3 When Darkness Falls.8 (43 page)

He'd made most of his dispositions while the army was waiting to cross. He took care of the last-minute details now. He would lead the first group into the caverns; after half an hour, Umerchiel would follow with a second force. Another party would stand ready to ride to the aid of those barricading the cave-system's other exits.

That accounted for the disposition of nearly all of his command, save for a skeleton force remaining behind to guard the supply wagons and begin the work of setting up the camp, since Artenel's forces would be settling into a permanent camp here, and he'd be leaving the oxen and the heavy equipment behind with most of his people while he headed on to Sentarshadeen.

And whether there was trouble in the caverns or not, he simply couldn't take his entire force down with him. It was bad enough — from a tactical standpoint — that he'd be leading them, but that was something he simply couldn't forgo. As a Knight-Mage, his battle-sense would give them the advantage that could spell life or death.

Assuming there was anything here at all.

Warily, Kellen gazed at the cavernmouth, shifting with the ease of long practice into battle-sight, but there was nothing to see, and his Wildmage senses brought him no trace of warning.

He blew out a deep breath, watching it turn to a plume of fog on the winter air. As was so often the case, the only way to know was to go and see.

He cast his own globe of Coldfire over his head and loosened his sword in his sheath. Isinwen handed him one of Artenel's glass shields. Just in case, everyone was carrying them now.

He gave the order to advance.

* * * * *

THE passage into the caverns bore the same resemblance to the caves he had been in previously as a garden did to a wild woodland. He realized that subconsciously he'd been expecting something a good deal cruder. Hadn't Jermayan said that these were mines?

If the Elves
did
mine here, they did a good job of concealing it.

Some of the things he saw were patently artificial, like the twining pattern of Greet-the-Day vine that curled along the top edge of the walls, though it took him a few seconds to realize that the plant, with its delicate bell-shaped flowers, was carved out of the stone itself. As they got farther from the entrance, he saw that there were small niches carved into the walls, each one a perfect miniature copy of an Elven house-front, and obviously designed to hold lanterns. Every few yards there was a step down, so instead of a long steep slope into the earth, they descended by means of a series of short level terraces.

It would not be pleasant to have to retreat up these long shallow steps fighting a holding action against an enemy, Kellen thought soberly. Nor would it be an easy matter to get carts, either on wheels or sledges, through this passage. He hoped one of the other passages was better suited for moving heavy equipment in and out.

As they moved deeper into the earth, he ran through the details of the cavern map in his head. After the entry passageway, there was a large open cavern. Galleries led off that to the left and right, and directly ahead the main passage continued onward to the point about half a league farther on to where the Angarussa flowed through the caverns. Beyond that was one of the other exits from the cavern system.

The caverns had several levels, and Umerchiel had told him that there were staircases between the upper and lower galleries in many places, as well as pumps, carts, and equipment to lift ore from the deepest levels of the cave systems. Without Vestakia, the caverns would take at least three days to search thoroughly, but it was a task he dared not slight. Perhaps tomorrow, if all went well today, he would bring more people into the caves to search and clear them, but for now Kellen wouldn't be easy in his mind until he had overlooked as much as he could himself, searching with battle-sight for obvious traps.

When they entered the first open space, he received another of those odd surprises that one had to get used to when dealing with Elves. Though the walls of the cavern had been left pretty much untouched — aside from carved niches for lanterns, now empty — the entire stone floor of the cavern had been carefully inlaid to mimic one of the carpets Kellen had seen covering the floors of the House of Leaf and Star. He glanced back toward the entrance, and saw, as he'd expected, that whatever craftsman had laid down the design had even created the tasseled fringe at the edge of the carpet, making it slightly mussed, as a real carpet's fringe would be by the passage of feet over its surface.

Elves. They're just, I don't know… different.

There were four galleries on each side of the chamber. After checking each entrance for traps — or any sign that something
bad
had passed this way — Kellen left sentry-parties at each entrance, with orders to call for help — or simply fall back — if anything did appear. When Umerchiel's force arrived, it would relieve Kellen's all along his line of sortie. They needed to secure the topmost levels of the cave system before descending deeper. Fortunately, not all of the cave system involved multiple levels; the Elves had probably been worried about disturbing the Angarussa too much and ending up with an underground ocean instead of a jewel mine.

* * * * *

ONCE it would have been easy to fall under the spell of this place. If he hadn't seen Sentarshadeen, or Ysterialpoerin. Or the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. Or Pelashia's Veil. They entered a cavern that seemed to stretch on for miles, its vaulted ceiling stretching off to the distant horizon. But his senses told him that the space he and his troops stood within was small. It was only that the walls were carved in the semblance of distant caverns, the imitation so perfect that it could fool the eye, but not the body. Only the fact that their Coldfire illuminated the deepest "depths" of the carven caverns hinted at the artifice. Kellen paused to run his fingers over the carving, almost unable to believe what his senses told him even as he broke the illusion. They moved on.

As they passed into the next chamber, the temperature dropped sharply, and the air began to feel much damper. Kellen inhaled deeply. They must be nearing the Angarussa, which meant they could start to clear some of the side-passages soon. After so long in the arid cold of winter, the dampness felt good.

This chamber, unlike the one they were leaving, was large in truth. The Coldfire illumination they all carried seemed to shrink back, burning brightly in a tight ball above their heads, illuminating the floor, but not reaching out to the walls or the ceiling.

The floor was inlaid in a pattern of green and white squares.

A few steps farther into the chamber, Kellen understood why.

Here, the action of rock and water had again created tall columns of stone that stretched from floor to ceiling. But these the Elves had not left untouched. Though they remained where the random action of Nature had deposited them, of the partial columns that had been allowed to remain, each one had been carved into the likeness of a
xaique
game-piece. It was as if some giant unfinished game of
xaique
were being played out on the floor of this chamber.

The moment Kellen approached the first of the carvings, he felt a thrill of unease.

Something is wrong here.

He did not know where the conviction came from. He had never seen Halacira before. But the feeling was strong, and he trusted it. And a moment later, he understood.

One of the
xaique
figures — a delicate little dancer, her arms raised to offer a garland of flowers — had been smashed. The inside surface of the stone was paler than the outside; the mutilations to the statue seemed to glow in the dimness, and the chips and fragments that lay scattered on the stone floor glittered almost like ice.

At his shoulder, he heard Isinwen draw breath sharply, and heard a low susurrus of speech as word was passed back through the waiting Elves.

No Elf would have done this. No Elf
could
, have done this.

Show me,
Kellen said to his magic.

But instead of the clear vision of what-had-been that he had come to expect, it was as if a fog descended over his vision. He did not see what had gone before, nor did he see the utter darkness of the cavern without Coldfire. Instead he saw twisting shadows that slithered over each other like ink poured into water. He knew something had been here — and something Tainted, it was easy to guess — but precisely what it had been, he could not see.

He blinked his battle-sight away and turned to Isinwen.

"We know now that there have been trespassers here. But when they were here, and whether they remain, I cannot tell. You will oblige me by asking everyone to remain alert. And send someone to warn the sentries and Umerchiel."

"
Komentai,"
Isinwen said, turning away to pass the order.

A lot of Shadowed Elves had escaped after the Battle for the Heart of the Forest. No one knew how many, but enough to cause serious problems for the Allies. They could be here. Something that hated Elves certainly was. If the Shadowed Elves were, it seemed to Kellen that they did not want to fight another losing battle. Perhaps they had learned wisdom in their earlier defeats. Or perhaps they knew that they were the last of their kind.

But from everything he'd learned of them previously, he thought that if he offered them a great enough prize, and a tempting enough target, he could lure them out. The Shadowed Elves seemed to be incapable of avoiding battle when their enemy came close enough.

"I need a few volunteers… " Kellen said, turning to his sub-commanders.

* * * * *

WITH fifty chosen Knights at his back, Kellen moved deeper into Halacira. Since everyone with him had volunteered to go, the difficulty had been in picking the best people for the task, not in finding ones willing to go. He chose Knights that he could afford to lose.

There was every possibility that he was leading them into a trap. It was, after all, partly his intention to spring a trap. But he accepted the grim possibility that the trap's jaws might close on them all with lethal effect.

He had no choice but to place himself at risk. Of everyone there, he had not only the best chance to keep the warriors with him safe, but to provide an irresistible target for any enemy within these caverns. He knew, without false pride, that Shadow Mountain desperately wanted to get its hands on him, both because of his past victories over it, and because he was a Knight-Mage. If a Wildmage represented a source of both power and food to the Endarkened, he knew that a Knight-Mage must represent even more enticing bait.

As he and the Elves accompanying him moved across the enormous
xaique
board and toward what the maps had marked as the Southern Promenade, they saw that more and more of the carven
xaique
-pieces had been marred in some way, though none as thoroughly as the first they'd seen. There were no traps that he was able to detect, though now Kellen traveled a zig-zag course across the cavern floor, sweeping every inch of it himself. His sense of unease deepened. Beyond the Southern Promenade — another series of linked caverns, with galleries leading off them; the perfect place for an ambush — they should reach the banks of the Angarussa Underground, and beyond that a long, comparatively narrow passage leading up to the surface again. If they were allowed to traverse that entire distance unchallenged — it was at least a mile, if he was reading the maps at all correctly — then there would be no choice but to try another sweep, and another, through different parts of the cave-system, until they were absolutely certain they had secured every last square inch of it.

It might take sennights.

And meanwhile, what would be happening in Sentarshadeen? They left the
xaique
chamber.

The next chamber's walls had been extensively carved — into the semblance of a Flower Forest. Kellen realized he would search the caverns of Halacira in vain for signs of mining; it had slowly dawned on him that the elaborate stone-carving was the way that the Elves disguised—or at least made up for — their mineworking activities. But the chamber seemed completely untouched by any activities of the interlopers.

The next chamber was carved with scenes of… mining. Stone scaffolds covered the walls, with stone figures climbing upon them, stone tools in their hands.

Still nothing.

He wondered what it was about the
xaique
board that had roused someone's anger to smash it and reveal their presence.

Xaique
is about war. The figure with the garland… Master Belesharon told me she has something to do with the Flower Wars, which aren't actually real wars. Whoever is here is sending a sort of message to us — they want to be found — though I think only Master Belesharon could understand the whole of it.

I understand enough. I understand that there's someone here who needs to be gotten rid of.

The mining-cavern was long and comparatively narrow, its floor sloping very slightly downward. Suddenly Kellen's armored sabaton skidded on the smooth stone floor.

It was wet.

He knelt down and touched the stone. A distinct sheen of moisture clung to the stone, heavy enough to make it slippery. He raised his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Water.