The Ruby Knight

Ghwerig is, and he can hear and feel magic.’ She looked closely at Sephrenia. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
    ‘It’s not as bad as it was,’ Sephrenia replied, shifting Sir Gared’s sword to her right hand.
    ‘Good. I’m not going to be able to do anything in here. Ghwerig would recognize my voice. You’re going to have to do almost everything.’
    ‘I can manage,’ Sephrenia said, but her voice sounded weary. She held up the sword. ‘As long as I have to carry this anyway, I may as well use it.’ She muttered briefly and made a small motion with her left hand. The tip of the sword began to glow, a tiny incandescent spark. ‘It’s not much of a light,’ she said critically, ‘but it’s going to have to do. If I made it any brighter, Ghwerig would see it.’ She raised the sword and led the way into the mouth of the gallery. The glowing tip of the sword looked almost like a firefly in the oppressive darkness, but it cast just enough faint light to make it possible for them to find their way and avoid obstructions on the rough floor of the passageway they were following.
    The passage curved steadily downward and to the right. After they had gone a few hundred paces, Sparhawk realized that it was not a natural gallery, but rather that it had been carved out of the rock, and it moved in a steady spiral down and down. ‘How did Ghwerig make this?’ he whispered to Flute.
    ‘He used Bhelliom. The old passage is much longer, and it’s very steep. Ghwerig’s so badly deformed that it used to take him days to climb up out of the cave.’
    They moved on, walking as quietly as they could. At one point the gallery passed through a large cavern where limestone icicles hung from the ceiling, dripping continually. Then the passage continued on into the rock. Occasionally, their faint light disturbed a colony of bats hanging from the ceiling, and the creatures chittered shrilly as they flapped frantically away in huge, dark clouds.
    ‘I hate bats,’ Kurik said with an oath.
    ‘They won’t hurt you,’ Flute whispered. ‘A bat will never run into you, not even in total darkness.’
    ‘Are their eyes that good?’
    ‘No, but their ears are.’
    ‘Do you know everything ?’ Kurik’s whisper sounded a little grumpy.
    ‘Not yet,’ she said quietly, ‘but I’m working on that. Do you have anything to eat? I’m a little hungry for some reason.’
    ‘Some dried beef,’ Kurik replied, reaching inside the tunic that covered his black leather vest. ‘It’s very salty, though.’
    ‘There’s plenty of water in this cave.’ She took the chunk of leather-hard beef he offered and bit into it. ‘It is a little salty, isn’t it?’ she admitted, swallowing hard.
    They moved on. Then they saw a light coming from somewhere ahead, faint at first but growing steadily stronger as they moved on down the spiral gallery. ‘His treasure cave is just ahead,’ Flute whispered. ‘Let me have a look.’ She crept on ahead and then returned. ‘He’s there,’ she said, her face breaking into a smile.
    ‘Is he making that light?’ Kurik whispered.
    ‘No. It comes down from the surface. There’s a stream that drops down into the cavern. It catches the sunlight at certain times of the day.’ She was speaking in a normal tone now. ‘The sound of the waterfall will muffle our voices. We still have to be careful, though. His eyes will catch any movement.’ She spoke briefly to Sephrenia, and the small Styric woman nodded. She reached up and extinguished the spark at the tip of the sword between two fingers. Then she began to weave an incantation.
    ‘What’s she doing?’ Sparhawk asked Flute.
    ‘Ghwerig’s talking to himself,’ she replied, ‘and it might just be that he’ll say something useful to us. He’s speaking in the language of the Trolls, so Sephrenia’s making it possible for us to understand him.’
    ‘You mean that she’s going to make him speak in Elene?’
    ‘No. The spell isn’t directed at him.’ She smiled that impish little smile of hers. ‘You’re learning many things, Sparhawk. Now you’ll understand the language of the Trolls – for a time at least.’
    Sephrenia released the spell, and quite suddenly Sparhawk could hear much more than he had during their long descent through the spiralling gallery. The rushing sound of the waterfall dropping into the cavern ahead became almost a roar, and Ghwerig’s rasping mutter came clearly over it.
    ‘We’ll wait here for a