"I see little strange about this, James," said Brian, conversationally. He turned to Dafydd. "Do you, Dafydd?"
"I do not, Sir Brian," said Dafydd. "Yet I am not easy in my bones about where this goes. I have a feeling we would do well to keep our weapons ready."
"Indeed," said Brian, "that goes without saying in any unknown place. I have had it said to me when riding with others into the marketplace of an unfamiliar town. I mind me once, however, that the warning stood us in good stead. There were only four of us, though all knights, only a few miles short of Winchester—"
He pulled Blanchard to a sudden halt, and Jim and Dafydd both reflexively checked their horses also.
As if they had passed through some invisible door, they were no longer in a simple tunnel, but in a cave, the extent of which exceeded the strength of the light.
Stone fingers seemed to rise before them, a forest of stalagmites reaching upward from the cave floor, and stalactites growing down out of the gloom hiding the cavetop overhead—the cave was noisy with the dripping of water from the tips of the stalactites. What light there was came from the same buried illumination that had shown their way so far. Through this stone jungle, still slanting downward, their tunnel floor had become a road that went on as straight as if the Romans had been building here, too. It was as wide as the tunnel itself had been.
"A hellish, but convenient, light," remarked Brian.
"There's a glow from everything," Jim said. "As if under their surfaces the rocks were phosphorescent."
Brian and even Dafydd looked at him with respect. Occasionally, at moments like this, they were used to hearing Jim come up with long words that no one could have understood. Magick, without a doubt.
"A help in this hap, however," said Brian—more cheerfully, now that Jim had taken steps to counter the hellishness of their surroundings. They rode on.
Farther on the cave seemed to widen even more, into an enormous space whose walls could not be seen. Their road, shrinking to a mere trail, wound away into a wilderness of rock fingers until it was lost from sight among them; and still they descended.
The strange illumination seemed brighter—or perhaps their eyes had adapted to it. The quiet of the air here was accentuated by the dripping sound, that was all around them. Jim remembered a little mnemonic that a tour guide in the western United States had told his group, so that they could remember which name belonged to which kind of rock spire.
Stalactite have to stick tight,
But stalagmites, might grow if they had more water.
Jim wondered if either of his companions had ever been in a cave like this, but since they gave no sign of anything being out of the usual, he did not ask.
By the light in the stone, he and the others went forward along the winding trail; and within moments, they had lost all sense of direction and had only the trail to guide them.
"M'Lord?" said Hob's voice, lowered and very small-seeming behind him—and yet at the same time, it echoed and reechoed among the stone spears.
"What is it, Hob?" answered Jim, without turning his head.
"There are—things. Around us."
"Things?" Jim glanced around, but saw nothing.
"Don't look for them, m'Lord," said Hob. "If you do, they hide. Just look straight ahead and watch for them out of the corners of your eyes."
Jim tried this, but for a moment—a long moment—he saw nothing—heard nothing but the clopping of hooves on the stone beneath them and the dripping. Then his eyes, focused straight ahead, picked up a flicker of movement off to his right; and then, a second later, another to his left.
As he watched in this unobtrusive way, he began to make out dark figures, essentially man-like—smaller versions of the giants Agatha had led them to confront back in Lyonesse. They moved upright but in a shambling, almost ape-like manner; they were covered with a very dark-colored fur, even to their faces, and they seemed to be carrying no weapons. But there were more than a few of them, and they were moving along with Jim and his party.
It seemed to Jim that they kept coming a little bit closer all the time.
Brian had heard Hob's warning, too. He did not touch his spear, but he loosened his sword in its sheath again and spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Jim.
"The hobgoblin was right," he murmured. "These are a small host; and they mean us no good. If we could but come to a place where we could put our backs to something, we would be in better case to meet their attack."
"Hob," said Jim, still without turning his head, "ask Hill if he knows what they are. Or has he said something about them?"
"I asked him, m'Lord," said Hob. "He says nothing, no word at all. It's as if he doesn't hear me."
Jim risked turning and looking at Hill. The small man's expressionless face was as uninformative as always, and his gaze looked not at Jim, but past him and into the forest of stone ahead, as if he rode alone and with his mind elsewhere.
"Hill, pay attention to me!" Jim said. "I've got something to ask you!"
There was no response from the small man. Jim spoke again; but Hill said nothing.
But, Jim realized, there had been a change about Hill after all. Although his face was exactly the same, now his mouth was closed; and there was a seriousness, almost a grimness, about him, that was new. He could be said to have the expression of a soldier going into battle; or, maybe, a man going to his own execution. In either case he seemed unapproachable.
"They come closer," said Brian.
His hands had crossed each other, the left still holding his reins but very close to the hilt of his dagger, and the right close to the hilt of his sword on his left side.
"I suggest sword and poignard," he said, still in that low voice but in an almost conversational tone. "In this case, James, our shields will do us little good, and our blades much more."
He raised his voice just a trifle.
"Dafydd," he said, without looking back to the archer, "I would suggest the same for you. The blade of that long knife you carry on your right leg, rather than your arrows, deadly though they may be. There are too many here for a few killed to stop them before the rest can rush us altogether."
"I have made ready so," said the voice of Dafydd in an equally low tone behind them. "I am close behind you; and no doubt it were best we three stand as next together as possible."
Jim felt something light land on his shoulder
"Pray pardon, m'Lord," whispered Hob, perched there, "but I want to be with you."
"That's all right, Hob," said Jim under his breath.
But now Jim felt Gorp nudged from behind; and the sumpter-horse pushed its way between Gorp and Blanchard, taking the lead. On it, and without any visible control of the animal, Hill rode through and past them, sitting almost on the neck of the animal and taking the lead. His eyes were still looking straight forward, and he seemed not to see them, or the creatures about. He rode some little way out in front, until the sumpter-horse, again without any apparent direction, slowed down to its previous pace; so that they all went forward, but now with Hill a couple of horse-lengths in front, leading.
Hill's move seemed to affect the creatures circling them. Their movements slowed, and they ceased to come nearer. Also, their numbers seemed to have thinned somewhat.
"I had a suspicion the fellow knew something about all this," muttered Brian to Jim. "Mayhap he may now carry us safely through."
"Maybe," said Jim.
For the fur-clad creatures began to move faster in their circling, and to move in again toward them. They were now very close, some of them dodging out to stand for a second clearly in sight between two of the glowing stone columns, mouths open and teeth bared. Brian made the mark of the Cross on his breast.
"That is the one trouble with this adventuring in strange places, James," he said, again in a conversational tone. "How is a man to find a priest to shrive him, in such a place as this? In manus tuus, Domine."
The creatures now began to thump with their fis
ts on the vertical stone formations. It was a soft sound, but many times multiplied, so that it felt almost like a muffled drum beating inside Jim's head. He took it as a signal that they were just about to begin their rush, looped his own reins about the pommel of his saddle, and reached quite openly for the hilts of his sword and poignard.
It was a moment in which he was quite sure that there was no way out, that an attack would come at any minute. But, oddly, he found that instead of feeling fearful, regretful, or any other emotion he might have expected—there was only a sort of empty feeling inside him. He rode on, listening to the drumming.
Then, unexpectedly, something lanced through the soft heavy sound of the drumming—a sharp, almost musical note, a sound like a steel pick striking rock. It chimed like the note of a glass bell over the drumming—and the drumming stopped instantly. The chime repeated, and continued, as steady as a metronome.
Jim stared about him. The furry figures had frozen in place. For a long moment they stood unmoving; then, like dark lights going out, they began to vanish among the stony pillars of the cave. In less than a minute there was not a one to be seen.
"In God's name," said Brian, "it sounds as regular as a church bell. What is it?"
Jim had no answer. Brian rode forward until he was level with Hill and almost shouted at the small man.
"What is that!" he demanded.
Hill rode on, apparently unmoving and unresponding. On Jim's shoulder Hob called forward to Brian, before Jim himself could speak.
"Sir Brian!" Hob said. "Hill answered!"
"What did he say then?" asked Brian, looking back.
" 'It is my friends,' " called Hob.
"I knew it!" said Brian, checking Blanchard, so that he stood for a moment until Jim caught up with him. "He is no stranger here! Now we need doubt no longer."
"Yes," said Jim, grimly. "And now maybe things will start to make sense."
"It is well past time," said Brian. He looked closely at Jim.
"I remember now," he went on. His face was perfectly humorless. "It comes to my mind," he said, "that you named that lady with the brother and father who vanished a while back. I was looking elsewhere; but you knew her. Is she somehow a part of this?"
"I didn't think so," said Jim, "but you're right. It was Agatha Falon, Robert's aunt."
"But she was wearing a veil," said Brian. "What was it led you suspect it was her?"
"I'd seen her hold a knife in her hand, before," Jim said. "You remember, I told you of the time, at the Earl's Christmas party—Angie found her in our room trying to smother Robert. She pulled a knife on Angie. Luckily, I came in just then and took it away from her."
"Ah, yes," Brian said. "I recall you telling me of it. Would that she had a husband, for that should call for a meeting between you and he!"
"Not only has she no husband," Jim said, "but she came in the train of young Prince Edward, having lately been favored by his Majesty the King. It was she who insisted on coming, though the Prince didn't want her. She had asked the King to let her go—and he let her, of course."
"Well, if not her husband, her Champion, then," said Brian, brushing the matter aside. "So no more was made of the matter. I was remiss not to speak to you about it. It was not properly done. Surely she could have found someone to meet you on her behalf. What if Angela had been killed?"
"It was not a simple, straightforward matter," said Jim. "Remember, she's been one of the King's favorites, and is again, it seems. Any uproar over such a happening could do nothing but harm to us."
"Nonetheless…" said Brian, a truculent set to his jaw.
Down, down, and down they went, the chime still keeping them company. Their way changed once more, seeming to widen because the forest of stalactites and stalagmites dwindled into nothingness. The light was again coming from stone walls, off to their sides, and the ceiling was visible; although this section was clearly both higher and wider than the first tunnel had been.
The regularity of the chiming sound and the hoofbeats began to make a soporific rhythm in the back of Jim's mind. No one spoke. Dafydd was not a great talker under any conditions, and Brian was often silent when not in the grip of some strong emotion.
Jim's thoughts hopped from subject to subject. All during this trip, there had been no evidence that they were going in the right direction to find Robert. Still, it had all felt somehow right to him. If it was true, as Carolinus had hinted, that a magician could feel when magic was being used against him—maybe it was that feeling leading him now.
But how could that be true when he no longer had the use of his magic, here in this underground Kingdom?
Something else bothered him. Back there in Lyonesse, in a place he himself could not have predicted he would ever be, he had been ambushed by someone who should not have had any way to know he was there—much less have a way to get there for an attack, and then flee as she had.
That was bad enough. But when he thought of it, there was the fact that he had come to seek young Robert, whose enemy was the very Agatha Falon—his aunt—who wanted the Falon properties and who had just tried to stop Jim and his friends. Jim had little evidence that Robert had been taken here. But maybe Agatha's attack could be taken as coincidence.
Somewhere he had once read that there was no such thing as coincidence. If so, it would argue that Robert was indeed somewhere up ahead of them. But it also could mean that Agatha had been involved in the kidnapping, and it was hard to think how that could be possible.
Coincidence? Unlikely. Ever since he and Angie had come to this fourteenth-century world, they had been marked as enemies by the Dark Powers; those malignant forces who—or which, perhaps—Carolinus said were trying to alter the balance between Chance and History, in either direction.
But how could the kidnapping of young Robert affect such Powers? It seemed to make no sense.
Suddenly, too, he remembered the warning given by Carolinus' projection, about not letting himself be deceived by appearances in Lyonesse—how could he even be sure that that had in fact been Agatha?
There was too much here to figure out without further information.
He switched his mind off to the more immediate question of where this tunnel might lead them and what they might find at its end. So far, nothing that had happened gave him a clue to their destination, except that it was undoubtedly underground. They had been going down steadily—
"I like them," said the voice of Hob dreamily in his ear. The hobgoblin was still sitting on his shoulder, and, light as the little Natural was, Jim had completely forgotten he was there. But now Hob's voice pulled Jim from his thoughts, and he realized that the bell-like sound had ceased some time since. But the clopping of their horses' hooves seemed to have picked up something like an echo—a regular drum-like beating that seemed almost within his ears, rather than outside them.
It seemed to come from everywhere around them, and no place in particular—Jim's laggard mind suddenly registered Hob's words…
"Them?" he said. "Which 'them' are you talking about, Hob?"
"The Gnarlies. Behind us." said Hob.
"Behind us?"
Jim looked around; and saw behind him, marching ten abreast, rank on rank of manlike beings only slightly smaller than Hill, and all with the same expressionless faces. They came steadily along behind Jim and his party, their feet bare, slapping down on the stone floor in perfect time, and making the soft, drum-like sound Jim had heard. They moved all together and were all dressed alike.
Like Hill, they wore what looked to be leather kilts and shirts. Each one carried, thrust through his belt on his right side, a hammer with a metal head and a short wooden handle; balancing it on the other side was a metal-headed pick, pointed at both ends. Behind their backs, sticking up the way an unstrung bow might be carried by an archer, each bore a metal rod no thicker than Jim's little finger.
These baffled Jim for a moment, until it occurred to him that, here underground, these might be a mining variety of
Natural; if so, the rods might be drilling rods, lengths of metal that could be hammered into a crack in a rock face, to force it to crack further, so that the rock itself could be broken more easily than straight pick-work could manage.
Like Hill, each had his long sleeves closed at the ends, well past the ends of the arms inside them.
"Who are they?" Jim asked Hob. "Why are they following us?"
"They're friends of Hill's," Hob said.
Jim felt a sudden spurt of hope and quickly pushed it back and firmly stoppered it up again.
"You like Hill now, don't you?" he asked Hob.
Hob did not answer immediately, apparently thinking it over.
"Yes," he said at last. "But he mustn't think he can have what belongs to me. Malencontri and m'Lady and you, m'Lord, are mine!"
Jim tried to turn his head to get a look at the hobgoblin's face, but he was too close. Hob had never shown a jealous streak like this, before.
But he recognized a faint, but familiar, note in the little creature's voice, now it seemed to Jim like a note he had heard in the voices of his Malencontri servants when they were speaking to him, a proprietary note, as if they owned him, rather than the other way around.
"I don't think he particularly wants Malencontri and those of us who live there," said Jim.
"He wants you—part of you, anyway," said Hob. "But you're my Lord, not his."
"Of course," said Jim. "And I've no intention of being his Lord."
"You hear that, Hill?" said Hob, looking forward at the back of the small man.
Hill, however, did not answer.
A suspicion that had been building in the back of Jim's mind for some time, half-noticed, suddenly crystallized. He lifted his reins and urged Gorp forward with his heels; but the warhorse was strangely unwilling to draw level with Hill on the sumpter-horse. Jim finally gave up, Gorp's head only level with the withers of the sumpter-horse.
"Hill," he said to the back of Hill's head, "what are those metal rods used for? Are they used for driving through stone walls? And if they are, what kind of noise would they make?"
Hill still did not speak. But without turning his head to look, he held out one of his sleeve-enclosed arms to the side; and, although he gave no other signal that Jim could see, one of the marching little men broke ranks, ran forward, and passed up the rod he had been carrying.