They reached a narrows where stalactites hung from the ceiling in columns, and water dripped. Each person had to walk through the narrows in single file, and once they passed, Binnesman turned.
“Averan,” he said. “Let’s see if you can draw that rune I was telling you about.”
He traced the rune on the stone with his finger, leaving a tiny scratch mark.
“Now,” he said, “draw the rune with the point of your staff. And as you do, imagine your own strength, your own power, and the power of your staff fusing with the stone.”
Averan recognized the rune. She’d seen it many times, carved into stone blocks on houses and on castle walls. For a commoner, to carve such a rune was meaningless, a charm that he hoped might protect him from danger. But for an Earth Warden to draw such a rune, it could be a powerful spell.
Yet Averan also knew that not all Earth Wardens had the same powers. Binnesman could peer into stones and see things at great distances. But Averan had no skill with the seer stones. Similarly, she was discovering that she had powers Binnesman had never heard of.
Obviously, the old wizard was pushing her, hoping to discover Averan’s merits.
She closed her eyes. She drew the rune, almost by instinct, and sought to funnel all of her strength, all of her power into it, until she trembled from the effort.
Close for me, she whispered. Close for me.
She drew the rune, and then as if of its own volition, her staff drew three more squiggling lines within it.
And then Averan felt something strange. In an instant, it was as if all of her energy were inhaled.
Averan collapsed; everything went black.
When she woke, not much time seemed to have passed. Her head was spinning, and it felt as if someone had wrapped an iron band about it, and was pulling it tight. A deep pain ached, far back between her eyes. Gaborn stood over her, calling. “Averan! Averan, wake up!”
She looked around. Everyone was staring at her, or staring at the narrow wall. Binnesman stood before the pillars, studying them intensely.
“Are you all right?” Gaborn asked.
Averan tried to sit up, and felt weak as a mouse. Her arms seemed to be made of butter, and her legs would not move at all. If she had run all day without stopping, she would not have felt more overworn.
“I’m all right,” she said, struggling to sit up. She reached a seated position and the pain between her eyes deepened. Dizziness assailed her. She sat for a moment, unable to think, unable to focus.
Slowly, the strength returned to her muscles.
“Very good,” Binnesman said. “Very good, though I am afraid that it was a bit much for you. Would you like to see your handiwork?”
He stepped aside and Averan gasped.
The crack between the pillars was gone. Instead, the rock looked as if it had turned to mud and smeared together, only to harden afterward. The surface of the gray stone itself glistened, as if it had been fired in a kiln.
“What did I do?” Averan asked.
Binnesman shook his head in wonder, then laughed. “Certain sorcerers among the duskins could shape stone to their will. By that power, the great rift in Heredon was formed, and the continents divided. It is the rarest of all of the powers of the deep Earth. I have not heard of a human who ever possessed such skills, but it seems that you have it in some small degree.”
Averan gaped at the stone wall in shock.
Binnesman tapped it with his staff, listening as if for an echo. “This should hold them for a good while. Indeed, I suspect that the reavers may abandon any hope of breaking through, and instead be forced to dig around it. Let’s go.”
Averan made it to her feet. Everyone else ran ahead, but Binnesman stayed behind with Averan, keeping a watchful eye on her, as if afraid that she might fall again. She very nearly did, and if she had not had her staff to help her, she would have.
“When next we stop,” Binnesman said, “if you have the energy, we should practice this newfound skill of yours. But this time, we’ll try shaping something smaller.”
“All right,” Averan said, though in truth she didn’t feel as if she ever wanted to try it again.
After they had run only half a mile, the cave floor suddenly dropped away into oblivion.
The tunnel narrowed and the old watercourse dropped almost straight down, varying only slightly as it twisted this way and that.
Gaborn peered down the hole. Its sides were covered with tickle fern and wormgrass. Averan could see perhaps a quarter mile down the tunnel. At that point, it seemed to twist away, but she could not be certain. The light was too dim to let her see farther. Averan looked into Gaborn’s eyes, wondering if they should dare the shaft.
“The Earth warns us to flee,” Gaborn said. “And this is the only way out.”
Averan reached down and touched a tickle fern. Its fronds brushed her hands gently. She pulled at it, and the roots came away easily.
“Trying to climb the rocks with this stuff is dangerous,” she said. “It’s as slippery as moss.”
“We can make it,” Gaborn said.
The packs lay all around, and Gaborn began pulling off the coils of rope and tying them together, while Iome tied one end of the rope to a nearby stalagmite.
“Let me have a look at those ribs,” Binnesman said to Gaborn.
“I’ll be fine,” Gaborn objected. “They’re almost healed.”
But Binnesman strode forward, unlaced Gaborn’s armor, and pulled it off. Beneath his padding and tunic, Gaborn’s ribs were a mess of blue and black bruises.
“They look worse than they feel,” Gaborn said.
“Good,” Binnesman said, “because if they felt as bad as they look, you’d be dead!” He placed his fingertips above the wound, never touching it. He frowned and muttered, “As I thought, four broken ribs. Even with all of your endowments, they won’t heal fully for a day or so. But I don’t understand how you got hit in the first place.”
“I trusted my eyes more than my heart,” Gaborn said. “I felt the warning to duck, but couldn’t see the danger. Then the knight gig came through so fast.”
“Let that be a warning,” Binnesman said. “Do as the Earth commands. Forget about what your eyes can see, or what you think you know.”
Binnesman reached into his robes, pulled out some melilot, and blew it onto the wound. When he finished tending Gaborn’s ribs, he picked up Gaborn’s mail and leather padding. He considered for half a second, then hurled it into the pit, where the mail clanked and thudded as it bounced down into the darkness.
“What?” Gaborn asked.
“It will only be a hindrance on the climb down,” Binnesman said. “And we should find it on the bottom easily enough.”
Iome and Averan had just finished tying the ropes together. They all looked at one another, and at the pit.
“Who should go first?” Iome asked tensely.
Gaborn walked to the edge of the pit, tossed his reaver dart down the hole. It clanged once, and then he threw the packs over. Last of all, he threw over the end of the rope, and jumped. Averan drew a startled breath.
But Gaborn merely twisted catlike in the air, then grabbed the rope. With so many endowments of brawn and grace, he began to scamper down as quickly as a spider.
Binnesman raised an eyebrow in surprise. Apparently Gaborn’s ribs were better than they appeared.
Averan went to the lip of the shaft and peered down. She gripped her poisonwood staff tightly. She wanted to carry it, but didn’t dare try. The staff was precious, though as yet it was unadorned. She planned to carve runes of protection into it as soon as she could. The poisonwood had chosen her, and in some way she felt that the staff was a part of her. She was wondering what to do with it when Binnesmen threw his own staff down the shaft, so that it cleared Gaborn by a yard. Then he had his wylde do the same.
“Go ahead,” Binnesman told Averan. “The wood knows you. It will be waiting for you at the bottom.”
Averan let her staff fall gingerly, fearing that it might shatter against a stone wall.