17878265 (52 page)

More importantly, Princess Avalana remained at risk. Loric wanted to smash that timepiece to bits, so time would be as motionless as measuring sands scattered across the ground.

Perhaps I can save us time.
Loric thought, as an idea struck him.
I must keep this plan to
myself.

****

Loric and company sat around the fire, chatting deep into the night. Warnyck offered to take the bulk of the watch and pass leftover hours to Barag, but Loric said, “No. I will have the first watch.” Stares upon him made him aware that was too eager to take the watch, that he had been too forceful in claiming that duty out of turn. “I am ill at ease and unlikely to sleep,” he mumbled.

Barag readily accepted Loric’s word with a helpless shrug.

Marblin sounded protective, as he said, “You had watch last night, lad. Surely you need your rest.”

Warnyck had a suspicious twist to his mouth. It matched the squint of his eye.

Loric dismissed both the scout’s distrusting stare and Marblin’s motherly concerns with a flippant wave. “I feel alive,” he said, not sounding it as he truly felt it. “I will not fall asleep for hours,” he assured them, with a lord’s honesty.

Warnyck kept up his doubtful expression long after Marblin dropped the matter of watches.

Conversation moved on. Loric resisted the urge to steer it toward taverns or serving wenches, knowing that Warnyck was far too clever to be lured away from his half-truth. He let Barag bring up wistful thoughts of
Taggert’s Pub
, which ultimately weighed him down to sleep away his pain, but likewise released a flood of the scout’s stories about his drunken exploits and willing women. Thankfully, Kelvion was not awake to hear those tales.

Eventually, Marblin, and then Warnyck joined Kelvion and Barag in slumber. Only then did Loric prepare for his night foray.
This keeper is meant for the Blood of Logant,
Loric rationalized.
I must face it alone, in a challenge of single combat.

With the greatest care, Loric rose to his haunches and scooped up his pack. He hesitated.
A
final message is in order in case-
Loric killed the thought in its infancy.
There is no time for
wasted words,
he admonished himself.
Besides, there is nothing for me to tell my friends that
they do not already know.

Loric stole away to the precipice where the waterfall rushed over. His exceptional night vision allowed him to pick out a suitable place from which to begin his descent. Loric drew in one last breath and started down. It was a tricky descent. Although there were adequate holds available to him and this face of the cliff was not under direct flow of the Venom, spray from the fall dampened jutting rocks that otherwise would have proven useful to Loric on his way down.

Instead, he had to work around those slippery areas, amidst blinding mist from below. What seemed like many turns of the glass later, the knight was dangling high above the bubbling water and mossy rocks that marked the entryway to the lair of Ungertakkus, with no reasonable means to descend the remaining distance to earth. He stretched out his legs as far as they would reach, but his toes remained a dozen feet above the closest crooked boulder. The son of Palendar breathed a prayer and let loose his fingertip clutch....

Loric plummeted toward his jagged landing point, drawing his legs up unevenly in an

attempt to balance himself and soften his impact. With a hard wobble and a firmly planted palm, Loric came to rest upon a tall rock. He squatted atop his new perch, from there surveying his surroundings. From his new vantage point, those two jutting stones over which the waterfall flowed rather resembled the mouth of a great pitcher, and the cylindrical hollow above which base he balanced was similar to a broken tankard. No matter how much water the deities of the world poured down from that great height, it seemed as though the waiting mug would never be filled above the shallow foot-and-a-half depth it presently held. Instead, excess flow washed over the rim of the gurgling pool and trickled down those many narrow avenues one could use to escape the deep hollow.

Loric drew in a gulp of refreshing night air and held it. He knew he might never return from the dreadful lair of Ungertakkus. He held that breath for quite some time, as if expelling the air from his lungs would signify that he had surrendered his last breath. Once Loric reconciled himself with the grim reality of his situation, he released the air he was holding and whispered a promise, “Ungertakkus, the Blood of Logant returns unto your ending.”

Loric deposited his pack on a large dry stone and dropped into chilly water. He was still trying to decide the best way to enter the narrow hole beneath the rippling surface when his boots relinquished holds on that slimy rock basin and sent him crashing and splashing on his backside.

The natural suction of the ever-draining pool gave his feet a gentle tug, pulling him under the weighty force of the fall and into the cavern mouth.

Loric had a reactionary fear to outlast the stimulus that caused it. The sensation was similar to a free fall, but the powerful wash of the Venom Stream controlled it. Water pushed him in a bouncing manner through a zigzagging corridor leading primarily downward, from whence it spewed him out into subterranean air, with his helmet bounding from his head and his sword sliding from its scabbard, some ten feet above the underground stream.

Loric made a desperate grab for his blade, which he caught and rammed back into its sheath before it was completely free, knowing that his hopes of slaying the second keeper depended on the very edges that had cut his hand. With a silent prayer, Loric held his sword hilt between his bloody fingers and braced himself for the coming impact. A tremendous spray of water served as the vanguard of those forces that assailed his body, and the streambed struck him as the unyielding main host. Loric wavered in-between consciousness and passing out. He pushed his face up from two feet of flowing currents to avoid drowning. Then he realized he could not breathe anyway, because his awkward belly flop had compressed the air from his body. His streams of tears mingled with steady rivulets of water trickling down his face.

When Loric was finally able to draw his first breath, it bit his lungs. He suffered through his initial gasps and splutters as bravely as he could. Then he looked at his surroundings. The chute had dropped him in the wide shallows of the Venom Stream. Semi-rounded walls curved up from the floor of the tunnel in which he now stood, shivering with cold. The passage shimmered as though under the flickering light of a torch, but there was no natural light source in the tunnel.

Loric peered at it for indeterminable duration before he figured out that his dragon eyes were responsible for the uncanny display. Loric remembered multicolored stalagmites and stalactites and their surrounding walls from his dream. He was in the Lair of Ungertakkus.

Loric inhaled another deep breath, an act that hurt his lower abdomen. He sloshed forward to pluck his helmet from the eddy, before the stream sucked it under and it was lost to him. He emptied and set the protective headgear in its right place on the crown of his head. Then he moved forward.

A cool draft wafted up from the lower regions of the cavern. It bore with it nauseating stench, which reminded Loric of his danger. His instinctive reaction was to peer up, as if a host of Floating Shadows might be descending upon him, but he kept his gaze forward and level. He knew that from whence the stench had come, so too would the beast approach him.

In an attempt at stealth, Loric shortened his stride to mere six-inch lengths. The going was slow. Along the way, he passed several natural ducts in those cavern walls, each of which allowed more water to pour in from the hillside above. Within a dozen strides of spotting those miniature waterfalls, the corridor pressed in tighter about Loric, channeling chilly water into a far narrower alleyway, which forced the stream up to his waist. Its tugging beckon was willing him deeper into the cave. Likewise, his desire to find the Dragon’s Eye was nudging him forward. He embraced the current, went along with it.

Loric could not fathom how long he waded through that befouled stream. It could have been full sands or it could have been five turns. Loric’s focus was such that someone might have smashed the almighty hourglass, as he had previously wished to do, and it would not have mattered. Time was irrelevant in this place, this flooded lair.

The cavern widened, until it formed a massive chamber columned by ageless stalactites that had long ago mated with their floor-grown counterparts. The Venom Stream deepened to cover a wider area as well, until it became a great underground lake. There was also room for Loric to climb out of the chilly water and move along the dry, rocky shore, which he did.

With his feet on solid ground once more, Loric set his hand to the Sword of Logant. Sticky wetness between his skin and his weapon reminded the knight of those cuts he had suffered to keep hold of his beloved blade. The son of Palendar clenched his fist more tightly about his sword hilt and exposed cool steel to chill tunnel air. His shield slid easily from his shoulder to his arm. The weapons of Logant were his surest friends in this den. They provided Loric with a sense of solace within the lonely confines of the dreadful, underground passageway. Bones beneath his feet whispered doubts to him, but he boldly pressed on toward his appointed duel with the cruel editor who had punctuated the final sentence of so many prematurely shortened lives, whether men or beasts.

On Loric went; it seemed forever. Distracting thoughts of Princess Avalana, back at

Moonriver, and the knight’s friends, near the mouth of the waterfall, alternately shifted to the forefront of his mind. Loric attempted to shut out his intruding concerns for them, but they continued to seep into his head, like water through a tiny defect in a dam. Given adequate time, such thoughts could wash away his desire to follow through with his solo attack against Ungertakkus, just as the trickle of water through a dam could ultimately cause the structure to burst.

At length Loric whispered a few quiet words of reason to keep his resolve firm. To the bracelet Avalana had given him, he said, “Keep my hopes strong and alive.” To the sword of his fathers he prayed, “Deliver strength unto me; give death to my foe. Let me not perish so close to the gemstone that will restore the Sword of the Dragon’s Eye to the Kings of Beledon, thereby bringing peace to our shattered realm. Give my ladylove and my friends no reason to weep because of me.”

Loric shook off the tingly shiver his emotional petition caused him and blinked moisture from his eyes. The waterway began widening. Loric expected to join the monster Ungertakkus in battle soon, and he needed to see clearly to win that fight.

Loric stayed close to the cavern wall, but at length he stopped for motionless observation.

The fact that he had not seen his foe nor heard any motion from the creature worried him. The knight scanned dark lake waters, seeking out a small ripple, a deeper shadow or any other indication that his foe was near. He detected no sign of the monster.

Doubt began scratching at his skin, at first causing him mild irritation. It escalated to all-out bother. Loric tried to sort things out in his mind.
Surely, a creature as large as Ungertakkus
should be easier to find than this.
The knight dared to hope that the beast had died or abandoned its lair. In either case, Loric could retrieve the Dragon’s Eye and be safely on his way.
That is far
too easy,
he decided. T
he beast is gone....
He let that thought dangle as he considered other possibilities,
....unless I am looking in the wrong place.

Loric eased his head to the side for a peripheral view of the cavern walls above and behind him, suddenly noticing darkening shadows in those areas. There it was, in all of its enormous bulk. Ungertakkus was clinging to the wall at Loric’s back, poised to strike.

The second keeper hung from an outcropping of glistening rock, with its stubby forelegs shaking from holding its enormous body in place. Its tail draped over a jutting stone higher up the wall for additional support. Ungertakkus was like an oversized salamander, except for the low spiny ridge lining its back. Its head was flat and wide. Its skin shimmered with slimy wetness. The moisture highlighting those puffing sides of the beast was slowly disappearing as its skin drank it in. The most striking feature about Mighty Ungertakkus was its eyes, which were lidless and devoid of emotion. One look at those unblinking discs caused the son of Palendar a convulsive shudder.

Even at a sidelong glance, Loric was quick to pinpoint his adversary’s two greatest

weaknesses: it had legs too weak for its incredible mass and it could never return to its precious water source without them. With those thoughts in mind, the son of Palendar pivoted to strike Ungertakkus.

Loric could not have been more mistaken about the creature’s mobility, as it quickly drew back the stubby leg he had thought to remove from its body, and skittered along the wall to find a more advantageous position from which to fight him. The Sword of Logant rang and made sparks, while the second keeper reared back its head and launched it forward again. As that hideous face snapped toward Loric, its mouth opened to hurl a streaming blob of spittle on a direct line for him.

The Shield of Logant suddenly showed remarkable usefulness to its bearer, who raised the semi-curved barrier and tucked his body into a tight ball behind it. With a thudding
splat,
the wad of mucous spattered metal. A tiny drop of that poisonous spittle deflected over the shield and found its way into Loric’s right eye.

Pain burned behind Loric’s closed eyelid. The knight knelt beside the stream and cupped handful after handful of water into his face in an effort to find relief from the blinding emission of Ungertakkus. There was none available to him.

Blind in one eye and teary in the other, Loric remained determined not to lose bearing on his foe. It dropped down from the heights, somewhere beyond a forest of stalagmite-stalactite columns. Loric heard bones clattering as the beast dragged its immense body across the cavern floor. It was coming toward him. Its cry of outrage shook the chamber. The knight’s heart thrummed excitement. Cloudiness cleared into a tunnel of light and partial vision returned to Loric. Ungertakkus was a dozen feet away from him.