The Sword in the Cave
on it. The smell was much stronger.
The sailors had followed her up to the cave. "Harna," she said, "wait here at the mouth and watch her. The rest,
with me." And without speaking the sailors fell in behind her, Gint and Turlam and an Islander named Reoda, and
followed her light deeper into the cave.
They had not gone far when Drea became aware of a tension, almost a vibration, in the air around her. The smell
had held steady, but now a pulse, almost a hum, seems to catch her ears. She stopped, watched her light fade out,
and with an incantation summoned a new one. She looked about for what might be causing the hum, but saw
nothing but the dark walls of the cave, which had held long in a tunnel shape around them, like a corridor. A
strange impulse came to her, and stepping to the wall to her left, she put out a hand and touched it.
Immediately a wave of thoughts, sounds, and visions flooded her mind. They came from nowhere, and were pressed
in together, making a chaos of perception, there was blood and screaming and the smell of charred flesh, and
beyond that a hunger indescribable. An endless feeding waste that could never be satisfied, only delayed.
"I think we should leave this cave," she said
"Aye," said Gint, and with no more commentary than that, they turned back, steps careful at first, then gradually
becoming swifter and less sure as the light at the end of the cave, with Harna and the girl and the Golden Sword
illuminated in silhouette. Reoda tripped on a rock and fell on his face, his sailor's cutlass clattering away from him.
He groaned.
When Drea got close to Harna, Gint and Turlam had stopped to pull their comrade up. Drea saw that Harna was
staring intently at the girl, and she at him. Their eyes were locked like an Aka snake and its prey. Harna's hand,
extended, was just above the hilt of the golden sword. Too late, Drea realized something. Too late, she reached out.
Harna's hand fell on the sword, and gripping it, he gave it a powerful tug. It did not come loose, but everything else
did.
At once, three things happened. First, the very mountain seem to come alive, reverberating to a music beyond
mortal ken. The walls of the cave shoved cruelly together, and up and down, and Gint and Turlam and Reoda
slipped back by the topsy-turvy sliding back down the cave they had been trying to escape, from which they never
emerged while the world lasted. Second, the girl heaved herself forward, sprouted a cruel beak, black leather
wings, and talons like daggers, and she tore immediately into Harna, who, still under her spell, made no sound.
Third, Drea said to herself Tygg will never let me hear the end of this.
"The Seven Cities were Folost on the tip of the Great Sea,
Kalavash at the heart of Adorna,
Bur-Tun of the glittering North,
Pasun the Blossom of the South,
Beg-Elu the Golden,
IV