Blades of the Banished - Robert Ryan Page 0,15

its heels.”

They remounted. Without another word, Erlissa led the way from their camp, such as it had been.

She did not speak. Her head was bowed, and she gripped her walnut staff tightly in her hand. It seemed to Lanrik that she rode in some sort of trance. It was not as deep as the last one, perhaps merely a sending out of her lòhren senses. Whatever she did, she did it in silence, and he left her to concentrate.

They backtracked along the road that they had climbed last night, but they did not go far. Within several hundred paces Erlissa pulled up her mount.

She sat astride it a while, still and thoughtful. The horse grew restless under her, stepping a little to the side, but she ignored it.

After some moments, she nudged her mount toward the edge of the road. There were bushes here, or perhaps small trees; Lanrik could not tell in the dark. What he did learn swiftly was that they were thorny.

Erlissa encouraged her horse forward, for there was a way between the crowding branches, though it was narrow. Many times the long thorns pricked and gashed them.

It was a large thicket. When they finally reached the other side all that stood before them was a rugged rock face.

A while they stared at it. Erlissa was no longer in a trance and now looked about alertly. Lanrik spoke.

“This doesn’t look promising.”

“No,” she answered. “And yet the entrance is here, or at least nearby. I know it.”

Lanrik dismounted. He tied his mount’s reins around a thorny branch and moved a little to the right. He saw nothing. There was no change in the rock face. He pushed as deep as he dared into a stand of the thorny trees. He had nearly turned to go back when he noticed something.

There was a path on the ground, disappearing into the thicket and toward the road. Obviously, it was an animal trail of some kind, and though it was wide, he saw no paw or hoof tracks. That was unusual, though perhaps something was in fact there but it was too dark to see it. What interested him was that animal trails always led from one place to another. And yet, such a large animal as this obviously could not clamber down the steep rock face. But that was where the trail started.

He stepped closer and studied the craggy surface. Sure enough, there was a fissure in the rock, obscured by a slight bulge in the cliff face that made it appear no more than a shadow.

The fissure was not quite man high, and only wide enough for someone to squeeze through sideways, but it was an opening nonetheless.

“I’ve found it,” he called.

Erlissa tied her own reins tightly around a branch and joined him. They stood a while before the crack. They knew that they must pass through it, but they were not keen to do so.

To either side of it, so faint as to be barely visible, were drùgluck signs. Time and nature had weathered them so badly as to render the rough chisel strokes near invisible.

No doubt this cave, for such it must be, was long forgotten. There was no sign that people had ever come here save for the ancient marks. They served as a warning to superstitious elugs, and probably Azan also, that this place must be shunned, unless, perhaps, in the presence of an elùgroth conducting some rite or ceremony.

The drùgluck signs were not the only worry. Whatever made the track led from the fissure, and it was a large animal of some sort. Lanrik did not know what it was, nor did he want to find out. How it even forced a way though such a narrow crevice, he did not know. He saw no fur or hair caught on the sides. But something lived in there, making its home amid the dark at the roots of the mountain.

There was an odor also. It was not the smell of an animal lair. It was something else. Legends told of poisoned air in these lands, of crannies in the rock that expelled noxious gases. But he took heart. Those stories told of air that killed without scent. If he could smell it, and he did, it was not such a place. And the creature, whatever it was, lived and breathed somewhere inside.

“We can’t stand here all night,” Erlissa said.

She took a good grip of her staff and stepped forward. Light flickered at its tip. Taking