Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [127]
“It’s still dark, Mother!” Nightshade mumbled irritably and rolled over.
His mother barked.
Nightshade found this strange behavior in a mother, even a kender mother, but his head hurt too much for him to think about it. He just wanted to go back to sleep, so he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the cold water seeping into his britches.
His mother nipped him quite painfully on the ear.
“Now, really, Ma!” Nightshade exclaimed, indignant, and he sat up and opened his eyes.
“Mother?” He couldn’t see a thing, but he could tell by the feel that he wasn’t in bed. He was sitting on a lot of extremely sharp rocks that were poking him in tender places: the rocks were wet and getting wetter.
A bark answered him, a rough tongue licked his face, a paw with sharp nails scratched at him, and Nightshade remembered.
“Rhys!” He gasped and reached out to touch Rhys’s hand. Rhys was only lukewarm, and he was also wet.
Nightshade had no idea why a previously bone-dry grotto should now be filling up with seawater, but that was apparently what was happening. He could hear the water gurgling among the rubble that littered the cavern floor. It wasn’t very deep yet; thus far it was only a trickle. The water might stick to trickling, but again, it might not. It might decide to start flooding. If the grotto flooded, there was nowhere for them to go. The water would keep getting deeper and deeper.…
“Rhys,” said Nightshade firmly, and this time he meant it. “We have to get out of here.”
He slammed his hand down on the rocks to emphasize his determination and said, “Ouch!” following that up with a “Damn!”
He had slammed his hand down on a splinter of wood that had buried itself in the soft, fleshy part of his palm. He plucked it out and was about to toss it away, when it occurred to him that finding a splinter of wood here in a grotto was an odd thing. Being a kender, Nightshade was naturally curious—even in such a dire situation—and he ran his hand over the splinter, and noticed it was long and smooth and had a sharp point at both ends.
“Ah, I know. It’s part of Rhys’s staff,” said Nightshade sadly, clasping his hand over it. “I’ll save it for him. A memento. He’ll like that.”
Nightshade heaved a sigh and rested his aching head in his arms, wondering how they were ever going to get out of this horrible place. He felt sick and drowsy and once more he was a little kender, only this time his father was trying to show him how to pick a lock.
“You do it by feel and by sound,” his father was explaining to him. “You put the lock pick in here, and you wiggle it around until you feel it catch—”
Nightshade jerked his head up so fast that blazing pain burst on the backs of his eyeballs. He didn’t notice. Much. He looked down at the splinter in his hand, except he couldn’t see it, what with the grotto being so very dark, but he didn’t need to be able to see. It was all done by feel and sound.
The only problem was that Nightshade had never successfully picked a lock in his life. In many ways, he had been, as father often lamented, a failure as a kender.
“Not this time,” Nightshade vowed, determined. “This time I’ll succeed. I have to,” he added silently. “I just have to!”
He groped about with his hands until he found one of the manacles clamped around Rhys’s bony wrists. The water level was continuing to rise, but Nightshade put that out of his mind.
Atta whimpered softly and licked Rhys’s face and flopped down on her belly alongside him. The fact that she splashed was somewhat disconcerting. Nightshade didn’t let himself think about that. He had other things to think about, the first being to convince his hand to stop shaking. This took a few moments, then, holding his breath and thrusting out his tongue, which is essential to successful lock picking, he inserted the splinter of wood into the lock on the manacle.
“Please don’t break!” he told the splinter, then he remembered the staff had been blessed by the god, so perhaps the splinter