R. Salvatore - The Sword of Bedwyr

What would he and Oliver Burrows, who called himself Oliver deBurrows, get on with? Their quest? Their lives? The road to continued thievery and, perhaps, worse?

The young Bedwyr had no answers—either for what would come, or for what had just passed. Ever since the arrival of Viscount Aubrey and his entourage in Dun Varna, Luthien’s world had been turned upside down. He had left Dun Varna in search of his brother, but now he was beginning to get a feel of just how big the world truly was. Over the last couple of days, Oliver had explained to him that ships left the Avonsea Islands for Gascony by a dozen different ports, from Carlisle on the Stratton River to Montfort. And Gascony was a bigger place than Avon, Oliver assured his unworldly companion, with hundreds of cities larger than Dun Varna and scores larger even than Carlisle. And Duree, the land of the war Ethan was supposedly going off to fight, was over a thousand miles south of Gascony’s northern coast.

A thousand miles!

How could Luthien hope to catch up to Ethan when he didn’t know what course his brother might take?

Luthien never answered Oliver’s question, and the halfling, soon snoring contentedly, didn’t seem anxious to know.

The first thing that Oliver and Luthien noticed when they exited Brind’Amour’s new magical tunnel was that the cave they had entered was uncomfortably warm. And it was huge. Luthien’s torch reflected off of one wall only, the one they had exited, and the two could barely see the crystalline glimmer of the sharp-tipped, long stalactites hanging ominously far above their heads.

There came a flash from behind them, and they turned to see Brind’Amour’s portal beginning to shrink. At first, the two scrambled for the light, thinking the wizard meant to desert them. The swirl continued, diminished to the size of a fist, but its light was no less intense.

“He only wishes to make sure that no cyclopians, if they live, could come through,” a relieved Oliver remarked.

“Or to make sure that we do not come through until we have found the staff,” Luthien added. “He has that crystal ball and will watch our every move.”

Luthien moved over to the wall again as he spoke, studying its curious texture. He hadn’t been in many caves—only the wizard’s and the sea caves along the rocky coast near Dun Varna—but still, this one seemed somehow strange to him. The rock of the walls was coppery in color and rough, as Luthien would expect, but interwoven with it were lines of a darker hue, smooth to the touch.

“Melted ore,” Oliver explained, coming to join him. The halfling looked up and all around. “Copper, I would guess. Separated from the stone by some very large heat.”

Luthien, too, studied the area. “This must be where the wizards sealed the cave,” he decided. “Perhaps they used magical fires to create the avalanche.” It seemed to be as much a question as a statement.

“That must be it,” Oliver agreed, but he, too, did not sound convinced. He tapped the stone gently with the pommel of his main gauche, trying to gauge its density. From what he could tell, the wall was very thick. That, in turn, led him to the conclusion that something on this side of the wall had caused the heat, but he kept his thoughts private.

“Come along,” the halfling muttered. “I do not wish to be in here any longer than is necessary.” He paused and looked at Luthien, who was still studying the melted ore, and got the feeling that the intelligent young man’s reasoning was following the same trail as had his own. “Not with so many fattened purses awaiting my eager grasp in Montfort,” he added a bit too loudly, for echoes came back at him from several directions. His words took Luthien’s thoughts from the wall, though, as he had hoped.

No sense in worrying, Oliver believed.

The floor was uneven and dotted by rows of stalagmites, many taller than Luthien. Even though this area was a single chamber, at times it seemed to the two as if they were walking along narrow corridors. Shadows from Luthien’s flickering torch surrounded them ominously, keeping them tense, continually glancing from side to side.

They came to a steeply sloping area, and in the open area below they could see that a path had been made through the stalagmites—trampled, it seemed, with great hunks of broken stone scattered all about.

“The traveling will be easier,” Luthien remarked hopefully. He gingerly started down the slope, leaning back so far that he was practically sitting down.

Oliver grabbed him by the shoulder and tugged hard.

“Do you not even wonder what broke those things?” the halfling asked grimly.

It was a question that Luthien preferred not to answer, not even to think about. “Come along,” was all that he replied, and he resumed his controlled slide to the lower level.

“Wizard-types,” Oliver muttered under his breath, and with a last look back to the now-distant wall and the wizard’s portal, he shrugged and followed the young man.

When Oliver stopped his descent and looked up once more, he found Luthien standing very still, staring off to the side, looking over one broken stalagmite.

“What . . .” the halfling started to ask, but he got his answer as he came up beside Luthien. Pieces of skeletons lay broken behind the rocky pile. Both the friends looked about nervously, as if expecting some horrid and powerful monster to rush out and squash them.

“Human,” Oliver remarked as he moved over to investigate, holding up a skull that showed two eye sockets. “Not cyclopian.”

They pieced together three bodies in all, but only two skulls, for the third had apparently been smashed into a thousand pieces. There was little more than whitened bone, but it didn’t seem to either of the companions that these corpses had been here for all that long, certainly not four hundred years. One of the legs, buried under some rock, showed ligaments and pieces of skin, and the clothing, though tattered, was not so rotted.

“We might not be the first group Brind’Amour has sent in search of his staff,” Luthien remarked.

“And whatever was in here lives still,” Oliver added. He looked around at the toppled stalagmites and the crushed skull. “I do not think cyclopians could have done this,” he reasoned. “Not even a cyclopian king.”

First the melted ore along the wall, then the line of broken rock mounds, and now this. A sense of dread dropped over the companions. Luthien replayed Brind’Amour’s words about the cave in his mind. In light of these new discoveries, it seemed to Luthien that the wizard was indeed lying, or not telling the whole truth.

But what could Luthien and Oliver do now? The portal offered them no escape unless Brind’Amour widened it, and Luthien knew that the wizard would not do that until they had recovered his lost staff.

“If the staff is so valuable, then we should expect to find it among the treasures of whatever rules this place,” Luthien said determinedly. “And this trail of rubble should lead us to it.”

“How fine,” Oliver replied.

The trail soon led them out of the vast chamber and they moved down a wide corridor. Both walls were within the area of torchlight then, and they could see the ceiling as well. That offered them little comfort, though, for whatever had come through this passage had not only flattened stalagmite mounds but had broken short the hanging stalactites, as well.

The air seemed to be growing even warmer in here, and the walls shone a deep crimson. After a few hundred yards, the corridor dipped suddenly, turning almost vertical for a few feet, until it widened into a chamber on a more level but still descending slope. Luthien skidded down first, Oliver coming close behind.