Content in his future, the beast settled back into the fire and waited for the dwarves to be reborn into their ghostly existence, so he could hunt again. He did not mind honing his skills.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Howling Delve

12 Uktar, the Year of the Serpent (1359 DR)

Meisha thrust herself forward another foot. Her stomach felt raw through her coarse linen shirt. Sweat poured down her face, dripping salt in her eyes, but she kept crawling. The physical discomforts kept her mind occupied. She would endure almost anything to keep the memory of the dream at bay.

The beast of fire and claws. Every time she had the dream, the presence was there, stalking the helpless dwarves. She watched them die over and over again.

Ten more feet, Meisha counted in her head. The stone chilled her flesh, making her lightheaded and feverish.

She pressed her face against the ground. The taste of rock and dirt and something foreign filled her mouth.

A wave of nausea hit her gut. Meisha turned her head to one side and gagged, spitting to clear her mouth of a taste worse than bile. Instinctively, she tried to curl up in a ball, but the tunnel bound her in the shape of a worm.

Meisha forced herself to breathe deeply, to push away the tight fear in her chest.

"You've slept on stone every night for the past four years," she said aloud, just to hear the sound of her voice. "This should not disturb you now."

Perhaps it was because she found herself so far from Varan's circle of protection. She'd always felt more at ease in the wizard's presence. Possibly his magic in some way mitigated the oppressiveness of the Delve.

Not enough, Meisha thought. She ached for the sunlight and the heat, almost as much as she craved the fire inside herself, the power of it. Living in a deep hole in the ground had never stopped feeling unnatural to her.

Was the presence in her dream merely a manifestation of that wrongness?

No, it was more than that, Meisha knew. There was something wrong with the Delve, something Varan chose to deny or ignore. She didn't know which state of mind was the more foolish.

Pushing herself back up to her elbows, Meisha began dragging herself forward again.

Ahead of her, a rock outcrop burst into soft glow. Before she could react, a cold hand closed around her ankle.

A scream ripped from Meisha's throat. The sound echoed down the tunnel. Power flared involuntarily in her mind.

She flipped to her back and splayed her fingertips. Fire rolled down her body, an inch-thick gout of flame that lit up the passage.

When the flames died, the glow had gone, and the only sound was Meisha's ragged breathing. The passage sat empty behind her.

"Show yourself!" Meisha shouted.

The answering silence mocked her. Meisha threw her hands up against the curved stone ceiling, emptying her fear and the fire into the rock. Orange clouds of flame licked along the tunnel in either direction until her anger spent itself.

When the flames grew cold, she regarded the blackened stone above her. Meisha felt some small satisfaction knowing she could leave a mark on the Delve's impenetrable armor.

Reigniting her light source, Meisha squinted into the distance ahead of her, and saw that the tunnel dropped off sharply ten feet ahead of her. She hadn't seen the precipice earlier.

She crawled to the edge and saw a steep, angled drop of roughly fifteen feet. Crawling blindly, she might have fallen over the edge and broken her neck.

Cold sweat pricked her scalp. Meisha closed her eyes and pictured a dwarf's face, for she had no other explanation for her mysterious rescue.

"My thanks," she whispered.

She still had to navigate the steep drop. Feet first, the fall might have been manageable, but Meisha had no way to reverse her position in the tiny space. Shaera, an air savant, would have bypassed the drop easily. Meisha knew few such spells, but would have to learn more, she thought. She'd never trusted magic that did not involve fire. Flame felt natural to her—rendering her body light enough to float down a fifteen-foot drop, did not.

Calling the little-used words to her mind, Meisha cast the spell. Outwardly, she felt no change, but she could sense the release of magic from her spirit, and knew the spell had worked. Still, as she shimmied to the edge of the drop, she felt a hint of trepidation.

She grasped the stone ledge and somersaulted, releasing the ledge before she hit her back against the rock. Slowly, lighter than the stale air in the cavern, she drifted to the floor below.

What seemed like a tenday later, when her feet touched the ground, Meisha sank into a crouch, grateful for the chance to bend her knees. Her spine cracked as she swiveled around to loosen her sore muscles.

By her light spell, Meisha could see the passage angled off to the right, the formerly smooth tunnel walls pockmarked with crags and fissures.

She drew her hand along the ground and found what she had hoped to find. Shaera's footprints hugged the wall. They moved steadily, and Meisha saw no traces of blood or torn clothing to indicate injury. She breathed a little easier as she continued on down the tunnel.

In the quiet, with half her mind alert on the trail and watching for danger, Meisha's thoughts drifted at random. Varan's words came unexpectedly into focus.

You've never shown any indication of friendship. . . .

She'd grown up on the streets of Keczulla, running in packs with other children of the same age and situation: a perpetual state of half-starved viciousness. She would never have risked her life for any of the other Wraiths, not when a loaf of bread was worth killing for. Why did she care about the future of a nobleman's daughter like Shaera? Why was Shaera worth risking her life for, when the Wraiths were not?

They had nothing in common. Shaera was refined and educated as Meisha never would be. The girl had never experienced the kind of hunger that was an acid in the belly, blighting any other rational thought.

Perhaps it was simply that Varan didn't care. Her teacher had the capacity for kindness; she had seen glimpses of emotion behind his power, but ultimately, the will was not there, Meisha thought.

Twice now, she'd been disappointed by those she'd chosen to trust. Yet here she was, groping in the dark after a stupid girl who hadn't sense enough to take a companion on her fool's errand.

Meisha picked up her pace, aware of a downward trend to the passage. At first she hadn't felt it, and if the rate of descent didn't change, she might have miles of tunnel to cover before she reached the bottom.

She stopped briefly to eat cold meat and a biscuit she'd taken from the stores. Before discovering the lower tunnels, Varan had kept a well-stocked food supply that often included fresh fruits and vegetables Meisha had never seen before. She hadn't thought to ask where they came from, until they were gone.

When she resumed her walk, Meisha discovered an abrupt end to the tunnel after roughly twenty feet. The passage fell away again, but this time, instead of being sheer, jagged rocks riddled the drop-off.

Meisha leaned over the edge to touch one of the rocks with her fingertip. Filed, she thought, to a razor edge. She drew her hand back and smeared the dot of blood away.

The architect of the Climb had gone to a great deal of effort to make the descent from the spider to the star as long and as treacherous as possible. If it were the work of the Howlings, to guard their stronghold, how had the dwarves ever traversed such a passage? Surely, there must be an easier way to move between both sets of caverns.