“Jacques is right,” said Finder, who had limped over to join their conversation. “We’re going to have to be more careful than ever how we travel.”
Belle’s sharp ears overheard them. “They never should have gotten the jump on us to begin with,” she said from where she stood. “I should have been paying closer attention. But my thoughts were distracted by trying to figure out who was following us, not who might be waiting ahead.”
“No point in blaming Lightfoot for what’s happened,” said Finder gently.
“Oh, go ahead,” said Lightfoot, glancing at Belle. “You might as well blame me. I’m used to it.”
Belle snorted in disgust. Ignoring her glare, Lightfoot turned to Thomas. “Moonheart asked me to tend your wounds. I’ll take care of that bite on your hand, too, Cara. But Thomas first, because he’s lost the most blood. Finder will take care of the Dimblethum. And Belle will see to Jacques.”
Cara knew that in doing all this healing, the unicorns were at the same time weakening themselves and would need to rest for a while to recover.
“Are you going to fix each other, too?” she asked Lightfoot when he came to tend her hand.
“We’ll take care of the worst of the damage,” he told her as he knelt beside her and pressed his horn to the place where the delver had bitten her.
She started to answer, but her words were choked by the flash of pain that accompanied the healing. She caught her breath, then bit her lip to keep from crying out. In a moment it was over. She looked at her hand. Though the open wound had closed smoothly, the flesh was still red and angry looking.
“An incomplete cure,” murmured Lightfoot. “Delver bites are nasty, and I am at less than full strength. Thomas’s wounds were even worse than they looked, and took a lot of energy to fix.”
Cara noticed that his legs were trembling. A moment later he sank to the ground beside her.
She had learned the first time that Lightfoot healed one of her wounds — a wound also caused by a delver attack — that the process was extremely draining for the unicorns. She guessed that was why they were going to heal only the worst of each other’s wounds. It was probably a kind of balancing act, determining which would slow them down the least: the wounds themselves, or the period of rest required after a major healing.
Putting her hand on Lightfoot’s neck, she thought, “I am so glad you’ve come back. I missed you.”
“And I missed you,” he replied, his thoughts muzzy with exhaustion.
An instant later he was asleep.
* * *
They stayed at the site of the battle for the next two days, keeping watch for the return of the delvers and letting the unicorns regain their strength. Cara fretted at the delay. Rubbing her thumb across the notches on her calendar stick, she counted the days over and over, as if by counting them enough she could somehow change the math of the sky and add to the time they had left before the first day of autumn.
She did take advantage of the delay to spend some time with the Dimblethum, whom she felt she had slighted the day before by rushing straight to Lightfoot.
“I am so glad you are with us,” she said to him. “I missed you very much.”
“And I missed you, little Wanderer,” he replied in his deep, rumbling voice.
The name startled her, and she didn’t say much after that. The Dimblethum wasn’t one for talking anyway. But it felt good, and safe, to sit beside him. Later he disappeared for several hours. When she asked Lightfoot about it, he said, “I think he’s off looking for delvers to crunch.”
* * *
Toward the end of the second afternoon Jacques invited her to take a walk with him. It felt good to be up and moving, even if they weren’t really going anywhere. They found a stream about a hundred yards from their resting place. Following it, they came to a large pool.
“Don’t go out too far,” warned Jacques when she waded in to wash. “You’ll drown yourself for certain.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, which caused his face to grow even gloomier than usual.
Later they led the unicorns to the pool, and Cara helped them clean away the blood and gore that had covered them after the battle.
“Do you know one of the biggest differences between unicorns and humans?” asked Finder, standing knee-deep in the cold water.
“What?” asked Cara, trying to keep her stomach from turning as she used a handful of tarka leaves to scour the filth from his coat.
“Hands,” said the big unicorn. “I can never be sure if I’m glad we don’t have them, or not. They’re plenty useful — certainly it would be easier for us to clean up now if we had them. On the other hoof, they lead you into all sorts of mischief.”
Cara held her hands in front of her, spread her fingers, wiggled them. Though she sometimes wished she had been born a unicorn instead of a human, she wasn’t sure she would be willing to give up her hands for the privilege.
She returned to her task. “There,” she said at last. “Perfectly clean!”
Finder climbed out of the pond and shook his head. His mane spattered water in all directions, like a spray of diamonds.
That night Cara carved the seventh notch in her calendar. “Twenty-four days left,” she murmured.
* * *
The next morning they began to travel again. Moonheart was still limping a little, but his wounds were healing faster than Cara would have expected.
I wonder if their healing powers work naturally on their own wounds? she thought as she watched him walk. She studied the scar on Finder’s shoulder and, by the end of the day, was surprised to see that it had grown significantly lighter.
The Dimblethum dropped behind several times. Lightfoot told her it was because he was covering their trail and devising various methods to confuse the delvers.
Continuing upstream along the river, they emerged at midday from the woods to a broad plain. Though the land was flat and open here, it was often marshy, and trying to find a solid path sometimes slowed their progress so much that Cara would grow nearly frantic with worry.
On the far side of the plain rose some low, rolling hills, which they reached toward dusk of the second day. By this time the unicorns seemed to have completely recovered from their wounds. It was just as well, for their path led directly into the hills, where it was not always easy to follow the river. It had sliced deep into the land, and the banks were often steep and high.
To make things more difficult, it began to rain — a slow, steady drizzle that persisted all through the night and into the next day.
On the morning of the fourth day after they had resumed their journey, the soggy, grumpy travelers were walking along a rocky wall when they were startled by a rumbling sound.
Looking to her right, Cara gasped. One of the boulders was rising into the air, revealing a dark hole.
From the darkness came a voice, both cranky and familiar.
“Well,” it snapped. “It’s about time you got here!”
11
Underground Journey
A small man stepped out of the darkness. His skin was a beautiful deep brown. His eyes, so large they looked almost comic in his serious face, were topped by bushy sprouts of silvery hair. He wore a coarsely woven robe in which shades of red, brown, and orange mixed to make it look rather like a distant view of a forest floor in autumn.
“Grimwold!” cried Cara in delight. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, you were coming to see me, weren’t you?” asked the little man, sounding impatient.
“I wasn’t sure. I hoped we might, but — ”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “The Queen sent a message.”
“You mean other unicorns have gotten here ahead of us?” Cara asked in surprise.
“Did I say that?” asked Grimwold.
“Then how — ” She broke off as she remembered the scrying pool with which they had once tried to contact the Queen.
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br /> “Arabella has many ways to communicate with me,” said Grimwold. “Anyway, she’d heard from M’Gama that you were coming this way and asked me to meet you.” He narrowed his eyes. “She didn’t mention that there would be so many of you.”
“We had unexpected company,” said Moonheart sourly.
Grimwold sighed heavily, as if accepting some tragic turn of fate. “Well, I suppose you’ll all be wanting to come in. Nothing to do about it, I guess. It’s not like anyone would really care if it was an imposition, or if I already had more work than I could handle, or anything like that. Come on, come on! We can’t stand here all night!”
With that, he disappeared back into the darkness. Thomas began folding up his cart, something Cara always enjoyed watching. It was astonishing to see the huge thing disappear into itself — though she could never figure out exactly how it happened. The Tinker had reduced the cart to something he could easily tuck under one arm when Moonheart motioned for Cara to lead the way.
As she stepped into the dark opening, the Squijum leaped onto her shoulder to ride with her. “Wowza, wowza!” he chattered. “Cranky, cranky old guy!”
“Shhh!” she cautioned. Not because his words weren’t true. She just didn’t want him to make the situation worse.
As soon as they entered the hillside, she saw a glimmer of light to her right. The passageway turned, then turned again. Rounding the second corner, Cara found herself in a small chamber lined with dark, reddish wood. A lantern hung from the wall, casting a cheery glow. Beneath it stood Grimwold, his hands resting on what looked like the captain’s wheel of an old-fashioned ship. On the floor beside him was a backpack.
“You’d better go on ahead a bit,” he told her gruffly. “Won’t be room in here for everyone.”
Cara nodded and did as he asked, moving along the stony corridor that stretched to his left. She could hear the others enter behind her, the unicorns muttering in annoyance because the turns were so tight it was hard for them to maneuver.
Finally she heard Lightfoot say, “That’s it. I’m the last.”
Grimwold grunted. “Are you sure? I was beginning to think the Queen had sent an entire army.” He paused, then said, more softly and clearly surprised, “By Bellenmore’s Belt, it’s Lightfoot. What are you doing here?” He chuckled. “I notice you waited till last to come in. Staying as far away from your uncle as you can?”
“I thought you didn’t like idle chatter,” said Lightfoot sharply.
“Information gathering is never idle.”
“Why not just close the door before someone else tries to get in?” snapped Lightfoot.
“What do you think I’m doing?” said Grimwold, sounding equally testy.
Cara heard a creak. Looking back past the others, she was able — just barely — to see Grimwold turning the wooden wheel. Next came a rumbling noise, and then a heavy thud as the boulder that masked the entry into the hill fell back in place.
A moment later Grimwold joined her at the front of the procession. He was carrying the lantern that had hung in the small chamber.
“I knew we would be passing near the edge of your territory,” said Cara. “But I didn’t realize we were so close to it already.”
“You’re not.”
“I don’t understand. If we’re not near your home, then why are we — ”
“This tunnel leads to my home. But it would take us at least a day’s journey to get there. Anyway, that’s not where we’re going.”
“I still don’t understand,” said Cara, beginning to feel frustrated.
“You want to get to the Northern Forest, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it will take you forever the way you were going. I have a better route.”
“All underground?” asked Cara nervously.
“I like being underground. Besides, we’ll travel more quickly this way. Making the same trip overland, with all those hills and valleys and forests and other nonsense — not to mention the way that foolish river twists and turns — would take you at least twice as long.”
Cara felt a surge of relief. Anything that would get them to Ebillan’s cave faster was welcome to her.
“You’ll probably be safer this way, too,” added Grimwold, somewhat as an afterthought.
“That would be nice,” said Jacques, who was walking behind them. “I’d just as soon avoid danger as much as possible.”
“Sensible,” said Grimwold. “Hardly what I would have expected from one of you Players.”
Moonheart snorted in amusement.
* * *
It was a wondrous journey. They traveled along corridors lined with wood, and others made of stone. Some of the stone passages appeared to have been made by hand; others were obviously natural, sometimes widening so that the entire company could walk side by side. At other times a passage would narrow so sharply that even going single file they could barely squeeze through it. Once they had to stop because the Dimblethum got stuck and howled pitifully until they could free him — which was only possible because Jacques was still behind him, and so could push, while Thomas pulled him from in front.
Moonheart and Belle stood watching this, both looking exasperated.
Shortly after they had freed the Dimblethum the passage opened into an enormous cave, so big that the light from Grimwold’s lantern couldn’t penetrate its depths. Ahead of them was a reddish glow. Cara heard a low rumbling sound. As they drew closer to the glow, she could see that it came from a wide gap in the cavern floor.
“How are we going to get over that?” she asked nervously.
Without saying a word, Grimwold pointed to the right, where a narrow stretch of rock spanned the chasm.
“I thought you said this was safer than traveling aboveground,” grumbled Jacques.
“I said safer, not risk-free. Besides, if you don’t fall off, it’s no problem at all.”
“I’d rather take my chances in a good, clean fight,” muttered Belle.
* * *
The rumble grew louder as they walked. From the red glow ahead of them, Cara expected to find the chasm filled with bubbling lava. She was astonished when they reached it to see that the noise was actually made by an enormous cataract — a thundering torrent of water that gushed from a sheer wall about a quarter of a mile to the right, then tumbled fifty or sixty feet to form a river that raged and rolled beneath them and on to their left for as far as she could see.
What made it even more remarkable was that the water exploding from the wall glowed a brilliant red. The spray and mist it threw up were crimson as well, and the river that roared beneath them might as well have been made of blood.
Cara stared at the water in awe. “What makes it glow?” she asked, shouting to be heard above the roar of the water.
Grimwold shrugged. “Could be minerals it picks up as it travels underground. Could be some kind of tiny plant or animal.”
“Could be magic,” added Thomas.
“Possible,” agreed Grimwold, “though if it is, I don’t see the point of it.”
“Do all wonders need to have a purpose?” asked Thomas.
Grimwold snorted in response, then said, “Follow me.” He stepped onto the stone bridge, which was about three feet wide, with an irregular surface. Fortunately it was far enough from the falls that the spray didn’t reach it, so the surface was not made slick by water. Unfortunately, the drop to the river below was well over a hundred feet.
“Well, at least it will be a quick death if I fall,” said Jacques as he stepped onto the bridge.
Cara followed him, and after a few steps made the mistake of looking down at the glowing torrent. She felt herself sway and had to close her eyes for a moment. After that, she forced herself to focus on her feet and not the abyss below.
The Squijum, however, scampered around fearlessly — shooting ahead, zipping back and forth across the bridge, even climbing over the edge and clinging to the side
. Cara tried to ignore him until he got underneath her feet and nearly tripped her. “Squijum!” she snapped. “Get up here on my shoulder before you kill me. And don’t move until we get to the other side!”
“Hotcha stinky cranky girl,” he muttered sullenly. But he did as she told him.
They stopped at the top of the bridge’s arc to admire the waterfall. Turning to her left, Cara could now see that the river flowed in a straight line for another mile or two, then disappeared out of sight — though whether it plunged over another falls, or the cavern ended and the river simply began flowing through a tunnel again, she could not tell.
* * *
Once across the bridge, it took another hour to reach the far side of the cavern. Cara had no idea how Grimwold kept on track, for there was no path that she could see, and the space was so large that even the echoes of their footsteps seemed distant. But that he did keep on track there was no doubt, for when they finally came to the far side, they were directly in front of a small tunnel, no more than six feet high and three feet wide. It was tiny compared to the vastness of the cavern wall, and if you missed it you could have spent hours, maybe days, trying to find it — and that was assuming it was the only one and you didn’t go wandering off in the wrong tunnel altogether.
“How did you bring us directly to this spot?” asked Cara.
“Practice,” grunted Grimwold as he entered the tunnel.
* * *
Another hour or so of traveling brought the group to a comfortably sized cave that was dimly lit by glowing, pale blue fungus that grew on rocks surrounding a pool of water.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” said Grimwold.
“How do you know it’s night?” asked Jacques.
The old dwarf snorted. “I listen to my body. Do you have to have the light to tell you everything?”
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