Petariel. Gesade. So many of those Kellen had ridden with, fought beside, dead or terribly wounded in these last battles. And how long until Idalia, Vestakia, Jermayan and Ancaladar, were added to the list? Everyone he knew, everyone he loved…
“Yes,” Kellen said, tightly. The last thing Jermayan needed was a display of emotion when he himself must be feeling worse than Kellen. He must have known his friends and fellow Knights for—a century, at least! These were Elves who should have been spending the next several centuries contemplating their gardens, practicing their arts, making beautiful things, and perfecting themselves. And now—now they were gone.
“We must take what comfort we can in having won,” Jermayan said somberly. “For the consequences of defeat are too great to bear.”
But are we winning, Jermayan? Kellen looked at his friend’s back, heard the weariness and near-despair in his voice, and did not ask his question aloud.
—«♦»—
THE following day, Kellen, Vestakia, and Keirasti met with Adaerion to discuss the best way of ridding the caverns of duergar. By now both their units had been brought up to full strength again, as Redhelwar reconfigured the hard-hit skirmishing units, and formed new ones.
The blizzard still hammered the land. The pavilions of the cavern camp were all half-buried in snow, and ropes had been strung between them to allow people to find their way between them. Without that, there was every chance of becoming lost, even in the few feet that separated one pavilion and the next.
“Kindolhinadetil has opened the archives at Ysterialpoerin to Redhelwar, so we now know something more than we did of the habits of duergar. They are not accustomed to luring many victims at one time, so if you approach them in force, at least some of you should be safe from their call, and able to attack them while the others are held in thrall,” Adaerion said.
“But our light will drive them into hiding, as it did the last time we entered the caverns,” Keirasti said.
“You will not have light,” Adaerion said. “The Wildmages have worked upon this problem since we understood we would have to hunt duergar. They have crafted Darksight hoods—enough for both your troops. They will not render you invisible as tarnkappa would, for we now know that would be useless, but you will be able to see your prey and approach him in darkness. And Artenel’s artificers have made you spears and nets, which will be of more use against these creatures than your swords.”
“So we can hunt them,” Keirasti said with grim satisfaction. “But it would be pleasant indeed to hear how we will find them.”
“The Crystal Spiders will tell us,” Kellen said. “They’re as eager as we are to free their home of what they call Dark Ones. They said they would give us aid. If we go into the caverns—past the village cavern—I think they’ll come out and speak with us.”
“All that remains is getting there,” Keirasti said. She glanced at the doorway of Adaerion’s pavilion and winced faintly as the wind shook the fabric vigorously.
“We might as well move into the caverns until we’ve cleared them,” Kellen said reluctantly, although the last thing he wanted to do was to move underground. “The big chamber near the entrance would do for a base camp. If we light up enough of the caverns—I can cast Coldfire on the walls, or Jermayan or one of the other Wildmages can—we’ll be safe from the duergar. And we won’t have to keep coming back and forth through the snow.” The camp was a mile away from the cavern mouth—close enough in ordinary winter weather, but not something he wanted to ride through twice a day in a storm. And it would be warmer underground as well; so much of their energy was being wasted in keeping warm that everyone was exhausted.
“A reasonable suggestion,” Adaerion said, with equal reluctance.
“Will the Crystal Spiders be able to tell you when the caverns are… empty?” Vestakia asked, speaking up for the first time.
“I’m not sure,” Kellen admitted. “They’re not very much like anything we’ve ever seen before, though they’re not Tainted. So when they say the caverns are empty, that’s when I’d like you to check and see what you feel.”
“Nothing, I hope,” Vestakia said. “But… you did say they could talk to each other, didn’t you? That the one lot in the trapped caverns talked to the ones here?”
Kellen nodded, frowning faintly in puzzlement, wondering what she was thinking.
“Well,” Vestakia said, “once the cavern is clear, maybe someone should find out just how far away they can talk to each other. Because the weather’s getting so bad now—if these storms keep up—that Jermayan and Ancaladar and I won’t be able to fly to search for the next Shadowed Elf cave, but if there are Crystal Spiders living in all the caves in the Elven Lands, and they know everything that goes on in their caves, and they all talk to each other, maybe they can tell you where the next cave you need to go to is.”
Everyone stared at her. It was such a simple, practical, obvious solution that none of them had thought of it. And it would save them an enormous amount of time—and danger to Vestakia.
If it worked.
“That is an excellent notion, Lady Vestakia,” Adaerion said with grave enthusiasm. “It is certainly something we must try, once the caverns are safe to enter.”
Kellen felt a sense of relief. Not so much at the thought that Vestakia wouldn’t be in constant danger—though that thought was never far from his mind—but at the thought that, if her plan worked, she would no longer be completely irreplaceable.
“Well,” Kellen said, “once we’ve gotten rid of the duergar and you tell us the caves are clear, I’ll introduce you to a bunch of giant glowing spiders and you can ask them yourself. How would you like that?”
Vestakia grinned at him. “Better than flying around for sennights freezing my… feet off, to tell the truth! And spiders certainly won’t care a bit what I look like, so we won’t have to persuade them that I’m not Tainted!”
—«♦»—
KELLEN and Keirasti moved their troops into the caverns. When the blizzard blew itself out, they barely noticed—their days had settled into a wearying, hideous routine as they searched the caverns, hunting duergars. With the dark-sight hoods the Wildmages had made for them, they could approach their prey in darkness and still see and hear one another, and the Crystal Spiders kept their promise, letting them know where to hunt.
The creatures had approached them eagerly as soon as they had ventured past the now-empty Shadowed Elf village. Remembering what Idalia had done, as soon as he saw them approach, Kellen pulled off his gauntlet and held out his bare hand.
The enormous spiders had climbed over him eagerly, until he was covered in them. Though they looked as insubstantial as thistledown, the whole swarm of them was surprisingly heavy. One of them walked out on his arm, and settled its body in his palm.
: You return.: He heard the voice in his mind. It tickled faintly. : Now we can help. You hunt the Black Minds. We know where they are.:
Show me, Kellen thought.
Pictures appeared in his mind—parts of the cave system he hadn’t seen yet. They were blurred, impossible to decipher.
The Crystal Spiders must have sensed his bewilderment, for the pictures ceased. : We will take you—near. And then you will know.:
Know? How? Kellen thought in bewilderment.
:You will know,: the voice in his head repeated.
The carpet of spiders ebbed from his body, and the Crystal Spiders began to scuttle away with surprising speed.
“We follow them,” Kellen said to the others.
Soon enough he understood what the Crystal Spiders had meant. After they had followed the Spiders for a while—being careful to mark their trail at intervals in order to find their way back—two of their party simply dropped their weapons and began walking forward.
“Rhufai!” Reyezeyt said sharply. “Janshil!”
“Let them go,” Kellen said quietly. “They’ll lead us right to where we need to go.”
The first kill was easy: though the duergar held ten of them spellbound at the end, it didn’t seem to understand that it was still vulnerable. The others rushed forward, confusing it, and Kellen and Keirasti spitted the duergar on their long wooden spears. In death it dissolved instantly, filling the cavern with the same gagging sweet-sick stench Kellen remembered from his first duergar kill.
It was the last time their hunts were to be this easy. The duergar seemed somehow to be able to silently communicate with one another. Once Kellen and the Elven Knights had killed the first one, the others seemed to understand there was a need to hide.
And if they could not hide, attack.
—«♦»—
“WATCH him! Watch him!” Kellen shouted. His voice echoed eerily in the vastness of the cavern.
A dozen of the Elves stood like sleepwalkers. The duergar was backed into a small alcove just off a larger chamber deep within the mountain. It crouched and snarled, revealing a mouth filled with formidable teeth.
Then it sprang at the entranced Elves.
Keirasti barely blocked its rush toward the helpless ones, sweeping it back toward the alcove with the shaft of her heavy spear. Then she, too, dropped the spear, sinking to her knees in a daze. The weapon clattered to the ground as she fell beneath the duergar’s spell. Some of the first victims were rousing now, as the creature turned its powers on other prey: Kellen, rushing forward to attack, found his way blocked by Seheimith and Nironoshan. He thrust them aside, but by then the duergar had released them and claimed others.