Dark Heart

Kit adopted an almost amused expression. She held out the moldy ring of keys. "What about these?" she asked.

Colo took the ring in her hand and made a fist, crumbling one of the ancient keys into bits. "I don't think they'll be of much use," she said drily.

Turning back to the huge chamber, Kit and Colo were greeted once again by the grisly tableaux of death. With somber expressions, their eyes swept the timbered doorways leading out, assessing their options. One was obstructed by fallen rock. Otherwise they looked like identical holes of darkness.

"Well?" asked Kit.

"I think we should stick together," said Colo. "I didn't like that talk about the Iron Guard."

They looked again, uncertain. "Well, we needn't worry about that one," Kitiara said, pointing to the exit that was obstructed with rock and debris. "And we know that behind us is the way out," she continued, indicating the tu

Colo nodded. Looking down the tu

At first, although the torches in the walls were set farther apart, the tu

"We'll probably end up back where we started," offered Kit wearily after a time.

The unrelieved tension as much as the effort of trudging through the dank tu

All of a sudden the tracker pricked up sharply. "What's that?" Hurrying to catch up, Kit heard a strange furtive noise, a low whooshing and thrashing. Squinting ahead, they could not pinpoint its source. "Careful," Colo warned.

As they moved farther down the stone tu

Kit was a few steps ahead of Colo, peering hard into the murk, when abruptly she slipped and slid forward as if down some steep chute. She screamed and let go of her copper knife, managing to close the fingers of her left hand around a thick, knobby root. With her other hand she held onto her useless sword.

She dangled in space. Below her she could see nothing, just a dark, bottomless chasm.

But she heard a tremendous roar, followed by the swishing and thrashing of some creature far below in a pool of water. The reek that wafted upward stung her nose.

Shouting, Colo uncoiled her rope. She came forward as far as she dared, so that she could just make out Kit's fearful face. The tracker missed her first throw. The second time, Colo got too close and lost her footing, almost falling forward herself. The third time, Kit managed to swing up her arm and grab onto the rope with the hand that was also clutching the hilt of Beck's sword.

The snarling monster let out another roar from below.

"Just hold on. I'll pull you up!" Colo shouted out between gritted teeth.

The rope cut into Kit's hand, and a trickle of blood ran down her wrist. She could barely hold on to the rope and Beck's sword at the same time. Colo's strength was remarkable for someone her size, but even so it took her long minutes of strenuous hand-over-hand pulling to raise Kitiara up over the steep edge.

Crawling forward, Kit rubbed her wrist ruefully. Colo was stretched out with fatigue. It was several minutes before either of them could speak. They could hear the roars and thrashing of the water beast below. No doubt the creature was disappointed by Kit's narrow escape.

"Definitely not a slig," Kit remarked at last.

"No," said Colo, sitting up. After a moment, she added wryly, "Now we're even anyway."

They rose slowly and began their way back. They could hurry but even so, it was some time before they re-emerged into the chamber of death. Two clear tu

Kit figured it was already past midday, and they were hungry. They shared their modest provisions in the presence of the victims of Luz Mantilla's lust for revenge. They were almost becoming accustomed to the grotesque surroundings.

Sprawled on some rocks, Colo spoke. "As I see it," she said sensibly, "if each of the two other tu

far into the night. And even then, we may not have found what we are looking for."

"I was thinking the same thing," responded Kit cautiously.

"I don't want to spend two days in this hellish place," said Colo, looking around warily.

"Nor do I," admitted Kit.

"We should split up. Each take a tu

"Agreed."

"Take it slowly," urged Colo. "Carefully. Watch out for traps and… the Iron Guard."

"Don't worry," said Kit with her crooked smile. "I won't make the same mistake twice."

They stood and clasped each other's shoulders. Kit realized she had grown fond of the tracker's company. Colo's eyes shone with similar feeling.

Turning first, Colo made for the far tu

After about ten minutes Colo's tu

The tu

"By the gods," she muttered, using her sword to sweep away the webs. "I must have got the worst of the two choices."

After almost an hour of wending forward, Colo came to a dead end, a slagheap of stone, timber, and assorted junk that formed a veritable wall, stretching up to the ceiling. She was about to turn back when she noticed a pinprick of light showing through from the other side. When she got down on her knees to peer through the tiny hole she could see that the tu

With a sigh she took her sword and jabbed at the opening, working at hollowing out a wider egress. When it looked big enough to crawl through, Colo wriggled in head first and found that, with some effort, she could snake forward. After crawling on her belly for some minutes in this fashion, she was well coated with dirt and slime and dust.

Holding her knife in front of her, she found that she could chip away a path. She progressed a couple of feet at a time until she came upon a particularly large rock, whose jagged, down-slanting edge blocked any further advance. After some time she managed to pry it loose, but when it dropped out, she could feel the weight of the slagheap above her creak.