mind, and he shuddered, turning to go back. Bradok cursed and heard the sound again—a short, truncated giggle. Whatever he didn’t know about cave spiders, he knew they didn’t giggle.
“Is someone there?” he called nervously.
Only silence greeted him from the depths.
“I won’t hurt you,” he called.
Still, nothing responded.
His hand slipped around the hilt of his sword, and he twisted it loose in its scabbard. Straining his ears, he could make out only the continuing dull drone of the argument between Rose and Chisul. He took a few tentative steps down the passageway but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The more rational part of his brain warned him not to go too far, for if something did rush him from the darkness, he would be too far away to call for help.
At length, he shrugged. It had been a long and stressful week, and he was hearing things. With a sigh he turned back to camp.
The argument he’d been avoiding was still raging as he entered the little cave. It had escalated to shouting, and had everyone’s attention. The survivors looked at Bradok expectantly as he marched up to Chisul and Rose.
“And I’m telling you that way is the right way; it slopes up,” Rose was shouting, mere inches from Chisul’s face. “You remember up, don’t you, the direction of the surface?”
Chisul pointed at the opposite opening. “As far as I can tell, they all go up, and then later they go down. Up and down. Round and round. Back and forth. That’s where we’ve gone so far.”
“There you are finally,” Rose said, noting Bradok’s appearance. “Will you please tell this buffoon that I’m right, and—”
Chisul looked scornfully at Bradok.
Bradok held up his hand for peace, and amazingly, both Rose and Chisul stopped arguing. He walked to the tunnel that Rose had suggested. It did slope slightly upward and looked promising.
Undecided, Bradok walked across the cave to the other opening. All eyes in the chamber followed him as he went. That passage resembled the one they’d been following for the past week, ragged and straight. As Bradok stood there, he could feel the push of air against his face. There was good air in that passage.
“Chisul’s right,” he said, turning back to the group. “We should take this one.”
Rose looked taken aback and strangely hurt.
“I told you,” Chisul said, puffing up his chest. “I told her,” he said, addressing all the dwarves.
Bradok pointed up the passage. “There’s air moving down this passage,” he explained. “That means that somewhere up ahead, there’s a way out. I think it’s our best choice.”
The crowd of survivors nodded their approval.
“Now let’s get some breakfast,” Bradok said. “We’ll want to put some good distance under our feet today.”
At the mention of the word breakfast, the gathered dwarves emitted an audible sigh of anticipation. Three days’ hard marching with no food once had seemed like an eternity. At that moment it was like a bad dream to be forgotten. Everyone sat, clustered together in groups of kin or friends and brought out chunks of mushroom to share.
Rose pointedly moved to sit among the other hill dwarves, though she cast a glance back at Bradok. He sat next to Much and was joined by the human, Perin, and Kellik and his sons.
Kellik was in a buoyant mood, showing his crooked teeth in a big smile and pointing to the biggest of his two boys, a burly lad whose beard had just begun coming in. “That’s my Rijul,” he informed Much; then, indicating the boy with his arm in a sling, he added, “I think you already know my youngest son, Hemmish.”
Hemmish smiled, a chunk of honey mushroom sliding around between his teeth, and Much grinned back.
“What happened to their mother?” Much asked quietly once the boys were engrossed in their breakfast.
A shadow passed over Kellik’s face for a moment; then he sighed. “She died last year,” he said in a subdued tone.
“I’m sorry,” Bradok said, although partly he was sorry that Much had asked such an indelicate question.
“It’s all right,” Kellik said wistfully. “It’s just that sometimes a year doesn’t really seem like all that much time.”
Anxious to change the subject, Bradok turned to Perin, “Tell us about you, Perin,” he said. “What brought you to Ironroot?”
The tall human smiled and shrugged. “The man who first taught me the cooper’s art died,” he said. “I still had much to learn. I heard that Silas was the best cooper for two hundred miles in any direction, so I traveled to Ironroot and had to practically beg him to take me on as an apprentice. Silas was a good soul.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, thinking of Silas. Bradok glanced over at Chisul, who wasn’t paying any attention to them.
“No offense, but most dwarves wouldn’t take on a human apprentice,” Much said.
If he felt offended by such frankness, Perin didn’t show it. He just smiled in an easy, knowing manner. “Silas wasn’t like most dwarves,” he said respectfully. “Besides, I think he wanted me around to kind of challenge Chisul to work harder, do better.”
“Did it work?” Kellik asked.
Perin shook his head, chuckling. “Quite the opposite,” he explained. “With me there, Chisul figured his father had someone to run the business once he retired. That left Chisul free to pursue his two favorite pastimes: beer and women.”
At the mention of beer, Bradok’s stomach growled angrily. “I wish you hadn’t said ‘beer,’” he said with a grimace. “It reminds me that I’m thirsty for something other than water.”
Much and Kellik laughed and agreed.
“Wherever we finally stop, we’d better have access to some ore deposits,” Kellik said as they began packing up.
“Why?” Bradok asked.
“Because I’ll need some copper and iron to make a decent still,” he said with a grin.
“That’s not all you’ll need,” a feminine voice said.
Standing over them was Urlish Hearthhome, a squat hill dwarf with a plain face and clever eyes. “You’ll need barley.”
Kellik stood and shouldered his pack, nodding sagely. “You’re right,” he said. “The barley will be harder to find down here than copper and iron. A still’s no good without something to put in it.”
It turned out Urlish was a farm girl from a long line of farm girls. There didn’t seem to be anything about planting or growing that she didn’t know. They fell into step together. Kellik spent the better part of the morning locked in conversation with her about the best way to set up a large-scale brewery one day.
Kellik and Urlish weren’t the only ones suddenly in good spirits. The children laughed and sang as they marched along, and Dallon, the wheelwright from Everguard, had clearly taken a shine to Starlight Anvil, the eldest of the Anvil grandchildren.
The most cheerful one, however, seemed to be the usually stoic Much. He wove through the crowd of marching dwarves, checking on Lyra, telling jokes, entertaining the children. At one point he passed Bradok, carrying Teal, the dark-haired toddler of the young couple who didn’t talk very much. Bradok told himself he really should learn their names, and the names of all the children too, but he had never been good with names.
Unlike their previous travels, they encountered several open chambers and side passages, though all of those were too narrow for the group to pass through. Finally they reached a chamber with two exits. One looked just like the fissure they’d been following; the other angled up from the top of the chamber.
“We’ll have to climb to reach that one,” Rose said to no one in particular.
“How do we know we should take that one?” Vulnar said.
“I wish you hadn’t lost that compass,” Halum said to Bradok.
He didn’t mean for it to be a rebuke, but it felt that way to Bradok.
“It’s getting late and everyone’s tired,” Much said, consulting his watch to break the tension. “Let’s stop here for the night. That’ll give us a chance to check both passages.”
Hours later, a thorough inspection of the two possible passages yielded nothing to recommend either of them over the other. Finally after much arguing and debate, the dwarves gave it up and resolved to explore afresh in the morning.
Somewhere around midnight, Tal nudged Bradok with his foot. “Get up,” he whispered, waking Bradok for his watch. Once Bradok had sat up, rubbing his eyes, he made his way to where his cloak lay, waiting for him.
Bradok stretched, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness. They had covered the glowlamps with a piece of cheesecloth, dimming the light significantly, during the night. He strapped on his sword and made his way to the mouth of the tunnel they’d come through. He still remembered the strange noise he’d heard the previous morning, and had asked that someone watch the path behind them. To his delight, he found Rose there, waiting for him. She smiled when he arrived, her teeth flashing in the low light.
“I see you drew the short straw,” she joked.
He nodded, leaning against the passage wall. “You too,” he said.
Rose shook her head. “I volunteered,” she said. “I like to sit and think when it’s quiet. I don’t get much chance to do that during the day.”
Bradok wanted to ask her about her life in Everguard but thought better of it. There was a very real chance that the village and everyone Rose had known were dead—all her friends, family, if she had family. He thought of a dozen ways of starting a conversation and rejected each in turn as awkward or inane.
An uncomfortable silence stretched out between them. Bradok cursed himself; he hadn’t had so much trouble talking to a girl since he was a lad. Finally he decided on an old standby. He pulled out his waterskin, took a long drink, then held it out to Rose.
“Buy you a drink?” he said with what he hoped was his most charming smile.
Rose chuckled; then her eyes went wide as a bright green light washed over both of them. Bradok dropped the waterskin and turned, jerking his sword from its scabbard.
A sight like he’d never imagined greeted him.
A glowing ball of light hovered over the floor, drifting back and forth as if caught in a current. It looked completely insubstantial, as though it were the stuff of mere light without form or body. As Bradok watched, a green patch appeared on the ground, and a second one oozed up out of the floor of the cave.
“What are they?” he whispered, amazed at the sight of the balls of light.
Rose shook her head. “I don’t know but they’re beautiful,” she said.
The second glowing ball hovered for a moment, like the first, then it shot upward without a sound, zooming around the ceiling of the cavern. The first light reacted instantly, giving chase.
Bradok and Rose watched in awe as the pair darted soundlessly around the chamber. I
f the strange, ethereal creatures were aware of the dwarves sleeping below them, they gave no sign.
Every time the two lights got close enough to touch, a spark of electricity crackled between them. Finally they circled each other, the sparks jumping regularly between them.
“What—” Rose began, but at that very moment the two lights disengaged and came darting straight for the passage entrance.
Bradok didn’t think; he leaped in front of Rose, knocking her down. Both of the light creatures slammed into his chest, passing right through his body and into the wall behind him. A shock like lightning ran through him at their passing and Bradok collapsed.
His senses cleared a moment later, and he found himself lying on top of Rose.
“Hey, I thought I told you next time to bring flowers,” she joked.
Bradok tried to smile but every muscle in his body seemed to be quivering weakly in the wake of the attack of the odd light-creatures. Was it an attack he had suffered? He did manage to get one arm under him, but he had no strength to push himself up.
Rose pushed up on his shoulders, trying to roll him off. She grunted with the effort, making gradual progress.
Just then Bradok heard a sound that was ominous—the click of a rock hitting the stone of the floor. Both he and Rose stopped dead, listening. Somewhere down the passage, someone had kicked or dropped or dislodged a rock.
Their eyes met and Rose nodded, understanding immediately. She rolled Bradok off and quickly crouched, drawing her long knife. Shakily, Bradok joined her as his muscles began to obey him.
Without making a sound, the pair of them advanced down the black passageway. They moved slowly, giving their eyes time to adjust to the total darkness. After a few dozen yards, they stopped. From somewhere below them, the sounds of whispered voices came drifting up. They were able to catch most of the words.
“… you sure?” someone asked.
“Hmm, yes,” a dreamy-sounding voice answered. “He’s rolling around on the floor with some woman. Once they get going, we should be able to slip by.”
“Ah, the good old days,” a third, mild voice said.
