R. Salvatore - The Sword of Bedwyr

They had come to the banks of an underground pool, its still waters shimmering a dull red and orange in the reflections of the light. The torch seemed much brighter in here, for the walls were lined with quartz and other crystals. Across the pool, the companions could see the entrance to another corridor, running generally along the same direction they had been traveling.

Luthien bent low over the water and reached out his hand slowly, tentatively. He could feel the heat of the rising steam, and he dared to gently touch the pool, retracting his hand immediately.

“Why is it so very hot?” Oliver asked. “We are high up in the mountains—there is snow on peaks not so far from here.”

“Are we?” Luthien replied, reminding the halfling that they really didn’t know where the wizard’s tunnel had led them.

Oliver stared at the lake. It was only a hundred feet across and perhaps twice that wide, but it seemed at that moment to be an impenetrable barrier. Perhaps even the end of the road, for it filled the floor of the chamber, and the halfling, who was not so fond of water in the first place, had no intention of swimming across.

“There is a way around,” Luthien noticed. He pointed to the left to a ledge running along the wall about ten feet above the water level.

Oliver did not seem thrilled by the prospect of the narrow ledge. He dropped his traveling pack to the ground and fumbled with its straps, ignoring the questions Luthien put his way. A few moments later, the halfling produced a long, thin, almost translucent cord and a three-pointed grappling hook.

The ceiling was not so high in here, no more than thirty feet in most areas, and it was broken and uneven, full of jags and cracks. Oliver put the grappling hook into a spin at the end of the rope, then sent it flying away, high over the lake. It banged against the ceiling, but found no hold and dropped into the water with a resounding ka-thunk.

Luthien stared hard at the halfling as the echoes of the splash died away, neither companion daring to move for several seconds.

“I only thought—” Oliver started to explain.

“Get it back,” Luthien interrupted, and Oliver began slowly reeling in the line. It came easily, and Oliver explained that he wanted it up on the ceiling so that he could carry the end as he crossed the ledge—in case one of them slipped, or they were forced to get away quickly.

The reasoning seemed sound to Luthien, and it appeared as if Oliver’s errant throw had not done any damage. The rope was still coming easily, and the grappling hook couldn’t be very far from shore. Then it stopped suddenly, resisting Oliver’s strongest tugs.

Luthien and the halfling looked at each other curiously, then Luthien took hold and pulled, too. The rope held fast seeming as though the grappling hook had snared on something along the lake bottom.

“Cut the line and let us be on our way,” Luthien offered, and Oliver, though he prized that fine and light cord and hated to lose any part of it, reluctantly reached for his main gauche.

Suddenly the halfling was jerked forward. He instinctively grabbed the rope in both hands, then, realizing that he could not resist the pull and would be taken into the lake, loosened his grasp. Only Oliver’s well-made leather gauntlets saved him from serious rope burns as the cord whipped along. The halfling looked back at the coiled and rapidly diminishing pile and began hopping all about, calling for Luthien to do something.

But what could Luthien do? He braced himself and bent low, as if trying to catch the flying rope, but never took the chance, knowing that he could not possibly break its tremendous momentum.

Oliver had started with over a hundred feet of the cord, and it was nearly gone. But then, without warning, the furious pulling suddenly stopped.

The halfling stopped, too, and stood staring at Luthien and at the cord.

“Big fish in this pond,” the halfling remarked.

Luthien had no answer, just stood staring out over the lake as the waters flattened to stillness once more. Finally, the young Bedwyr mustered the nerve to reach down and grab the cord. He pulled gently, taking in the rope hand over hand, expecting it to be pulled away again at any moment.

His surprise (and Oliver’s, as well) was complete when the grappling hook appeared, covered with brown and red weeds. Luthien lifted it up and cleaned it so that he and Oliver could inspect it. One of the prongs was bent a bit, but it showed no other marks and no sign of flesh or scales or anything else that might indicate what had taken it.

“Big fish who do not so much like the taste of iron,” Oliver said with a halfhearted chuckle. “Let us get to the ledge and along our way.”

But now Luthien wasn’t so sure of that course. He eyed the ceiling and, seeing a spot where two stalactites were joined, forming an inverted arch, he spun the grappling hook above his head.

“Do not lose my so fine rope!” Oliver protested, but before he finished his thought, Luthien let it fly. The hook soared through the gap and came back down on the other side, and when Luthien pulled the cord taut, the hook stuck firmly.

“Now we can go across,” Luthien explained.

Oliver shrugged and let Luthien lead the way.

The path along the edge of the lake took them right to the ledge, and soon they were moving steadily, if slowly, along the ledge, ten feet up from the water. The lake remained quiet for a short while, but then Oliver noticed subtle ripples lapping gently against the base of the stone wall.

“Faster,” the halfling whispered, but Luthien was already moving as fast as he could. The ledge was no more than a foot wide in many places, and the wall behind it was uneven, sometimes forcing Luthien to arch his back so that he could slip around thick jags.

A moment later, Oliver’s urgency was reaffirmed as the two heard the water lapping harder at the base of the wall, and then a spot perhaps thirty feet out from the wall began to churn and bubble.

“What?” Oliver asked incredulously as a column of water rose half a dozen feet into the air, as though something beneath the surface was displacing a tremendous amount of the lake.

And then it smoothed, or seemed to smooth, until the halfling and Luthien realized that they were staring not at the surface of the lake but rather at the curving shell of a gigantic turtle.

The halfling squeaked, and Luthien tried to pick up the pace as the giant glided in. Its head, with a mouth big enough to swallow poor Oliver whole, lifted high out of the water eyeing the scrambling companions dangerously.

Ten feet from the ledge, the head shot forward suddenly on an impossibly long neck. Oliver cried out again and fell back, poking with his rapier. The turtle missed, biting instead a piece of the ledge, and actually chipping the stone!

The great reptilian body turned to keep pace with the halfling. It came forward again, and Oliver started to dodge, but he was grabbed suddenly as Luthien ran back the other way and scooped him into his strong arms.

The ledge was too narrow for such tactics, but Luthien had no intention of even trying to keep his balance. He leaped off and out, just in front of the rushing turtle head, holding tight to Oliver and holding tight to the rope. The turtle whipped its head to the side, but the angle for the snapping maw was not right, and though the head banged hard against Luthien pushing the companions on, the turtle could not bite down.

“Lucky turtle!” Oliver cried, braver now that he was fast swinging out of the monster’s reach. “I would make of you a fine soup, such as we have in Gascony!”

They swung in a wide arc, circling close to where they had first come down to the lake, then onward in a loop that took them all the way to the other side. Luthien was no novice with such rope swings; as a boy on Bedwydrin, he had spent his summers swinging out across the sheltered bays near to Dun Varna. He had wisely grabbed the rope up as high as he could before leaping from the ledge, but still the two would have dipped into the water if they had come near to the spot directly below the grappling hook. Only the momentum inadvertently given to them by the banging turtle head saved them from that fate, and still Luthien had to tuck his feet up to keep them clear.