The Savage Caves

11

Regdar and Naull managed to find a dry torch and light it before the effects of the light spell wore off. Drying everything out, though, was a lost cause, and Regdar grimly accepted the fact that he was going to be wet and cold for a long time. He certainly wasn’t about to take off his armor. Regdar found no small consolation, though, in the fact that they seemed to have managed to keep hold of everything they fell into the water with—or, at least, everything that fell in with them.

They both looked up at the waterfall, which disappeared into the darkness above. Its source was far above the reach of Regdar’s feeble torchlight, but he could see enough to realize that they would have to find a different way out. Even if Naull could climb as well as he could, they would have to work against falling water the whole way. The fact that they had gotten hopelessly turned around in the first fall was enough for Regdar to admit to himself that even if they could manage the climb, they would still be lost.

He turned to face the only other way out of the chamber: a dark mouth that emptied into a high-ceilinged cave, the floor of which sloped a bit downward. They’d be going deeper, but they’d be going somewhere. On his left, another, smaller waterfall, splashed into a second pool.

“Do you think there’s any way Jozan and Lidda could find us?” Naull asked, her voice ricocheting from the rough stone walls. “Maybe there’s only this one way down.”

Regdar shrugged, turning away, and didn’t tell her what he really thought.

“We should find another way out,” he said. “Once we’re back on the surface, we can find the pit we climbed down. Jozan and Lidda might be waiting for us there.”

“You think they’d leave without us?”

“I hope so,” he said.

She gave him an odd look, and he turned away again.

“We should go,” he said. “It looks like there’s only one way—”

Naull hissed at him and touched him on the arm. Her head was cocked to one side, and her face had drained of what little color the cold water had left her. Regdar put a hand on the hilt of his sword but didn’t draw it. He listened, but all he heard at first was the echoing rush and spatter of the waterfalls. Naull pulled gently on his arm and turned to face him. Regdar bent slightly at the waist, bringing his ear close to her upturned face. He felt his skin tingle when her breath touched the side of his neck.

“I hear voices,” she whispered, then glanced at the dark cave mouth.

Regdar straightened and took a few slow, silent steps toward the cave mouth. He bent a little closer and finally heard what Naull had described as voices. To Regdar they sounded more like grunts. He was put in the mind of pigs but couldn’t imagine they’d run across any pigs the gods knew how deep underground.

Naull stepped up next to him, standing very close. He could feel her anxiety but had no idea how to reassure her. If there was something grunting down that tunnel, they were going to have to run into it sooner or later. It was their only way out.

He bent down to whisper in her ear and could see her tense as he came in close.

“We have to see what it is,” he said. “Stay close behind me.”

Standing, he drew his sword as slowly and as quietly as he could, not waiting for an answer from Naull. Regdar felt better with his sword in his hand. Holding the torch out in front of him, he slid up to the ragged stone wall to his right. He reached back to motion Naull to follow his lead, and the young mage complied. They started moving slowly, as quietly as they could under the less-than-favorable circumstances, and found that the floor sloped rather less severely at the edge. There were a few stalagmites to hang on to as they went, and as slowly as they walked they both managed to get onto level ground without slipping.

The tunnel was about twenty-five feet wide where it emptied into the chamber. The ceiling was still too far over their heads to see. To Regdar it seemed as if they were traveling in a bubble of dull orange torchlight, with nothing around them on all sides but utter blackness. He found it unsettling, but the presence of the young mage was somehow comforting. She was certainly more nervous than he was—he could see her hands shaking and the tight-set line of her jaw—but at least he wasn’t alone. Though he rarely sought refuge in idle chatter, he wished he could speak to her, but with the grunting and snorting sounds echoing ever more loudly—ever more closely—in front of them, he kept his mouth shut.

When he almost fell over a sudden drop-off, he cursed his wandering thoughts. His foot dangled in midair for a heart-stopping moment before he drew back, pushing Naull gently away with his broad back. He swung his torch slowly in front of him.

There was a deep depression in the side of the tunnel, a good four feet deeper than Regdar was tall. The floor fell away all at once in an irregular line. Below was the dark mouth of a side-passage. Regdar bent forward a bit farther, trying to listen down the much more confined space.

He turned back to Naull, who was gazing at him expectantly, and whispered, “I don’t think the sounds are coming from there.”

He was being honest but was secretly worried that maybe he was hearing what he wanted to hear. Regdar wasn’t the slightest bit pleased with the idea of climbing down into an even smaller, tighter space.

He could see Naull trying to listen, and after a bit she nodded and whispered, “It’s straight ahead. What is it?”

Regdar shrugged. He could hear the grunting sounds much more clearly, the echoing hiss of the waterfalls behind him only barely audible.

He held his torch out to the side and walked carefully, still trying to be as quiet as he could. Naull grabbed hold of his armor and walked just as carefully behind him. Together they traced the outline of the drop-off and finally came back to the jagged stone wall.

They continued following the wall for maybe twenty or thirty feet before Naull, still holding Regdar’s tassets, whispered, “Wait.”

The fighter stopped and was about to turn around but stopped himself. Instead, he swiveled his head, so she wouldn’t let go.

“Won’t it be able to see the torch?” she asked.

It took Regdar a moment or two to sort out what she meant, but when he did, his face flushed. They were walking through pitch darkness with a lit torch. They could tiptoe all they wanted, but if whatever it was that was grunting had eyes, they’d be as obvious as a roc in a birdbath.

“Can you cast a spell to…?” Regdar wasn’t sure what he hoped a spell might do for them.

Naull shook her head and looked at him imploringly.

He had no idea what to do. They couldn’t see in the dark. They had to have the torch. If it was a lantern they might be able to shield it somehow, but a torch…

“We have no choice,” he whispered.

Naull looked like she was going to say something but didn’t.

He turned back and kept moving along the wall, Naull still in tow.

They stopped when the edge of the torchlight revealed a narrowing of the tunnel ahead of them. The grunting noises came intermittently, echoing, but clearly in front of them. To the right, the wall they’d been following curved outward and wrapped around a pool of clear water so still Regdar couldn’t tell if he was seeing stalagmites jutting up from the pool’s bottom or reflections of the stalactites hanging above it. The tunnel narrowed to less than ten feet, though the ceiling was still too high above them to see. To the left, Regdar could barely make out what might have been another side-passage. He motioned Naull forward then crossed to the other side, hugging the left wall with the torch, his sword arm away from the rock in hopes of both hiding the torchlight and giving him more room to fight.

The cave continued to widen, then the wall curved back inward, and Regdar stopped again. Across the passage and forward was another pool of still, clear water, and deeper in was the unmistakable orange glow of torchlight.

“Do you see that?” Regdar whispered.

Torches meant at least some civilization. Even if it was only goblins living there, they might convince the humanoids—one way or another—to show them the way out.

Naull nodded and replied, “Put your torch out.”

Excited, Regdar tossed his torch into the pool across the narrow tunnel.

Even as it sailed through the air, Regdar cringed and almost cursed aloud. When the flame hit the cold water with a deafening hiss followed by the torch’s resounding splash, he actually whispered, “Damn it,” and pressed his back against the stone wall.

Naull followed his lead, and both of them were keenly aware that the grunting noises had abruptly stopped.

Sure that whatever it was knew they were there, it occurred to Regdar that he should just run in and get it—whatever “it” might be—over with, but he had to think of Naull. If he went down fighting because he’d prematurely revealed himself to an enemy, that would be one thing, but to bring Naull with him…

Before Regdar could continue wrestling with this dilemma, the grunting noises began again.

“It’s got to be goblins,” Naull whispered.

Regdar turned to her and could see the impatience in her face. She curled both hands around her staff and nodded once, sharply, toward the torchlight.

Regdar waved her back then leaned forward and to his right to peer around the cave wall.

From where he stood, Regdar could see a pool of light cast by a torch that had been set into a crack in the right-hand wall, about ten feet past the edge of the second pool—about forty feet all together from Regdar. Between the far edge of the pool and the torch was a cage constructed of broken-off stalactites held together by what looked like the same thick spidersilk as the rope ladder. A spider identical to the ones they’d fought on the surface picked its way along the dome-shaped top of the stone cage as if it was testing the spidersilk ties. Inside, cowering in the half of the cage floor closest to the wall, was a tightly pressed group of goblins.

The little creatures looked even more ragged than the goblins they’d seen before. What clothes they wore were rarely more than strips of torn cloth. Most if not all of them were wounded in some way—at least the odd scrape or gray-orange bruise—and none of them were armed.

Regdar assumed that they either hadn’t heard his torch go out or didn’t care. They were all looking away. He motioned Naull to look, and she slid up next to him close enough that he could feel her trembling.

Beyond the first cage was one more, and Regdar thought he could see just the edge of a third. A second torch burned even farther down, and Regdar thought there might be another pool along the right-hand wall just past the farther cages. In the second cage was another group of goblins. Regdar couldn’t make out details, but something about the way they clustered to the far end of the cage made him think that they were in no better shape either physically or mentally than the goblins in the cage closer to him.

“More spiders,” Naull whispered.

Regdar followed her gaze to the space between the two cages, where two of the huge spiders were wandering across the uneven floor. They disappeared from sight to the left. Regdar was about to ask Naull if she thought it was possible that the spiders were keeping the goblins captive—maybe as retribution for killing them and using their bodies to make bowls and tools—when the caged goblins murmured, grunted, and cowered even lower in their cages.

Regdar heard more of the guttural grunts and realized that they had been hearing voices after all, just voices speaking the primitive language of the subterranean humanoids.

“What’s going on?” Naull asked.

“The jailer’s coming,” Regdar guessed, eyes glued to the cages.

Regdar hoped that he’d see a human approach the cages. He hoped it was anyone he might be able to talk to. Regdar didn’t really care why the goblins were in cages. His limited experience of them had been generally negative, and he’d never heard a kind word spoken of the nasty little creatures. Regdar hoped that whoever was holding them would be good enough to show them the way out, but his more rational side knew that the chance of that was remote at best. The chances were better that whoever—or whatever—was holding the goblins prisoner would be even worse.

His answer came soon enough, when shadows flickered across the stone floor and the sound of shuffling footsteps echoed through the cave. Regdar crossed the fingers of his left hand, feebly hoping to see anything but a goblin.

The jailer was another goblin and one that looked no more civilized than its prisoners. This one was armed, though, and brought one of its friends with it.

The jailer barked out unintelligible commands at the caged goblins, and its comrade stepped up to slice open some of the spidersilk with a rusty old dagger. The spider that had been skittering about the top of the cage turned and crawled down toward the now open cage with some determination. Two of the armed goblins went into the cage and dragged one of the prisoners out.

This goblin looked particularly abused, but there was something about the set of its shoulders and the way it made the jailers work to move it, that was almost impressive to Regdar. Its fellow goblins cowered only lower still. When the jailers turned their charge in Regdar’s direction, the fighter was sure he saw a look of stern disappointment, even contempt, on the stiff prisoner’s face.

The jailers dragged the goblin away, and the spider set immediately to work repairing the webs holding the cage closed. None of the goblin prisoners made a move to escape.

Regdar turned to Naull and said, “We’re following them.”