Voyage of the Fox Rider (62 page)
On the perimeter of the ring, Jinnarin looked about in puzzlement. “But there is nothing here.”
“Do not be certain of that,” gritted Bokar, tapping lightly on an upright face of stone. “Perhaps there is a secret door leading underground.”
“A secret door?” asked Jinnarin. “Where would it lead?”
“Into the living stone,” answered Kelek.
Aravan turned to Aylis. “Dost thou see aught with thy magesight?”
Aylis shook her head,
No
, as did Alamar.
Bokar barked a sharp laugh. “If a hidden door lies nearby, even one as poorly crafted as are those of the Ukhs, it is not likely we will find it.”
“Ha, Dwarf!” snapped Alamar. “That’s what you think. You forget, Aylis is a seer.” He turned to her. “Daughter.”
Aylis held out a hand to Aravan. “May I hold the stone?”
The Elf slipped the thong from his throat and over his head and handed the amulet to her. She gripped the chill stone in her hand and closed her eyes and murmured,
“Unde?”
After a moment she whispered, “It comes from below.”
“Uah!” grunted Kelek. “It is as I said—from the living stone.”
Aravan softly asked, “Is there aught else thou canst divine, Lady Aylis?”
Aylis opened her eyes and looked at Aravan, then slowly shook her head and handed the stone back to him. “Below is all, nothing more.”
“Kruk!” spat Bokar. “If there is someone or something down within the living stone, the entrance could be anywhere on the entire isle!” He flung his arms out in a wide gesture. “In the crags. On the flats. Anywhere!”
Aylis nodded, then said, “Yes, Bokar, but heed: If Durlok is involved, then perhaps the entrance is hidden by magery. We have searched the perimeter. The tors we have not. I say that we continue with our original plan. I would add that perhaps the creature below has nothing at all to do with Durlok, but is merely a thing which causes the stone to chill. —All the more reason to continue the search.”
Aravan slipped the thong back over his head. “Let us go on, then.”
Once more Alamar protested. “No need to prevent me from coming along. There’s places in here I can walk. You need my
“Father, that we could use your
“Oh, you think so, eh? Well we’ll just see about that, Daughter.” Alamar spun on his heel and stomped off, followed by Bokar and Jatu and the Dwarven squad.
“Nicely done,
chieran
,” whispered Aravan. And trailing Jinnarin on Rux, into the tors went Kelek’s Dwarven squad, Aylis and Aravan in their midst.
“Nothing!” exclaimed Alamar. “You found nothing?”
Aylis nodded. “No sign of magery at all, Father.”
Alamar turned to Kelek. “What about hidden doors, Dwarf?”
Kelek shook his head,
No
, but Bokar exclaimed, “Mage, did I not say that secret doors are all but impossible to find. Even with a map they are difficult to locate.”
Alamar growled but did not retort.
Aravan glanced at the mid afternoon Sun then turned to the others. “We searched yester and today, finding nought—”
“Nothing but bare rock and scrubby plants, Aravan,” interjected Jinnarin glumly.
Aravan nodded in agreement. “Aye. But no sign of crystal castle or Black Mage.”
“There was the chill on your amulet,” Aylis reminded all.
“It’s got to have something to do with Durlok!” declared Alamar.
“Mayhap, Mage Alamar, yet what?” asked Aravan.
Alamar turned up his hands, peering about at the others.
“I seek suggestions,” said Aravan.
“About the chill on your stone?” asked Jinnarin.
“About aught,” replied the Elf, “be it the chill, places we might look, or things we have overlooked.”
Jatu cleared his throat. “Captain, I have been thinking. If Durlok indeed comes in a black galley to this place for who knows what reasons, then he needs safe anchorage for his craft. And can we find that anchorage, then maybe we will find whatever else there is to discover on or in this isle.”
Aravan cocked his head to the side and slowly smiled. “Ever the sailor, eh, Jatu. I like thy reasoning. Thy thought, it has much merit. Hast thou additional words?”
Jatu shrugged, then added, “Just this: the brine is deep where we landed. No anchorage at all. But we have not looked at the water completely ‘round. I suggest we once again circle the isle and look down within the sea, seeking a place for the Black Mage to heave to and lay up along the shores.”
Alamar held up a hand, and when Aravan turned to him he said, “I agree, but let me add this: the first place we should look is along the shore where your stone amulet grew chill.”
“Wait!” exclaimed Aylis, peering over the rim and down the face of the bluff. “That ledge of stone, I cannot see under it.”
The others looked down at the overhang. “Even so,” said Jatu, “the water is black, deep. No anchorage at all…that is, unless Durlok ties the black galley to moorings in the stone.”
“I will climb down and see,” said Bokar.
Aylis doffed her cloak. “I’m going with you, Armsmaster.”
Bokar looked at her in surprise, and Aylis added, “Moorings may be disguised by magery. You will need my
Bokar shrugged, then asked, “You climb?”
Alamar barked a laugh. “Like a doe goat, Dwarf.”
Ignoring Alamar, Bokar asked, “Can you rappel?”
Aylis smiled. “I have been known to walk down a wall or two.”
Now Alamar hooted. “Why, once at the college in Kairn, Aylis—”
“Father, hush!” commanded Aylis, reddening, glancing at Aravan but not meeting his eyes. For his part, Aravan raised a curious eyebrow but said nought.
Ropes were lashed together and passed through snap rings anchored by pitons driven into stone crevices, the free ends cast over the side. Looping the doubled line under her left thigh and over the right shoulder and down, the right hand back gripping the rope low, the left to the fore and high, Aylis looked at Bokar, the Dwarf handling his rope likewise. Nodding to one another, over the rim they backed, slipping the line as they went walking down the vertical wall.
A hundred or so feet below they reached the ledge, Bokar first, Aylis following. They each cast loose from their ropes, and Bokar lay belly down and peered over the edge. “Kruk!” he grunted. “Nothing but rock down to the water’s edge.”
Now Aylis lay beside him.
“Visus,”
she murmured, then gasped. “Look! False rock!”
“False? It seems sound enough to me.”
“Believe me, Bokar, it is false. See the waves—they roll straight through the so-called stone.”
Now Bokar’s eyes widened. “By Elwydd,” he breathed. “You are right!”
HAPTER
28
The Lair of the Spider
Spring, 1E9575
[The Present]
T
here is a sea-level cavern down there,” said Aylis, the moment she climbed up over the rim, “hidden behind an illusion of stone.”
Illusion!
exclaimed several voices at once.
“Durlok!” spat Alamar.
“This cavern, how large?” asked Aravan.
“The entrance is some seventy or eighty feet wide at the sea, and tapers up to a central point nearly reaching the ledge, say ninety feet high.”
Jinnarin, her eyes wide, asked, “What did the illusion look like?”
Bokar stooped down and took up a stone. “Like this rock,” he grunted. “I could see nothing of the cavern. To me the wall fell sheer to the ocean below. But as Lady Aylis pointed out, the waves rolled on through. —
That
, I could see.”
“How deep is this cavern?” asked Aravan.
“From the ledge I could not tell,” answered Aylis, “though Bokar says it is very large.”
Kelek raised an eyebrow, then asked, “How so, Armsmaster?”
“It has the sound of a large cavern, Kelek. The waves surge in and softly boom with a low, rolling echo.”
“Ah,” said Kelek, satisfied.
“I could see some distance in,” added Aylis, “and for forty or fifty feet it runs straight on back. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
Jatu looked at Aravan. “Safe harbor for Durlok’s boat?”
Aravan nodded. “Aye, Jatu, or so it seems.”
“Ha!” barked Alamar. “As to how far it reaches, this cavern must run inward at least two furlongs.”
Jinnarin looked up at the elder. “Why do you say that, Alamar?”
“The stone amulet, Pysk.” The Mage pointed toward the tors. “It was a quarter mile back from the rim where Aravan’s amulet grew coldest.” Alamar glanced at the Elf. “Foul Folk from Neddra are likely holed up in this cave, eh?”
Aravan turned up a hand. “Most likely, Mage Alamar, though it could as well be something else—even a creature of the sea.”
“Creature of the sea?” blurted Jinnarin.
“Aye,” responded Aravan. “Some are known to cause the stone to grow chill—Hèlarms, for one.”
Jinnarin swallowed.
Hèlarms—Krakens
.
“Eh, Hèlarms or no,” declared Alamar, “still we’ve got to investigate. The illusion alone says that this is Durlok’s lair.”
Jinnarin’s heart pounded, her thoughts running wild—
The Lair of the Spider, he means
—but she said nought.
Bokar turned to Aylis. “Is there a place to land if we rappel down and in?”
Aylis shook her head. “I think not. There are no ledges within that I could see—nowhere to stand.”
“Then we’ll have to enter by boat,” rumbled Jatu.
Aravan glanced at the low-hanging Sun. “The daylight is nigh gone. I deem ‘twould be better to make this essay in morning light.”
Two hours after dawn the boats drew near the bluff below the ledge. Sheer stone rose up to the shelf—or so it seemed to Jinnarin.
[Drop sail,] ordered Aravan, using silent hand signals.
Swiftly all silks were lowered, and while some Dwarves took up already cocked and loaded crossbows, others set muffled oars in locks and began rowing toward the opening that only Aylis and Alamar could see, Aylis in the lead boat with Bokar, Alamar in the next with Aravan. Jinnarin, Rux, and Jatu in the third boat.
Following Aylis’s lead, all seven boats rowed in file toward what seemed to be a solid stone wall, the dinghies bearing the entire complement of Dwarves, Men, Mages, Elf, Pysk, and fox, for they knew not what they would encounter behind the illusion and so they came in full force.
Of a sudden Jinnarin gasped, for Aylis and Bokar’s boat disappeared, passing through the stone. Then Aravan and Alamar’s craft slid through the wall. In spite of what she had just seen, when Jinnarin’s boat came to the bluff—
We’re going to crash!
—she squeezed her eyes shut as the wall intangibly rushed over her. And then cautiously opened them when they were within. Turning, she looked over her shoulder—from this side there was no illusion of stone, only the large jagged opening, wide at the base and narrowing to a point high above.
Jinnarin leaned over the side and peered down into the water; it was deep and made luminous by the daylight shining in under the surface; she could see no bottom. Facing front, she saw that they had entered a long, jagged strait, stone walls rising sheer, the channel leading inward. Glints shone in the stone, fragments of
kwarc
, or so it was named by the Dwarves.