“Did I see him, you ask? No one ever saw him, not and lived to tell, not sanely, anyway. You don't see him, don't hear him, never even know he's there. I know that now. Maybe if I hadn't drained that muth ⦔
“That's the hell of all tragedies,” said Hero quietly. “They can never happen to youâuntil they do. We all think the same, act the same, like so many sheep. And we never know for sure which lamb's next for the slaughter.”
“Well,” Geeler stood up, “I thank you for your fire, your food, your comfort. But now I must get on. It's a long night ahead, and somewhere in one of these holes I'll find my boy. I may even find Augeren, and if I doâyour job will be done for you there and then.” He took out a long knife from under his ragged coat, its blade
honed to a shimmer. “Whatever that damned thing is, if I find him, he's a goner!”
Hero came to his feet, laid a hand on Geeler's arm. “Easy, friend. Best by daylight. You don't know what you're going against.”
“And do you know any better?”
Now Eldin spoke up: “We know that well-armed posses have lost strong men,” he said. “And we know that the three of us togetherâin daylightâmust surely do better than you alone by night.”
Geeler Maas was fierce now, his teeth a bar of white in the shadow of his face where they ground the words out: “But Ilfer may still be alive! I
can't
wait till morning. I've wasted enough time as it is. Listen, I thank you both, and I know you mean wellâbut ⦔
“But you're going on anyway,” said Hero.
“Your tea and this bite of food I've taken have given me strength. Aye, and I'm back in my right mind now. Oh, I was crazed for a while, granted, but nowâall I want is to find my boy. Dead or alive. And if I find him deadâthen I'll not rest until I've found Augeren!”
“Take this, then,” said Hero. He handed Geeler a sharpened stake, of hard wood and with a point like a needle. “We think he's maybe a vampire, so this should be surer than your knife.”
Geeler tucked the stake in his belt, nodded gratefully and began to turn away.
“Where'll you start?” growled Eldin. “And how will you light your way? Best take this.” He gave Geeler a prepared torch of oil-soaked twigs tied tight about a green stick. “I suppose you've got flints?”
Again Geeler nodded. “You're good men,” he said. “The best. As for where I'll start: right here. This is as good a place as any. This quarry is vast, with many hundred
cavelets. I'll go in a circle. Might get back here by first light. Or might not ⦔
“Don't light the torch until you have to,” Hero advised. “We think Augeren fears the light. If he's got your boy, and if he sees the torch, he could just up and run.”
“A fly-the-light, aye,” Geeler grunted. “I've heard that said before. Well then, I'll only light the torch if I find Ilfer. And if I find him dead, then I'll sit till the torch goes out and taunt Ilfer's murderer all through the nightâor until he comes for me. And then it'll be him or me.” He finished speaking, stood frowning wonderingly at what the questers were about.
Eldin had stuffed a pair of stakes in his own belt, armed himself with an unlighted torch. Hero had done the same, except he'd also applied a little oil to the curve of his Kledan sword, sliding it in and out of its scabbard with scarce a whisper.
“Well, that's us all fixed up then,” said the younger quester. “Right, Geeler, which way will you take?”
“Eh? But Iâ”
“Listen,” said Eldin, “this is how we make our living, remember? A daft way, sure enough, but we're good at it. And this is one job we've already been paid, or promised, for. What?âwe should let you do it for us? And when it gets out how some onyx fancier has beaten us at our own game ⦠We'd never live it down!”
“Damn right!” said Hero. But Geeler knew that wasn't the motive at all. There weren't any motives. They just wouldn't let him try it on his own, that was all.
“I don't know how to thank you,” he said, “exceptâ”
“That's thanks enough,” Hero gruffly cut him short.
“Now tell us: is this quarry circular or what? How many exits has it got? We got here in the dark.”
“So did I,” said Geeler, “but I know the place like the back of my hand. Now look, this defile we're in is the entrance; it goes down a gentle ramp to the quarry proper, then widens out. The ground's uneven down there, and the entire dig is shaped like a kidney three hundred yards long overall. The distance between sides is maybe one hundred and twenty yards average. If you can climb you could get out almost anywhere, but it's dangerous by night. There are cavesâforsaken exploratory digsâeverywhere in the face, some of them extensive. And there are pitfalls, too, so go careful!”
“Away from the fire,” said Eldin, “our eyes will soon grow accustomed to the dark.”
“And raw onyx has a certain sheen in the night,” Geeler added. “It can take on a sort of foxfire. On the other hand, shadows can seem bottomless. But now we have to get on. I'll go this way.” Hugging the wall of rock at the side of the descending ramp, he moved off, was soon swallowed up by the darkness â¦
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Hero and Eldin wasted no time.
As Geeler took his departure, they crossed to the far side of the ramp, began their descent along that wall. “Mad as hatters!” Eldin grumbled low in his throat as they went. “We have to be.”
“Madder than that,” Hero agreed. “What? Hatters are completely sane by comparison! But be quiet now. Quiet and quick turns the trick.”
They reached the quarry's floor, began carefully exploring the caves and niches opening on every hand.
At first the work was slow, laboriously careful, even timid. “Like looking for a wasp's nest,” Eldin whisperingly
observed. “And sometimes when you find it you wish you hadn't.”
They went together into caves, waited moments until their eyes were somewhat accustomed, explored and finally left together. But apart from the slow drip of seeping water or the sudden scurry of a rat, they found nothing. “Augeren could be five miles from here.” Hero quietly stated an irrefutable fact. “Or fifty.”
“Why, after all,” asked Eldin, “should the monster be right
here
? Why not any one of a million other places?”
They began to work faster, allowing a little distance to creep between them, choosing their own caves for individual exploration as they went. Then, halfway into the quarry, Hero just emerging from a shallow cave while Eldin was deep in a more complex oneâ
“Here!”
came Geeler's hoarse shout from across the quarry. “Questers, here! I've found the boy's jacket!”
“Geeler, wait!” Hero at once called back. “Don't go on alone!”
“What? Eh? What?” came Eldin's startled inquiry, echoing loudly from the bowels of his cave.
“He's found Ilfer's jacket,” Hero called back over his shoulder, as he loped silently across the quarry's rock-and boulder-strewn floor. Panting, he reached the opposite wall, called: “Geeler? Geeler? Where the hellâ?”
“Hero?” came Eldin's cry, from what seemed a long way away. “Where are you?”
“Over here!” Hero called back. He skirted a massive boulder, saw a movement in the shadows. And: “Geeler?” he called softly. He stepped forward and something turned to face him.
“Geeler?” Hero tried to say again, even knowing it wasn't Geeler. But the word lodged in his throat, came out as the merest squeak. Faint light gleamed on features utterly alien. A monstrous fly's eye glittered; a wet
wedge of quivering flesh and bone churned between distended, slavering jaws.
The unexpected, which should
not
have been unexpected, froze Hero's muscles into instant paralysis. For a moment onlyâbut a moment was all it took.
“Hero? Geeler?” came Eldin's shout, and the sounds of his charging close by. “Damn me, a man could break his neck! Where in the name of allâ?”
“Here,” Augeren grunted around the monstrous organ in his mouth. “Here, behind this boulder. Come quick ⦔
“What? This boulder? Man, it's like pitch just here; can't see a thing!”
“Are you blind? Five paces straight ahead.”
“Eh?” Eldin took three rapid paces. With the fourth he wondered what was wrong with Hero's voice. And with the fifth ⦠But there was no fifth. His foot came down heavily on thin air.
“Pitfall!”
thought Eldin, twirling. And landing on his shoulder, neck and the back of his head, he thought no more ⦠not for some little time.
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Hero regained consciousness to a monstrous sight, one so grim that at first he thought he was still asleep, nightmaring within dreams. It was this: propped opposite Hero where he lay, as if sitting there with his back to the wall of the cave, Geeler Maas stared vacantly ahead, sightlessly, slack-jawed. His arms hung by his sides, their hands loosely a-dangle on the stony floor. And he was quite dead. His glassy eyes told that much; he neither twitched nor stirred, not a fraction. But the wound in his forehead, a neat hole, one inch across, and the brain-tissue which had seeped from it and congealed thereâthese things were even greater authority on his
passing. Dead, aye: his robes torn open, the places in his flesh where his bones would be thickest all pierced through by those same holes, their rims caked with dry blood.
And suddenly Hero recalled everything; every detail of what had gone before returned to him in a flash of memory so vivid it hurt almost as much as the egg-sized lump on the back of his head. Galvanized by those memoriesâespecially by what he had seen in the moment before he was cloutedâhe thrust himself up from the cold floor.
Or at least he tried to. But he was bound hand and foot, hands behind his back, knees bent, and a length of rope tied between wrists and anklesâhobbled, trussed like a chicken!
As realization dawnedâthe fact that he had been effectively immobilized, and that this, effectively, was Augeren's larderâHero forced himself to go limp, simply lay there trying to put all in perspective.
Time, of course, was of the essence, for he didn't know when Augeren would be back. Time â¦
And what time would it be right now? How
much
time had elapsed between clout on head and rude awakening? Last night, or presumably the night before last Augeren had taken Ilfer. And drained his marrow. Last nightâHero glanced again across the cave, and grimacedâhe'd sucked on Geeler's bones. Since he hunted at night he must feed then, too, when “food” was available. So ⦠this gray twilight filtering into the cave from outside: was it morning's light or evening's? It must be morning's, Hero decided, for he'd never known a clout on the head to keep him out of things for more than a night. Which meant that he'd been here, trussed like this, all through the hours of darkness.
Most of that time, of course, he'd been utterly insensible,
his muscles relaxed and not wanting to fight their cramped positions. But for quite some time now he'd been waking up; his arms and legs had been wanting to straighten themselves, flex a bit here and there. This was when cramp had commenced, and his current consciousness was exacerbating the condition. He forced himself to relax more yet, began to study his surroundings.
His eyes were more or less accustomed to the considerable gloom, or were at least reacting to what little light crept in from the imminent dawn. But the fact that it found its way in at all seemed to show that this lair or larder was fairly close to the entrance. Augeren (according to earlier calculations, anyway) did not much care for light, including daylight, presumably, and so must be retreating from the dawn to this lair even now. Or else he was already here â¦
For as Hero's eyes swept the cave yet again, noting to one side a low-ceilinged tunnel mouth or exit whose arch and walls seemed softly phosphorescent, so they came to rest on an apparently motionless shape huddled in one cornerâwhich in the same moment
commenced
to move!
The monster, too, was coming awake, probably disturbed by Hero's own stirrings. Foetal, its slumbering position, becoming more nearly manlike as it roused itself and uncoiled. Then it sat upâAugeren sat upâand Hero saw that it, he, was indeed manlike. Man-
like
â¦
And how Hero fought against his bonds then, straining against them until his muscles bunched, standing out like rocks trapped under his skinâuntil he thought his teeth must break where they ground together with his effortâuntil, shockingly, the monster spoke to him!
“No use, quester. None at all.” The thing's voice was a slide of oily gravel, wet earth falling from a spade.
Augeren stood up, naked and white as some deadly toadstool, half-crouching with a queer forward tilt. Then he dragged a black, ragged robe from a niche, draped himself, came loping to where Hero lay.