Kheda began wiping the grime from his blade with an oiled rag. 'Do you know how to use one?'
'Not as such—' the young mage began defensively.
'Then no.' Perversely amused by the disappointment on Naldeth's face, Kheda relented a little. 'You'll find a hacking blade will serve if you have to fight with it and it'll be more use against the scrub's teeth around here.'
'We should all carry water flasks, and something to eat.' Risala handed Naldeth a brass water flask on a braided st rap almost identical to her own as well as a leather pouch to sling over his other shoulder. 'We don't want to have to go foraging.'
'No,' Kheda agreed, scrubbing hard to be sure he was ridding his blade of every smear.
/ haven't come all this way just to have my skull crushed by some savage's club because my sword sticks in its scabbard.
'Make sure you don't lose this.' Risala offered the young wizard a square-ended blade as broad as his palm and as long as his forearm, protected by a wood and leather scabbard. The varnished handle was almost as long as the blade.
'Here, let me show you.' Kheda took a long leather belt from the pile of gear in front of Risala and looped it twice around Naldeth's hips. Kheda's foot brushed against the cold metal of the youth's toeless foot and he looked down. 'How much magic do you use to keep yourself walking?'
Velindre answered for the young mage. 'Not enough to stir the elements beyond arm's length.' She sat down to pull on stout sandals and used the laces to bind her loose trousers tight around her ankles.
/ suppose I shall just have to take your word for that.
Kheda looked at Risala. She shrugged at him, her expression unreadable in the dim light. The straps of a water flask and a light leather sack crisscrossed her chest, and she held her hacking blade in both hands, dagger ready at her belt.
'Show us the way out of here, Naldeth,' Kheda said.
The young wizard stood upright and squared his shoulders. He climbed over the Zaise's rail and walked cautiously along a ledge deeper into the gloom. A muted red glow leaked from the joints and rivets of his metal leg.
'I'll bring up the rear.' Velindre's face was more angular and androgynous than ever in the meagre light filtering through the cave. 'Just in case.'
'We'll spend a day seeing what hope there might be of learning something useful.' Kheda's tone brooked no argument from the magewoman. 'If there's any sign of danger, you take us away with your magic at once.'
Faint green radiance reflected in her eyes as she nodded calmly. 'I've no desire to find myself in some contest with a wild mage or being eaten by a dragon.'
'Gome on.' Naldeth called impatiently out of the darkness.
Kheda swung himself over the rail. The slick stone felt treacherous under the soles of his sturdy sandals and cast up a damp cold. Feeling his way cautiously towards the pale blur that was Naldeth's tunic, Kheda's outstretched hacking blade found a low ledge the instant before he cracked his already bruised shins on it.
'See up there?' Naldeth raised a hand once more tipped with pale flames that revealed riven rocks making a perilous stair. 'This cleft reaches nearly to the top of the cliffs. I'll only have to open the last stretch with wizardry.'
Kheda began climbing cautiously upwards. He paused when the young mage reached a tumble of broken stone caught between two cracked walls. 'Is that safe?'
'Quite safe.' Kheda could hear rather than see Naldeth's grin.
'I see your time in the Gidestan mines with Planir wasn't wasted.' In the shadows behind them all, Velindre sounded approving.
'You know our Archmage.' Naldeth turned with a scrape of his metal foot on the stones and began climbing again. 'He doesn't tolerate slackness.'
The cleft grew narrower and steeper and the air turned stale and dusty. Kheda looked up vainly for any chink of natural light beyond Naldeth's eerie magelight. As the roof lowered and the deceptive shadows danced around, the warlord found himself cringing, expecting to hit his head on unyielding stone with each step.
Naldeth finally halted and the flames in his hand turned to ochre. 'I will have to use a little earth magic here.'
The light showed they had reached a dead end. One
side of the cleft reared up solidly to bar any further passage while the other rolled away to disappear into some empty void echoing with the sound of the clawing sea far below.
'Be as quick as you can, and discreet,' Velindre called from the rear. 'I can sense open air not far above us.'
'Can you sense any people up there?' Kheda asked swiftly. 'Before he makes the ground fall out from beneath their feet.'
Naldeth wasn't listening, already concentrating on the unyielding rock face. Ochre light suddenly filled the air and then soaked into the dark-grey stone, running along the interstices like liquid fire. The young mage pressed himself against the rock, the glowing lines throwing strange shadows on his face. He closed his eyes and breathed deep.
Kheda reached around for Risala's hand, keeping his body between her and the magic. He braced himself and felt Risala hold her breath. The air tasted oddly metallic and warmed rapidly.
A muffled crack sounded deep within the wall of the cleft, and then another. The ochre light flickered with each snapping sound and tremors ran through the stone beneath their feet. The orange light blinked out and Risala's fingers tightened around Kheda's in the darkness.
The rock face disintegrated with a gentle sigh. Velindre summoned a pale-blue flame that showed them countless thin fragments sliding down the long slope they had just climbed, shards drifting more like leaves than stones. By contrast, the dust fell out of the air as fast as metal fragments drawn to a lodestone, leaving barely a mote to sparkle in the shaft of sunlight piercing the darkness. Kheda gazed at the patch of empty blue overhead.
'Careful,' Naldeth warned as he climbed up newly revealed artfully ragged steps.
'Don't go outside.' Kheda released Risala's hand and
hurried after the wizard. 'There might still be someone or something waiting up there.'
The velvety slick of powdered stone was disconcerting to walk on and it sifted into his sandals, gritty between his toes. Kheda ignored the discomfort, watching intently for any shadow crossing the opening ahead.
Naldeth halted in a pool of light on a broad stone shelf beneath a last brief flight of magically wrought steps that reached up to the surface. 'I think we're alone.'
'Wait there.' Kheda moved in front of him and discovered that the wizard had opened a deep crevice in the side of a rocky bluff on top of the cliff. The bright sunlight stabbed at his eyes and the heat of the open air was brutal even before he stepped out of the cool of the cave. Gripping his scabbarded sword and mindful of the hacking blade thrust through his double-looped belt, the warlord edged out onto the dusty slope.
Beneath the outcrop of grey stone, the barren earth was patched with grass dried to straw by the sun and crushed by the wind. The slope ran away to meet a sparse expanse of those blotched and twisted trees fringed with paltry leaves. Kheda could see no movement in the dappled shade beneath them. Further down the slope, larger trees lifted thicker canopies of denser green. The forest rose up again to a shallow crest and then sank once more out of sight. A series of low rolling hills marched away into the east. A few birds flapped lazily above the treetops, their fluting calls unperturbed. A little way to the south, the hills yielded to the sere yellow of the grassy plain where the meandering river glinted like steel. There was no longer any sign of the hunters' fires. He frowned as he tried to calculate where their caves might be.
'Is it safe?' Risala asked from the dark opening behind him.
Kheda slid a little way along the side of the bluff, his