Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [112]
“Varn’s down there, all right. He says that if you dare, you should pick up the mock sword he left for you on the worktable and go down after him. He wants to see the stuff you’re made of. I’ll follow in a bit.”
Rhodry laughed in a long chime of berserker mirth, echoing down the stairs. He found the sword, a proper hilt fitted with a wooden blade, lying in the clutter on the bench, and hefted it, a good length for his own height and reach. When Garin offered him the basket of light, he waved it away, then sat down and pulled off his boots.
“If I carry the light, he’ll see me coming, while I’ll be blind.”
Garin swore with such passion that Rhodry was just as glad he didn’t understand.
“You’ll be killed if you fall,” Garin said at last.
“Well, you know, I’ve got some of the elven feel for dweomer in my veins, and somehow or other I know that if I fail this test, there’s not much use in my being alive.”
Each step was narrow, and the risers seemed of different heights, too, so that Rhodry had to feel his way with a bare foot, one step at a time. As he moved past the pool of glow from the top of the stairs, his eyes began to adjust and find a different kind of light, oozing up from below, this more blue than silver. He felt as if he were easing into water, and about halfway down he heard water, too, the roar and thunder of a river, plunging over some precipice lost in the dark. He felt himself grinning; he’d never be able to hear Varn over that noise, but then, the weaponmaster wouldn’t be able to hear him, either. He paused and peered down. From this height, he could just distinguish a cavern floor, broken by mounds of rock and stalagmites, silhouetted in the eerie blue. Nothing moved among them.
In a few more steps, the stairs turned damp underfoot. His riding boots would have meant his death, had he been wearing them. Down ten steps more, another five, and the stairway suddenly disappeared from dead ahead of him. Moving fast would have meant his death as well. The stairway spiraled in a half-turn for some ten steps more and brought him to a new view. Through towering pillars of rock, he could place the source of light. The entire underground river churned with phosphorescence, a seethe of silver and blue that streaked across the darkness of the enormous cavern through which it flowed. Down another five steps, two more—he gained the rough floor of the cavern to find it scattered with stones.
Some of them bit into his bare feet, too, but not enough to draw blood. If he stepped just wrong, they would roll and rattle to give Varn the alarm. And where would the old man be hiding? The entire cavern was a maze of broken pillars and natural stalagmites, any one of which could hide a dwarf. Suddenly, Rhodry grinned and spun round, his sword up and ready for a parry, to find Varn waiting, right there at the end of the stairs. Rhodry might have searched for hours out in the cavern while the old man watched, enjoying his jest.
Varn nodded, then grunted out a single word. He carried a wooden great-ax, balanced with his left hand at the end of the shaft for a fulcrum and his right, partway down for the guide, because he was holding it with the blade well down, almost to the floor. As the dwarf stood and waited, his ax seemingly at rest, Rhodry found himself remembering Cullyn of Cerrmor, who stood the same way at the beginning of a duel or mock combat, the point of his broadsword trailing on the ground, so that no matter what attack his opponent might make, he’d come from below their stroke to flick it aside.
When Rhodry lowered his blade to the same position, Varn laughed, grinning approval in the pale light. From behind them, Rhodry heard muttering and grumbles as Garin made his slow way down the stairs, yet he never looked away from Varn, who merely smiled and never looked away from him.
“Hola!” Garin called out. “There you are. Eh, what’s this? I gather naught’s happened.”
“That’s not for me to say,” Rhodry said.
The puzzled envoy repeated his question