Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,42

knew, the cyclopian race hadn’t fully recovered to this day.

“Now, with any luck, the cave is uninhabited,” Brind’Amour said hopefully, obviously trying to press on past that last point.

“Then why do you not go there and retrieve your so precious staff?” Oliver asked.

“I am old,” Brind’Amour replied, “and weak. I cannot hold open the portal from here, my source of power, if I go through the tunnel to that other cave. And so I need your help—help for which you have already been, and will yet be, well paid.”

Luthien continued to study the wizard for some time, sensing that what the man had said was not true, or not the whole truth. Still, he had no more specific questions to ask, and Oliver simply sat back in his chair and patted his tummy. They had ridden far that day, fought on the road, and eaten well.

“I offer you now the comfort of warm and soft beds,” Brind’Amour promised, sensing the mood. “Rest well. Our business can wait until the morn.”

The companions readily accepted, and after a quick check on Threadbare and Riverdancer, who had been put in an empty chamber to the side of the library, they were soon nestled comfortably in featherbeds, and Brind’Amour left them alone.

“Four hundred years old?” Oliver asked Luthien.

“I do not question the words and ways of wizards,” Luthien replied.

“But does not this magical stasis intrigue you?”

“No.” It was a simple and honest answer. Luthien had been raised among pragmatic and solid fisherfolk and farmers. The only magic prominent at all on Bedwydrin were the herbs of healing women and premonitions of weather conditions offered to the captains of fishing boats by the dock seers. Even those two rather benign magic-using groups made Luthien uncomfortable—a man like Brind’Amour put the young man totally out of his element.

“And I do not understand why a cave holding nothing more than a cyclopian—”

Luthien cut Oliver off with a wave of his hand.

“And who would steal a wizard’s staff?” Oliver put in quickly, before Luthien waved his words away once more.

“Let us just be done with this task and be on with our—” Luthien began, and then he paused at an obvious impasse.

“With our what?” Oliver prompted, and wondered, and young Luthien wondered, too.

What would he and Oliver Burrows, who called himself Oliver deBurrows, get on with? Their quest? Their lives? The road to continued thievery and, perhaps, worse?

The young Bedwyr had no answers—either for what would come, or for what had just passed. Ever since the arrival of Viscount Aubrey and his entourage in Dun Varna, Luthien’s world had been turned upside down. He had left Dun Varna in search of his brother, but now he was beginning to get a feel of just how big the world truly was. Over the last couple of days, Oliver had explained to him that ships left the Avonsea Islands for Gascony by a dozen different ports, from Carlisle on the Stratton River to Montfort. And Gascony was a bigger place than Avon, Oliver assured his unworldly companion, with hundreds of cities larger than Dun Varna and scores larger even than Carlisle. And Duree, the land of the war Ethan was supposedly going off to fight, was over a thousand miles south of Gascony’s northern coast.

A thousand miles!

How could Luthien hope to catch up to Ethan when he didn’t know what course his brother might take?

Luthien never answered Oliver’s question, and the halfling, soon snoring contentedly, didn’t seem anxious to know.

CHAPTER 10

WHITE LIES?

THE FIRST THING THAT OLIVER and Luthien noticed when they exited Brind’Amour’s new magical tunnel was that the cave they had entered was uncomfortably warm. And it was huge. Luthien’s torch reflected off of one wall only, the one they had exited, and the two could barely see the crystalline glimmer of the sharp-tipped, long stalactites hanging ominously far above their heads.

There came a flash from behind them, and they turned to see Brind’Amour’s portal beginning to shrink. At first, the two scrambled for the light, thinking the wizard meant to desert them. The swirl continued, diminished to the size of a fist, but its light was no less intense.

“He only wishes to make sure that no cyclopians, if they live, could come through,” a relieved Oliver remarked.

“Or to make sure that we do not come through until we have found the staff,” Luthien added. “He has that crystal ball and will watch our every move.”

Luthien moved over to the wall again as he spoke, studying its curious texture.