"Let's go in," Verminaard urged, stepping toward the overhanging rock.
"It's someone's dwelling," Aglaca objected, squinting into the darkness.
"Then you can sleep outside," Verminaard replied coldly. He stepped inside and foraged for serviceable kindling. Aglaca stood hesitantly at the cave mouth, then climbed the rock face to higher ground and a lookout point.
As Verminaard rummaged through straw and stacked crockery, he picked up a pitcher and examined it with a growing, uneasy sense that he had been here, or had at least seen these very things before.
"Look, Verminaard!" Aglaca exclaimed from the cave mouth. "Carrots and radishes! There's a little garden just above here. Not a sunlit acre, what with the shade from the drasil trees, but surprisingly good soil for this rocky country! I don't know how they did it, not at this height. There are late tomatoes as well, and the whole plot is bordered in day lilies! Some of them are blooming! You really should come and see! One has a face in it-"
"Did you find anything to use for a fire?" Verminaard asked curtly, his attention drawn back to the rubble on the floor of the cave. Aglaca vexed him with all this knowledge of plants and weeds and flowers. It was unseemly, irregular to him. Gruffly he waved his companion away. Better to burn what wood he could find in the cavern- chairs, perhaps, or the oaken bucket-than to wait while Aglaca dawdled, his nose again in the lilies.
His gaze returned to the bucket again. It was somehow the center of the cave, the focal point of the strange familiarity that seemed to inhabit the place. He approached it cautiously. A wizard might live here, and wizards were known to charge an item with fire, with venom, with destructive spells, so that when the unwary hand touched it, flame would course through the bones and poison through the veins. A thousand years after a wizard's departure or death, the spell could arise to ignite or corrupt.
This bucket had all the signs. A line of ragged marks along the rim-not weathering or chipping, but the intentional carvings of a knowing hand.
Verminaard listened for the Voice. Whatever it was that spoke to him no doubt had a storehouse of lore and magic.
But again the Voice was silent.
Verminaard swore softly and looked into the bottom of the pail. He blinked and looked again.
There was something about the swirl of the damp wood grain in the bottom of the bucket that seemed to shimmer and change. For a moment, it was a spiral, a swirl, then it seemed like the dark matrix at the hub of a spider's web, like the hagall rune, which promised misfortune and crisis.
And then, as though he gazed into the proverbial crystals and orbs at the Tower of High Sorcery, he thought he saw a rocky landscape, like the Khalkists but even darker,
more severe, a hand reaching out to him from the depths of the swirling wood, reaching, grasping, failing….
Verminaard shook his head and looked again. The hand and the webbing, the rocks and the rune had all passed from sight, merely a trick of light on the water-stained wood of the bucket. Aglaca called again from outside, something about columbines.
But the back of the cave drew Verminaard now. A small mound in a shadowy corner, more humble and less mysterious than the bucket, but very compelling. Quietly, with a single glance over his shoulder, he crept toward the shadows and the strange construction.
Dirt and stones. Someone was buried here.
An unfathomable sadness passed over the young man as he knelt beside the gravesite. Something just below his memory stirred, a warmth and a faint, fragile peace….
"Verminaard!" Aglaca shouted a third time, and the thoughts fled suddenly. With a growl of impatience, Verminaard started off to find him.
As he moved toward the mouth of the cave, a glitter in the straw caught his eye. He knelt and picked up a small pendant, the silver chain broken, the thumb-sized gem-stone sparkling. Rubbing the stone with the hem of his tunic, Verminaard marveled at the midnight purple of the thing, a color halfway between violet and blue. There was no feel of magic or omen about the pendant, but it might turn a pretty penny from some courtier at Nidus.
Or make a gift for a mysterious young woman.
He thought little more of it, dropping it in the bag with the rune stones. It clicked and rolled against them softly, the sound as if someone deep in the cavern had opened a hidden door. Verminaard shrugged and hastened up the trail to the garden, where Aglaca crouched above a fan-shaped plant, his gaze intent on the solitary flower that bloomed from its solitary scape.
"See?" Aglaca said, beaming, cupping the unplucked
blossom delicately in his hand. He motioned Verminaard closer.
"Delightful," the larger youth declared flatly, his eyes elsewhere, alert to danger from predator or bandit.
"It's a beautiful peach color, and its eye zone is an odd sort of purple . . . and this marking-the face, or maybe it looks more like a mask. And the flower is a perfect triangle," Aglaca insisted, but Verminaard wasn't listening.
"There must be a better place to stay the night, Aglaca. We should move on before the darkness overtakes us."
"I don't understand, Verminaard."
There's a haunt to the cave, he wanted to say. Some … presence. I don't know if it's friendly or hostile, but that bucket in there …
Don't tell him, the Voice urged, rising from the cave's mouth, as if the black, glinting mountain itself was speaking. You know how the ignorant laugh at your lore and runes and signs. Speak of defense. Of the depth of the cave…
"The cave goes back forever," Verminaard said dutifully. "It burrows through the mountain, I'd wager, and with no telling how many branches and chambers and passages. Dangerous things could hide in those depths, and I'm not going to risk your safety again."
He forced a grimaced smile at his irritating companion, who smiled in response.
"The danger of that's a slim one, Verminaard. The roots of the drasil tree go down a hundred feet, maybe more. They grow over caves to … well, I suppose it's to feed the roots or something-some kind of nourishment they need in the cavern air. They know enough to grow through the rock, but not enough to stop growing. The back of that cave is probably atangle with 'em, like a cage or a baffle. Nothing bigger than a man could navigate it, and a small man indeed, no match for you."
"But there could be something else," Verminaard
murmured. "Something unreckoned in your botany. Scorpions, maybe. Some kind of cave viper."
Aglaca frowned. "It's getting dark. And there's-"