Mercedes Lackey - The Demon's Den

:I'm coming!:

:No, you're not!: He'd landed on his stomach, facing up a slope of about thirty degrees. He could lift his torso about a handspan. He could move his left arm freely. His right was pined by his side. Breathing heavily, he rested his cheek against the damp rock and closed his eyes. It made no difference to the darkness, but it made him feel better. :Gevris, you're going to have to go for help. I can't free myself, and you can't even get to me.: He tried to envision his map, tried to trace the route they'd taken tracking the cat, tried to work out distances. :There's a mining settlement closer than the farmstead, just follow the old mine trail, and it should take you right to it.:

:But you ...:

:I'm hot going anywhere until you get back.:

I'm not going anywhere, he repeated to the darkness as he felt the presence of his Companion move rapidly away. I'm not going anywhere. Unfortunately, as the mountain pressed in on him and all he could hear was his own terror filling the silence, that was exactly what he was afraid of.

It was hard to hear anything over the storm that howled around the chimneys and shutters, but Ari's ears were her only contact with the world and she'd learned to sift sound for value. Head cocked, tangled hair falling over the ruin of her eyes, she listened. Rider coming. Galloping hard. She smiled, smug and silent. Not much went on that she didn't know about first. Something must've gone wrong somewhere. Only reason to be riding so hard in this kind of weather.

The storm had been no surprise, not with her stumps aching so for the past two days. She rubbed at them, hacking and spitting into the fire.

"Mama, Auntie Ari did it again."

"Hush, Robin. Leave her alone."

That's right, leave me alone. She spat once more, just because she knew the child would still be watching, then lifted herself on her palms and hand-walked toward her bench in the corner.

"Ari, can I get you something?"

Sometimes she thought they'd never learn. Grunting a negative, because ignoring them only brought renewed and more irritating offers, she swung herself easily up onto the low bench just as the pounding began. Sounds like they didn't even dismount. I can't wait.

"Who can it be at this hour?"

Her cousin, Dyril. Answer it and find out, idiot.

"Stone me, it's a horse!"

The sound of hooves against the threshold was unmistakable. She could hear the creak of leather harness, the snorting and blowing of an animal ridden hard, could even smell the hot scent of it from all the way across the room — but somehow it didn't add up to horse.

And while the noises it was making were certainly horselike ...

From the excited babble at the door, Ari managed to separate two bits of relevant information; the horse was riderless and it was nearly frantic about something.

"What color is it?"

It took a moment for Ari to recognize the rough and unfamiliar voice as her own. A stunned silence fell, and she felt the eyes of her extended family turned on her. Her chin rose and her lips thinned. "Well?" she demanded, refusing to let them see she was as startled as they were. "What color is it?"

"He's not an it, Auntie Ari, he's a he. And he's white. And his eyes are blue. And horses don't got blue eyes." Young Robin was obviously smarter than she'd suspected. "Of course they don't. It's not a horse, you rock-headed morons. Can't you recognize a Companion when you see one?"

The Companion made a sound that could only be agreement. As the babble of voices broke out again, Ari snorted and shook her head in disbelief.

"A Companion without a Herald?"

"Is it searching?"

"What happened to the Herald?"

Ari heard the Companion spin and gallop away, return and gallop away again.

"I think it wants us to follow it."

"Maybe its Herald is hurt, and it's come here for help."

And did you figure that out all on your own? Ari rubbed at her stumps as various members of the family scrambled for jackets and boots and some of the children were sent to rouse the rest of the settlement.

When with a great thunder of hooves, the rescue party galloped off, she beat her head lightly against the wall, trying not to remember.

"Auntie Ari?"

Robin. Made brave no doubt by her breaking silence. Well, she wouldn't do it again.

"Auntie Ari, tell me about Companions." He had a high-pitched, imperious little voice. "Tell me."

Tell him about Companions. Tell bun about the time spent at the Collegium wishing her Blues were Gray. Tell him how the skills of mind and hand that had earned her a place seemed so suddenly unimportant next to the glorious honor of being Chosen. Tell him of watching them gallop across Companion's Field, impossibly beautiful, impossibly graceful — infinitely far from her mechanical world of stresses and supports and levers and gears.

Tell him how she'd made certain she was never in the village when the Heralds came through riding circuit because it hurt so much to see such beauty and know she could never be a part of it. Tell him how after the accident she'd stuffed her fingers in her ears at the first sound of bridle bells.

Tell him any or all of that?

"You saw them, didn't you, Auntie Ari. You saw them up close when you were in the city."

"Yes." And then she regretted she'd said so much.

:Chosen! I've brought hands to dig you out!:

Jots released a long, shuddering breath that warmed the rock under his cheek and tried very, very hard not to cry.

:Chosen?:

The distress in his Companion's mind-touch helped him pull himself together. -:I'm okay. As okay as I was, anway. I just, I just missed you.: Gevris' presence settled gently into his mind, and he clung to it, more afraid of dying alone in the dark than of just dying.

:Do not think of dying.:

He hadn't realized he'd been thinking of it in such a way as to be heard..'Sorry. I guess I'm not behaving much like a Herald, am I?:

A very equine snort made him smile. :You are a Herald. Therefore, this is how Heralds behave trapped in a mine.:

The Companion's tone suggested he not argue the point so he changed the subject. :How did you manage to communicate with the villagers?:

:When they recognized what I was, they followed me. Once they saw where you were, they understood. Some have returned to the village for tools.: He paused and Jors had the feeling he was deciding whether or not to pass on one last bit of information. :They call this place the Demon's Den.:

:Oh, swell.:

:There are no real demons in it.:

:That makes me feel so much better.:

:It should,: Gevris pointed out helpfully.

“Herald's down in the Demon's Den." The storm swirled the voice in through the open door stirring the room up into a frenzy of activity. All the able-bodied who hadn't followed the Companion ran for jackets and boots. The rest buzzed like a nest of hornets poked with a stick.

Ari sat in her corner, behind the tangled tent of her hair, and tried not to remember.

There was a rumble, deep in the bowels of the hillside, a warning of worse to come. But they kept working because Ari had braced the tunnels so cleverly that the earth could move as it liked and the mine would move with it, flexing instead of shattering.

But this time, the earth moved in a way she hadn't anticipated. Timbers cracked. Rock began to fall. Someone screamed.

Jors jerked his head up and hissed through his teeth in pain.

:Chosen?:

:I can hear them. I can hear them digging.: The distant sound of metal against stone was unmistakable.