such as this should be heaped high, beetles crawling about in it. But there was no dung. No bats. No cave vermin.
“You keep your ears perked,” said Sugar. Then they proceeded down the corridor, always just a stride or two from the swallowing dark.
They passed many carvings. One was of a great tree with all manner of beasts in it. Another of a bear carved with such fine detail she could see individual locks of its fur. Yet another contained a panel of ancient writing carved from top to bottom.
At one point she thought she’d heard something again. They froze, her waiting for the creature to come running out of the shadows, Talen stepping forward and to the side so the torch would illuminate more of the corridor.
She decided the sound was some trick of the cave, and proceeded forward, still tracking the creature by the occasional marks the creature made as it walked. She held the hag’s tooth ready in one hand, the case in the other. The silver glimmered in the torchlight. The tooth was long and felt well-balanced for throwing. But she couldn’t risk a long throw. After seeing the battle with the Skir Master, she knew she’d only have one chance.
With every step she became more certain that their names were going to be added to the list of those fools who had been swallowed by the ancient stone-wight ruins. Soon the second torch burned low. Talen lit the third. They now had only three left. Not long after that they arrived at a fork. Talen held the torch at a low angle to create better shadows that might reveal footprints. They walked down to the right a few paces and found nothing. A few paces down the left passage Sugar found another half print.
Talen froze and sniffed.
Sugar sniffed as well. Sulfur.
“The monster’s up there,” she said. “In that stink.”
“Aye,” said Talen.
Sugar gripped the tooth in her gauntlet, the gold studs gleaming in the torchlight, and took a step forward.
THE GROVE
A
rgoth could not stop shaking. The tremors came in waves, starting deep within and building until his whole body spasmed. When each wave began, the monster carrying him would hold him tighter to keep him from shaking loose. He thought at first the tremors were signs of his terror at this beast. But the fear of the creature had quickly subsided, and he realized he had begun shaking as soon as it killed the Skir Master.
It was an effect of the breaking of the bond, he was sure of it. What it meant for his survival, he did not know. It might build until, like a case of lockjaw, he died in a horrible contraction. Or it might eventually pass.
Between tremors he examined the creature, the dark pits of its eyes, the rough edges of its hideous mouth protruding like the spines of a cod, the exposed skeleton of stone. A smattering of tiny, pale, white flowers grew across its neck and shoulder. He wondered why they had not wilted and supposed the earth from which they grew was living, part of its skin. At one point in the journey, when the monster stopped to kick a tumbled tree out of its way, a fat bumblebee droned about the monster’s head and landed on its shoulder. It had time to probe one of the pale flowers before the monster began running again and the bouncing shook it off.
Argoth could not understand why the creature had taken Legs. Perhaps he would deliver Argoth to the master and then reward itself with Legs as a meal. Whatever the reason, in between spasms, Argoth talked to Purity’s blind boy, soothing him, thinking all the while of Nettle, and the sacrifice he’d made—the sacrifice that had been wasted on his cursed, foolhardy scheme.
The creature kept, for the most part, to the woods. Argoth knew there was no use calling for help. He’d tried, and the monster had clamped a rough hand over his mouth. Besides, this was not a weave of flesh and blood. How it lived, he could not guess. What he did know was that it could only be undone by special lore. Lore of which he had no knowledge. He could only hope that the Creek Widow had mustered the strength of the Grove. He was spent, but there still was a chance the Grove could defeat this thing.
The tremors continued for the many miles, but he noticed they were coming farther and farther apart. Perhaps he