Ari moved across the loft to the narrow dormer and listened. Although the wind shrieked and whistled around the roof, she could hear the frenzied cries of the Companion as he pounded through the settlement, desperately searching for someone who could help.
"Who else do you want that mine to kill?"
She dug through the mess on the floor for a leather strap and tied her hair back off her face. Her jacket lay crumpled in a damp pile where she'd left it, but that didn't matter. It'd be damper still before she was done.
Down below, the common room emptied as the family headed for their beds, voices rising and falling, some needing comfort and absolution, some giving it. Ari didn't bother to listen. It didn't concern her.
Later, in the quiet, she swarmed down the ladder and hand-walked to where she'd heard the equipment dropped and sorted out a hundred-foot coil of rope. Draping it across her chest, she continued to the door. The latch was her design; her fingers remembered it.
The ground felt cold and wet under the heavy calluses on her palms, and she was pretty sure she felt wet snow in the rain that slapped into her face. She moved out away from the house and waited.
Hooves thundered past her, around her, and stopped.
"No one," she said, "knows the Den better than I do. I'm the only chance your Herald has left. You've probably called for others—other Heralds, other Companions—but they can't be close enough to help or you wouldn't still be hanging around here. The temperature's dropping, and time means everything now."
The Companion snorted, a great gust of warm, sweetly-scented breath replacing the storm for a moment. She hadn't realized he'd stopped so close, and she fought to keep from trembling.
"I know what you're thinking. But I won't need eyes in the darkness, and you don't dig with legs and feet. If you can get me there, Shining One, I can get your Herald out."
The Companion reared and screamed a challenge.
Ari held up her hands. "I know you understand me," she said. "I know you're more than you appear. You've got to believe me. I will get your Herald out.
"If you lie down, I can grab the saddle horn and the cantle and hold myself on between them." On a horse, it would never work, even if she could lift herself on, she'd never stay in the saddle once it started to move; her stumps were too short for balance. But then, she wouldn't be having this conversation with a horse.
A single whicker, and a rush of displaced air as a large body went to the ground a whisker's distance from her.
Ari reached out, touched one silken shoulder, and worked her way back. You must be desperate to be going along with this, she thought bitterly. Never mind. You'll see. Mounting was easy. Staying in the saddle as the Companion rose to his feet was another thing entirely. Somehow, she managed it. "All right." A deep breath and she balanced her weight as evenly as she could, stumps spread. "Go."
He leaped forward so suddenly he nearly threw her off. Heart in her throat, she clung to the saddle as his pace settled to an almost gentle rocking motion completely at odds with the speed she knew he had to be traveling. She could feel the night whipping by her, rain and snow stinging her face.
In spite of everything, she smiled. She was on a Companion. Riding a Companion.
It was over too soon.
* * *
:Jors? Chosen!:
The Herald coughed and lifted his head. He'd been having the worst dream about being trapped in a cave-in. That's what I get for eating my own cooking. And then he tried to move his legs and realized he wasn't dreaming.: Gevris! You went away!:
:I'm sorry, heart-brother. Please forgive me, but when they wouldn't stay. . . .: The thought trailed off, lost in an incoherent mix of anger and shame.
:It's all right.: Jors carefully pushed his own terror back in order to reassure the Companion. :You're back now, that's all that matters.:
:1 brought someone to get you out.:
:But I thought the mine was unstable, still collapsing.:
:She says she can free you.:
:You're talking to her?: As far as Jors knew, that never happened. Even some Heralds were unable to mind-touch clearly.
:She's talking to me. I believe she can do what she says.:
Jors swallowed and took a deep breath. :No. It's too dangerous. There's already been one accident. I don't want anyone dying because of me.:
:Chosen . .. The Companion's mind-touch held a tone Jors had never heard before. . I don't think she's doing it for you.:
When they stopped, An took a moment to work some feeling back into each hand in turn. Herald's probably going to have my finger marks permanently denting his gear. Below her, the Companion stood perfectly still, waiting.
"We're going to have to do this together, Shining One, because if I do it alone, I'll be too damned slow. Go past the mine about fifty feet and look up. Five, maybe six feet off the ground there should be a good solid shelf of rock. If you can get us onto it, we can follow it right to the mouth of the mine and avoid all that shale shit."
The Companion whickered once and started walking. When she felt him turn, Ari scooted back as far as she
could in the saddle, and flopped forward, trapping the coil of rope under her chest. Stretching her arms down and around the sleek curve of his barrel, she pushed the useless stirrups out of her way and clutched the girth.
"Go," she grunted.
He backed up a few steps, lunged forward, and the world tilted at a crazy angle.
Ari held her uncomfortable position until he stopped on the level ground at the mouth of the mine. "Remind me," she coughed, rubbing the spot where the saddle horn had slammed into her throat, "not to do that again. All right, Shining One, I'll have to get off the same way I got on."
His movement took her by surprise. She grabbed for the saddle, her cold fingers slipped on the wet leather, and she dismounted a lot farther from the ground than she'd intended.
A warm muzzle pushed into her face as she lay there for a moment, trying to get her breath back. "I'm okay," she muttered. "Just a little winded." Teeth gritted against the pain in her stumps, she pushed herself up.
Soft lips nuzzled at her hair.
"Don't worry, Shining One." Tentatively she reached out and stroked the Companion's velvet nose. "I'll get your Herald out. There's enough of me left for that" She tossed her head and turned toward the mine, not needing eyes to find the gaping hole in the hillside. Icy winds dragged across her cheeks, and she knew by their touch that they'd danced through the Demon's Den before they came to her.
"Now, then . . ." She was pleased to hear that her voice remained steady. "... we need to work out a way to communicate. At the risk of sounding like a bad Bardic tale, how about one whicker for yes and two for no?"
There was a single, soft whicker just above her head.
"Good. First of all, we have to find out how badly he ..." A pause. "Your Herald is a he?" At the Companion's affirmative, she went on. ". . . how badly he's hurt. Ask him if he has any broken bones."
:I don't know. I can't move enough to tell.:
Ari frowned at the answer. "Yes and no? Is he buried?"
:Only half of me.:
:Chosen, I have no way to tell her that.:
.•Then, yeah, I guess I'm buried.:
"Shit." There could be broken bones under the rock, the pressure keeping the Herald from feeling the pain. Well, she'd just have to deal with that when she got to it. "Is he buried in the actual mine, or in a natural cave?"
:She seems to think it's good you're in a natural cave.:
jots traced the rock that curved away from him with his free hand. His fingers were so numb he could barely feel it. :Why?:
:I can't ask her that, Chosen. She wants to know if you turned left around a corner, about thirty feet in from the entrance to the mine.:
:Left?: He tried to remember, but the cold had seeped into his brain and thoughts moved sluggishly through it.
"I—I guess so."
"Okay." Ari tied one end of the rope around
her waist as she spoke. "Ask him if the quake happened within, say, twenty feet of that corner."
.7 don't know. I don't remember. Gevris, I'm tired. Just stay with me while I rest.:
:No! Mean-brother, do not go to steep. Think, please, were you close to the comer?:
He remembered seeing the blood. Then stopping and looking into the hole in the side of the tunnel. :Yes. I think no more than twenty feet.:
"Good. We're in luck, there's only one place on this level where the cave system butts up against the mine. I know approximately where he is. He's close." She reached forward and sifted a handful of rubble. "I just have to get to him."
A hundred feet of rope would reach the place where the quake threw him out of the mine, but, after that, she could only hope he hadn't slid too deep into the catacombs.
Turning to where she could feel the bulk of the Companion, Ari's memory showed her a graceful white stallion, outlined against the night. "Once I get the rope around him, you'll have to pull him free."
He whickered once and nudged her and she surrendered to the urge to bury face and fingers in his mane. When she finally let go, she had to bite her lip to keep from crying. "Thanks. I'm okay now."
Using both arms at once, then swinging her body forward between them, Ari made her way into the mine, breathing in the wet, oily scent of the rock, the lingering odors of the lanterns Dyril and the others had used, and the stink of fear, old and new. At the first rockfall she paused, traced the broken pieces, and found the passage the earlier rescue party had dug.
Her shoulder brushed a timber support and she hurried past the memories.
A biting gust of wind whistled through a crack up ahead, flinging grit up into her face. "Nice try," she muttered. "But you threw me into darkness five summers ago and I've learned my way around." Then she raised her voice. "Shining One, can you still hear me?" The Companion's whicker echoed eerily. "You don't need to worry about him running out of air, this place is like a sieve, so remind your Herald to keep moving. Tell him to keep flexing his muscles if that's all he can do. He's got to keep the blood going out to the extremities."
:What extremities?: Jors heard himself giggle and wondered what there was to laugh about.
:Chosen, listen to me. You know what the cold can do. You have to move.:
:I know that.: Everyone knew that. It wasn't like he hadn't been paying attention when they'd been teaching winter survival skills, it was just, well, it was just so much effort.
:Wiggle your toes!:
Gevris somehow managed to sound exactly like the Weaponsmaster, and Jors found himself responding instinctively. To his surprise, his toes still wiggled. And it still hurt. The pain burned some of the frost out of his brain and left him gasping for breath, but he was thinking more clearly than he had been in some time. With his Companion's encouragement, he began to systematically work each muscle that still responded.
The biggest problem with digging out the Demon's Den had always been that the rock shattered into pieces so small it was like burrowing through beads in a box. The slightest jar would sent the whole crashing to the ground.
Her eyes in her fingertips, Ari inched toward the buried Herald, not digging but building a passageway, each stone placed exactly to hold the weight of the next. Slowly, with exquisite care, she moved up and over the rockfall that had nearly killed Neegan. She lightly touched the splintered end of the shattered support, then went on. She had no time to mourn the past.
Years of destruction couldn't erase her knowledge of the mine. She'd been trapped in it for too long.
"Herald? Can you hear me?"
Jors turned his face toward the sudden breeze. "Yes . . ." -.Gevris, she's here!:
:Good.: Although he sounded relieved, Jors realized the Companion didn't sound the least bit surprised.
:You knew she'd make it.:
Again the strange tone the Herald didn't recognize. .7 believed her when she said she'd get you out.:
"Cover your head with your hands, Herald."
Startled, he curved his left arm up and around his head just in time to prevent a small shower of stones from ringing off his skull.
"I'm on my way down."
A moment later he felt the space around him fill, and a rough jacket pressed hard against his cheek.
"Sorry. Just let me get turned."
Turned? Teeth chattering from the cold, he strained back as far as he could but knew it would make little difference. There wasn't room for a cat to turn let alone a person. To his astonishment, his rescuer seemed to double back on herself.
"Ow. Not a lot of head room down here."
From the sound of her voice and the touch of her hands, she had to be sitting tight up against his side, her upper body bent across his back. He tried to force his half-frozen mind to work. "Your legs . . ."
"Are well out of the way, Herald. Trust me." Ari danced her fingers over the pile of rubble that pinned him. "Can you still move your toes."
It took him a moment to remember how. "Yes."
"Good. You're at the bottom of a roughly wedge-shaped crevasse. Fortunately, you're pointing the right way. As soon as I get enough of you clear, I'm going to tie this rope around you, and your Companion on the other end is going to inch you up the slope as I uncover your legs. That means if anything's broken, it's going to drag, but if we don't do it that way, there won't be room down here for me, you, and the rock. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Good." One piece at a time, she began to free his right side.
:Gevris, she doesn't have any legs.:
:I know.:
:How did she get here?:
: brought her.:
:That's impossible!:
The Companion snorted. .-Obviously not. She's blind, too.:
"What!" His incredulous exclamation echoed through the Demon's Den.
Ari snorted and jammed a rock into the crack between two others. It wasn't difficult to guess what had caused that reaction, not when she knew the silence had to be filled with dialogue she couldn't hear. She waited for him to say something Herald-like and nauseating about overcoming handicaps as though they were all she was.
To her surprise, he said only, "What's your name?"
It took her a moment to find her voice. "Ari."
"Jors."
She nodded, even though she knew he couldn't see the gesture. "Herald Jors."
"Are you one of the miners?"
Why was he talking to her when he had his Companion to keep him company? "Not exactly." So far tonight, she'd said more than she'd said in the five summers since the accident. Her throat ached.
"Gevris says he's never seen anyone do what you did to get in here. He says you didn't dig through the rubble, you built a tunnel around you using nothing but your hands."
"Gevris?"
"My Companion. He's very impressed. He believes you can get me out."
Ari swallowed hard. His Companion believed in her. It was almost funny in a way. "You can move your arm now."
"Actually," he gasped, trying not to writhe, "no, I can't." He felt her reach across him, tuck her hand under his chest, and grab his wrist. He could barely feel her touch against his skin.
"On three." She pulled immediately before he could tense.
"That wasn't very nice," he grunted when he could speak again.
She ignored his feeble attempt to tug his arm out of her hands and continued rubbing life back into the chilled flesh. "There's nothing wrong with it. It's just numb because you've been lying on it in the cold."
"Oh? Are you a Healer, then?"
He sounded so indignant that she smiled and actually
answered the question. "No, I was a mining engineer. I designed this mine."
"Oh." He'd wondered what kind of idiot would put a mine in a place like this. Now he knew.
Ari heard most of the thought and gritted her teeth. "Keep flexing the muscles." Untying the end of the rope from around her own waist, she relied it just under the He
rald's arms. It felt strange to touch a young man's body again after so long. Strange and uncomfortable. She twisted and began to free his legs.
Jors listened to her breathing and thought of being alone in darkness forever.
:I'm here, Chosen.:
:I know. But I wasn't thinking of me. I was thinking about Ari. . . Ari. . .: "Were you at the Collegium?"
"I was."
"You redesigned the hoists from the kitchen so they'd stop jamming. And you fixed that pump in Bardic that kept flooding the place. And you made the practice dummy that . . ."
"That was a long time ago."
"Not so long," Jors protested trying to ignore the sudden pain as she lifted a weight off his hips. "You left the Blues the summer I was Chosen."
"Did I?"
"They were all talking about you. They said there wasn't anything you couldn't build. What happened?"
Her hands paused. "I came home. Be quiet. I have to listen." It wasn't exactly a lie.
Working as fast as she could, Ari learned the shape of the stone imprisoning the Herald, its strengths, its weaknesses. It was all so very familiar. The tunnel she'd built behind her ended here. She finished it in her head, and nodded, once, as the final piece slid into place.
"Herald Jors, when I give you the word, have your Companion pull gently but firmly on the rope until I tell you to stop. I can't move the rest of this off of you so I'm going to have to move you out from under it."
Jors nodded, realized how stupid that was, and said, "I understand."
Ari pushed her thumbs under the edge of a rock and took a deep breath. "Now."
The rock shifted, but so did the Herald.
"Stop." She changed her grip. "Now." A stone fell. She blocked it with her shoulder. "Stop."
Inch by inch, teeth clenched against the pain of returning circulation, Jors moved up the slope, clinging desperately to the rope.
"Stop."
"I'm out."
"I know. Now, listen carefully because this is important. On my way in, I tried to lay the rope so it wouldn't snag, but your Companion will have to drag you clear without stopping—one long smooth motion, no matter what."
"No matter what?" Jors repeated, twisting to peer over his shoulder, the instinctive desire to see her face winning out over the reality. The loose slope he was lying on shifted.
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