to the tumult, and the tumbling tributary four hundred and fifty feet below sent up spray to dampen the rocks. Higher up, a series of caves opened into a far greater cavern system: the lair itself.
B.J. could have - perhaps should have - chosen the 'easy' route into the lair: up onto the plateau's shattered roof, and down through any one of several shafts into the dusty, rubble-strewn heart of the place. But this way had been a challenge, albeit a small one, for here the rock was rotten and given to crumbling. Thus it presented her with an opportunity to test secondary skills, this time with the generally despised apparatus of the professional climber.
And having eaten just a bite, and sipped a little water, then - for the first time during her climb - pitons and hammer, karabiners and fine, light nylon rope came into play. She used them all to form a hoist, then cranked herself up onto the last ledge, where a treacherously fractured 'window' opened into the gloom of the lair. And leaning back with her feet on the ledge and every ounce of her weight suspended on the rope, she looked down through all that deadly height to where fangs of rock were blackened by the torrent, and the gorge was a snarling gash of a mouth more terrible than any dark beast's -
- Almost.
And so into the lair, which for all B.J. 's previous visits was at least as fearsome a step as the actual climb itself ...
Once inside, after a brief scramble through shrouding cobwebs, accumulated dust and sharp, stony debris, B.J. wasted no time. With the ease of any night-sighted animal and most wild creatures, her eyes very quickly adjusted to the gloom. Had it been pitch-black, they would have served her just as well. So that even as she shrugged out of her harness, she was able to gauge fairly accurately her location in this cavern system which she had explored so many times before. She knew where she was, and therefore where He was.
And between them, maybe two hundred feet of pitfalls and crumbling pathways, jumbles of falen, hexagonal pilars, and dizzy causeways over crevasses which, for al she knew, might wel go down to the roots of the mountains. On this one level she had explored the lair, for this was His place. But as for other possible levels: she didn't know, couldn't say.
And apart from the natural obstacles of this great cavern, there was one other thing standing between B.J. and her Master. A Thing, yes, and she shuddered at the thought of it... even the 'wee mistress' herself.
It was something of His, she knew, but still it was beyond reason. Beyond her reason, anyway. But it was sentient; it knew things, sensed things. It would know she was here, and it would stir when she passed by. And it would know why she was here ... that it, the Thing itself, was one of her reasons. For just as B.J. 's Master hungered, so did His creature ...
That would be the part she disliked, the one aspect of her duty that bothered her. Her Master's needs were one thing, but the needs of His creature were something else. She ... disliked feeding it, even with beast's blood. Also, she never failed to be amazed by the fact that so little could satisfy so much. But would it be the same when the Thing was up? Surely He intended to bring it up, else what was its purpose? But Bonnie Jean had never inquired about it; it wasn't her business to question but to guard and inform, as it was her duty to obey.
The place was unquiet; only take a single step away from the crack of light gleaming through the dusty, irregular shape of the 'window,' and silence fel as if someone had switched it on - or switched al sound off -except for the echoes of the lair itself: the dripping of water in various unseen locations, and B.J.'s own breathing, her own muffled movements. Quiet, yet unquiet... But by no means a contradiction of terms. The tumult of the gorge was dead here; it couldn't find its way in; something shut it out.
There was some light, at least; rays or curtains of dim light filtering dustily down from various faults in a ceiling of il-defined height and extent: the shafts through which she might have descended, if she'd chosen a different route. Light