The song echoed in the ravine and made the dwarf shiver.
"My Fullbeard Day was nothing like this," he breathed. "And praise Reorx for that."
They kept walking, being more careful now that they drew close to the Kentommenai-kath, For if they didn't want Gilthanas to see them, they were even less interested in revealing themselves to the murderer, who might be hiding behind any boulder or tree. Flint felt the hair creep up at the back of his neck, and he placed a reassuring hand on the hammer he carried at his belt.
Finally, they reached the Kentommenai-kath. Flint placed a hand on the half-elf's shoulder, and the two paused, watching as Gilthanas stepped back and forth along the slabs of granite that capped the ridge. Tanis gestured that they should circle to the right, and Flint nodded. The two crept along, hugging the boulders for cover, making their way perhaps two hundred yards along the crest of the ridge from where Gilthanas stood, still singing. They passed the last of the trees and stepped briefly into the open, ducking quickly behind an upturned slab of granite.
Flint peered around the slab. Gilthanas, wearing a plain gray robe with the hood pulled up, stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing out into the black abyss and singing a lament that jumped through intervals unknown to human and dwarven music.
"What are we waiting for?" Flint whispered gruffly, and Tanis shook his head.
"I'm not sure. Maybe we should try to get closer."
Flint nodded in agreement. Tanis loosened his dagger at his belt, and the dwarf did likewise as they began to pick their way through the jumble of boulders. All the while, Gilthanas's musical supplication formed a backdrop.
"I have a bad feeling about this, Tanis," Flint grumbled softly. "It's like we're just waiting for something to go-"
The earth dropped out from under the dwarf.
A scuffling sound, like something sliding against stone, and a muffled oath interrupted Flint's words. Tanis spun and twisted his head about.
"Flint!" Tanis whispered as loudly as he dared, crouching to be sure he was out of Gilthanas's line of sight. "Flint!"
There was no answer, only Gilthanas's tenor, unabated.
Tanis cursed himself. Why hadn't he been paying closer attention? He shook his head. But the dwarf had been right behind him. Where could he have gone?
A patch of shadow among the stones-or, rather, a patch of black deeper than the rest of the blackness-caught Tanis's eye, and he crawled closer to examine it. When he drew nearer, a puff of dank air wafted against his face and he saw that the dark patch wasn't a shadow at all. It was a crevasse, riven in the rock, just behind a lump of stone.
Tanis had stepped right over it without even noticing it. But Flint, with his stocky legs and his shorter stride…
Oh, gods, no, Tanis said to himself, and he threw himself down on his stomach, peering into the crevasse. "Flint!" Tanis whispered down into the deep darkness, but the shadows swallowed his voice. There was no answer.
The opening was large enough to admit the dwarf-though just barely. Frantically, Tanis tried to think. The dwarf could be hurt down there-or worse.
"Flint!" he tried one more time, but there was still no answer. Tanis was utterly alone.
At that moment, behind Tanis, Gilthanas's song broke off with a cry, and the half-elf leaped to his feet.
"You should not be here!" Gilthanas cried. "The Kentommen forbids…"
Tanis looked back at the crevasse that had swallowed Flint. Then, moving as quickly as he could and drawing his sword, Tanis slipped from boulder to boulder.
A figure, barely discernible even to Tanis's sensitive sight, stood before Gilthanas. It advanced a step.
"Who are you?" cried Gilthanas, edging backward. The edge of the cliff loomed dangerously near his heels.
The figure, wordless, drew nearer. Gilthanas looked to the right and left, but the stranger was blocking the only escape. "Who are you?"
As Tanis watched, picking his way as close as possible while staying behind cover, he saw the figure move as if to gather its forces for a lunge. The half-elf dashed from behind a granite block, shouting, "Gilthanas!"
His cousin turned. In that same heartbeat, the robed figure feinted at Gilthanas. With a scream, the blond youth disappeared over the edge of the cliff. Another scream broke off abruptly.
The murderer dashed toward the forest, and Tanis hesitated, not sure whether to follow the figure or to go to the spot where Gilthanas had disappeared. But the ravine had swallowed his cousin, Tanis was sure. The half-elf darted into the trees after the evil one.
He had run only ten or twenty paces into the forest when the underbrush closed around him. There was no path; where, then, had the figure disappeared to? Tanis cursed the vines that clutched the sword blade, and squinted into the darkness. He held his breath and listened, but heard no muffled breathing from his quarry.
Tanis retraced his steps to the granite slab from which his cousin had disappeared. "Gilthanas!" he cried hopelessly into the gloom. Then, "Flint!" he cried, for good measure.
He got a response, but not the one he'd hoped for.
A figure loomed behind Tanis, placed strong hands on the small of his back, and pushed.
As the half-elf fell, he heard the words, "I'm sorry, Tanis."
Chapter 28
Flint slid at breakneck speed down a narrow shaft of stone. Desperately he pawed at the rock with his hands and dug in with the heels of his boots, searching for some knob or crevice he could get a grip on, to stop-or at least to slow-his descent. But the cold stone of the chute was like glass, polished smooth by centuries of rainwater. Flint plunged down into the darkness. The chute bent to his right.
He was beginning to wonder when this dark ride would end- abruptly and messily, no doubt, when the chute stopped suddenly in a wall of solid stone-when he began to notice a lessening in the steepness of his descent. The shaft was leveling out.
By the time the end of the chute finally came, it had become nearly level, and Flint's momentum had slowed nearly to a creep. One moment, the stone of the chute was all around him, and the next, Flint was surrounded by nothing more than dark, musty air.
"Reorx!" Flint swore as he flailed in space, then he fell with a splash into frigid water. The rope ladder, which he had continued to clutch uselessly during the fall, landed next to him.
The dwarf thrashed and sputtered, choking on the metallic-tasting water-until he realized that, somehow, he wasn't sinking any farther into the bone-chilling wetness. It was then that Flint noticed he was on his hands and knees and that the water came halfway up his forearms. In fact, if he hadn't thrashed around so much, he would hardly have gotten wet at all.
All this-plus the fact that the fall had reopened his shoulder wound-did nothing to sweeten his temper.
"Reorx's forge!" he muttered, dragging himself out of the shallow pool. Instantly, however, he regretted the words. They echoed hollowly around him in the darkness, as if he were in a vast cavern. Flint had the disconcerting impression that the blackness swirled angrily, as if it resented having its stillness disturbed by his words. The dwarf felt a shiver dance across his skin-from the chilling water, no doubt, he assured himself, though for the time being he kept the rest of his grumbles to himself.
Flint sat on the cold ground for a moment, shivering in the darkness, trying to catch his breath. He looked about, but he couldn't see a trace of light from anywhere-not surprising in the dead of night and inside a cliff, he supposed. He might have fallen a short distance or halfway down to the ravine; he couldn't tell. His heart gave a lurch as he thought of Tanis up above. Flint shook his head. All he could do to help Tanis now was whisper a gruff prayer to Reorx and try to find his way out of wherever it was he'd landed.