120 – Meeting more locals

  Roxanne woke with a start, listening. She could see in her extended vision range. Caspian and Cyrril lay across from her, breathing in deep sleep. Then she heard the rattling of pebbles. Anywhere else she might not have noticed it. Here it was the only other sound. Rox slowly reached out and put her hand on her bow grip, pulling out a wooden arrow from her quiver with the other, and finding the end. Now she heard a faint scratching across stone. She looked up and beyond Caspian, but could not spot anything. She looked up the pillars and could see some faint patches of warmer stone on one, as if something had held on at those points. Her fingers rolled the arrow by feel as she looked around.

  As noiselessly as she could she rolled to a crouch, knocking her arrow as she did. She looked at the surrounding pillars but saw and heard nothing. She waited, remembering the times she had been bow hunting. Only then she had stalked or sat up a tree, not crouched looking up. After a few eternal moments of listening, movement attracted her attention.

  Something was crawling down a pillar, head first. Quadruped. A bit larger than a large dog, or maybe a small bear. Its claws held it to the rough stone. It had eyes, and large ears, and its head seemed to have a large nose cavity. It sniffed and listened. One ear swiveled to her, as Roxanne pulled back the bow string, and the compound wheels rolled over. She found herself aiming between its shoulders, trying to count its ribs by the heat of its body.

  At this angle it presented a terrific target but no soft spots for quick kills, except for right there. She aimed and then just as she released she moved her arm slightly, and caught the creature right at the base of its neck as it jumped at the sound of her bow. Instead of catching on to the next pillar, the thing just crashed into it and fell with a dull thud to the dirt floor.

  At the sound of the bow Cyrril had awakened; as the beast tumbled against Caspian he awoke with a start. He jumped sideways without seeming to pass from lying to standing, giving a startled shout.

  “What happened? What was that? What hit me?” Caspian flailed a bit in the dark, until Cyrril landed on his staff, causing the carved dragon to glow.

  Rox stood and toed the creature. “You tell me. It was climbing down the pillar above you.”

  The whole staff brightened, illuminating the thing. It lay on its side, looking vaguely like a piled up rug, with a broken arrow sticking out of it. Caspian picked up the staff, and switched its glowing to the spotlights. He looked the thing over. Its head was a bit smashed, and its legs at odd angles.

  “Some kind of bugbear,” Caspian did not sound certain.

  While its back had course short fur and looked well muscled, its underbody looked almost like an exoskeleton, a rough surface all over its chest with small spikes. It had stout looking jaws and fangs. Caspian showed Roxanne its paw. Talons as long as her fingers, barbs on its knuckles.

  “Is it worth anything?” Rox was wondering about how they might take it with.

  “Not here or now. Best we move.”

  They hiked an hour through the rock garden parallel to the road, and camped again without disturbance.

  Steven dreamed again. But this was a familiar dream. He had had it several times growing up and a few times since, with more and different details each time, as life got closer to the event. In the past, it usually came when he was depressed, and would cheer him up. This time he did not need cheering up, but it still helped.

  He wore some kind of leather armor, and was fighting with a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, against some kind of uniformly armored men. He was fighting these bad guys off. Roxanne is nearby. The kids are also nearby, standing with two trusted strangers, when . . .  the dream ends, at least as far as Steven could ever remember. The setting was always an afterthought. But it seemed they were in a forest, having made camp. And that whatever happens after the dream ends, everything will be all right.

  This dream always renewed his optimism. But he had not had it in some time. Then the armor the elves gave him began to look and feel familiar. As did the old sword. And while he was marching out from Skarg the memory of this dream returned to him. From that point he had looked forward in quiet anticipation for the moment when he would live what he dreamed. And now he could remember and see most of the elements of the event. He still could not see all the elements, but he thought he knew who they all were, and generally where. And it made him happy.

  Steven woke from his sleep feeling refreshed. The humidity was pleasant, as was the sound of the lapping of the water against stone. He cleaned up his camp, and packed everything carefully. He did not want to make anymore noise or mess than he needed, so he secured everything in their pouches. He had pushed himself hard the afternoon and night before, and had rested well. Now, with the village near by according to Karen, he had to scout it out and plan the best way to go about approaching and rescuing his son. His eyes quickly adapted to the dim conditions, as his sense of hearing seemed to give new information. He could hear movement approaching. A party of some kind on the trail coming from the way he wanted to go. They would be looking nearly right at him as they passed this point.

  Quickly Steven repacked his stuff, and slung his pack across his back. He cast about for somewhere to go, and realized he had a shelf to stand on, on the far side of this pillar. Steven lowered himself to stand on the balls of his feet in just his socks, and gripped the lip with his hands. As he looked past his feet and the shelf he could see the water, and the luminescent lichen or moss below going deep into the water.

  Steven waited there for the party to go by, sneaking peaks over the rocks to watch, hoping they would not notice his boots he had not thought about to grab. Three beings went by. Most of what Steven could see was by pattern-recognition in the very low light.

  They were short, as everybody on this planet was to Steven. But these also looked lightly built. They wore some kind of rough cloth with worked leather of some kind. They did not carry any light source with them, but did have what looked like torches or clubs of some kind, wrapped in bundles on their backs. They all carried short swords and knives on their belts. The sword hung level, rather than down. Also they all wore their hair pulled back and tied into a tail that hung down their backs. They all were probably male, but Steven wasn’t about to worry about it. In the dark, he was surprised to see that much.

  Karen’s voice echoed through his mind ‘When you encounter the locals, think ‘empty;’ not just the word but the concept. These people can sense your mind. There is little you can do to sneak up on them, except distraction.’ Steven found himself thinking of empty space, until they passed.

  He figured he had at least part of one more day of travel before getting to the village. He had better get moving. Once they were past and a bit away, Steven chinned himself back up, grabbed his boots, crossed over to the trail, and proceeded along in the direction the three had come for a bit to put some distance between him and the three before putting his boots on. If they found the ant-pillars down, and the creature beyond missing they might start looking for him. Steven put his boots on, and moved along in hasty stealth. He was several turns of the trail along before realizing that his woodcraft skills from his active duty days had essentially returned. Also the cavern was just light enough he did not need a portable light source.

  Steven though things over as he went. Karen’s implanted memory told him he would skirt this lake for most of the rest of his way, then turn at a tributary stream and follow that up to the village. From there he could exit the main village passage and eventually get back to the large cavern and the main road from there.

  But what still troubles Steven was the tactics of the situation. He was uncomfortable with the idea of just walking into an armed village, and demanding his son. But on his own, there was little else he could do. As he walked, Steven tried to review his situation and what he could do about it. His primary objective was getting Alex, while keeping them both alive. Secondary to this was getting a certain book or scroll. Karen had implanted this, rather than mention it. Steven was not sure why, but would ask about it later. Then was to get them back to the main trail and out.

  About the village he was going to, normally his first concern would be reconnoitering the place. If it was in a cavern, he could not just skirt around its perimeter, without being observed, as he might on the surface. Nor was he in position to get airborne images or maps of the place. So that meant entering it blind to its layout. Add the light limitations, and the apparent psionic abilities, or talents, or these people.

  With the technology and tools he might have had on Terra, Earth, he could have done more planning and felt better about the situation. But none of that was available. Caspian and his magic might have been able to overcome these limitations, but for whatever reason Karen had arranged the plan for a simultaneous retrieval of Alex and Diana.

  In following this plan Karen had surmised and discussed with Steven, this his options were reduced to walking in and introducing himself, or abandoning the project.

  Perhaps it was just as well. A group of three novices attacking a village for a extraction of one person was not necessarily going to work. Particularly if every member of the village could sense the presence of any strangers before the stranger got even into bow-range.

  The memory of the dream intruded into his line of thought. Alex was in the dream. The dream was of future events, and judging by what was becoming reality around him, these were near future events. So best to stick to the plan, and remember that last bit of all battle plans. No plan of attack every completely survived its first encounter with the enemy. Thus be ready to improvise and adapt.

  Steven spent until lunchtime trotting along the trail. In that time, he had still not encountered another person or creature. This was starting to trouble him. Even when walking the mountains with Caspian, they had occasionally passed some sign of life.

  “In most stories,” he mumbled under his breath, “caves are full of things to fight or hide from. All I have found is an oversized badger, and an anthill.”

  Steven stopped in a bright spot for lunch, but only long enough to pull the food out of his pocket, and munch as he went. The taste was nothing to write home about, but it was filling. Then he encountered a problem.

  The cavern had been opening up, and the trail increasingly less on the edge of the lake and more on its shore. From family travels, it was like walking in a variation of Goblin Valley, Utah. With water carved boulders and formations, glowing lichen all over, and the air moist. The problem came as he reached a bend, and quickly ducked back behind it. First the shore stopped, and the cavern looked to close on itself like the shore at Lake Powell, or parts of Lake Mead, and like so many of the bends this morning. The terrain was not the problem.

  Ahead of him stood a hand full of beings. They looked like the three that had passed him this morning; smallish men, maybe a bit shorter on average than the locals on the surface. But these looked to be guarding a post on a waterway.

  Steven ducked behind a pillar to think. Karen’s instructions had got him this far, but did not explicitly cover this. She said he had to hike that river a ways and get back onto a side trail. It looked like the trail went across the river and down a parallel tunnel these guarded.

  Some how he had to get past, but how? Four, or more, on one? Not unless no other way existed. Even then that could get him killed, if they were as skilled, or more skilled, than Karen.

  Climb? Steven looked up, near as he could tell, the way would be next to impossible without proper gear, like a pneumatic drill and a team. And the ceiling sloped away quickly. Not a probable climb.

  Swim? Back track and circle in wide in the water? Possible, as long as his gear didn’t sink him. And any current did not take him too far.

  One other option, and the one that was originally planned, was to walk right in and see what happened. Karen said these were an honorable people. But she also said he needed to get a certain book, or scroll, to take with. She did not say why.

  Steven had gathered from bits of conversation that Karen had let slip that these people had the same skills she did, in being a psi-talent. Steven had a vivid enough imagination to be concerned; and had seen enough, both during his time with the Marines and in the week with Karen that he felt any fight would have to be entirely one sided; either he kill or incapacitate the person quickly, or get killed or incapacitated that quickly.

  The more Steven though about it, the more it seamed diplomacy was his best weapon, but he would need to be very careful, as he suspected these people could read minds. Not necessarily all of them, but enough. He also wondered why his first instinct had been to fight.

122 – Travels in tunnels

  By the time they were another hour along, the tunnel began to darken and the air to be dryer. They had crossed two more agricultural caverns, and the trail had changed direction several times. Steven was ready for lunch, and to get one of his torches out. As he did, he produced the change of clothes for Alex. For his part, Alex was pleased to get into his own underwear, not liking the local underwear anymore than his mother had. He also put on the clothes that the elves had provided. Steven took a moment to fix the sleeves and trouser legs to length. Alex had to keep the moccasins that he had been given.

  After Alex had changed, they took the clothes he had been wearing, ripped them to strips and soaked some of them in the bag of oil that Steven had for maintaining torches, and then wrapped one of the strips around one of the torches that Steven had. Steven lit the torch and gave it to Alex, telling Alex to hold it above his eyes as much as he could and to keep up. At first Alex tried to protest but Steven insisted, so that he could keep track of Alex by the torch. Alex stopped arguing with that.

  As they walked along, Alex began to tell all that had happened to him and Diana. They had first been scared when Mom had been separated from them. Then they simply had to keep walking as long as they could every day. The food was terrible and the people mean. The bugs stung a few times. Soon his shoes wore out and he was given some moccasins. Those also wore out, and he was given a second set. Some of the sights they saw were really neat to see. Then he and Diana were put into a cage on a cart and rolled into a city, where they met some scary people. He was separated from Diana and brought to here. They took his clothes and burned them and gave him the clothes he had worn up to now.

  He had met a few boys and girls here, but none seamed to like him, except to tease. He was taken to the smith and the man cut a small patch of his scalp off and put it into the sword that was given to Alex when it was finished. Once Alex had the sword, he found he could stand up to the teasing, and had used some of the fighting that Mom had taught him to beat up a bully who would not leave him alone.

  When they stopped to eat and rest, Alex curled up in Steven’s lap and dozed off. Steven put out the torch and after getting comfortable, Steven napped holding his son.

  In their next awake time, they ate a bit, and continued traveling the tunnels and caverns. At the approximate mid-afternoon, they came out of a wide tunnel onto the floor of the rift that Steven had left some few days and a bit of altitude earlier. Steven turned to his left and started along the floor, looking for the signs of a used trail. As he went he got the second tracker he had been given out of a vest pocket. The spot glowed a bit dim about half way from the middle to the edge, and off to Steven’s 4-o’clock as he aligned himself to he direction of the rift, 12-o’clock being the direction out.

  Alex watched Steven wave it around like he did when using a compass, then put it away. “Which way do we go?”

  Steven sat for a moment, easing his pack off of his back, and let his coat breath a bit. “We are supposed to meet your mother and sister and a friend here somewhere. But I don’t know for sure where. We have three days of food, and I think it is just over two days to hike out. The question is do we wait, or start out?”

  Alex thought for a moment. “How do they find us? This is not the mall or the store.”

  Steven was well aware of that. “Your mother has a tracker like this one, which she can use to find Diana, and another for finding me. Her guide should know the way out to the surface.”

  Alex did not wait to think long. “I want to see the sky. Mom hikes fast. She can catch up.”

  The main road was similar to what Steven had traveled earlier, wide enough for wagons to pass each other, with the ground beyond unproven and irregular at best. The road mostly went straight along the floor of the rift, following the roll of the ground. They walked up an incline, and at the top of this hill they found a warn path that turned into a tunnel in the side of the rift. It had a carved and enlarged entrance. Steven somehow recognized the writing as of the local elf-script, and immediately dragged Alex away from it. as he mulled why he recognized the characters, he recalled both the various alphabets he had seen in Shalaia, and Karen giving him a warning to avoid the people who made that script.

  “We have to get away from here. These people can see in the dark, and maybe even the heat of where your torch was.” Steven led Alex away from the tunnel opening.

  “So can I, Dad.”

  Steven led them up the road a little to where it went through a rock garden. Steven had been to Goblin Valley in east central Utah a few times, and had promised himself to take the kids there someday. This rock garden reminded him of there.

  Alex was visibly getting tired at this point, Steven had been carrying him on and off and figured this was as good a place to stop as any. Steven moved through it to his left and up to the wall of the rift. There was a spring here, trickling into a pool. Steven touched it and found it was fresh water, if a bit warm. Not a geology expert, Steven figured it was probably from the same general source as the lake that he had been past. He refilled Alex’s water skin from him bladder in his pack, then refilled the bladder through the filter from the spring and pool.

  Steven let the torch burn down low, and out of the way as he worked. Their thrust slaked, they leaned against the wall as Alex again curled up not quite in his lap. The torch went out not long after both father and son sank into sleep. Fortunately the smell of the burnt torch kept the local critters from coming to close to investigate.

  Alex woke at the noise. People were running by on the road. He could not see it from here, so they probably could not see him. This allowed him to relax, and count. He though he heard four people run past, rattling in some kind of gear. As he looked around, he could see the shapes in the heat. The rock garden stretched out around them for as far as he could see. The wall they were against stretched to both sides and a long way up. Above the tops of the close rock pillars, he could see the far wall also going up too far to see.

  Alex had gotten used to the novelty of seeing in the dark the first few nights on planet. So had Diana. But until he had gotten into the village no one had explained it to him. When Dad had given him the torch, Alex knew that it was going to hinder him from seeing that way, if he had the torch in front of him, but had not been able to get his Dad to listen then. As it was the torch was long enough to hold high and behind his head, so it did not effect his sight too much. Now Alex felt and saw that his Dad was soundly asleep and they were for the moment safe. The people had run on, and were gone. Alex lay his head back down and went back to sleep.

*     *     *

  Caspian led by deliberate decision of Roxanne. She did not want his light from his staff interfering with her vision. She had come to see quite clearly with her recently discovered ability. As they hiked the floor of the rift, they left the arches and pillars behind, and quickly found a crossroads, where the path turned to their left and through a carved opening in the rift wall into another tunnel. There was a carved arch in the natural rock, with carved characters in it. Rox could recognize the individual characters as such, but had no idea what the language was or the meaning of the characters.

  Caspian looked the arch over. “This is probably it. Check you r tracker.”

  Rox got the tracker for Diana out, and looked it over. The point of light was a forward and to her right from center, and a bit over half way down the curve of the surface.

  Caspian stood by and looked at it, and nodded. “That is promising. She is a day away, give or take, in that general direction.”

  He started forward into the darkness of the tunnel. Rox put the tracker back under her jacket a followed after.

  This road was a bit more than one wagon wide, having been carved to that width. In prior conversation about it, Caspian had joined the Caplan’s speculation that these tunnels were not fully carved from solid rock, but rather existing tunnels and cracks that had been enlarged.

  The tunnel did not branch, but it did twist some. Soon they came out into a cavern. This cavern was humid and sticky feeling. Rox could see all sorts of crystals lining almost every surface. Water seamed to pool and puddle in the low spots of the carved road. The crystals and water glowed with whatever light struck them. They exited the far side of this chamber through a hole surrounded by crystal. There were no natural bio-luminescent sources, even with Caspian’s staff giving off light. Rox could see just fine with her expanded visual range.

  Karen came to Roxanne’s mind saying they would have to travel through three caverns like this, and then the elf village of Chigoria would be in a large series of caverns after that. Rox found to the road now went uphill as she went.

  Within the second chamber, Rox realized that they were inside what might be a large geode, of similar type of cavern. As they left the third, the humidity of the previous area seamed to end abruptly as if a door prevents its passage. The road was still a wagon width, and the passage was carved and decorated.

  The next chamber was also lined with crystal, but this was being sculpted and cut, rather than left natural. There was no one here at the moment, but the chamber looked like it was being cleared for use.

  Rox was ready for lunch, and Caspian agreed.

  They crossed this chamber into a natural rock tunnel and were quickly into a maze of regular carved tunnels, some road sized, some walkways. Caspian led in a left-handed direction through the tunnels, looking for a place to rest for a bit.

  Caspian was on edge, and Rox could see he was a bit stressed. They found a chamber that was organic in its scent. As Rox looked it over, it was like a large green house with some strange kind of leafless trees growing from the ceiling, and orderly rows of indeterminate crops arrayed across the large chamber.

  “This is a garden of some sort. I don’t see anyone here.”

  Caspian agreed as he moved off to his left against the wall, then stopped at a curve of the wall. He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, then sat down.

  “Time to do some setup, and reconnoitering. Cyrril is out buzzing around testing for any standing magic fields. I haven’t felt any active magic yet. We may have managed to sneak in without detection, so far.”

  Rox nodded as she took her bag off.

123 – Where are we going and what are we doing

  Caspian’s plan at this point was to get as good a map as he could through magic, then plan how to get in to where Diana was and back out. Rox’s job was to hide their presence for the moment, and shield Caspian’s magic from detection.

  Rox set up her shields as small and unobtrusive as she could, and set then to camouflage by blending in to the ambient energy. Caspian put his staff down, the light from the carved head at the top pointing into a spot on the floor. He tested her setup, and then cast a spell that began to map the area via the air currents. This fed into an image spell to form a visual map in front of him. First the chamber they were in was shown, then the five passages connected to it began to show. These quickly showed more chambers and passages, as the spell split at every intersection. As the map expanded, the scale of the overall image changed to keep the whole image about a cubic cubit. Caspian kept a sense of the expanding mapping spell, and whenever a passage seamed to be beyond the general boundaries of the community he would cease its expansion.

  After the spell completed, they had a floating map with several large blobby caverns as central structures connected by knots of smaller tunnels, with smaller caverns interspersed, and several arrays of satellite caverns like the ones they were currently in.

  “Can the magic of the map and of this tracker interact and tell us where in the place Diana is?” Rox held the tracker ready.

  “No,” Caspian answered, looking the map over. “The tracker’s spell is not designed to interact with any other magic.”

  Rox looked over the floating image, careful to keep her own magic going. “I see three main caverns.”

  She ran her hands across one long cavern that curved up and around like a long misshapen bean, a second above half of and rotated a bit from the first that looked like a splattered pancake, and a third that went away from the first two that also looked a bit bean shaped. This third one had a constellation of smaller caverns closely around it at assorted altitudes, connected by a series of orderly tunnels. The interconnecting tunnels between the main ones looked like roads connecting three towns, a few main roads through the shortest available intervening space, and longer ones at almost random. There were a handful of medium sized and dozens of smaller caverns along and among the tunnels. Several passages seamed to circle the whole community at assorted altitudes and angels with larger chambers strung along them like pearls. These were interconnected by more knots of smaller passages and chambers. The chamber that Rox and Caspian were currently in was on one of these external passages. Five separate larger roads led out of the community, each in a different direction, each starting from a medium sized cavern that had a myriad of smaller tunnels attached. The way they had come from was identifiable by three medium sized chambers along that road.

  Caspian just stared at the image. “Ideas?”

  Rox looked it over, beginning to spot a pattern. “We know the tracker runs on straight lines. You said it will not interact with this map. I expect she will be in one of the larger caverns, as those would be better for housing. They need space for growing food, this upper cavern almost looks like a mining operation, or at least that they are clearing the rock out to expand the available volume. They need a water source, but that could be anywhere. We have seen plenty of springs, and I suppose we are deep enough to be under the first layer of aquifer. We don’t want to spend long here, and avoid capture.”

  Rox traced a few peripheral tunnels to the main caverns. “With some disguise, we could scout a few of these, and see which way the tracker says she is. That will eliminate which of the rest we have to risk.”

  Rox paused. Her spells were still going, properly. “Can you recall the image of this map, once you dispel it, or is it dependent?”

  Caspian thought, then got a bit of paper from a pouch. He held the paper flat in his palm, sprinkled some dirt on the paper and cast another spell. The dirt started organizing on the paper, into lines and smears. The excess dirt ran off the side, leaving an image on the paper that looked like a scribble done by an enthusiastic child with a crayon.

  Rox could see that it was a two dimensional image of the three dimensional map. There was residual magic on the map, not just holding the dirt on.

  “I can now recall the map from this at need.” Caspian put the map aside. “In the mean time, I agree. We need to go along this tunnel here,” he ran his finger through the image. “It goes between the two larger areas, while pointing at the third. There the tracker should tell us which one. Then we can scout things further. I just hope these elves are not a militant as the last group of this race I encountered.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I got my crossbow, and a few scars. They got a cave in.”

  Rox almost asked how big a cave in but let it go, not really wanting to know. “I haven’t sensed any magic yet. But I can’t say that I would know for sure.” Rox rechecked her spells. They were humming along just fine.

  “I haven’t ether. You would have noticed. And you don’t need to keep checking yours so much, unless you set them wrong or deliberately unstable.” Caspian answered, then got an unfocused look. “There he is.”

  Caspian stayed that way for a moment.

  Rox waited, figuring correctly that Caspian was communicating with his familiar elsewhere in the complex.

  Caspian’s awareness returned to here. “Cyrril finds a standing field at the entrances to each of the main caverns. He is not sure what kind or how large the magic field is. Also the third cavern is being slowly enlarged, but there are people living in it as well. Near as I can figure from what Cyrril reports, they are between their lunch and dinner time.”

  Rox’s stomach growled. “So are we.”

  She was splitting her attention, tracing the floating image before her, maintaining her spells, and listening to Caspian. She traced the floating map.

  “Looking at this, we can get to the tunnel we want by going out this one, up at this node, and then along this one, and into this main tunnel. Then about what, halfway, and check things. Question is, how much traffic is there to avoid, and how.”

  “We won’t find out about the traffic, until we start moving. If I cast any magic to tell us more than I have, it will let every magic user in the area know where I am. The next question is whether they will pay attention.”

  Rox was at a bit of a loss, yet several ideas mostly out of fiction were floating around her head for how to sneak about and not be noticed. “How much traffic does Cyrril see, or have to dodge?”

  Caspian went unfocused again. “Some. They are not paying him attention just yet. That might be because of the time of day.”

  Rox nodded. “Then let’s go. Tell Cyrril to keep watch for traffic in this main passage., and we will try to meet him there.”

  “Right. That dampening spell I taught you? Now is the time to use it.”

  Caspian let his spells go, and cast a quick spell around himself and his equipment.

  Rox relaxed and dispelled her shielding and camouflage spells. Then she followed Caspian’s example and cast a spell over herself and her equipment. The most noticeable result was that Caspian’s staff stopped buzzing in Rox’s senses and instead only continued to visibly put off light from the dragon’s head.

  Caspian had been teaching and helping Rox practice this spell since Shalaia. It essentially blended the presence of whatever object or group it was cast on into the background, insofar as magical sense went, regardless of the actual magical presence of the object or being.

  As Rox took time to look the rest of the garden room over, she noticed could see that the living things put off a heat sufficient to navigate around. The leafless trees or wooden roots or whatever hanging from the ceiling were arranged almost random, but actually in general rows. The plants on the floor of the chamber were also in rows. Rox could neither see nor hear anybody else in this chamber. Remembering from the map, she started toward the exit she had proposed.

  “I though you wanted to eat.”

  Rox paused. “I do, but . . .”

  Caspian understood. “You are focused on the task at hand. Eat first. Then we will go look. It will be easier to deal with things if you are not hungry.”

  Caspian got out his own food, from his bag as Rox turned to her pack and got hers. They ate quietly and quickly. Rox knew she was eating a sandwich, but was not aware of what it consisted of or tasted like, her mind working over what she would do if and when she encountered anyone between her and Diana.

  Caspian finished first, and contemplated his staff for a moment. “I can’t just walk around with this light going, If I do I may as well walk around with a big banner saying ‘shoot me’ on it.”

  Rox watched as he prepared another spell. He cast it on himself, and then extinguished the light from his staff.

  “Now you can see in the dark?” Rox asked.

  “Yeah. Unlike your visual gifts, this is only seeing in grays; it’s really uncomfortable, and prone to flash-blindness. That’s why I haven’t done it before now. Once we are clear of this place I will shut it off.”

  Once the food was consumed and trash packed away, they stood, put their gear back in order and on, and started out. Rox led to the passage, carefully looking around, and not seeing anybody. They also listened, and did not hear anybody. The slight breeze that flowed through the caverns they were in gave everything a barely perceptible whistle. The passage went into was typical of the previous ones they had followed to get here, being carved from the natural rock, and wide enough for a several people to pass along it. This passage went generally straight and emptied into a crossroad/chamber with a larger passage going to either side. The air could be felt passing from their right to their left. Just past the edge of the side passages, a shaft ascended and descended to other levels. Rox wanted to go up. She could see the bracing that had been constructed to support the sides of the shaft, tracks for a lift built onto the braces, and a second set on the left side as she faced it for the counterweight. Cables of some kind ran down in the middle of the counterweight’s frame. A ramp spiraled in a right-hand spiral around the outside of the shaft that would allow the defender to stand above and swing right handed with the wall to his left. She looked down and up the shaft briefly, then back to Caspian.

  “No traffic, and if there is a lift, it is above us.”

  Caspian looked around quickly, then back to Rox. “Do you know what you are doing?”

  “Yeah. I’m sneaking around potentially hostile territory to find and retrieve my kidnapped daughter.”

124 – Blending in, walking around

  Rox started up the ramp, going quickly. A slight breeze went down the shaft. They spiraled around several times before getting to the next level up. There was some noise above but it drifted by, and was muffled by the lift platform sitting at rest at this top level. Several creatures were hanging on the bottom of the platform, and occasionally on rocks on the wall and ceiling of the passages. Rox presumed these to be some variant on bats, and partly why Cyrril had so far been unnoticed, at least as reported by Caspian.

  Rox and Caspian listened as they waited, there was noise but it was not apparently threatening. From what Rox remembered of the map, this was still more or less a side tunnel so there would not be lots of traffic just passing by, it would be directly at them. The passage directly into the elevator was short and sided directly onto another more or less flat passage that went to either side. Rox and Caspian crept carefully, looking both ways for anybody. Following the plan, they would travel this passage to the main tunnel that circled most of the area, going at about the level of the largest cavern, partly under and partly between the second largest as it circled around. The unknown was how much traffic anywhere, and how to deal with it.

  Rox led to the next intersection. It was all she could do to keep from crouching and sneaking along. Caspian strolled along behind, waiting for someone to make some notice and noise to their presence. Surprising to both of them, there was no one in this tunnel at this time.

  Looking in either direction, this larger passage looked to Rox like the concourse of a mall, with a large wide road, side passages at intervals, some passages at different elevations with ramps or stairs to get both up and down, and the main concourse tiled with pieces of the same crystals as in the first three chambers they had passed through.

  Rox saw that there were several locals in clusters moving purposefully in all directions.

  “Do you sense any magic?”

  Rox looked back as Caspian who stood looking almost bored. She looked back, and put her attention to those senses. She could not sense Caspian’s staff, and nothing along the passage in either direction, so far as her visual range extended.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then quit hiding,” Caspian chided. “Start looking like you belong here, and are not giving anyone any more notice than any other local.”

  “I’m a head taller than you, and head and shoulders taller than they are. Somebody will notice.”

  Caspian scoffed. “About time you noticed. Come back here and let’s do a bit more magic.”

  Rox followed him a few steps back into the passage. “Will anyone notice this?”

  “Only the few magic users around, if they are paying attention.” Caspian concentrated a moment, then spoke a phrase in a language Rox was not familiar with.

  She felt it settle in with the magic already active on her, like an ingredient in a mix.

  “That should keep you from being noticed by anyone not directly looking for you. Problem is it will also keep your daughter from understanding you’re you. So you will have to dispel these spells before identifying to her.” Caspian finished, then strolled past Rox.

  She followed him into the larger passage and simply took up a purposeful walk in the direction they wanted to go. To Rox’s initial surprise, the sparse regular traffic of the locals took no more notice of her or Caspian than they did of each other. As she walked Rox noticed that the crystal tiling of the passage soon alternated in patterns, and included other stones for cobbles. The walls were carved and occasionally had wooden or stone carved arches arched buttressing the ceiling.

  They traveled a bit farther than they wanted, having missed the scale of things a little. The passage turned counterclockwise and started to descend some as they went. Rox had noticed a pattern in the arches that buttressed the ceiling. Every third one was carved stone with the intermediate two being plain wood. Then she came to one that was crystal. It was carved blocks shaped to make the arch, and had a slight aura of magic to it. It did not have a strong field to it, but it did register. Rox almost stopped before going through it.

  Caspian gently took her arm and kept her pace up. “The magic is just for ventilation. It keeps the air moving.”

  They walked on under the arch and past it without much incident. Rox did notice that the breeze had picked up a bit, and was fresher.

  After a few more archways, Caspian pulled Rox aside against the wall. He kept his demeanor as business-like as he could, as if just a local conversing with another over whatever business du-jour.

  “We should be far enough that the second chamber is above and behind us, while the third is ahead of us. Check the tracker.”

  Rox got the tracker from the neck of her shirt and held it out. She had her back to the column and the wall on her right. The dot was nearly to the top, on the side away from her, and bit to her left. Both looked at it, and visualized the map and the actual caverns around them.

  Caspian spoke first. “I think she is in the main one, and a bit to this end of it. So, do I continue with you, or do we split up? If we split up now, that is less chance for us to be both caught before we can start any diversion. Also I can go back and scout the other end of this main cavern, for somewhere to make that diversion. That will leave you on your own, to finalize Diana’s general location, and get there.”

  “I think it is time to split up,” Rox said, as she took the tracker from around her neck and wrapped it around her left wrist, where it would not interfere with using her bow. “I’m no longer jittery about moving through here. I think I got a handle on the tools at hand. I will meet you in this same passage on the other side.”

  Caspian nodded. “Right. Go quickly, but pick your targets carefully. We aren’t here to kill or destroy, just distract.”

  Rox looked at him, pausing before moving away. “That is a surprise, considering what you did to the last locals who crossed out paths.”

  “They weren’t Urnvtai, or from this community.” Caspian turned and strolled away as Rox considered, a moment, then started again in the direction she had been going along this passage.

  Rox passed several openings on either side of the passage, and the traffic was such that she was not alone. She strolled along and kept her self looking as purposeful as she could to any locals she encountered. The locals were head and shoulders shorter than Rox, but appeared not to pay her any attention, her magic cloaking still working. Rox briefly looked at their variety of clothing, but none of it stood out as remarkable; rather it fit for the rolls each played in their community, tradesmen, domestics, the odd constable or militia man, and so forth. The passage soon began descending gently and turning to her left. It leveled off before it finished its turn. Shortly after the turn, Rox paused and checked the tracker. Again oriented with the passage wall to her right, the dot on the tracker was to her left. Rox walked to the next passage on the left side of the passage and into the entry tunnel to the main cavern, where about half of the community was located.

  Fortunately she was alone in this passage. It was the same general size and design as the passage she had been traveling. The gateway arch into the cavern was another crystal one. Rox had passed several more of these and could tell that this one had a different spell on it than the ones in the passage; more so an additional one. But she could not tell what just yet. Rox did not want to risk breaching any magical barriers yet, neither did she want to risk testing one and setting off any alarm, yet.

  She looked across through the archway directly into a residential area. The roads continued to be cobbled and tiled, and there were pillars of shaped crystal on the corners of the houses. The roof looked to be more of the crystals, cur to uneven depths several dozen meters above. Having seen what she could, Rox turned and strode back the way she had come and continued on her way around the ring-passage as she had come to think of it.

  She turned to go in and check the passages into the cavern at every other one. Past the residential area was a market place, then a few open areas that were just open areas. On her right she passed a significant construction area, where stone was being removed from between several passages to create more open space. At one part they were harvesting crystal blocks the size of the workers.

  By the time Rox met up with Caspian coming the other way, she figured she had circled this ring-passage about three fifths of its total distance. The cavern that it ringed had more industrial stuff at this end she was approaching and that Caspian was supposed to check.

  They turned to their right down a side passage into a storage area. The room they entered smelled of food storage.

  Caspian started first. “I found the water works, and I think a barracks and guard house.”

  “I found residential area, some markets, and some open areas that I have no idea of their use. Do you have any idea what the second spell on the arches into the cavern is? Near as I could tell, they alternate which way they move air into or out of the cavern. But they all have that second spell that I don’t recognize, and did not want to risk testing.” Rox leaned against a wall as stretched as she reported.

  Caspian likewise stretched as he listened. Cyrril hopped off his shoulder onto a stacked pile of grain bags. “I think it is related to firefighting. I got the sense that it had to do with moving heat and smoke. But that was not the barrier Cyrril noticed. That one is just beyond the archway, in the main cavern. I don’t think is it a military barrier either. I think it is a varmint barrier. We should be able to walk right in. So how do we do this?”

  Rox took her shoulder bag off. She had been wearing her cape to this point, as it helped to diffuse her shape in the light and hear conditions. She folded and rolled it into a bundle and secured it to her bag. Rox left her bag on the pile Cyrril was crouched on, and added her water bag to it. She did not want to carry anything extra that might get in the way. This left her with her equipment and weapons. She reached into another part of the bag and pulled her chains, and a small box out. She hand not worn these yet for stealth reasons; now she put them on, securing them to her equipment harness, arms and legs.

  Caspian likewise put his own shoulder bags aside. “Leaving these here means either coming back this way, abandoning them, or risking using magic to retrieve them.”

125 – Planning and Causing Trouble

  Rox nodded. “Let me see the map.”

  Caspian pulled out the sheet, and energized it. The glowing image of the map sprang from the paper. Rox looked it over. She touched a set of rooms off the side of the ring.

  “I believe we are here. This passage leads to this chamber, which leads to this exit tunnel.” Rox traced the passages as she spoke.

  “Problem: that is not the way we came from.” Caspian pointed at the passage they had come from it was a third of the way around the map from where Rox was pointing.

  Rox looked at the passages. “Okay. My scouting says Diana is in this section of the main cavern.” She pointed at the end closest to the third, expanding cavern. “We are here right now.” She pointed at the series of rooms on the side away from the second cavern. “If we cause enough distraction, we can get back here, and around and out the way we came.”

  Caspian looked at the map. “The area I am looking to make my distraction in is over here, on the far end from where you will be. I can take our bags and leave them there, then we pick them back up on out way out.”

  He ran his finger out of the cavern, back onto the ring, and around the way they had initially traveled.

  Rox looked at it. She was flummoxed. If there was more time . . . but there was no more time.

  “Okay. Let’s do that. I will come over to here, fire a few of my gimmick arrows toward the center of things. You will hear them land. Then you start your distraction. I follow the tracker to exactly where Diana is, and get her. I fire a few more arrows as needed, and we go out and around, meet at the elevator, and go down and out that way.”

  Caspian nodded and put the map away. “Sounds good. Don’t start without me. Give me a bit to get back into position.”

  He picked his bags and hers, and then went out of the room, Cyrril leaping onto his shoulder as he left.

  Rox took a deep breath, and sent the Astronaut’s Prayer to heaven for good fortune. Then she pulled her bow from the low carry she had slung it at on her belt. She pulled the sling’s slack out and wrapped the excess around itself to its shorter position. Next she opened the small box from earlier. Eight crystal bread-head arrow heads rested in felt padding. One at a time, Rox drew eight of the local made wooden arrows from her quiver and slotted the crystal broad head over the metal arrow head, and slid it to the shaft until it stopped. With all eight ready, Rox put her hands on either side of the lined up arrows; she put the magic safeties in order, and then activated the spells on the arrowheads. Each began to glow in her magical senses. The activation finished, she scooped up the arrows and put them back into the upper box of her quiver with the other wood arrows, her other aluminum ones on the lower box. Rox opened the draw string on the cloth closer of both boxes, to quickly draw as she needed. Satisfied she slung her bow on her shoulder, and tested her disguise spell. The spell was still working. Rox squared her shoulders and stepped out.

  Rox did not see Caspian ahead of her. She looked both ways in the ring cavern, and caught sight of him making his way to his start point, off to her right. She turned left and went back in the direction she came from. Rox passed a town constable or militia man as she went this time. This unnerved her a bit, but she held her discipline and kept going. She was certain that was what or who he was as he wore armor and carried a sword. No one else did.

  Thinking of the ring-passage like a race track, she was going the wrong way on the back straight away, toward the turn from the short passage, though in this part of the ring it was more just a gentle curve all around. Rox checked the tracker. The dot subtly shifted as Rox walked. Now it was on her right side, and as she turned the corner, it slid slowly around to more in front of her, but still to her right, in the cavern.

  Rox waited to be past the open areas before turning into the cavern. Three other chattering locals followed her into the cavern. She stuttered her steps briefly then stepped boldly through the fields that filled the archway into the cavern. Nothing happened that Rox sensed. The three behind her likewise went through without incident and walked into the main cavern of the Urnvtai village of Chigoria.

  This cavern looked like part of this end had been carved from the inside of a huge geode. Most of the crystals had been cut and cleared for space, but a few had been left to support buildings. The crystal tiling and cobbles on the road continued, sometimes up the side of a building. The road was wide enough for two wagons to pass, with sidewalks. Every so often a water pump and trough intruded on the sidewalk, leaving the road clear. In the first intersection Rox came to, a large crystal had been carved into a statue. Rox turned to her left and looked for the first alley she could. But the buildings were built continuously. So she looked for a non-busy side road.

  The roads were generally gridded, but wandered a little; the buildings were single story with the floor at road level, or double story with a step down and a step up. Finally Rox turned right onto a smaller road, and found what she wanted. Stepping away from the traffic, she checked either side, borrowed a spell idea from Caspian, and leapt up and onto the top of the wall of the building. The roof was joists with some kind of thatching lay across, almost flat. Rox scrambled across the top of the wall to an intersection, keeping as quiet as she could. The tracker said Diana was off to her left, almost directly, and the dot almost centered.

  Rox looked across the village. She could smell smoke up here, but it was of cooking fires, rather than anything else, yet.  Rox got her bow from her shoulder and drew one of her magic tipped arrows from her quiver. She knocked the arrow and held it in place as she surveyed the village looking for a good target over the roof tops.

  She was about a third of the way across this end of the cavern, with about a third of it to her right and two thirds to her left. She was closer to the wall behind her than to either side. Also the cavern height would require a fairly flat trajectory, unless she wanted to hit the roof.

  Off to her right there were several large structures that seamed to be where the open areas she had seen were. Further away were more residential and market areas. At the far end she could begin to make out the industrial area, but it was too far to see in detail and make sense of just now. Rox looked back to the big structures, and decided they would do.

  Roxanne moved quietly across the tops of the walls to where she could stand and shoot. Standing carefully she found her balance, and drew the bow back. She took aim, adjusted her elevation, and let fly, then reached for the second arrow.

  Caspian stood, back to the rock wall, absently petting Cyrril. His part of the plan called for creating a diversion to give Roxanne an easier time on her side of this village. But he had to wait for her shot to go first. He didn’t wait long. A muffled boom echoed out of the cavern.

  At that first explosion, he began his part. He calmly started walking, concentrating on the archway he faced. The locals who had been walking in the area were nervous, wanting to go help, but not sure how or where yet. Caspian relieved them of their tedious wait, letting loose with the spell he had formulated. The keystone of the archway between the ring passage and this entry passage disintegrated, and the arch swiftly collapsed.

  After using half of her crystal tipped arrows, Roxanne had hit four targets on her side of the cavern. At that she slung the bow across her back, and retrieved her staff from its position on her quiver. She moved quickly across this block on the tops of its walls and at its end dropped back to street level, then trotted through the confusion she had just created. People were running every which way. Caspian’s attack on the other side of the village was now drawing much of the attention. Several larger structures blew up, the damage spreading in the confines of the cavern. Roxanne ignored it, and mostly ignored anybody she went past, her purposeful movement enough of a disguise at the moment for most of them, her magic doing the rest. Then a Constable put his hand on her shoulder.

  Rox turned into him leading with her staff into his face. He went down quickly, and she fled before much could be made of it.

  Caspian moved stealthily through the rubble he was causing. His task that of diversion and nuisance. He sent Cyrril to find the fuel oil storage and light it on fire. This took a few moments. But once done the results were spectacular. Next he went to the armory. He took a moment to examine the swords and then started the bows and arrows on fire.

  Rox picked her way quickly through the confusion and rubble, moving as fast as she dared, following the tracker. She thought briefly as she went that she would never have thought herself capable of something like this a few short months ago. She then cleared her thoughts and moved on. The few fires were casting strange shadows across the whole cavern and creating lots of smoke that would take a while to clear out. She could feel the magic on the passages had jumped in activation to ventilate the cavern.

  As she went, she felt relief that she had probably only injured men and a few women, and no children. Roxanne followed the tracker, watching it to see how close her daughter was, and where. She turned down a road into a square. The buildings before her were the last before an open area and the other cavern wall. Rox came to a stop, dispelled all the cloaking magic on her, and put up her magic shields. She was not anxious to enter a local house.

  More of the village burst into flames, the thatched roofs spreading embers quickly, the cavern beginning to smell of smoke. Caspian continued to cause trouble. He had blow a water wheel apart to its constituent boards. Cyrril was out looking for oils to burn. He paused at a smithy, and decided not to do anything here. He moved on, trotting around the confusion. He paused and hopped up onto the tops of the walls. He could not see any particular pursuit, and decided that the smashed water works, the caved in passage, the fuel oil storage, and what ever Rox had blown up were sufficient.

  Caspian called Cyrril to go check on Rox, and then felt her shields energize.