It was all he could take. Muttering, he stuffed his belongings in the saddlebag-the Amarach runes, the quith-pa, the purple pendant-and took off on foot toward high ground.
Let them band together to shut him out, in the affected, gossipy fashion of courtier or knave. He had better things to do! Adventures to seek on the harsh Nerakan plains, where a stout arm availed more than some urbane knowledge of manners and far-flung places and pretty words!
There were better women elsewhere-more agreeable and compliant.
He could scarcely believe it when he looked back and saw how far he was from the camp. The little canyon below shielded them from the plains in the rising Ner-akan night. The sun was well gone and the afterglow fading fast. He had traveled a good two hundred feet or so up the sheer mountain trail, amid scrubby aeterna and the little deciduous plants the mountain folk called broucherei….
"Damn it!" he exclaimed. "They have me studying foliage now!" His gaze shot up the rock face to a plateau, void of the lush, surrounding vegetation, where four drasil trees stood in a circle, stark and black against the last of the light, like a sign from the gods.
"There's the entrance," Verminaard said to himself, stooping to enter the mouth of the cave. A quartet of bats flashed by his ears, chattering, and he shivered as one touched his face.
He had made up his mind when he recognized the trees and finally remembered that they always grew above caverns. He would go into the cave-go there alone-and find his way past the thick arrangement of roots and tendrils, exploring the dark as far as his courage would take him.
"Which is much farther than Aglaca would go," he muttered, and he crouched in the palpable gloom, moving slowly into the depths of the cave.
It wasn't long before the Voice reached him, familiar and embracing, as it had always been, but there was something new in its suggestion, some haunting note of urgency that Verminaard had never heard before. For the first time, he paused and wondered whether he should go on.
Enough of the day, the low, feminine voice intoned, almost singing, as Verminaard caught his breath and sank to his knees, leaning against the moist wall of the cavern. Enough of the treachery of sun, the little deceits of the stars in their courses. Leave them behind, Prince Verminaard, lord of a thousand leagues and the scion of dragons….
Undefined shapes flitted through the shadows ahead, spectral, robed figures mingling with the darkness, their voices mixing with the low insect drone of sound he had first heard in the depths of the Nerakan caverns, a sound like the high-pitched humming from the ruins about God-shome. He stood, his knees shaking, and breathed a prayer to Hiddukel, to Zeboim, to Takhisis.
And at the finish of the third prayer, it was as though the Lady herself had reached forth and embraced him. In the warm darkness, he traveled deeper into the cave, past the insubstantial shapes.
He gathered strength and courage with each stride.
One voice rose above all the babble, the bewitching Voice of his childhood, of a thousand thoughts that had passed through his beleaguered mind. In voluptuous darkness lies the truth, it urged, and then, as the cloaked shapes wavered and danced at the edge of Verminaard's sight, the urging intensified, growing more rhythmic, more melodious, until the cavern echoed with a cold and melancholy song.
Set aside the buried light Of candle, torch, and rotting wood, And listen to the turn of night Caught in your rising blood.
How quiet is the midnight, love, How warm the winds where ravens fly, Where all the changing moonlight, love, Pales in your fading eye.
How loud your heart is calling, love, How close the darkness at your breast, ~ How hectic are the rivers, love, Drawn through your dying wrist.
And, love, what heat your frail skin hides, As pure as salt, as sweet as death, And in the dark the red moon rides The foxfire of your breath.
He followed the song in a daze, as newly visible stalactites strangely dripped and melted around him and the cavern rippled and eddied like the heart of a whirlpool. Voices called to him from the center of the walls; pale hands seemed to reach from the stone, grasping at his tunic, his hair, coldly fingering the wound in his arm until his hand tingled, his fingers numbed about the hilt of his drawn sword. Before him, the shadows twitched and cavorted, chittering like bats, and time and again bright shocks of color flashed behind them in the darkness-pale purple, deep red, occasional green.
Then all shadow and the odd light descended to a single slim corridor, a green-white sickly glow emanating from it like a dying phosfire, like the damaged soul of a marshland. Verminaard followed mindlessly, shuffling in the dried clay of the corridor, the trail behind him a fading stream of light.
Aglaca looked up and noticed that Verminaard had vanished.
Waving his hand, the Solamnic lad stilled Judyth's florid description of the purple clematis that scaled the western walls of Dargaard Keep.
"Verminaard!" he said, a low note of concern in his voice. Quickly he leapt from the fireside and raced toward the mouth of the little box canyon, where the plains spread before him ten miles to the darkened east.
No sign of him. Aglaca stared disconsolately across the low expanse to the black edge of the Nerakan Forest, where the torches of the ogres danced in the distance, moving steadily north and away.
They were safe from the monsters, but there was no sign of Verminaard. If he had stomped off in anger, he could be a mile away by now. A mile in any direction …
Aglaca brightened, wheeled suddenly, and raced toward the cliff side trail. Sure enough, there were footprints in the dust. He knelt, recognized the outline of Ver-minaard's enormous boot…
And started when Judyth's hand clasped him on the shoulder.
"If you're bent on finding him, don't go alone," she urged.
Aglaca smiled, but the smile faded when the tracks led into a cave-a low, bramble-covered burrow in the rock face, framed by hardy juniper and a blue mask of aeterna. Carefully, with Judyth still clutching his arm for balance, safety, and support, the lad leaned into the darkness, following the footprints until his sight failed and he lost them in a strange, pale green light.
"Judyth! Look here!" Aglaca urged. "What's this?"
"I don't know exactly," the girl declared. "Nor do I like my first sight of it."
"Nonetheless," Aglaca insisted, "Verminaard is nearly family-kind of like a brother. Well, exactly like a brother. And he's always doing things like this. I wouldn't blame you one whit for waiting right here. I'd do it, if I had a choice. But by my honor, I have to continue and see what's befallen him."