“Yes,” she whispered.
“How like him.” Fenworth shuffled off to the others, carrying parcels of food in his arms.
Leetu moved closer to the hole and leaned forward. “Kale, you haven’t been talking with Risto, have you?”
“No!” Kale shifted uncomfortably. “Not much.”
The frown disappeared from Leetu’s face and compassion registered in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
Kale took a big breath. “I think so.”
“He lies.”
“Yes.”
“It sounds like truth.”
“Yes.”
Leetu grinned and winked at Kale. “If you were an emerlindian, you’d be a shade darker.”
Kale’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut before Leetu could say something about her not knowing anything or having a lot to learn.
Dar sprinted across the prison cell, waving his harmonica.
“Kale!” He reached a hand through the opening to touch the one she had resting there. “You are a sight for sore eyes, what little I can see of you. You have the meech egg?”
She nodded.
“She needs to take it out of here.” Leetu sounded practical and gruff again. “We have our weapons. We can escape. You go on before us. Don’t wait.”
Kale shook her head. “I’m getting nowhere. I need help.”
Lee Ark joined them. He no longer held one injured arm cradled against his chest. “I agree with the o’rant girl. Leetu, you assume too much. Her talents are strong, but she is untrained. Paladin chose her, which certifies her ability, but he also chose us to accompany her. We are stronger together.”
Dar looked into Kale’s eyes and gave her another wink. He turned to Lee Ark and nodded pointedly at the hole through which Kale stared. “It seems to me that we have a problem in this togetherness thing.”
Their marione commander gave a decisive nod and walked back to confer with Brunstetter. The little dragons flew back to the hole and squeezed through. Both were exhilarated over their success. They chattered to each other until Kale interrupted.
“I don’t think Brunstetter can move any of this rock.”
Metta and Gymn both cocked their heads and inspected the wall of granite as they sat on her shoulder. They muttered to each other, and Kale got the gist of their thoughts. People had the strangest notions of how to spend their time.
“They want to get out of the dungeon,” she explained. “Can you look further down this tunnel and see if there is a way out?”
They darted off without responding. Brunstetter looked the hole over. Fenworth examined it as well.
“Tut-tut. Some things can’t be moved easily. I could make Kale smaller if you want her in here with us,” he offered. “But it would be more to the point for us to go out there with her. Can’t say I like these accommodations. Food is inedible as well.”
“They haven’t brought us any food,” said Librettowit at his elbow.
The wizard jumped. “Don’t scare me like that, Wit. Why aren’t you at your books? Proves my point though. Can’t very well eat food that isn’t served. Therefore, it is inedible.” He turned and whispered to Dar in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “Sneaky, quiet fellows are librarians. One moment he has his nose in a book, the next he’s dragging a decent, respectable wizard off on a harrowing quest. No respect for my age and station in life. Librettowit’s useful, I have to admit. Still, he can’t cook. He’s my friend, though, and you have to make allowances for friends. None of them are perfect. Very few of them can cook.”
“Harrumph!” grunted Librettowit and tramped away. The wizard, shaking his head in befuddlement, watched the tumanhofer stomp across the cell.
Kale’s attention caught on the flutter of leathery wings. Metta and Gymn had returned.
“They’ve found Shimeran and Seezle,” Kale told Lee Ark. “I’m going to go see if I can get them out. Then we’ll come back for you.”
Lee Ark nodded.
“You might remember,” interrupted Leetu in Kale’s mind, “ who is in command. It is more proper to ask Lee Ark if you can go, rather than tell him.”
Kale felt her face burn red. She looked quickly from Leetu’s disapproving face to Lee Ark’s amused one. She heard Dar chuckle and looked at him.
“I think,” said the doneel with a cocky grin, “our little o’rant slave girl is doing a good job of thinking for herself.”
Are you sure you don’t read my mind?
“Never. Go see if you can help our kimen friends.”
Kale followed Metta and Gymn, dragging the meech egg on the cape. The passageway came to an abrupt end, opening into a chamber. Kale crouched in the tunnel about halfway up one wall.
In the center of this stone room, a sphere floated. Smaller than the ones Kale had seen from a distance, hanging over the city of Vendela, this orb contained the two kimens. Kale caught her breath. Shimeran and Seezle sat back to back, legs crossed, knees pulled up to their chins, eyes closed, and their arms folded and resting on their knees. Their hair fell limply around their shoulders and flowed to their feet. As still as stone, they looked liked lifeless carvings.
Kale examined the empty room. She could drop to the floor some six feet below her, but how would she reach the floating sphere?
“Can you fly to them?” she asked her companions.
The emphatic no surprised Kale.
“Shimeran? Seezle?”
No response.
Shimeran! Seezle!
Still no response. She wouldn’t give up. Around the room many tunnels led out of the chamber. If she could find something to aid her in one of those tunnels…
She tied the blue scarf to the corners of the cape once more, slipped the makeshift sling onto her back and sat down on the rock edge, preparing to jump to the ground. Her legs and feet felt cold as if she had submerged them into Baltzentor’s Pond near River Away.
It must have something to do with whatever it is that floats the ball.
Both Metta and Gymn objected, chittering warnings about the room, but their thoughts came in an overlapping rush. Kale couldn’t sort them out, and she was in no mood to wait. She pushed off the shelf created by the end of the tunnel and plunged into air as thick as water.
She fell but did not land on the floor. The meech egg thumped against her back. Kale bobbed upward like a cork on a fishing line. It felt so much like being in the pond Kale instinctively kicked her legs and “swam” toward the orb. She put both hands on the surface of the sphere and felt the transparent material give under her palms. She pushed harder but did not break through. However, in response to her shove, the orb floated away from her.
I wonder if I could get this ball back to Fenworth. He could probably open it.
She looked back at the tunnel where Metta and Gymn sat anxiously waiting for her.
That direction only takes me back to a tiny slit in the wall.
She looked at the numerous other openings leading out of the small chamber. She made up her mind almost immediately.
That one looks the right size and the right direction.
Kale shivered against the cold air surrounding her.
Best get moving before I freeze.
She put her shoulder to the sphere and pushed, moving her legs in a strong swimmer’s kick. The meech egg dragged behind her, making her movements clumsy. Finally, she bumped into the wall above the tunnel she’d picked out. She pulled herself to the top of the kimens’ prison and sat on it to push it downward. After several tries she pushed it into the rock opening.
The sphere burst, spilling Shimeran and Seezle onto the hard floor. A sparkling light filled the room for an instant. The kimens curled into balls, rolled over a couple of times, then sprang to their feet. They shook their heads, sending their already wild hair flying in all directions.
Shimeran placed his hands on his hips and surveyed his surroundings. Seezle squealed with delight and sprang across the expanse to hug Kale’s neck.
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“I thought you were dead.” Kale laughed with relief. Seezle’s warm body tickled a little.
“Whyever did you think that?” asked Shimeran.
“You were so still.”
“We were waiting.”
“Your lights weren’t shining.”
Seezle giggled. “You saw our underwear.”
Shimeran gave his sister an impatient look.
Kale wrinkled her brow, trying to remember what the stonelike figures of the two kimens looked like. “Uh, I don’t remember seeing anything but a lot of hair.”
That sent Seezle into another round of giggles accompanied by acrobatics.
Shimeran sighed. “Kimen skin is very much like a covering, like a finely knitted stocking without seams.” He scowled at Seezle. She quit prancing and stood in one place but continued to quiver with glee. Shimeran focused on Kale.
“Where are the others?”
Kale pointed across the room behind her. “Gymn and Metta are waiting over there. Fenworth and the others are in a prison cell.”
“Can you find them from here?”
Kale took a moment to get her bearings and locate Leetu. She tilted her head toward the tunnel behind them. “They should be down that way. But half these tunnels end abruptly, and you have to backtrack.”
The kimen leader nodded. “Do you need help fetching the minor dragons?”
“No.”
“Then do so quickly.”
He could have said thanks.
The thought startled her. Had Risto said that? No, it was her own thought. Where was Risto all this time? Why was he so quiet and not pestering her?
Kale dove into the room and swam across as easily as if she were swimming to the opposite shore of Baltzentor’s Pond. The dragons would not fly in the room, but rode back across on Kale’s head. Their clawed feet dug into her scalp. They jumped off into the opening just as they reached it and stood huddled together looking fearfully at the now-deserted chamber.
“Why do they find that place so dreadful?” Kale asked.
“The heavy air would have clogged their tiny lungs,” said Shimeran.
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“No, you probably could have lasted an hour or more before you realized you were drowning.”
Kale looked back into the clear air and wondered what other hidden dangers they would encounter on this quest.
She shifted the sling on her back and turned to follow the others down the passageway.
The meech egg thrummed. A loud thrum. It vibrated her shoulder blades. It could be heard distinctly in the stone tunnel. It echoed and grew louder with each beat. Surely every bisonbeck in the region could hear the meech egg’s contented thrum.
47
WHICH WAY OUT?
As Shimeran, Seezle, Kale, and the dragons approached the dungeon cell from one end of the long tunnel, four bisonbeck guards approached it from the other.
“We heard you coming,” said Dar when they reached the cell.
“So did they,” Kale answered, nodding to the burly men out of the prisoners’ sight.
Shimeran dropped to one knee beside the locked door and placed his hands in a cup to receive his sister’s tiny feet. Seezle stood on this makeshift boost and reached a hand inside the keyhole. In a moment the door swung open. Lee Ark, Brunstetter, Dar, and Leetu jumped into the corridor with their weapons ready. The bisonbecks charged.
Leetu slew the lead soldier with an arrow. Dar let fly two small daggers and downed another. Though Lee Ark and Brunstetter were massive, they moved with quick precision. The marione and urohm dispatched the remaining two warriors in a brief flurry of hand-to-hand combat.
“Is there any way to quiet that egg?” Lee Ark asked as he cleaned his blade before sheathing it.
The egg’s monotone thrum, drowned out in the din of battle, now sounded loud in the rock corridor. It hung against Kale’s back, gently vibrating.
The marione commander looked straight at Kale, and she suddenly felt guilty. “No, I mean, I don’t know.” She looked at Leetu and Dar. Both shrugged and looked to Fenworth. He shook his head and turned to his librarian.
“Well?” The wizard cocked an eyebrow.
“I believe,” said Librettowit, “Kale is carrying the book containing a reference to meech eggs in her cape.”
Kale slipped the sling off her back and quickly located the books. She pulled out a heavy brown volume.
Librettowit frowned and shook his head. “No, smaller.”
He rejected each book Kale found until she reached her arm into the hollow up to her shoulder and recovered a small blue leather book with ancient yellowed pages.
The librarian frowned as he opened it. “Someone has been restoring these volumes.” He leveled a glare at the o’rant girl. “Risky business. You could do a lot of damage.”
Kale shook her head and spread her hands in an innocent gesture. “Not me, it was the cape.”
Librettowit carefully turned the fragile pages until he came to a passage of interest. He harrumphed a few times as he read.
“I could send it to my castle,” suggested Fenworth.
“No,” said the tumanhofer and scratched his brow.
“Use it to bake a cake and then do the backward spell once we’re out of this hideous mountain.”
“No,” said Librettowit and squinted fiercely behind his spectacles.
Lee Ark, Brunstetter, and Leetu stood at attention. Dar shifted from foot to foot. With big yawns, the minor dragons disappeared into their pocket-dens. Fenworth stroked his beard, dislodging a whole family of mice and a sparrow.
“Just as I feared,” Librettowit said.
“What can we do?” asked the wizard.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You went to university so that in a time of crisis you come up with nothing? Preposterous. We should have brought a plumber instead of a librarian.”
He turned to address Lee Ark. “I knew it at the time, but he mopes if you leave him at home.”
The tumanhofer’s face went red beneath his whiskers. With his book tucked under one arm, he stepped in front of the old wizard and with a pointed finger jabbed him in the beard at waist level. “I didn’t want to come on this quest. I told you I’m a librarian, not an individual given to questing.”
Fenworth bent forward and growled. “You should have told me you were a plumber! I would have left a plumber at home. In fact, I did. I did leave the plumber at home and brought a librarian.”
Librettowit shook his fist in the wizard’s face. “You don’t even know a plumber.”
Lee Ark stepped forward, separating them. He stood between the angry men and patted each on a shoulder. “If the bisonbecks don’t hear the egg, they will hear you. I suggest we leave.”
Fenworth straightened and looked at the floor strewn with bisonbeck warriors slain minutes before. “Quite a good idea, actually. It’s getting crowded down here.” He looked down the dungeon corridor in both directions. “Which way would you suggest we go, Wit? You’ve always had a good head for directions. Especially underground.”
Librettowit signaled for the others to follow and led them back the way Kale had come with Seezle and Shimeran. As they passed the room where the orb had floated, Kale touched Leetu’s arm and whispered.
“I haven’t heard Risto’s voice in my head for a long time. What do you suppose he is up to?”
“He’s up to capturing us again. You haven’t heard him because the rest of us put a shield around you.”
“How?”
“The same way you blocked him with the words Granny Noon gave you. We knew you were in peril so we kept up the block for you.”
“You can do that?”
She nodded.
Kale looked at her companions trudging through the tunnel, following the tumanhofer. “All of you?”
“All of us in the cell.”
“What did you say?”
“We stand together under Wulder’s authority a
nd offer a shield of protection from Risto’s poisonous words around Kale’s mind.”
“And the words worked?”
“The words didn’t work, Kale. Wulder worked.”
Another four bisonbeck guards barreled down the corridor at them. Lee Ark and Brunstetter sprang in front of Librettowit.
Leetu pushed Kale behind Dar and the wizard. “Keep that egg safe,” she ordered and ran forward to enter the fray.
The wizard changed into a tree. Dar stood ready with a dagger and his short sword drawn. The bisonbecks did not break through the comrades’ line of defense.
Kale gingerly stepped over the legs of one of the fallen warriors when Lee Ark gave the all clear and Fenworth was persuaded to change back into himself. The sight of blood still made her queasy. The still forms of the dead soldiers looked capable of jumping up and resuming their fierce battle.
Kale and the wizard fell into step together. Dar and the kimens guarded the rear, Lee Ark, Brunstetter, and Leetu followed directly behind Librettowit who seemed confident about his directions.
“Why can’t you just whirl us out of here, Wizard Fenworth?”
“Whirl? Whirl! What type of scientific activity is whirl?”
She decided not to let him distract her. “Whirl, as in move people without regard to time or distance from one place to another, as when you whirled our party from The Midways to your castle. Whirl, the useful action of a wizard in times of necessity.”
The wizard scowled at her with narrowed eyes but kept walking.
“You didn’t happen to pick up my walking stick, now did you?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t place it in your cape hollow?”
“No sir.”
Fenworth turned his attention to those in front of them. Kale peeked at the wizard’s frowning face. He didn’t look open to any more questions.
They moved on. The egg thrummed. Kale shifted the light weight to the center of her back. “About the whirling out of the mountain.”
“The walking stick would have been useful.”
“You could put your hand on my shoulder, sir.”
He promptly clapped his wrinkled hand over Kale’s blue scarf strap and gave her a gentle squeeze. They walked on, turning occasionally and once climbing two flights of stone steps. Soldiers in groups of four tried to stop them twice.