Bayard's night was sleepless. The shooting pains in his leg mingled with unsettling thoughts, more baffling than any numbers, as he tried to decipher the will, to plumb the mysterious "device", to stop the dark laughter. He worried, too, about the young man in the mountains and his ragtag group of followers.
It was almost a week before Bradley, one of the castle engineers, inspecting the foundations and cellars of the castle for flaws and damage the earthquake had wrought, stumbled across the gap in the dungeon.
It was not a large opening, he insisted to an alarmed Bayard and a half-dozing Sir Robert, but dangerous enough. For the great well that lay under the castle, subject to strain and pressure through the extraordinary rainy season, was no doubt brimming and bubbling in the deep recesses of rock, where only a sudden twist of the earth could unleash a flood through the floors of the towers and leave them awash in their own cistern.
To Bayard, it was still a question of plumbing. He soothed himself, thinking, I shall attend to this later. Until the young engineer added that beyond the opening lay a network of runnels.
Now he was far more concerned as to the state of the castle, for there was no telling what vermin or darker thing neither wedged himself in some remote underground cranny nor caused a cave-in or rockslide due to his high spirits. Sir Andrew promised that Robert was "in good hands."
Bayard Brightblade was not assured.
Comprising the rest of the group were servants- linkboys and bearers. There were two men trained as sappers, whose talents Bayard thought he could put to less military use. There was also Gileandos the tutor, who hovered about Sir Robert and Sir Andrew, prattling about the differences between stalactite and stalagmite and how one remembered the difference, until Sir Robert suggested that the scholar carry a lantern and make himself "useful for once."
All in all, there were nearly twenty of them-"a small army," Bayard muttered, a little resentfully, because his visions had been of adventure-of a solitary Knight, or at most a band of two or three or four, off into the bowels of the earth, where unknown peril awaited them.
With his group, the numbers were stacked against the lurking dangers. And Bayard admitted he was disappointed by the odds. His followers pressed together around him until he felt like a schoolmaster or a governess off on a jaunt with unruly children in tow.
"What… what does it look like inside there, Bayard?" Sir Andrew asked, squinting over a lantern held much too high by Gileandos.
Together the Knights peered into the fissure. Andrew shifted uncomfortably under Bayard's weight.
"I cannot see a thing while I rock like a boat, Andrew," Bayard replied curtly, and the old man settled himself.
Brandon Rus leaned forward and, taking a lantern from one of the linkboys, cast light into the fissure.
A tangle of roots, no doubt from the huge hackberry and vallenwood parks just outside the castle wall, spread across the door as though the very veins and arteries of the world lay exposed. Beyond the network of tendrils, there was a greater darkness-some tunnel, no doubt, or a passageway formed where the roots churned and shifted the ground about them.
The explorers, all twenty or more of them, stood gaping at the edge of the darkness. Bayard tried to move forward for a closer look, but the reluctance of his bearers held him back.
"There is nothing of… passageways… in the histories," Brandon whispered.
"Oh, I have seen them in a chapter or two," Bayard murmured ominously as startled eyes turned toward him.
Gileandos moved forward and faced the party, his back to the cavity in front of them.
"Gentlemen, you are looking into the mouth of an accident. A quirk of geology. All that's left for any of us is repairs, if you ask me. Nothing a good stonemason cannot mend and refashion into dungeonry."
Bayard regarded the old tutor curiously but said nothing. All around him, the servants voiced their agreement with the scholar. No doubt they were anxious to be upstairs in warmth and dryness and light.
Among all assembled, Bayard was sure of only one stout heart.
"What do you think, Brandon Rus?" Bayard asked, leaning heavily on the wall at the mouth of the tunnel, one foot already stepping into the tangled darkness beyond the light of the lanterns.
The young man paused, poised between Solamnic courtesy and the truth he was coming to suspect-that indeed, Sir Bayard knew more of this underground mystery than he was letting on, for whatever reason.
"No doubt," Brandon Rus said slowly, tactfully, "the schoolmaster is correct when he claims this to be an accident of nature. All the more reason we should go forward and explore it-for the sake of science, if for nothing else."
"And," Sir Andrew added, "a body can never tell when something like this spreads beneath his foundations and undermines his whole damned architecture."
Bayard breathed raggedly and rested against the strong arms of the younger man. As Sir Andrew stepped behind him, the faint unsavory odor, the smells of unwashed trail dirt and the heavy odors of soured wine, was lost in the smoke of the torch.
Bayard sighed. Hygiene may not have been among Sir Andrew's virtues, but courage and loyalty took its place most gracefully.
The Knights stood together at the lip of the fissure, waiting for something they could not quite fathom.
"As… as… the only accredited scientist in this group," Gileandos began, "I assure you that whatever discoveries you might expect in the bowels of the castle grounds would be minimal at best. Why, this area has been excavated, plowed under, apportioned, and surveyed for a thousand years. There is nothing new beneath Castle di Caela-" "Enough, Gileandos," Sir Robert insisted. "Why, indeed, if there are tunnels, most certainly-" "That will be enough, Gileandos!" Sir Robert thundered, and the whole party stood silent. There was a scuffling sound and the clatter of metal behind them as one of the linkboys dropped his lantern and scurried back up the stairs toward daylight and safety.
"Well…" Sir Robert began, this time more quietly, a note of resignation and almost of sadness passing over his voice as he joined the three others who were preparing to pass from the cellars into the thicket of roots and sliding dirt.
"Give me your lantern," he said to the nearest linkboy. "The rest of you tend to business upstairs. Tell my daughter where we've gone."
"Then we're off for it," he said, grinning exultantly. "It's a glory how so many things come down to a crawl in a dungeon."
His companions looked at one another curiously, then back at Sir Robert. Trained Solamnics all, they waited politely as the rest of the party filed up the stairs toward the Great Hall and fresh air and light. Bayard glanced coldly at Gileandos, who stopped for a moment on the stairwell and leaned into the shadow, no doubt hoping to overhear whatever transpired when the entourage left. The old scholar snorted and cast his eyes downward. Finally Sir Andrew had enough.
"Damn it, man, if you're going to blubber or pout, I'd rather risk all our lives and take you with us."
The tutor scurried back down the steps. Now the darkness in the room grew deeper as the cellar door closed above the six of them. Sir Robert lifted the lantern, and each face was bathed in orange light.
"So here we are," Bayard said with a smile. "One fresh young Knight little tested, one seasoned but somewhat banged up, and three others-"
"Old. The word is 'old.' Like cheese or wine." Sir Andrew chuckled, and Sir Robert laughed gamely.