"We'll have to use the blankets Morwen gave us," I said. "We can tie them together."
"What about me?" said the dragon. "I can't climb down blankets."
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe we'll think of something once we know how far it is."
"What if you can't think of anything?"
"Hey? Shiara had opened her bundle to get the blankets out, and now she was staring at it as if she'd never seen it before. "Daystar, look at this!"
The dragon looked a little put out. It usually isn't a good idea to interrupt someone's conversation with a dragon, but for once I decided not to say anything, because I was glad Shiara had yelled. I didn't know what was going to happen if I couldn't think of a way to get the dragon into the Caves of Chance, and I didn't really want to say so.
I said, "Excuse me," to the dragon and went over to Shiara. "What is it?"
"This," said Shiara. She pulled a coil of rope out of the top of the bundle. "It wasn't here before."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Of course I'm sure!" Shiara said. "Look in your pack. Maybe you have one, too."
Shiara was right: There was another coil of rope in my bundle, along with a little silver lamp and a set of flints, and I didn't remember seeing any of them before. We tied the ropes together, then looped one end around the tree closest to the hole. The dragon watched, grumbling the whole time.
When we finished, Shiara and I argued about who was going to get to climb down first. We wound up tossing a coin, and I won.
I stuck the flints and the lamp into my belt, right next to the Sword of the Sleeping King, where I could find them easily. Then I lowered myself over the edge of the hole and started to climb down the rope.
It wasn't easy.
The rope kept twisting around, which made me dizzy, and I kept bumping into the side of the hole. I'd gotten about three feet from the top of the hole when the lights went out.
I stopped climbing for a minute and just hung there. I couldn't see anything except a circle of sky right above me, and that looked much farther away than it should have. Then I realized that I had to start climbing one way or another because my arms were going to get tired very quickly if I didn't move. I looked up at the sky. I knew I'd only come down a couple of feet, and it shouldn't have been difficult to climb back up. On the other hand, I knew it could be extremely dangerous to start things and not finish them in the Enchanted Forest.
I started down again.
Climbing in the dark is not pleasant. I couldn't see where I was going; I couldn't even see the rope. It seemed like years before my feet finally touched something flat below me. I felt around to make sure what I'd found wasn't just a narrow ledge, then I let go of the rope and called to Shiara that I was at the bottom.
The next thing I did was to get out the lamp and light it. I had a little trouble, since I was doing everything by feel, but I finally got it going. At first all I could see was the tiny yellow flame. Then the lamp made a popping noise and suddenly I could see the cave.
Actually, it was more like a tunnel. Where I was standing, the walls were a smooth, speckled stone, but as soon as the tunnel got out from under the hole the walls looked rough. It was cool and dry and dusty, as if no one had been there in a long, long time.
"That's not so bad," said a voice above me. I looked up. The dragon was peering over the edge of the hole. "I can jump that far."
"I think you should wait until Shiara climbs down," I said. "Then you can untie the rope and bring it with you."
Shiara's head appeared beside the dragon's. "You're right; it's not nearly so bad when you can see the bottom."
"If you drop the bundles Morwen gave us, I can catch them," I said.
"Then you can climb down and we can get started."
"All right." Shiara's head vanished for a few seconds, then reappeared, along with a pair of hands and a bundle. "Ready? Catch."
Nightwitch was more of a problem than the bundles. I got a few scratches catching her. As soon as I had everything, Shiara climbed down.
We picked up our things and moved into the tunnel while the dragon took care of the rope, and then the dragon jumped down.
"That was easy!" it said.
I thought about sliding down the rope in the dark and didn't say anything.
Shiara looked from me to the dragon and back. "Well? Are you going to stand there until the wizards show up again?"
"We have to decide what we're going to hold on to first," I said.
"Daystar, we have to carry everything ourselves anyway," Shiara said.
"What difference does it make?"
"I don't think that's what Telemain meant," I said. "There are all sorts of ways to lose things in the Caves of Chance if you aren't paying attention, but if you have something in your hand all the time and never set it down it's less likely to disappear."
"If you really believe that, you'd better carry the sword," Shiara said.
"The only thing I don't want to lose is Nightwitch, and she can take care of herself."
"You're right," I said doubtfully. I didn't really want to march through the Caves of Chance with the Sword of the Sleeping King in my hand, but I certainly didn't want to lose it. Finally I decided to take the sheath off my belt and carry the sword and sheath together. I had some trouble doing it, though, and Shiara had to help.
"Are you sure this is necessary?" she asked. "Why can't you just wear it?"
"Magic things are particularly easy to lose here," I said. "And Mother told me to take care of this sword." I tucked the sheathed sword under my arm and picked up the silver lamp and the bundle Morwen had given me.
"Let's go."
The tunnel slanted down for a long way, then leveled. Every now and then we came to a dark opening in the wall that led to a side passage, but we ignored all of them. Telemain had been very specific about that. Not that they were particularly tempting. The silver lamp had no difficulty lighting up our part of the tunnel, but it didn't penetrate into the side passages at all.
After a while, the tunnel we were following jogged sharply left, then right again, and suddenly it opened out into an enormous cave. The walls were crystal, and they seemed to have hundreds of different-colored lights shifting behind them. I stopped abruptly, staring, and the dragon bumped into me from behind.
"Excuse me," I said automatically.
"You shouldn't stop so fast," the dragon complained. It craned its neck to see around me. "Hey! This is nice!" It stretched upward, and a minute later it was clinging to the crystal wall several feet above us.
I backed away hastily. I didn't want to be underneath if the dragon slipped.
"Where are we supposed to go from here?" asked Shiara, ignoring the dragon.
"This must be the Cave of Crystal Lights," I said. "Telemain said to walk straight across. There ought to be three passageways on the other side, and we want to take the left one."
"I see them," the dragon said. It squinted across the cave, then climbed down and sat beside us. "They aren't straight across. They're over that way a little." It waved toward the right.
I looked at the dragon. "I think we should follow Telemain's directions.
The Caves of Chance are even trickier than the Enchanted Forest. I don't want to risk getting in trouble if we don't have to." I didn't mention that the last time we had taken the dragon's advice we'd run into the fire-witch and Shiara had gotten turned into a statue, but I was thinking it. Shiara nodded in agreement.
"All right," the dragon said sullenly. "But I think you're being silly."
We started walking again, trying to go straight across the cave. The walls curved in and out, and the floor humped up in low mounds and ridges. Between that and the shifting colored lights, it was hard to be sure we were going straight. Shiara and I backtracked a couple of times, just to check, and every time we did the dragon grumbled.