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.
As they rose on the backswing, Luthien slid a bit down the cord, extending their range. He had to let go altogether, taking a screaming Oliver with him, as they fell the dozen feet to splash into the shallow waters near to the yellowish spongy ground on the lake’s opposite shore.
Luthien scrambled up first, g
rabbing the rope and taking it with him as far as its length would allow. He tripped and almost lost it, instinctively swinging it hard toward a cluster of large rocks. Luck was with the young man, for the rope looped about these rocks enough so that it did not slide back into the water. Luthien regained his footing and his composure and went for the rope as Oliver ran past him toward the back exit.
Luthien skidded to an abrupt halt, though, as the turtle’s head came back out of the water not so far away. To the young man’s utter amazement, the creature opened wide its maw and breathed out a cloud of steam.
Luthien fell back to the ground, saved only by the surrounding boulders that protected him from the full force of the scalding breath. He came up sweating, his face bright red, and ran toward Oliver, who was signaling frantically from the exit. Into the corridor they ran, pausing just inside to look back toward the water.
The pond was still once more, with no sign of the giant turtle.
“My rope?” Oliver asked, looking at the cord, which was securely looped about the rock.
“On the way out,” Luthien replied.
“We may need it.”
“Then you go get it.”
Oliver looked doubtfully at the cord and at the deceptively quiet lake. “On the way out,” he agreed, even though both he and Luthien hoped to find a different way back to the wizard’s tunnel.
The halfling’s demeanor changed considerably when the two companions had put the lake farther behind them. The going was easier on this side, with the cave floors relatively flat and clear of stalagmites and rubble.
“Now we know what caused the problems to those who came before us,” Oliver insisted hopefully, even cheerily “And we have left the beast in a lake behind us.”
“A lake that we will have to cross once more,” Luthien reminded him.
“Perhaps,” Oliver conceded, “perhaps not. Once we have found the wizard-type’s most valuable staff, he will come to get us, do not doubt.”
“Have you considered that the staff might be in the lake?” Luthien had to ask. He did not think this the time for celebration or that all of the dangers had passed.
Oliver did not answer the pragmatic young man directly. He just began muttering about “lying wizard-types” and scoffing at the notion that this cave had been sealed to entrap a cyclopian king. The quiet tirade went on for many minutes as the friends crossed through several unremarkable chambers and adjoining corridors. Oliver even expanded his grumbling to include “merchant-types,” “king-types,” and several other types that Luthien had never heard of. The young Bedwyr let the halfling ramble, knowing that he really could do little to stop Oliver’s momentum.
But the sight that greeted the two as they entered one large, domelike chamber certainly did.
Oliver stood as if stricken, Luthien, too, as the torchlight was reflected back at them from a pile of gold and silver, gems and jewels, beyond anything either of them had ever seen before. One mound of silver and gold was as high as two tall men, dotted with glittering crystals and precious artifacts—goblets and jeweled serving utensils—probably dwarvish in make. As if in a trance, the two moved into the chamber.
Oliver shook the stunning surprise out of his head and ran toward the pile, stuffing his pockets, tossing coins into the air and climbing around with unbridled glee.
“We have come for something specific,” Luthien reminded him, “and we will never get out of here carrying much of this.”
Oliver didn’t seem to care, and Luthien had to admit that this all seemed too good to pass up. There were no other apparent exits from the room, and they had traveled along the most open and easily accessible trail. It seemed that this was either the turtle’s hoard—and the turtle showed no indication of following them—or the hoard of a long-dead king, perhaps the cyclopian Brind’Amour had spoken of. But “duty first,” Luthien’s father had always told him, and that advice seemed pertinent now with so many obvious distractions lying about.
“The staff, Oliver,” he called out once more. “Then you can have your play.”
From the top of the largest mound of coins, Oliver, the world’s happiest thief, stuck his green-gloved thumbs in his ears, waggled his fingers and stuck out his tongue in Luthien’s direction.
Luthien was about to scold him once more, but something caught the young man’s attention. He noticed a large cloth sack off to the right of where he was standing, on the lower slope of another of the mounds. Luthien was certain that the sack hadn’t been there a moment ago.
He looked up the mound, up to the ceiling above it, searching for some perch from which it might have fallen. Nothing was evident. Luthien was not surprised, for if it had fallen, or slid down the mound of coins, he certainly would have heard the movement. With a shrug, he walked the few feet and bent over the sack. He poked at it with his sword, then hooked the weapon into the drawstring, working it back and forth. Convinced that the sack wasn’t trapped, Luthien lay his torch on the pile, grabbed the sack’s top and pulled it open.
He found a beautiful crimson cape, richer in color, even in the dim torchlight, than anything the young Bedwyr had ever seen. With it was a rectangular piece of wood: two sticks side by side, curving at the ends in opposite directions. As soon as be took the piece out and saw that it was hinged, Luthien recognized it as a bow. He unfolded it, aligned the pieces, and found a pin hanging from a string on it that settled into a central notch and secured the weapon. A small compartment on one end concealed the bowstring of fine and strong gut.
Luthien drew out the silken cape and draped it around his shoulders, even putting up the hood. He picked the sack up next, inspecting it carefully to see if it held any more remarkable items.
It was truly empty, but Luthien then noticed a quiver beneath it, small and sleek and on a belt that would indicate it should be worn on the hip, not on the back. It contained only a handful of arrows. There was one more longer arrow lying next to it, a curious sight indeed, for the last few inches of the shaft, just below the small head, were cylindrical and nearly as thick as Luthien’s forearm. Surprisingly, the arrow still seemed somewhat balanced when Luthien picked it up. He studied it more closely and found that the notched end, near the fletching, was metallic, not wood, a counterbalance to the thick end near to the tip. Even with its balance, though, Luthien doubted that he could shoot the weighty and less-than-sleek arrow very far.
“You mean this very same wizard-type’s staff?” he heard Oliver shout out, drawing him from his contemplations. “Luthien?”
Luthien pushed back the cape’s hood and rushed to the large mound as Oliver slid the oaken staff down its side.
“Ah, there you are,” the halfling remarked. He eyed Luthien suspiciously. The young Bedwyr put one arm on his hip, held the strange bow in the other and posed in the new cloak.
Oliver held his hands up, not knowing what he should say. “Now I might play,” he replied instead, and he skittered down to the floor some distance to Luthien’s left.
Oliver stopped abruptly, staring down at the floor, caught by what appeared to be the shadows of a group of men, their arms held up in front of them as though warding away some danger. Oliver bent to touch the shadowy images, discovering to his horror that they were comprised of ashes.
“You know,” the halfling began, standing straight and looking back at Luthien, “in Gascony we have tales of treasures such as this, and every time, they are accompanied by . . .”
The great mound of silver and gold shifted suddenly and fell apart, coins rattling and bouncing to every part of the large chamber. Oliver and Luthien looked up into the slitted eyes of a very angry dragon.
“Yes,” the halfling finished, pointing at the great beast, “that is it.”
CHAPTER 11
BALTHAZAR
LUTHIEN HAD LIVED HIS LIFE beside the oceans of the great whales, had seen the bodies of giants taken down from the mountains by his father’s soldiers, had nearly been bitten apart by the monstrous turtle in the ot
her room. And he, like every other youth in Eriador and Avon, had heard many tales of the dragons and the brave men who slew them. But none of that could have prepared the young Bedwyr for this sight.
The great wyrm slowly uncoiled—was it a hundred feet long?—and rose up on its forelegs, towering over poor Oliver. Its yellow-green eyes shone like beacons, burning with inner fire, and its scales, reddish gold in hue and flecked with many coins and gemstones, which had become embedded during the beast’s long sleep, were as solid as a wall of iron. How many weapons did this monster possess? Luthien wondered, awe-stricken. Its claws appeared as though they could rend the stone, its abundant teeth gleamed like ivory, as long as Luthien’s sword, and its horns could skewer three men in a line. Luthien had heard tales of a dragon’s fiery breath. He knew then what had melted the ore in the walls near where he and Oliver had entered, and knew, too, that it wasn’t the turtle that had destroyed those stalagmites. The dragon had been there, four hundred years ago, and had taken out its frustration at being imprisoned.
And now it stood before Oliver, seething with rage.
“YOUR POCKETS BULGE WITH MY JEWELS, LITTLE THIEF!” the beast roared, the sheer strength of its voice blowing Oliver’s hat to the back of his head.
Oliver unconsciously dropped his hands into his pockets. He kept his wits enough to slip aside from the ashen remains, away from the one spot in this chamber that was relatively clear of dragon treasure.
Luthien stood open-mouthed, amazed that this reptilian beast had spoken. Of course, the dragons of the ancient tales spoke to the heroes, but Luthien had considered that an embellishment on the part of the tale-teller. To hear such a monster, a giant winged lizard, speaking the language of the land was perhaps the most amazing thing of all.
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