to any danger from the repeated dancing of the shadows that when real danger presented itself, they were caught unawares." R nn regarded her glowing scepter, its carved wood handle and the d class ball set at its top. The light was fairly constant, but in looking 1 * the ranger did note that there were some things moving about rtthin the frosted sphere.
"Fazl pods?" Juraviel asked, as if reading Brynn's mind.
"Small centipedes of the deep peat," Cazzira explained. ?They make the though it normally dissipates into the air like a glowing mist. Encased airless globe, they glow for many weeks. Without them, we would , a chance of crossing under the mountains, for we could not carry enough wood and I doubt we'll find any down here!
The conversation died at that, and the trio went on. They came to many forks in the trail, and intersections, and crossed a few wider chambers, some -hat had many exits. But Cazzira went on in seeming confidence that she knew the way, and it took Brynn a long while to catch on to the secret: all choices in the path had been marked, subtly, in flowing elven script deli-cately carved upon the walls.
"Your people come down here often," she said, and she winced, for her words sounded as an accusation.
Cazzira looked at her hard, as did Juraviel, the Touel'alfar silently signal-ing for Brynn to tread cautiously.
"You know the way, because the passages have been marked by Tylwyn Doc, I mean," Brynn stuttered, trying hard to keep her tone nonconfronta-tional. ?Your people are not strangers to the Path of Starless Night, I would assume. ?
"We used to come in here quite often," Cazzira answered after a long pause. ?Once, many centuries ago, Tymwyvenne was comprised of two settle-ments, the one you have walked and one in here."
"Why was the second abandoned?" Juraviel asked before Brynn could, the elf apparently past his trepidation at broaching the subject.
"The reasons are many, but in truth, this is not our place. Dark things crawl along these corridors, and after a few more days in here, you will understand why we prefer the open air."
"I understand it already," Brynn remarked, and Juraviel laughed in agreement.
They walked through the rest of the day - to the best of their estimation - and set a camp in a small side chamber, placing their glowing lamps strate-gically in the corridor outside, so that whoever was on watch would see the approach of a threat before it saw them.
Ihe next day went the same way, with brief conversations punctuating the silent blackness. The second day, Cazzira showed them some moss and rang! that they could eat, and some other mushrooms that they would be wise to avoid. On and on they^wallted, and oftentimes crawled in corridors too low for even the two elwes, and th?n set a similar camp.
ihe next day was much the sameand the next after that, and the next after that, where the only highlight was the discovery of a small stream where they could refill their waterskins, and even bathe a bit. Brynn was glad of that, very glad, but despite the clear water, every day they got a bit dirtier and a bit smellier.
On and on they walked, and the paths were so winding, left and right that they had to wonder how much progress they were really making to the south. At times, the trail before them ascended at such an angle that they had to climb hand over hand, struggling for finger- and toeholds. At other times, the path dropped so dramatically that they had to take out the fine silken ropes Cazzira's kin had provided, and slide down.
None of them complained; they just kept putting one foot in front of the other.
So many wondrous things did Brynn, Juraviel, and Cazzira see in the days to come: a wide underground lake, its water gently lapping at the shore, dis-turbed somewhere out in the darkness by something unseen and unknown; an underground waterfall, tumbling noisily, echoing like tumultuous music in all of the caverns and corridors about; strange and beautiful formations of crystals squeezed from the rocks, twisting and turning into exotic, shin-ing shapes as they became pushed out over the eons.
The trio were walking through another wondrous place, a three-tiered plateau of gigantic mushrooms, thicker of trunk than a large oak and thrice Brynn's height, when they came to know, for the first time, that they were not alone.