Temple Hill - Drew Karpyshyn [113]
"I'll be here waiting," he replied. A second later he added, "You two be careful."
Either they had already set off and hadn't heard him, or they didn't see any point in wasting time answering back. Whatever the case, Corin's only reply was the echo of his own voice bouncing off the tunnel walls.
He stood Fendel's staff in the crook formed by the tunnel wall and one of the granite stones now blocking his path. The warm glow of the gnome's magic gave Corin enough light to make out his immediate surroundings, but little else.
Ever vigilant for the sounds of an unseen enemy approaching through the gloom, Corin settled himself down, sitting with his back against one of the granite slabs. Sooner or later, Fendel and Lhasha would find him. There was nothing to do but wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Corin was used to waiting. During his time as a White Shield, he had spent more than his share of dark nights guarding caravans or standing watch over an encampment. He was used to doing nothing but sitting and staring, eyes focused only on the impenetrable darkness.
There were tricks a soldier could use to pass the hours on a long watch, ways to relieve the monotony of duty. Corin's favorite was counting heartbeats. It had the advantage of helping him keep track of time as it passed. Sixty beats a minute. Ten minutes passed, twenty. Thirty.
Of course, time was always relative, and in these particular circumstances it was essentially meaningless. It might take Lhasha and Fendel an hour to find an alternate route back to where Corin waited. Or four hours. Or anywhere in between. They would get there when they got there, and tracking every minute wouldn't speed things up.
Still, counting heartbeats gave him something to do, a way to stave off the boredom. At four thousand beats, something happened.
Or rather, something stopped happening. Upon first escaping from the beholder and entering the smugglers' tunnels, Corin had been struck by the oppressive silence, marked only by the far-off sounds of the battle in the vault and punctuated by the occasional distant scream of one who fell victim to the perils of the labyrinth.
But eventually, Corin's ears had begun to pick up faint, half-imagined noises coming from the darkness. The scuttle of beetles scattering before the light, never seen but always there. The scampering of tiny, clawed feet. Rats, subterranean lizards, and other predators were fleeing before the strange intruders in their realm of eternal night.
Once noticed, these ambient sounds were instinctively dismissed, pushed to a subconscious level of awareness within Corin's mind. Suddenly, the sounds stopped, vanishing completely as the unseen creatures in the shadows froze or scurried away to safety through the narrow cracks and fissures in the stone. Corin finally understood what true silence was.
The malevolent eyes that Corin had felt hounding his every step were gone, too. Gripping his swords tightly, Corin rose silently to his feet, moving out from the granite wall behind him. He was unsure what to expect, but he wanted to have room to maneuver.
The silence was soon broken by the sound of someone approaching. The noise was still far off but unmistakable. Deep rasping breaths. Heavy, methodical footsteps. The sharp chink of metal rings sliding across each other with every stride of the armored individual advancing.
No glimmer of light betrayed the progress of the one approaching. The being could see in the dark, Corin realized. Like a half-elf, or gnome, or orog.
When Graal finally emerged, stepping boldly into the light of Fendel's glowing staff, Corin wasn't surprised, and neither was his opponent.
"And so my hunt is over," Graal growled. "We have unfinished business, White Shield."
Corin said nothing, but held his ground.
Graal hesitated. "You no longer fear me." His voice was somewhere between disbelief and mockery.
Corin made no reply. He owed this beast no explanations.