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navigating between these bloody rocks, we are certain to die clinging to the driftwood we once called a boat.”

Marblin tilted his head northward, indicating that he had spotted the natural docking ground they desired. Loric added his strength to his friend’s efforts to make the larboard turn, until their vessel ran onto the soft muddy bank. Even as the craft came to a stop, rain began falling.

Warnyck stirred as soon as the first splash hit him. As raindrops fattened and descended at increased rates, the scout gained insight as to what had awakened him and why they had made their unscheduled landing. Warnyck shook Barag awake and moved to assist his companions, who were already trying to tug the boat onto the squishy shore.

Kelvion was by Loric’s side, rubbing his fiery eyes into wakefulness. The knight kindly patted his shoulder and directed him to stand next to a boulder, away from the river. Loric and Marblin decided to flip the boat and prop one end of it atop that enormous rock. Then they began anchoring the craft to the ground to use it for shelter. Warnyck and Barag liked the idea so much that they threw themselves into the effort.

When they completed their objective, Loric noticed that Kelvion was not where he was

supposed to be. “Kelvey?” he called. “Has anyone seen Kelvion?” Shaking heads and grunts were his collective,
No,
as others in his party ducked under the roof of the shelter they had made.

“The last I saw of him, he was right beside you,” Marblin acknowledged.

“Kelvion!” Loric shouted, his alarm growing. “Kelvion, where are you?”

There was no answer. Loric’s companions began to stirring when they realized Kelvion’s disappearance was reason for concern. As Warnyck clambered out from under the boat, Loric spotted something the keen-eyed scout had failed to detect. In the corner, where the boulder met the cliff and the ground, there was a narrow opening in the stone. The crevice was too small for a man, but for a small boy it would have been only a tight fit.

Loric brushed past the scout, dropped to all fours and crawled closer to the hole. In his anxious pursuit of the missing six-year-old, he looked past scratchy markings leading into darkness. He peered into the crack, hoping to find a sign of Kelvion.

Loric found that the narrow crawl space before him opened into a capacious cavern, but he saw nothing of the boy he was looking for. He slowly panned his gaze along the walls of the chamber within. There was flitting movement off to his right. Loric fixed his eyes upon that point. There was no additional stirring, so he dismissed it as workings of his imagination.

“What do you see?” Warnyck asked him.

“Little, you can be sure,” Marblin muttered. He began to fish in his pack for flints and a torch, adding, “Not without light, leastways.”

“I see quite well,” Loric assured his friends, “but I do not see our boy, Kelvion. We must dig our way in.”

The companions used everything from weapons to helmets to widen the hole. Marblin

snapped off the tip of his blade, but aside from that, excavation was successful. Soon, even Barag’s bulk fit the hollow.

Loric discovered that it was no ordinary cave. Rather, it was a lair. Objects clattering beneath his feet were bones. Loric made no mention of his grim discovery, only warning his friends in a low whisper, “We must stick together, avoid use of lights and refrain from yelling after the boy.”

“Why?” demanded Marblin, who continued his hunt for tiny flints to produce the precious spark he desired most of all things.

Loric ignored the question, choosing instead to draw his sword with a soft, scratchy ring.

Warnyck and Barag drew their blades without need for further explanation, so he said only,

“Follow me.” Marblin tentatively bared steel and followed them.

The natural rock chamber in which they were standing formed a near-perfect circle,

throughout scattered with jutting outcroppings capable of obscuring side passages from view.

Loric led them toward the nearest such formation, his eyes ever scanning the walls and ceiling of the secret lair. Another shadowy scurrying above him confirmed his suspicions that even now some creature or creatures were lurking there.

Loric made no sign, but Warnyck’s sharp intake of breath informed him that the scout also sensed danger to his party. Loric felt assured that Kelvion had come into this chamber. He could only hope that the boy was hiding somewhere, frightened and alone in the dark, stony hollow.

The knight pressed on, urgency demanding bolder and hastier movements, which he eagerly provided for the sake of the boy he had lost.

Four adventurers passed the first jutting pillar of rock, but no passage opened unto them.

Loric beckoned his friends to keep up as he slunk toward the next protruding column, but then he remembered they could not see him, so he gave his biceps a hard double pat. He felt a cool draft.

Then he spotted the low tunnel from whence it came. It opened about calf high to his left. Using his sword tip as a guide, Loric dropped to his knees and peered into the crawl space.

A wide valley gaped below the narrow path awaiting Loric and his companions. Loric

squeezed his way through first. He forgot shadowy forms skittering in the heights, as the enormity of the chamber came clear to him. A city ruin was nestled in steep cliffs across the chasm from his party. A swift stream flowed far below the abandoned city, likely feeding the Enchanted River. A friendly nudge from Warnyck reminded Loric that his companions needed room to join him on the ledge, but glowing points of two fiery eyes further down the walkway set his mind back on his true purpose for entering the cave.

As Loric made his way toward Kelvion, the boy shouted, “Loric! I’m glad you’re here. Isn’t this place something?” He paused, as if uncertain, before he added in a scarce whisper, “But it’s kind of scary too.”

Loric was about to respond that the lost city was amazing, and add that Kelvion should come along with him, when Marblin slipped down. His blade clattered to the stone floor with a resounding
clang
. The sound echoed from the ceiling high above to the very bowels of the lair, in depths lost to measures of time and distance. High-pitched chirps and beatings of leathery wings were telling signs that they had disturbed innumerable bats resting in those jagged heights above them.

Loric raced to Kelvion with the intention of pulling him to the ground, so he could shield him from frenzied flights of distressed bats. As he tugged the shrieking boy earthward, he made a quick glance toward the ceiling. Then he noticed other inhabitants of the cavern. Loric nudged Kelvion into a crawl. He stooped over the lad as he moved, keeping his sword and shield poised to ward off incoming monsters.

Those little beasts were unlike anything Loric and his friends had seen before, although Warnyck and company did not see them at all. Initially, they hovered down on unwary bats.

Loric saw how enthusiastically they hunted. He feared they were going to descend on his party in their zealous feast. He had good reason to anticipate such an ill turn. Those creatures were like wavering discs, some two feet in diameter and a handbreadth in thickness. They had leathery hides of gray and undersides bristling with thick collections of thorny teeth. By legend, the creatures were Floating Shadows, but to the son of Palendar and his fellow wayfarers they were simply an unwelcome menace.

Loric watched Floating Shadows assail helpless bats in wonder and amazement, for their dance was hypnotic to behold. Those creatures dropped onto their prey, and their outer circumferences continued their strange wavering motions while the rest of their bodily masses stretched about those doomed bats to ensnare them. Those leathery prisons then worked up and down until those helpless victims were devoured, at which time they flapped back to their original shapes, discarding bones and cartilage. Then those beastly predators fluttered down to enwrap the next available targets in their paths.

Kelvion curled into a ball and started crying. Loric forgot how much that was to complicate his party’s present dilemma, until the power of Kelvion’s fit manifested itself as a minor earthquake. Amidst all other chaos surrounding the companions in that moment, the cavern started rumbling. Stalactites and large sections of limestone fell from high above.

Warnyck, Marblin and Barag were too busy dodging bats to realize that a greater evil was about to assail them; and the quaking ground only served as an additional distraction to them.

Loric hung between a shout to exit the cavern and a call for light. Floating Shadows came into the chamber from the hole at their backs. They had to stand and fight.

“Behind you!” Loric cried, as he swung the Sword of Logant in a wide-sweeping upward

arc. The blade clove the creature above him in two, but three smaller Shadows jumped from its back. “Marblin, strike your light!” he called. Then he ran through one of the young, beat back another with his shield and dodged the last. As the torch flickered and his eyes came into focus, Loric saw Warnyck set himself to take a swing at the Floating Shadow nearest him. Loric grabbed Kelvion and dove away from a plummeting chunk of limestone, as he warned his

friends, “Beware! They carry offspring on their backs.”

Warnyck slashed across the monster and made an immediate backslash as miniature

Shadows sprang from the parent creature’s back. His second stroke swept through two of the younglings, while he dodged a third. The fourth latched onto the scout’s back. He cried out, struggling to stop the monster from succeeding in its attack against his leather jerkin and the skin beneath.

Just as the pumping body of the Floating Shadow repositioned itself for a better taste of its victim, Barag provided thudding relief from the feeding wretch with a backhanded wallop. Upon relieving the scout’s distress, the bulky warrior resumed focus on the creature confronting him, skillfully skewered it and flung it into the valley.

Meanwhile, Marblin was in a predicament. He had retrieved his sword and slain one

Floating Shadow with it, but he had overextended himself on his follow through and a collapsing boulder had landed across the jagged, pointless end of his damaged weapon. The Moonwatcher could not free his blade, and two of little Shadows were fast hovering toward him. In addition to those surviving offspring, another full-grown creature was hovering near him.

Loric witnessed Marblin’s powerful first stroke and his subsequent overextension,

whereupon he resolved to help his friend. The Sword of Logant hummed repeatedly as Loric hooked his shield arm about Kelvion’s waist and charged off-balance to the rescue. Loric dispatched Floating Shadow after Floating Shadow with a clean cut of steel and a spray of blood, until he rejoined his companions and effectively eradicated Marblin’s assailants.

“This way!” Loric shouted, indicating the hole that had brought them onto the ledge.

Warnyck needed no such direction. He ducked his head and moved his battered body

through the narrow opening. Barag passed Kelvion through the hole to the scout. Then he struggled to make his exit behind the boy. Loric and Marblin, the latter of whom had snapped off three more inches of his brittle blade to break it loose from the boulder, covered their hasty retreat, hacking apart each Floating Shadow that came close to a companion. Now one of them had to endure that unenviable task alone, while the other fled.

Five Floating Shadows settled on the trembling shelf, having missed their chosen victims.

Those grounded creatures began pumping their bodies in their unusual chewing motions to launch themselves skyward again. With countless Floating Shadows falling like autumn leaves, and five more launching themselves toward Loric and Marblin, there seemed to be no way for the last man to escape thousands of spiny teeth.

Loric shouted, “Go, Marblin!”

Marblin did not hesitate or question his leader’s order. He simply choked, “Come along behind me, lad. We’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”

Loric painted the cavern wall with Floating Shadow blood. “Do not tarry overlong,” he said sternly. “I will catch up if I can. Just go!”

Marblin slithered through the gap in the cavern wall, from whence Loric heard him say, “He does not want us to wait here.”

“We must stay!” Barag cried. “We must help Loric!”

Marblin argued, “We must honor his wishes. Pray to Great Donigan, and hope that he will crawl through that hole and walk from this lair alive.”

Warnyck spat bitterly, “Beledon is counting on the Knight of Shimmermir and Taeglin. He should have come through after Kelvey.”

Barag roared, “I’ll go get him!”

Marblin threatened, “Don’t make me hurt you, friends. Loric said keep moving.”

“There, there, Kelvey,” Barag gently encouraged the boy. “Loric will be alright. You will see.”

As they left, Loric’s desperate battle went on. He cut and bashed, kicked and smashed at the greedy maws descending upon him, until he at last had a moment to duck toward the hole. He felt spiny teeth as he wriggled through the narrow opening--over a hundred torturous needles with each bite.

A pair of hot ingots was looking back at Loric as he emerged. He first questioned the sense of his companions, to leave the boy alone in the beastly den, when they had gone to so much effort to rescue him. Then Loric saw that Marblin was with him. “We must go,” the old guard encouraged the lad.

“Loric!” Kelvion cried, pointing back to the wounded knight.

Loric rose and carefully positioned his sword point to end the Floating Shadows on his chest, his shoulder and his calf, while he slammed his back against the cavern wall to do for the one he could not reach. Afterward, he staggered toward Marblin and the boy that he had lost and found.

Chapter Twenty

Tangles of Dimwood

The companions used a heavy slab of rock to block the cavern. Then they took time out to assess the severity of their many collective wounds. Marblin and Barag had only picked up minor scrapes and bruises for their parts in the encounter, but Warnyck and Loric had earned painful, worrisome injuries.