Hanaleisa and Temberle looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

“Cut off her head, then!” someone yelled from the back, and the dead woman’s husband lifted a hateful and threatening gaze in the direction of the gruesome suggestion.

“No!” Hanaleisa yelled, again quieting the crowd. “No. Find some rocks. We’ll bury her under a cairn, respectfully, as she deserves.”

That seemed to mollify the distraught husband somewhat, but some in the crowd began to protest all the more loudly.

“And if she comes to a state of undeath like all the others, and charges at us?” a nearby dissenter remarked to Hanaleisa and Temberle. “Are you two going to have the will to cut her down, and in front of this poor man here? Are you sure you’re not being cruel in thinking to be kind?”

Hanaleisa found it a hard point to argue, and the weight of responsibility for the calamity pressed down heavily on her young shoulders. She looked back at the husband, who obviously recognized her dilemma. He stared at her pleadingly.

“A few heavier rocks, then,” Hanaleisa said. “If whatever abomination that is animating the dead reaches her, which I think unlikely,” she added for the sake of the distraught man, “then she will not be able to rise against us, or anyone else.”

“No, she’ll be trapped flailing under our heavy stones, and what an eternity that’s to be!” the old seadog said. More yelling ensued, and again the husband’s expression fell as he hugged his dear dead wife more closely.

“Aye, so if we cut off her head and that happens, then she can tuck it under one arm, what, and walk about forever like that?” another man chided the first.

“I hate this,” Temberle whispered to his sister.

“We’ve no choice,” Hanaleisa reminded him. “If we don’t lead, who will?” In the end, they settled on Hanaleisa’s suggestion, building a cairn of heavy rocks to securely inter the dead woman. At Hanaleisa’s private suggestion, Pikel then performed a ceremony to consecrate the ground around the cairn, with Hanaleisa assuring all, particularly the husband, that such a ritual would make it very unlikely that any necromantic magic could disturb her rest.

That seemed to calm the bereaved husband somewhat, and mollify the protestors, though in fact, Pikel had no such real ceremony to offer and the impromptu dance and song he offered was no more than a show.

At that dark time, in that dark place, Hanaleisa thought a show was just as good.

She realized it was better than the alternatives, of which she could not think of even one.

CHAPTER 16

DARK HOLES

Danica saw the cave entrance far in the distance, long before she realized that the trail of death led to that spot. She knew instinctively that such a creature as had caused that withering and decay would not long bask in sunlight.

The trail meandered a bit, but soon bent toward the dark face of the distant mountain, where it ended abruptly. Likely, the dragon had taken flight.

When Danica at last arrived at the base of the mountain, she looked up at the black mouth of the cavern. It was indeed large enough to admit a great wyrm, a subtle crease high in the mountain wall, inaccessible to any unable to fly.

Or unable to climb with the skill of a master monk.

Danica closed her eyes and fell inside herself, connecting mind and body in complete harmony. She envisioned herself as lighter, as unbounded by the press of gravity. Slowly, the woman opened her eyes again, lifting her chin to scan a path among the stones. Few others would have seen much possibility there, but to Danica, a ridge no wider than a finger seemed as inviting as a ledge upon which five men could stand breast.

She mentally lifted her body, then reached up to a narrow ledge and locked her fingers in place, counting out the cadence of the next few movements. She scrambled like a spider, seeming effortless, walking the wall on all fours, hands and feet reaching and stretching. Danica moved horizontally as well as vertically, shifting toward better ridges, more broken stones and better handholds.

The sun crossed its midpoint, and still Danica climbed. The wind howled around her, but she ignored its cold bite, and would not let it dislodge her. Of more concern to her was her timing. Her estimate in beginning her ascent was that the creature she sought was a beast of the darkness, and the last place she wanted to be when it emerged from its hole was splayed out on a cliff face, hundreds of feet above the ground.

With that unsettling thought in mind, Danica pushed on, her fingers and toes finding holds, however tentatively. She constantly shifted her weight to minimize the pull against any one limb or even one digit. As she neared the cave opening, the ascent became more broken and not so steep, with several stretches where she could pause and catch her breath. One long expanse was more a walk than a climb. Danica took her time along that trail and paid extra care to use any cover she could find among the many tumbled stones along the path that led to the stygian darkness of the waiting cave.

Numbers.

He was counting and adding, subtracting and counting some more. A compulsion dominated his every thought, to count and to add, to seek patterns in the many numbers that flitted though his thoughts.

Ivan Bouldershoulder had always been fond of numbers. Designing a new tool or implement, working through the proper ratios and calculating the necessary strength of each piece had been among the dwarf craftsman’s greatest joys. As when Cadderly had come to him with a tapestry depicting dark elves and their legendary hand crossbows. Working from that image and his knowledge and intuition alone, Ivan had replicated those delicate weapons to near perfection.

Numbers. It was all about numbers. Everything was about numbers—at least, that’s what Cadderly had always argued. Everything could be reduced to numbers and deconstructed at will from that point forward, if only the intelligence doing the reducing was great enough to understand the patterns involved.

That was the difference between the mortals and the gods, Cadderly had often remarked. The gods could reduce life itself to numbers.

Such thoughts had never found a home in the far less theorizing and far more pragmatic Ivan Bouldershoulder, but apparently, he realized, Cadderly’s sermons had created a far bigger imprint on his brain than he had assumed.

He thought of the implication of numbers, and that memory of a long-ago conversation was the only thing that made the befuddled dwarf realize that the numbers constantly flashing before him just then were nothing more than a purposeful and malicious distraction.

Ivan felt as if he were waking up beside a babbling brook, that moment of recognition of the sound giving him a real space outside of his dreams, a piece of solidity and reality from which to bring his thoughts fully to the waking world.

The numbers continued to flash more insistently. The patterns flickered and disappeared. Distraction.

Something was keeping him off balance and out of sorts, away from consciousness itself. He couldn’t close his eyes against the intrusion, because his eyes were already closed.

No, not closed, he suddenly understood—whether they were closed or not was of no practical consequence, because he wasn’t the one using them, or seeing through them. He was lost, wandering aimlessly within the swirl of his own thoughts.

And something had put him there.

And something had kept him there—some force, some creature, some intellect that was inside him.

The dwarf had broken the enchantment of distraction and lashed out from the cocoon of numbers, though he flailed blindly.

A memory flashed quickly through his thoughts, of fighting on a rocky slope north of Mithral Hall, of a piece of shale spinning through the air and taking the arm from his brother.