“How could he do either of those things when closely cased in hard earth?” Groniger objected.
“He'd manage somehow!” Pshawri shot back. “But then how came the dagger to be left behind? He'd never have been parted from Cat's Claw willingly, of that I'm sure."
“Perhaps he lost consciousness then,” Rill interposed.
“Or perhaps they were both attacked, the dragger and the dragged, by some third party,” Skullick hazarded. “How much do any of us know what may go on down there?"
A look of sheer horror had been growing in Cif's visage as she eyed the knife. She burst out, “Stop breaking our minds and hearts, all of you, with all these guesses!” She took the Mouser's cowl out of her pouch and rapidly wrapped up the dagger in it, folding in the ends. “I cannot think while looking at that thing.” She handed the small gray package to Mother Grum. “There, keep it safe and hid,” she said, “while we get on to efforts more constructive."
A change came over the small white-clad woman, who'd seemed consumed moments before with nervous grief. She rose lithely from her seat by the fire, saying to Pshawri, “Follow me, Lieutenant. We'll dowse for your captain with his Whirlpool Queller you rescued from the Maelstrom, beginning at the shaft head, and so determine whether and how he's deviated from the straight down in his strange journey through solid earth.” She wet two fingers in her mouth and held them high a space. “While we were talking, feeding our woes with horror, the north breeze died — which'll make the dowsing easier for us, its results surer. And you must do the dowsing, Pshawri, because although it galls me somewhat to admit it, you seem the one most sensitive to the Gray Mouser's presence."
Although looking puzzled and taken aback at first by her words, it was with a seeming sense of relief and a growing eagerness that the skinny ex-thief came to his feet. “I'm with you, Lady, of course, in any effort to regain the Captain. What do I do?"
As she explained, they started toward the shaft head. The eyes of the others followed them. After a bit Skullick and Rill got up and strolled after and, several moments later, Groniger. But old Ourph and Mother Grum — and Snowtreader and the other cart-dog, both of whom had been unharnessed — stayed warm by the fire.
A bucket was coming up from the hole, heaping full. When its earth had been scattered, Pshawri positioned himself by the hole, knees bent and spread a little, head bent forward, looking down earnestly at the black-gold cinder cube suspended on a cubit's length of sailor's twine he'd found in his pouch and held at the top between the thumb and ring finger of his left hand.
Cif stood north of him, spreading her cloak to ward off any remnants of the north breeze, though there seemed no need. The cold air had become quite still.
But although the contraption looked like a pendulum, it did not act like one, neither beginning to swing back and forth in any direction nor yet around in a circle or ellipse.
“And there's no vibration either,” Pshawri reported in a low voice.
Cif extended a slender forefinger and laid it very lightly and carefully atop the pinching juncture of his finger and thumb. After a space of three heartbeats she nodded in confirmation and said, “Let's try on the opposite side of the hole."
“Why do you use the ring finger and left hand?” Rill asked curiously
“I don't know,” Pshawri said puzzledly. “Maybe because that finger feels the touchiest of the lot. And left hand seems right for magic."
At that last word Groniger growled a skeptical “Hmmph!"
Fafhrd and Afreyt seemed to be digging and sifting strenuously yet still carefully at the bottom of the hole, which had gotten as much as a foot deeper. Cif called down to them an explanation of what she and Pshawri were doing, ending with, “…and then we'll spiral out from here in wider and wider circles, dowsing every few feet. When we get a strong reading—if we do — I'll signal you."
Fafhrd waved that he understood and returned to his digging.
The second reading showed the same results. Pshawri and Cif moved out four yards and began their first methodical circling of the hole, dowsing every few steps. One by one their small company of observers returned to the fire, wearied by sameness. A full bucket came up from the hole.
And after a while, another.
Slowly the white-glowing lantern with which Cif had provided herself grew more distant from the hole. Slowly the pile of dug earth beside it grew. Fingers and Gale slept in each other's arms. While the full moon inched down the western sky.
Time passed.
15
The yellowing moon was no more than two fists above the western horizon of Rime Isle's central hills when Fafhrd's probing spade encountered stone. They'd deepened the hole by about a woman's height below the second tier of shoring. At first Fafhrd thought the obstruction a small boulder and tried to dig around it. Afreyt warned him against overspeed but he persisted. The boulder grew larger and larger. Soon the whole bottom of the shaft was a flat floor of solid rock.
He lifted his eyes to Afreyt's. “What's to do now?"
She shook her head.
A spear's cast southeast of the hole the two dowsers began to get results.
The twine-and-cube pendulum suspended from Pshawri's left hand instead of hanging straight down dead, as it had done over a hundred successive times by count, slowly began to swing forth and back, away from the hole and toward it. They both stared down at it wonderingly, suspiciously.
“Are you making it do that, Pshawri?” she whispered.
“I don't think so,” he answered doubtfully.
And then the wonder happened. The swings of the cube toward the hole began to get shorter and shorter, and those away longer and longer, until they stopped altogether and the cube hung straining away from the hole, perceptibly out of the vertical.
“How are you doing that, Pshawri?” Her voice was small, respectful.
“I don't know,” he replied shakily. “It pulls. And I'm getting a vibration."
She touched his hand with her forefinger, as before. Almost immediately she nodded, looking at him with awe.
“I'll call Afreyt and Fafhrd. Don't you move."
She rummaged a metal whistle from her pouch and blew it. The note was shrill and piercing in the cold still air.
Down in the hole they heard it. “Cif's signal,” Afreyt said, but Fafhrd had already chinned himself on the lowest peg and was hauling himself up the rest hand over hook. She hung one of the lanterns on one arm and followed him up, using both hands and feet.
Fafhrd scanned around and saw a small white glow out in the frozen meadow across the hole from where he stood. It moved back and forth to call attention to itself. He looked down the wood-lined shaft and spotted at its foot the yellow ochre mark he'd made to show the direction Cat's Claw had pointed when it was found. It was in line with the distant lamp. He sucked in his breath, took from Afreyt the lit lamp she'd brought up with her, held it aloft, and moved it twice from side to side in answering signal. The one out in the meadow was immediately lowered.
“That tears it,” he told Afreyt, lowering the lamp. “The dagger and the dowsing agree. The shaft must now be dug in that direction, footed upon the rock we've just uncovered and lined and roofed with wood to shield it from collapse."
She nodded and said swiftly, “Skullick suggested earlier that was the message the horizontal attitude and pointing of Cat's Claw were intended by the Gray Mouser to convey."
Idlers crowded around them to hear what new was up. The Northerner at the pulley gazed at Fafhrd intently.