127 – A Few Loose Ends

  Rox withdrew from the two symbols, and removed her equipment harness, and put down her bow. She then entered the pentagram opposite Caspian, and stopped at the edge of the octagram, at Diana’s feet. She then acted as a control valve as Caspian worked the magic.

  First he mapped all the magic around Diana. He threaded past Rox’s spell, and quickly dispelled the next three placed on Diana by the black elf. At that point, Cyrril darted in and grabbed the necklace. He bit through one side of the silver chain and took the whole thing away with him.

  Now it was Rox’s turn. She tested the pattern of the magic that she had put on Diana, at Diana’s birth. There was the key. She dispelled it, and the rest collapsed. There was a brief shimmer around Diana, as the spell dispersed. When it faded the most noticeable difference was that Diana’s hair quickly turned as white as Rox’s had turned. Rox then backed up to the spell she had put on Diana a few moments ago. This was released as fast as it was activated, but the effects took longer to manifest. That was just as well. It gave Rox a moment to be a mother. With the casting done, she stepped into the octagram, which was now no more than lines on the ground. She picked up Diana’s limp form and hugged her close. Slowly Diana came back to herself, crying and clutching at her mother as if to let go would be forever.

  Caspian watched this with a detached interest. Then turned back to practical matters. Cyrril was already making ribbons of the Urnvtai elf clothes that Diana had been wearing. Caspian moved him aside and incinerated the rest of it. Then sent Cyrril on another errand. To go get the packs that they would have picked up had they gone out the way they had planned.

  Cyrril was up and gone just that fast, passing through the ward and down one of the tunnels. Caspian could have teleported the things straight here, but that would have alerted every magic user in the area to their location. Instead he maintained the ward with its camouflage, and let Rox have the privacy with her daughter. For the same reason of alerting the magic users, he would not be teleporting them back to the surface. That left them walking the whole way back out.

  Diana did not settle down completely until Cyrril returned. The clever beast had the packs in tow, having levitated them, and then dragged then by their straps. He also reported to Caspian that the search parties were out in earnest.

  Caspian dug into his pack for some fresh spell components, and also some digging tools. He then set about collecting some of every substance in the cavern.

  Rox had taken her pack and dug out the clothes that the Nidaer Clan had given to clothe Diana in. She helped Diana put these on. Underwear, then some trousers, and an elfin silk blouse with a leather vest. A belt, a pair of socks and boots were the last. The clothes were adjusted to fit. Diana was feeling much better now. Rather like she had just got up from a night of bad dreams. Except this one was not yet finished.

  Diana looked herself over and was already showing the resilience of children. She would spend a while playing with her hair, until she got used to it being white and the mohawk stood up. At this point Caspian put his tools away and shouldering his bag, he looked at Diana, and spoke in English.

  “Diana, can you lead us out of here?”

  Rox put her harness back on and secured the girdle, settled the quiver, and put her staff back on the under side out of the quiver. Then she put her shoulder bag on and picked up her bow.

  Diana looked at Caspian and her mother and nodded. She turned around twice, looking the cavern over and getting her bearings, then started in a new direction, roughly perpendicular to the one she had been on when she came into this chamber. “The Urnvtai allowed me to play with the other children down here, and a few times I managed to find the way to the main tunnel to the surface. I think it was this way. They always stopped me from going very far into the main tunnel.”

  As they left the cavern, Caspian cast one last quick spell. He collapsed the ward, and had the barrier sweep the floor as it did, removing the symbols that had been drawn.

  Several turns along, they came into a larger carved passage. Diana led almost running. Rox followed and had her bow out and another of her crystal tipped arrows in battery, ready to draw and aim. Caspian and Cyrril brought up the rear alternating between a fast walk and jog to keep up.

  This passage went more or less straight for a ways, then came to another intersection. Rox and Caspian both felt magic coming from somewhere up the passage to their right. Rox got a hold of Diana and slowed her down. Caspian got ready to put up a shield. As Diana and Rox crossed the passage, Caspian put a blocking shield across its opening. Rox surged forward, dragging Diana across the opening, and a blast of magic impacted on the shield Caspian had energized.

  Diana complained at Rox’s manhandling of her. Rox paused as she got clear of the opening on the far side of it. Caspian stepped around the corner and let lose with a lightening bolt into the cross passage. The concussion of this deafened everyone.

  “Diana, stay down.” Rox looked over the magic in action, and then brought her bow up. She aimed at the top of the side tunnel and let fly with her arrow. It passed through Caspian’s shield and down the passage several yards and hit the top of the tunnel. The magic on the crystal arrowhead hit the stone and sparked and shattered. The metal arrow head began to crumple against the stone, the wooden shaft to shatter. Then the spell on the crystal detonated. A wave of energy radiated out from the arrowhead, shattering the rock for three meters plus around it.

  The rock having lost integrity, it collapsed into the passage. The elves having been good engineers had avoided leaving seams as they had carved these tunnels, so there were no sympathetic fractures beyond this one. As it was, enough graveled rock obeyed gravity and collapsed into the tunnel blocking the way of the locals beyond it.

  The dust from the falling rock filled the cavern and obscured everything for a few moments. Then Caspian worked a spell that drew air from the direction they were headed and carried the dust the way they had come from.

  Once he could breathe clearly again, he dispelled his active shield and walked over to where Rox and Diana were getting up and brushing the dust off.

  “Can you hear me?” he spoke at normal level, he could barely hear himself.

  Rox did not even look over at him. Caspian cast a spell over himself, and Cyrril. This got Rox’s attention. Keeping the spell in process, he reached for Rox’s ears, and restored her hearing. Diana watched, and then let him do the same to her.

  “Can you hear me now?”

  “Yeah.” Rox answered in the northern language that she had most often spoke to Caspian in.

  “Mom, what are you saying?”

  Rox and Caspian looked down to her, and switched to English. “Caspian just asked if I can hear again, after all the big booms. What languages do you know from this world, besides English?”

  “The Urnvtai woman put their language into my head. I picked up some of the words that caravan spoke. Otherwise, I don’t know any other language from here.”

  Caspian continued in English. “We better get going. I put that group down, but there are sure to be others.” He turned to Rox. “Warn me next time you let one of those arrows fly at close range.”

  They moved on, following the passage.

*          *          *

  Steven woke up to find that Alex was sitting nearby on top of a low pillar looking around. The torch was cold. Steven could hardly see in the dark, while Alex could see just fine. By feel he carefully pulled out a lighter and found the right end of the torch. In moments the end was slowly burning, and Steven’s night vision had bright spots all over it. Steven put the lighter away, and pulled a strip of cloth out and wrapped it around the torch, almost smothering it before the oil caught and started burning.

  With the torch lit Steven called Alex over. Alex got down off the rock keeping his face away from the torch.

  “Alex, come here and let me show you something.” Steven pulled out the tracker out of his vest.

  Alex shaded his eyes as he walked over. “That hurts my eyes, Dad.”

  For a few moments, Steven did not understand. Then turned and set the torch on the ground upright against a nearby rock pillar, and walked back so it backlit him.

  “Is that better?”

  Alex put his hand down. He could see everything, and it was kind of strange to see the heat and light where the torch lit things.

  Steven knelt down and held out the tracker in his palm. “Alex, have a look at this.”

  Alex picked it up. It was a disk that filled most of his father’s palm, with a flat bubble of stuff on one side and a heavy metal back on the other. A swirl of light was right on the top. “Is this the tracker you talked about yesterday?”

  Steven smiled as Alex put is back in his palm. “Yes, it is. The top point is you.”

  Steven pulled the second one from his vest, and held it out. “This one is for Mom.”

  It had a swirl part way down the side of the bubble, not as bright as the other tracker.

  “I was told by the people who made it that it cannot read through thick rock very well. It does show the direction a person is, and how far away they are.”

  Alex looked and pointed back in the direction they had come past. “So Mom is that way, and not very far.”

  Steven had guessed that was about at the direction of the archway with the elf writing on it. This made him nervous, but it was expected. “That’s right. I figure we will wait for them here.”

  Steven’s tactical sense was telling him this would be a good place to squabble if need be. He only hoped he could do some good in the dark if it came to that.

  As it turned out, the need did not happen. Steven made breakfast for himself and Alex, using a small camp stove he had sparingly used to this point. He was glad for the warm breakfast, and had extinguished the torch in the mean time.

  Alex saw them first, which did not surprise Steven. They sat below the top of rock pillars near the wall. Steven could not see much beyond dark, but could hear lots. Alex said he could see everything, for a ways up, and in either direction along the rift. Then he saw a light in the elf’s tunnel.

  Steven turned and saw it, and finally had a rough clue on the distance. He gauged the bottom of the rift to vary between 75 and 150 meters across. The rock garden was about 400 meters from the archway. From Steven’s orientation the arch was to his right, and the way out was to his left, two days away.

  Cyrril startled Steven as he appeared out of the dark, having evidently flown under Alex’s sight line. He climbed up Steven’s boot and stood on his thigh as Steven crouched against the pillar.