The Dragon of Despair (64 page)

Firekeeper gave Blind Seer a reassuring stroke along one shoulder.

“We go even more slowly, then,”
she decided,
“until we find what it is that troubles us both.”

Neither Grateful Peace nor Edlin questioned the wolf-woman’s decision when she repeated it to them. As they made their slow way forward Peace more frequently sent a ray from his lantern to course the floor ahead of them. Firekeeper nearly told him to stop but decided not to. The amount of light wasn’t sufficient to ruin her vision and it might indeed reveal a trip wire or some other small trap.

And since there was no doing without light it might as well be useful, yet she was all too aware that even these pale beams could be fatal.

As they padded upward, Firekeeper became aware that Blind Seer was sniffing the air so vigorously that his action was audible. She tried to detect what had him so distracted, but other than burning lantern oil and the latent sewer scent clinging to their clothing, she could smell nothing significant.

Or could she? A musky scent, somehow familiar, somehow out of place.

“Blind Seer, what is it?”
she asked.

The wolf’s reply was a low, rumbling growl before he stopped in his tracks and shook as if he’d been soaked by a cloudburst.

Peace and Edlin, who had drawn up short when the wolf stopped, were obviously confused.

“I say!” Edlin said, keeping his voice low with an effort. “What’s wrong?”

As to Peace there was only a faint metallic chink as he drew his knife from its sheath.

Firekeeper ignored them both—a foolish thing, for that knife could have been meant for her. However, Blind Seer’s suddenly odd behavior drove any other consideration from her mind.

“What is wrong?”

She touched the wolf and found that his hackles were raised and he was shuddering, a bone-deep vibration that rippled over his increased heart rate. Had he been poisoned? She cast her gaze over the stone floor of the tunnel but there were no spikes or caltrops, not even a suspicious sheen.

“Blind Seer!”
she cried, so frantic that even the humans were aware of her low howl.

“I am,”
the wolf wheezed, panting,
“here. Hush, dear heart. Ah, the smell!”

Firekeeper acted at once. If a smell was what was troubling him…

Darting out her hand, she grabbed the spirit flask from Edlin’s belt. Doc had insisted they carry brandy in case a wound needed to be sterilized or someone needed a quick jolt to a shocked system. Now she was glad.

Firekeeper opened the flask and held it beneath Blind Seer’s nose, sloshing a little of the liquor onto her palm for good measure. The strong fumes welled up, so powerful that at this proximity they even overwhelmed the sewer stench.

Blind Seer breathed in through both mouth and nose, coughed, and seemed to be choking. Firekeeper thumped him on the flank with her free hand, amazed when she felt the wolf plunge his nose into her brandy-dampened palm.

Once again he shook, rather like a human trying to clear his head.

“I have…,”
he said.
“I can think again, but the smell!”

“What smell?”

The wolf hesitated.

“Like a thousand bitches in heat,”
he said at last, clearly somewhat uncomfortable.
“It took the thought from my mind and put it in my loins. If it had not been Cousins…”

“Cousins?”
Firekeeper repeated, appalled, though she wasn’t quite sure by what. Blind Seer had explained to her that the Royal Wolves did not mate with the Cousins, so the very thought that he was attracted by their bitch scent was bad, but there was something else, something that made her uncomfortable and angry all at once.

She pushed this last from her mind, focusing on the immediate problem. Edlin, too, was meeping at her, making sounds that it took her a moment to translate into words.

“I say! I would have just handed the flask to you? What’s wrong? Something bite him on the nose?”

Firekeeper considered lying and didn’t know why. She shook her head.

“No, not bite him. A smell like a bitch in heat. It makes him not think clear.”

To her complete surprise, Edlin appeared to understand.

“Lure,” he said. Then, when she blinked at him uncomprehendingly, he went on. “You’ve told me humans are nose-dead, what? But that doesn’t mean we’ve not noticed that others are not. Hunters make lures to attract creatures they want to hunt, to make them, well, stop being cautious, don’t you know….”

“Humans do this?” she asked, appalled.

“That’s right,” Edlin agreed. He shuffled his feet. “Usually trappers use lures. Make them out of urine and such. Keep females for it.”

Firekeeper understood. Animals—people, too, though they’d forgotten how to read the signs—told a great deal through their urine. A pregnant female advertised her situation; so did one in heat. Urine from a bitch in heat, especially if concentrated…

Blind Seer was right. If whoever had blended this lure had not used urine from Cousin wolves, then the Royal Wolf might not have been able to control himself.

Again Firekeeper felt that strange emotion. Protectiveness? Possessiveness? She put it from her, but she couldn’t put the growl from her voice.

“Lure. I must find and kill.”

Edlin put a restraining hand on her arm. A very brave thing to do given her sudden anger. She barely resisted snapping at him.

“Let me,” he suggested. “I know what to look for, what? And no matter what you think, you are not nose-dead. The scent could be affecting you as well.”

Firekeeper stopped, considering. Edlin might be speaking the truth. It would explain her anger—rather as if she’d found other wolves peeing their marks in her territory.

She nodded stiffly.

“Be careful.”

Edlin went without further comment, holding his lantern, but not encumbering himself in any other fashion. The others waited in silence. Indeed, Peace was so still that Firekeeper must look to confirm his presence. There he stood, a robed pillar, just visible in the dim light.

Beneath the hand she kept on his back, she could feel that Blind Seer was growing calmer.

“It’s not just the brandy scent,”
he explained.
“It’s knowing what’s happened. I can work against my reaction.”

Firekeeper wrapped her arm around the wolf’s shoulder and hugged him. Then they awaited Edlin’s return—or for the least indication that he had met with trouble.

Firekeeper was considering going after the young man when Edlin returned. He ghosted over the stone pavement, waiting to give his report until he was closer. Then he hunkered down on his heels and displayed a small bundle which reeked of a mixture of brandy and other, less definable, scents.

“Gave it a splash, what?” he commented. “This is the worst of it. I think the floor had been dabbed, but lure doesn’t last long, not convincingly. Trappers reanoint their traps regularly.”

Beneath Firekeeper’s hand Blind Seer remained calm, though he gave the lure an inquisitive sniff.

“With the brandy mixed in,”
he said,
“it’s not even interesting. Like an image in a mirror. It bears a resemblance but does not fool upon closer inspection.”

Firekeeper did her best to translate.

“I found it hung over a rather nasty pit trap,” Edlin went on. “Pit must have been there for ages. Spikes at the bottom, what? If Blind Seer had rushed out unheeding…”

He shrugged, then looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“There were other things, too,” he said. “Loose stones near the pit edge. Caltrops that matched the stone. Wouldn’t fool someone careful, but someone who might be running full tilt would have been in trouble. The designers were probably limited by how they could adapt that bit of tunnel. Couldn’t be too subtle.”

“Other than the lure,” Peace interjected. “That lure is very subtle, indeed.”

“Other than that,” Edlin agreed.

Although Blind Seer claimed that the lure no longer touched his mind, Firekeeper insisted on running the bundle back to the nearest sewer channel and dropping it in. Distances so laboriously traversed when every step needed to be checked for traps or trip wires proved ridiculously short on the return.

She came back to find Peace and Edlin discussing this latest development.

“You do realize,” Peace said to her, “that this means someone expects your return—and quite possibly my assistance?”

Firekeeper nodded. The thought had occurred to her. Why else would they set a trap meant to befuddle a wolf if they hadn’t expected her and Blind Seer? And Peace was one who knew these under roads and had last been seen in the company of her associates.

“I know,” she said. “Yet this only tells us what we feared was true. A good thing as I see it.”

From the flicker of expression that crossed Peace’s normally impassive features, she thought he was amused—but not necessarily at her expense.

“Very true,” he said. “It is better to know than not. Do we go on from here or do we take what we have learned to the others?”

“Go on,” Firekeeper said firmly. “We may not have two chances to scout.”

As they progressed, the tunnels through which Peace guided them varied wildly in width and height. Firekeeper found herself balking when the passages they must travel grew narrow, but as both her companions were larger than her, she didn’t care to lessen herself in either man’s eyes by complaining.

Along the way Peace taught Edlin and Firekeeper something of disarming the traps that were set with increasing cunning along their path. There were alarms as well, and Peace expressed the concern that sometimes the trap was no trap at all, but merely an excuse to conceal an alarm. As there was no choice except to turn back, they attended to these as they had the others.

Edlin proved more adept at these lessons, but Firekeeper’s strong fingers and acute sense of hearing gave her an edge that her general unfamiliarity with things mechanical did not.

The tunnels branched off many times. Each time before they took a turn, Peace would give Edlin an idea of what the alternative route would hold. His memory for small detail seemed inexhaustible—so much so that Firekeeper doubted his veracity. Once, however, a caved-in ceiling forced them back to the alternative tunnel and they found everything much as Peace had described it. After that, Firekeeper felt more confident.

The cave-in was not the only obstacle they met. Indeed, each branching could be counted on to hold its deterrent—and all of them, complex or simple, Peace stated were new since his time. Many of the traps were simple: trip wires that triggered spills of rock or released a hidden bow. More than once they encountered use of wolf lure, but Blind Seer was wise to that game and held himself firm while they dismantled and disarmed it as best they could.

“Taking a toll on the brandy, what?” Edlin commented as he dribbled the last of his flask on a scented bundle.

Firekeeper agreed, but her private concern was deeper. She knew that because of the lures Blind Seer was using his sense of smell in as limited a fashion as possible—rather like a human squinting against a too bright light. What might he miss under these circumstances?

At last their route leveled somewhat and Peace told them that they had arrived beneath Thendulla Lypella proper. Here Firekeeper noticed that many of the tunnels were natural, connected and enhanced by tools. Eventually, they came to an open space as large as a great hall in a castle. After the tunnels, the feeling of open surroundings was very agreeable. Indeed, Firekeeper hadn’t realized how trapped she had felt until she was so no longer.

Peace, too, seemed glad of a chance to stand straight and stretch. Edlin, however, was aware of their surroundings only as some new challenge for his mapmaking skills. Firekeeper didn’t know whether to admire him or think him mad.

Grateful Peace was looking around the open area with such care that Firekeeper frowned, fearing again the possibility of betrayal.

“What you looking for?” she asked.

“I thought,” the Illuminator said slowly, “to find more here. In the tunnels the wit of the artificers was retrained by confided space and solid rock walls. Here…”

He trailed off and Firekeeper understood. The open space was deceptive. Their way might be narrowly constrained by hidden trip wires and pitfalls. She found herself thinking how an apparently wide-open swamp could be crossed only by leaping onto certain solid hummocks and eyed the apparently solid black vault above, wondering if there were nets of rock or flights of spears hidden in the darkness.

Edlin squinted into the gloom.

“I say. What about letting up the lantern sides for a bit more light? I can hardly tell what’s a shadow and what’s a rock, don’t you know?”

Peace was about to reply when a clear, almost shrill, female voice spoke in heavily accented Pellish from the concealing shadows on the opposite side of the cavern:

“He wants light. Give it to him.”

They were dazzled, nearly blinded, by the light that flooded over them. Her right arm flying up involuntarily to cover her eyes, Firekeeper took a step back, ready to retreat into the tunnel mouth. An arrow shaft shattering on the rock wall near her shoulder caused her to freeze in her tracks.

“Don’t move!” commanded the same shrill voice again.

Firekeeper didn’t. She was relieved to see that Blind Seer had hunkered close to the ground, where he was somewhat protected by the unevenness of the cavern’s floor and clustered boulders that at some time, probably decades ago, had been dragged away from the center.

The reason for all this effort was clear as soon as her vision adjusted enough to see. In the light of a score or more open lanterns, the cavern was revealed as a place of beauty.

It looked as if the earth itself had taken a deep breath then blown it out to create a long, elongated bubble of iridescent black stone, honeycombed with countless tiny holes. The floor possessed a slight curve, but rubble and time filled it with a gravel carpet. Larger rocks, cut in severe blocks that made elegant contrast to the smooth lines of the cavern, were piled in what Firekeeper was sure was a deliberate attempt to make a human reply to nature’s breath.