Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Without a backward look, Tyorl left the rangerlord and went to join Lavim. Dropping to one knee, he laid a hand on the old kender’s shoulder. Lavim looked around and flashed his ever-present grin. It took him a moment, though, to get that grin rightly in place.

“How are you, kenderkin? Are you ready for another run?”

“I’m ready, Tyorl, whenever you are. And I think—well, that is Piper thinks—”

“Piper thinks what?” Tyorl said warily.

“He thinks that he can guide us to Thorbardin from here. He sort of recognizes some of the landmarks, and he says you’re right about heading south and east. He wants to know if you’ll let him be the guide for a while.”

A ghost as a guide? Tyorl sighed tiredly. Why not? When fleeing a house afire one abandons everything in an effort to get out alive. He turned to look at the western sky, crimson and roiling with thick black smoke.

“Well, we’ve no guide at all now. Tell Piper I’d be grateful for his help.” Tyorl smiled. “But let me tell Finn about it, aye?”

Lavim nodded, grinning. “He’s not real fond of Piper, is he?”

“Let’s say he’s not fond of the idea of Piper.”

Tyorl ran the flat of his hand absently along the smooth cherry wood flute at his belt. He’d snatched it from Lavim in the bog and fastened it to his belt by its leather thong. He hadn’t let it out of his sight since. Tyorl smiled.

He’d make Finn understand somehow. It was time to abandon everything, including all the good sense he once credited himself with having.

Hauk had no idea where he was, and he was quickly growing tired of the feeling. There was no way of determining direction under the mountain, with no landmarks to follow and no light but that spilling from Isarn’s leaping torch. He followed that torch through dark and deep corridors the way he would follow the pole star in strange lands. Isarn had drawn, from among the supplies he had in the sanctuary cave, a dagger and a sword. These he’d given to Hauk with a proud light in his mad old eyes.

“I made them,” he said simply, watching Hauk test the balance of the finely crafted weapons. “Carry them. I will carry the torch.”

The dagger in his belt, the sword in his hand, Hauk felt better than he had in many long days. Weaponed, he felt almost whole again, almost strong. He’d accepted the steel with a curt nod of thanks. The tunnels through which Isarn led him seemed labyrinthine, winding and turning with no pattern or reason. Some were wide, with cressets for torches on smooth, high-reaching walls. Others were narrow and cramped and so low that Hauk had to stoop to get through. The smoke of Isarn’s torch coiled back and caught in Hauk’s lungs, choking him. At the end of one of these, shoulders aching and back stiff, he caught Isarn by the arm and halted him.

“How much farther? And where are we?”

The old swordcrafter slipped away from Hauk’s hand. “Deep Warrens. Not much farther. Only a few tunnels.”

“Aye? If they’re no higher than the last, I’ll be no good to anyone.”

Isarn said nothing, only shrugged as though to suggest that the tunnels hadn’t been delved for tall Outlanders in the first place. They hadn’t been delved for the common traffic of Thorbardin either. In many places, Isarn found them a tight passing as well. When, at the end of another corridor, Hauk saw the dwarf bend low, he groaned inwardly and dropped to his hands and knees.

I’m going to be on my belly, he thought, before I ever come to where this crazy old bastard is taking me!

So low was the ceiling in this tunnel that Hauk imagined he could feel the whole weight of the mountain pressing down on him. So narrow were the walls that rough stone scraped against his shoulders and arms. The smoke of Isarn’s torch poured back over his shoulder and then suddenly eddied ahead, caught by a cold crosscurrent of air.

Hauk realized then that this was no corridor at all but a kind of passage between corridors. He dragged himself out of the tunnel on his elbows and cautiously climbed to his feet.

Isarn, calm and almost steady till now, shuffled from foot to foot. His breathing quickened, his hands trembled so that the torchlight was useless for anything but making the walls of the corridor seem to dance and sway.

“What is it?” Hauk whispered.

“Here. They’re here. The lad and the girl.”

Hauk’s heart lurched suddenly, leaping hard against the cage of his ribs. “Where?”

Isarn didn’t answer but to press the torch into Hauk’s hand and slip into the weaving shadows and darkness ahead. Hauk followed, his mouth dry, his blood singing high in his ears.

She was here! The fire-haired girl whose name he’d never known. The memory of her, straight and slim, green eyes shining, had kept him whole and sane through all the torments that Realgar had inflicted upon him. When he couldn’t tell whether he was dead or alive, when he’d seen and felt Tyorl’s death, known that he’d killed him and known that he hadn’t, the girl’s eyes had shown like emeralds in his heart.

She was here.

Slowly, following the sound of Isarn’s agitated breathing, Hauk edged around a corner. Orange light from the torch spilled across the far wall, revealing the dwarf where he knelt before a jagged crack in the stone. Just barely wide enough for Hauk to fit through, the gap reached from the floor to well out of the ranger’s sight.

“In there?”

Isarn nodded. “Aye. The lad and—”

Low and ominous, a rumbling filled the corridor, rising to a high scream in which Hauk somehow recognized dark, fierce joy. The stone itself seemed to vibrate with that cry, to sing echoes back to whatever voiced the soul-chilling scream.

Isarn wailed, a thin, high shriek of terror. The terrible bellowing struck Hauk like a blow and dropped him to his knees, He hung on to the torch with both hands while the sword fell to the floor. He didn’t hear the ring and clatter of steel on stone. As though the thing that made the cry were rising, the roar grew. Shadows from the torchlight spun madly across the walls and floor. Light, thin and orange, flickered around the corridor, alternately showing him the rough walls and the niches where darkness pooled.

There was no sign of Isarn.

Hauk shifted the torch to his left hand, grabbed up the fallen sword with his right. “Isarn!” he called softly. “Isarn!”

Nothing moved in the stony corridor but the trembling light and madly dancing shadows thrown by the torch. Urgent fear crowded into Hauk’s mind and raced through his heart. Isarn was nowhere to be found. Hauk caught his breath, listening. He heard nothing but the hiss and sputter of the torch. Where was the dwarf?

Then, he had no thought for Isarn at all. Soft, like wind sobbing, a low, moaning sound came from beyond the crack in the wall. Even as he recognized it for a woman’s voice, the moaning faded and died. Heart racing, not stopping to think, Hauk bolted through the crack in the wall. Isarn lay, huddled and small, to the left of the entrance. Hauk noted only peripherally that the old dwarf didn’t move. The cave was cold and filled with the dry, musty stink of reptile. In the far corner, memory made real, crouched a girl with hair like thick copper.

She was huddled over her knees, her hands high and fisted, green eyes wide in a white face splashed with shadows. A dwarf, black-bearded and thick-armed, stood over her. He reached for her with a bandaged hand. Hauk roared, a bear’s battle cry, and charged across the cave. As he ran, he realized that the dwarf was too close to the girl for a sword thrust. He reversed his grip on his weapon and raised the pommel high. She saw him and recognized him in the instant he brought the sword’s grip thundering down between the dwarf’s shoulders.