we ever meet again?”
“Yes, I believe we will.”
“You’re a sorcerer. Don’t you know everything?”
He laughed his sweet, innocent laugh. “No, not everything. Less than some, more than most.”
He kissed my cheek and then my neck and then a spot behind my left ear. With a rustle of his tunic, he turned and disappeared outside, into his garden.
I lit my torch and stepped down into the tunnel to Avalon.
TWENTY-ONE
“Do you hear something?” Madoc was a few steps ahead of me, his shadow stretching long through the torch-lit dark. He stopped walking and tilted his head.
I lowered my torch and listened. “I hear our footsteps echoing off these tunnel walls, nothing more.”
“I swear I just heard laughter, Torvi.”
We didn’t know how long we’d been wandering the Fremish tunnel—with no sun or sky, it was hard to mark the passing of time. Ink thought we’d been inside for four days, but perhaps as many as six. The days blurred together. Gloom and murk. Cold, stale air. Eerie echoes. White whisper bats swooped above us, their wings tickling the tips of our ears.
The tunnel was narrow, five feet wide and twelve feet tall, and after a few days without sunshine or the sight of the sky above, we were tense and miserable.
Madoc had passed the time by asking Gyda to use her druid magic to conjure up a false sun or a fleet of cave horses to carry us swiftly to the tunnel’s exit and then accused her of being lazy when she said that wasn’t possible. Their good-natured bickering kept us entertained and helped us bear the gloom.
Gyda came to a stop beside Madoc, one hand holding her torch, one hand on her knife. “The only entrance is through the wizard’s hut. No one else is in this cave, Bard. You must be hearing things.”
Madoc lifted his light and stared down the length of the dark tunnel. “A section could have caved in. Or perhaps someone found the exit in the Green Wild Forest.”
Ink halted and tilted her head to the left, as Madoc had done. “I hear it, too. Laughter, high and resonant.”
“Yes,” Madoc replied. “Children’s laughter.”
I peered forward into the shadows. “Do you see something up ahead? An orange light? It’s no bigger than a star, but it’s there.”
We walked forward toward the faint glow and soon came to a section of the tunnel that had been closed off by a rockslide. The light filtered in through a gap in the rocks.
The laughter was clear now, soft, young voices on the other side of the fallen stones. I began to move the rocks away, and the rest joined me, all of us grunting and sweating with the strain.
“We’ll need to be careful,” Madoc said. “A band of Jade Fells could be on the other side of these stones.”
Gyda grinned at him over her shoulder. “Afraid, Bard?”
Madoc frowned. “Of the Fell witches? Yes.”
“It could be a grimalkin.” Ink grunted as she set down a small boulder. “Their howling sounds like children’s laughter, but if you get too close, they will leap onto your chest and rip out your throat.”
“Grimalkin … you mean a cave cat?” Gyda laughed. “That’s just a fairy tale, told to children to keep them from exploring caves.”
Ink shook her head. “The grimalkins are real. I once read an account in an old Elsh book of beasts about a woman who was traveling through the Skal caves searching for cavern sage, when—”
“Who approaches?” The voice rang out as clear as a bell from the other side of the rocks.
“Four Butcher Bards on a quest,” I called out. “And who are you?”
I heard more laughter and excited mutterings. “We’ve decided we like Butcher Bards,” the voice said, “though we’ve never met any. You are free to enter.”
I lifted away the last stone, and it left a hole big enough to crawl through. “I’ll go first,” I said. I took my knife in one hand, slipped into the gap, and landed feetfirst in the middle of a cluster of cone-shaped cave stags, rising up from the floor like small white towers.
Gyda, Ink, and Madoc followed.
The cavern was as lush as a jarl’s Great Hall. Fires roared in several braziers, giving the enormous room an amber hue. The walls were marbled with streaks of jade stone, and rich tapestries hung from every corner, depicting scenes of trolls, trees, wolves, feasts, battle.
I counted a dozen beds scattered about, all piled high with thick sheepskins. I saw a long wooden table, well made—it held