darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,101
of stone—all but invisible from the broader lake. After perhaps seventy feet we turned right into a tiny bay cradled between the arms of the mountain. The eels left us then with their usual lack of ceremony and we paddled in to a narrow, black sand beach that provided us a place to pull the boats up out of the water.
“Now what?” asked Maryam. “Set up tents and collapse?”
“I think not,” replied Faran from farther up the beach. “Shallowshunter said we would have better accommodation, and there it is.”
She pointed toward what looked at first glance like a darker patch of rock. It was actually a rounded stone arch, likely the top of an old lava tube. Sand filled the lower half and had been neatly raked flat. A cursory examination suggested that someone or something had brought the sand in intentionally.
Perhaps thirty feet back from the cave mouth we found a neat stone hearth beneath a chimney in the rock. Cord hammocks hung from pitons driven deep into the stone of the arched ceiling, and sealed amphorae sunk, point down, in the sand held water and a selection of preserved foods.
Roric held up a strip of salted pork. “Do we make ourselves at home?”
I nodded. “I don’t think the eels would have brought us here to go hungry in sight of a good meal.”
Once we had finished with our early morning dinner, we climbed into the hammocks. Even with light coming in from the entrance and down the smoke hole, it was dark enough in the cave to leave watch duty to the Shades, which we gratefully did.
* * *
I woke from a deep sleep suddenly and gently, as though a beloved voice had called my name. When I sat up, I saw that no one else was awake yet. The light from the entrance told me it was late afternoon.
Triss?
Here, nothing to report.
You didn’t hear anything?
Nothing but insects and sleeping Blades.
Thanks. I rolled out of my hammock and grabbed my sword rig from where I’d hung it in easy reach.
Something wrong?
No. I could still hear the dream echo of the voice that had called me, but I didn’t want to try to explain. I’m slept out and I want a walk. I thought I’d check out the deeps of the cave. The direction of that echo.
Fair enough. I’ll let Kyrissa know we’re going.
The lava tube ran up and back at a gentle angle, curving this way and that as it went. It was lit by round shafts that had been bored through to the surface above every fifty feet or so. Maybe a hundred yards up from the place where I left the others, the sand ended, and I continued from there along a floor that looked as though someone had carefully smoothed it. I walked for perhaps an hour before I saw a much brighter light ahead.
The lava tube ended partway up the wall of a high-walled circular crater—one of the secondary peaks of the larger mountain perhaps. A steep trail led down to a deep pool that filled the floor of the crater. The water was an intense impossible blue with no visible bottom. A floating wooden pier continued on from the trail out to something that looked like a miniature version of one of those round, open-roofed theaters that were so popular in Dan Eyre. Only, where the groundlings would normally have stood, the floor was open to the deep water below.
I climbed down the path to the pier, feeling all the while as though I were following directions I had heard in a dream I couldn’t otherwise remember. The theater-like structure was a sort of cross between a raft and a reception hall, with tables and chairs placed on the broad plank circle around the pool at its heart. One table, just to the right of the entrance, held a pitcher of clear water, a rock-crystal goblet, a plate of finely sliced raw fish and freshwater seaweed, and a pair of Zhani-style chopsticks. A lone chair sat at the table facing the pool.
I take it we’re expected, sent Triss.
I believe that we are, though I couldn’t begin to tell you how I know that. I followed a forgotten dream to get here.
My, but doesn’t that just fill me with confidence and hope.
Have I ever mentioned that you have a sarcastic streak? I asked.
Not that I can remember.
Remind me to correct that later. For now, I think it best if I do the expected.