Whose Sword is it, Anyway?

By Ralph Benedetto, Jr.

Part Five of Five

PART FIVE:

The Blade of Githon

"Of course the College is the perfect resting place. That way, scholars from all over the world will know exactly where to find the sword when they want to study it. We are, first and foremost, an institution of higher learning, eager to foster study and knowledge. There is no other institution prestigious enough to merit the keeping of such a treasure. "And our Board of Trustees assures me that we would only have to charge a minimal fee to scholars who wanted to study the sword."

--Comments before the Committee on Antiquities Mikhala Harpfield, Ed.D. Acquisitions Librarian College of Ru'aath

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Caitlin scrambled down the steep sides of the pit, leaving Rivenbark to stand guard in the tunnel above. The sides of the pit were smooth and slick, but Caitlin was too worried about Mal to give any thought to whether or not she could make it down without killing herself or how she was going to get back out again.

When she reached Mal's side, she discovered that he was still breathing. Closing her eyes, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks and then cradled his head in her lap and examined the growing bruise near his left temple. The skin was broken and there was a lot of blood, but the wound didn't seem to be too bad.

Much to her surprise, Caitlin realized that she was gently stroking Mal's face and that her eyes were stinging. She raised a hand to her face and discovered tears streaming down her cheeks.

At that moment, Mal began to stir. Caitlin smiled at him.

He stared up at her for a moment, his head throbbing, waiting for his eyes to focus.

"I seem to be making a habit of this sort of thing," he said thickly.

"How are you?"

Mal closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of her hand on his face. "My head hurts," he said, "And I'm a little dizzy."

"Maybe you should just lie still for a few minutes."

Mal sighed. "I like that idea very much," he said.

"You know," Caitlin told him, "You shouldn't go running around like that if you're gong to trip over your own feet."

"I'll keep that in mind."

They were quiet for a few minutes while Caitlin continued to gently stroke Mal's face. Then Caitlin said, "Don't scare me like that again, okay?"

Mal blinked a few times until Caitlin's face swam into focus. "No more missed opportunities," he said.

"What?"

Very gently, Mal reached up a hand, placed it behind Caitlin's head and pulled her face down to his. Then he kissed her. The kiss didn't last long enough, but Mal could still feel her lips on his even after it was over.

He looked anxiously up into Caitlin's eyes, and she smiled at him. Then she leaned down and kissed him again.

"It's about time!"

Both Caitlin and Mal looked up to see Rivenbark peering down at them from the edge of the pit, grinning.

"You're supposed to be keeping watch!" Caitlin reminded him.

"Right!" Rivenbark's head vanished, and Caitlin turned her attention back to Mal.

"Can you stand?" she asked.

Mal nodded and then regretted having done so as pain lanced through his head. Slowly, with Caitlin's help, he climbed to his feet. He swayed a little, and Caitlin grabbed him.

"Lean on me," she said.

Mal grinned crookedly at her. "Thanks, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea. If I lean too hard, we'll both end up on the ground."

Caitlin put both arms around Mal's waist. "Oh, shut up," she said. Then, standing on her tiptoes, she kissed him again.

"I love you," Mal told her.

"Good," she said. "Because I love you, too."

"YEEOWWWW!!!"

Along with the shout, came Rivenbark, hurtling over the edge of the pit to land on Mal and Caitlin. Mal tumbled to the ground, nearly striking his head again.

"What are you oof doing?!" Caitlin yelled furiously, glaring at Rivenbark.

The answer came not from Rivenbark, but from the tunnel above. Half a dozen shadow gnomes crowded around the edge of the pit, yelling.

"Oh, fine!" Caitlin said sarcastically. She pushed Rivenbark off of her and climbed to her feet. "You're a wonderful lookout, Rivenbark."

"I let you know they were coming," Rivenbark protested, standing up.

"Falling on me wasn't the best way to do that."

"I didn't fall, I jumped."

Mal began looking around the pit. It was about eight feet wide and fourteen or fifteen feet long. There didn't seem to be any way out of it other than up.

"There are better ways to get our attention!"

"I yelled, too!" Rivenbark said.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" Caitlin snapped. "Maybe you should have tried yelling before you jumped. And why didn't you jump over the pit instead of into it?"

"I figured we should stick together."

Mal examined the far wall of the pit. It was as slick as glass. There was no way they were going to be able to climb it. Frowning, he began to examine the side walls.

"Maybe you should have stood guard yourself!" Rivenbark told Caitlin.

"Maybe I should have!" Caitlin yelled back.

Above them, the shadow gnomes were yelling as well, but they were armed only with swords, which they didn't want to throw at the three humans, and none of the gnomes was anxious to leap down into the pit after their former prisoners.

Mal walked toward a heavily shadowed area of one wall. The darkness there seemed a bit too solid looking to be just shadows.

"I've found a tunnel!"

Caitlin and Rivenbark turned to look at Mal. "What?" they asked in unison.

"I've found a tunnel," Mal repeated. "Come on!"

The tunnel roof was so low that Mal had to stoop to avoid bumping his head against it as he stepped into the tunnel.

Rivenbark ran to the tunnel entrance, stopped and bowed gallantly to Caitlin. "Ladies first," he said.

"Get in there!" Caitlin snapped. "I want to go last in case we're followed."

Shrugging, Rivenbark darted into the tunnel.

Caitlin look up at the shadow gnomes. They were strangely silent, all of them watching her expectantly. There was something ominous about the silence, and it made Caitlin wonder if going into the tunnel was such a good idea after all.

She peered into the darkness and then shrugged. It had to be better than becoming a prisoner again. With a sigh, she headed into the opening.

"It's pitch black in here!"

"Thank you, Rivenbark," Caitlin said, "for pointing that out to us."

"Shh," Mal said. "I need to listen."

"Listen?" Caitlin asked. "To what?"

"Sounds."

Caitlin opened her mouth to reply and then decided that it wasn't worth it. She wanted to keep as much of her attention as possible focused on what was behind them. If any of the shadow gnomes slipped after them in the darkness, they would reach her before either of the others, and she intended to be ready. They weren't going to catch her by surprise again.

"Rivenbark, put your hand on my back. Caitlin, put your hand on his. Let's go forward, slowly."

The tunnel floor was smooth and even, as were the walls, though the tunnel didn't follow anything even faintly resembling a straight line. It curved sharply every ten or twenty feet. After the first curve, the tiny amount of light that had seeped through the opening from the pit vanished as if it had never existed, leaving the three friends stranded in impenetrable darkness.

Rivenbark tried closing his eyes and discovered that it made absolutely no difference. Then he began to wonder if he actually had his eyes open when he thought he did. He opened his mouth to ask the others about it, but then he thought better of it. He didn't really want to know what Caitlin would have to say in reply.

The shadow gnomes had kept not torches or lanterns in their storage room, and though Mal knew that there were ways to magically create light, he didn't know how to do it, so all he could do was walk carefully forward with the fingertips of one hand brushing the tunnel wall and the other hand stretched out in front of him. He was trying to focus all of his attention into his ears.

The dwarves had a trick of finding their way through strange tunnels using the echoes of their footsteps as a guide. Though the darkness didn't leave them blind as it did humans, every dwarflearned to travel without his eyes. It had eventually become something of a sport with them. Many dwarves became so adept at "reading" sounds that they could make their way through strange tunnels blindfolded at a surprising rate of speed.

Mal knew the rudiments of the art, though he'd never become very good at it. At the moment, using his ears to guide him, he was doing his best to make some kind of forward progress without bumping into something and breaking his nose. It was fortunate that the floor of the tunnel was smooth and well made. He only hoped that no holes opened up suddenly before him.

Even with the Mal's efforts at listening, it was some time before he realized that he could hear a quiet whispering sound in the distance.

"What's that?" he asked, stopping abruptly.

"What's wh " Rivenbark began, also stopping abruptly as he ran into Mal's back.

"That noise."

Caitlin, all of her attention focused behind her, ran into Rivenbark.

"Ow! What's going on?"

"I hear something," Mal said. "Listen."

They stood quietly for a moment, listening to the distant whisper.

"What is that?" Caitlin asked softly.

Mal shook his head, forgetting that the others couldn't see him. "I don't know," he said. "The echoes in this place are confusing the sound."

"What do we do now?" Rivenbark asked.

"We go on," Caitlin said. "There's no point in going back."

"No," Mal agreed, "There isn't." He took a deep, slow breath. "Let's go on, then."

As they walked, the whisper began to grow steadily stronger. It increased in volume until it became a loud rushing noise that echoed down the tunnel, making hearing anything else difficult.

Mal stopped again. "You know what that sounds like to me?" he asked, almost yelling to make himself heard.

"No, what?" Rivenbark yelled back..

"I think it's..." Mal began, and then his voice stopped abruptly.

After a few seconds, Caitlin asked, "You think it's what?"

The rushing sound continued, uninterrupted.

"Mal?" Rivenbark asked. He stretched his hands out in front of him and stepped forward, only to find that there was nothing but air beneath his front foot. He scrambled wildly, trying to regain his balance, but failed. With a yell, he pitched forward into the darkness.

Hearing Rivenbark yell, Caitlin leaped forward blindly to help him. As she continued to plunge forward and down, it occurred to her that jumping into pitch darkness without the faintest idea what was ahead of her might not have been the best of all possible plans. The rushing sound filled her ears, and she could feel her heart pounding as she waved her arms and legs frantically and uselessly.

After what seemed like an eternity but could only have been a very few seconds, Caitlin splashed into achingly cold water.

She struggled blindly, clawing at the water, and suddenly found herself surfacing. She took a quick breath and tried to look around. It was still pitch black, but she could feel a strong current pulling her along.

"Mal?!" she called shrilly. "Rivenbark?!"

"Kate?"

It was Rivenbark. He sounded fairly near.

"Where are we?"

Leave it to Rivenbark to ask a question like that, Caitlin thought.

"Keep talking so that I can find you!" she called.

There was a brief pause, and then Rivenbark said, "All right. Have you heard the one about the bell tower, the two dwarves, the elf and the porcupine?"

Caitlin began to swim toward the sound of Rivenbark's voice. He seemed to be ahead of her and a little to the right. Swimming with the current while Rivenbark simply floated, it didn't take Caitlin long to reach Rivenbark's side. She grabbed his arm.

"Do you know where Mal is?" she asked, spitting out a mouthful of water.

Rivenbark broke of his story to say, "Up ahead of us, somewhere, I think."

"Keep talking, then."

It hadn't been necessary to tell him that. Rivenbark, once he began a story, always pushed remorselessly on to the end, whether his listeners wanted him to or not. After interrupting himself to answer Caitlin's question, he picked the threads of his narrative back up again effortlessly.

His stories were always confusing, convoluted and extremely long. Even so, the story was nearly over before Mal was able to rejoin his friends. Having hit the water first, he had been downstream from them and had had to swim back against the current to reach them.

Caitlin heard him splashing a few feet away, breathing heavily from his exertions. She reached out a hand, felt her fingers brush his tunic and grabbed the cloth tightly. She felt his arms encircle her waist. Keeping one arm around Rivenbark, Caitlin threw her other arm around Mal, pulled him close.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yes," Mal assured her, panting heavily. Swimming against the current had been grueling work.

"And then," Rivenbark concluded, "the elf says, 'Of course! How do you think I rang the bell?'"

Mal put one hand on Rivenbark's shoulder and wrapped the other around Caitlin's waist. She settled comfortably against him, still keeping her hold on Rivenbark's arm.

Rivenbark waited a moment for someone to laugh at his story, then he shrugged. He had discovered long ago that people usually had to be rather drunk to find his stories funny. Unfortunately, most people who were drunk were unable to follow the stories all the way through to the end. It was a problem that he hadn't managed to work out yet. Still, nothing was perfect. It was always best to look for the silver lining. There was always one there, even if you had to paint it in. In this case, at least he'd gotten to practice telling a story that he didn't get to tell very often. Practice is important.

"Well, what do we do now?" Caitlin asked.

"What <i>can,/i> we do?" Mal replied.

"Where are we?" Rivenbark asked.

"We're in some kind of underground river," Mal said. "And, if we're lucky, this current's sweeping us in the direction we want to go."

"It is," Rivenbark said firmly.

"How do you know?" Caitlin asked.

"Because things are going our way again, remember?"

"Now, Rivenbark..."

"And, by the way," Rivenbark interrupted her. "I did see you two kissing down there in that pit, didn't I?"

FORTY-TWO

Time passed. The river continued to sweep them into the darkness.

"We've got to do something," Caitlin said finally. "We can't just float here and let the current carry us along."

"Why not?" Rivenbark asked. "It saves wear and tear on the feet."

"We'll freeze! This water isn't getting any warmer."

"I don't know that we really have a lot of choice in the matter," Mal said.

"We could swim for the bank," Caitlin suggested.

"If there is one," Mal said.

Rivenbark frowned in Mal's direction. "Every river has a bank, even underground ones."

"There might be nothing there but an unclimbable stone wall," Mal explained. "And swimming across this current would be difficult to say the least, especially if we try to stay in physical contact with each other."

"So, what do we do?" Caitlin asked.

Mal shrugged. "Wait."

There were silent for a moment, and then Rivenbark said, "I think we're speeding up."

"How can you tell?" Caitlin asked.

"The spray," Mal said. "It's hitting with more force, I think. We are speeding up."

"What was that?!" Rivenbark yelped suddenly.

"What?!"

"Something just brushed my leg!"

"What was it?!" Caitlin yelled.

"Um..actually, I think it was my leg," Mal said.

"Is the sound getting louder?" Rivenbark asked.

"Yes," Mal said. "And we're picking up even more speed!"

In a state of rising panic, the three friends were swept down the river. The spray continued to strike them with increasing force, and the roar of the water continued to get louder.

"Do they," Rivenbark began, then he stopped to spit out a mouthful of water, "Do they have underground rapids?"

"I don't know," Mal said, "But I think we're about to oof--"

Rivenbark and Caitlin felt the impact through their arms as Mal's back slammed into a large rock.

"Are you all right?" Caitlin asked, letting go of Rivenbark and reaching toward Mal.

"Yes..." Mal said thickly. "I mean...I think so..."

Rivenbark opened his mouth to say something but began to choke as water rushed down his throat. Caitlin pounded on his back until he began to breathe again.

"Mal, this is getting serious," she said. "We can't stay here."

"We can't do much else. There's no way we can fight this current."

"Can't you do something?!" Caitlin yelled in frustration.

"No." Mal's response was characteristically quiet.

"What good are you, then?" Caitlin raged.

"None at all, I suppose."

There was a long pause. "That's not true," Caitlin said, finally. "I'm sorry, Mal."

Clinging tightly to each other to avoid being swept apart, the three friends were carried on by the racing current. Soon, the noise, the spray and the effort needed to keep from drowning made speech totally impossible. Simply continuing to breathe became difficult enough.

They were spun haphazardly from side to side, occasionally grazing rocks that jutted up from below the river's surface, sometimes being slammed into them with brutal force.

Caitlin was nearly knocked unconscious when her head struck a projecting stone, and Rivenbark thought his ankle was going to be twisted off when, for on agonizing second, it was caught in a crevice between two large rocks.

They lost track of time, feeling nothing but the pounding their bodies were taking, knowing that their skin was scraped, bruised and torn, lost in the rush of water and the driving noise that surrounded them. Then, suddenly, they were flung into the air, cartwheeling crazily through the darkness.

As she left the water, Caitlin felt her grip on Mal and Rivenbark torn away. Unexpectedly alone, her numbed mind remembered lessons in falling that Mal had given her...when? Ages ago, it seemed. She flattened her body out, spreading her arms and legs and trying to stay loose for the impact. Suddenly, she slammed into a sheet of water.

She struggled frantically, clawing at the water that surrounded her, trying to find the surface, and then she saw a shimmer of light. Light! The sight calmed her. Kicking both feet, she darted toward it and felt a warm breeze against her face. She stopped struggling and looked around.

She was in a round pool about thirty yards across. From somewhere high above her, light was streaming down. Mal and Rivenbark were in the pool with her, and the water was delightfully warm and, even more importantly, calm.

"Where are we?" she asked tiredly, treading water.

"And what happened?" Rivenbark added.

Mal swam to one edge of the pool and grabbed on to a thin rock ledge. "Come here," he called. "You have to see this!"

Caitlin and Rivenbark swam over and stared in silence at the scene before them.

Beside them, some distance away, its roar somehow muted, they could see a waterfall. It was an impressive sight. Unguessable torrents of water flowed out of the darkness above them and flowed on into the darkness below them, a vertical river.

The pool they were in was in a bowl of stone suspended form the wall of the cavern. Fifty feet above them, cut into the stone of the cavern wall, was a circular opening six feet across. Clear white/green light streamed from the opening.

"How did we get here?" Rivenbark asked, hanging on to the side of the bowl and luxuriating in the feel of the warm water on his bruised body.

"We must have been up there," Mal said pointing up into the darkness where the top of the waterfall must have been. "When we went over the side, we fell here instead of...down there." He gestured into the shadows below.

Caitlin swam slowly across the pool toward the cavern wall. "I think we ought to get out of here as soon as possible," she said.

"But, why?" Rivenbark protested. "It's nice." He closed his eyes and settled back into the water. "I'm finally starting to get warm again."

"It's also deep," Caitlin said. "What happens when you get too tired to swim? Besides, I'm tired of being in the water."

"I kind of like it," Rivenbark said. "And I bet we finally got all that mud off!"

"Well, there's the way out," Mal said, looking up at the distant opening.

"But, how do we get up there?" Caitlin asked as she reached the cavern wall. "This wall is hey, there's a rope here!"

Rivenbark and Mal both swam over as Caitlin pulled the rope away from the wall. One end of it dangled two feet above the surface of the pool, and the other vanished into the opening above.

"We can climb out of here!" Caitlin cried. "Look!"

"It's not much of a rope," Rivenbark said thoughtfully. "It's probably been here for years."

"It's the only way out," Caitlin said. "One of us has got to climb it."

"It will have to be someone light," Mal said. "Whoever it is can climb up and take one of our ropes with them."

Rivenbark pulled his pack off and opened it while Mal and Caitlin kept him afloat.

"Everything's still here," he said. "It's all soaked, though."

"The food's probably ruined," Caitlin said.

Mal winced, wondering what kind of condition the book Mika had given him was in.

"But the sword's all right," Rivenbark said with a grin. "And here's some rope." He pulled out a coil, closed his pack and handed it to Mal. "Here," he said. "I don't need to carry this extra weight with me up that rope."

"Rivenbark," Caitlin began.

"Don't argue with me, Kate," he said. "You aren't making this climb. I am."

Without another word, Rivenbark grabbed the rope, hung his weight from it and pulled. The rope didn't break. "Good enough," he said. Caitlin and Mal watched anxiously as he began to climb. There were no knots in the tope, and it was wet and slick as well as partially rotted. Rivenbark tried to brace his feet against he stone wall, but it, too, was wet and slippery.

Inch by inch, Rivenbark forced himself up the rope. There were several anxious moments when it looked as if he was going to fall, but he eventually made it to the opening.

He got his hands on the lip of the opening and began to haul himself carefully up. When his face cleared the edge of the hole, he looked in and found himself eyeball to eye socket with a grinning skull.

With a screech of fear, Rivenbark pushed himself away from the gruesome artifact, but the screech turned to a wail of dismay as he began to fall backwards, windmilling his arms and legs uselessly. It occurred to Rivenbark, even as he struggled to regain his balance, that he'd been spending a lot of time falling lately, and he'd had enough of it.

Caitlin and Mal, waiting fifty feet beneath Rivenbark, were briefly paralyzed by the sight of him beginning to topple backward toward them.

At the last possible moment, Rivenbark's grasping fingers found the rope and closed over it. He couldn't prevent himself from sliding several feet down the rope, his legs kicking against the stone wall beside him, but he managed to hang on and, finally, to stop his slide.

"Are you alright?" Mal called up to him.

"What happened?" Caitlin wanted to know.

Rivenbark looked down at them. "There's a skull up there!" he called back. He started to gesture toward the hole but realized at the last moment that taking one hand off of the rope would be a bad idea.

"Whose skull?" Caitlin asked.

"How should I know?" Rivenbark yelled back. "Some dead person's!"

"Is there anything else?" Mal asked.

"I didn't notice."

"Well, get back up there!" Caitlin called. "A skull can't hurt you, and I don't know how much longer we're going to be able to stay afloat!"

Rivenbark stared at her for a moment and then nodded. "You're right," he said. "You're right."

He looked up at the hole and, with a sigh, hauled himself back toward it, trying not to notice the fact that his palms were now leaving a fair amount of blood wherever they closed around the rope. When he reached the opening, Rivenbark peered carefully over the lower edge. The skull was still there, less than a foot away.

"Er...hello," Rivenbark greeted it with a lopsided smile. "Mind if I come in? Hope not." Without waiting for an answer, he pulled himself into the opening. Stretching before him was a short tunnel six feet high and ten feet long. Beyond that was apparently a chamber of some sort. The light source, whatever it was, was somewhere in the chamber.

At Rivenbark's feet, behind the skull, was a grappling hook wedged into a crack in the floor. He untied the rotted rope and tied the one he had carried up with him to the hook instead. The rope was wet, and his palms were burning badly, but he'd always been good at knots, even when he was flunking everything else. Well, actually, he'd even been good at some of the stuff he was flunking. He just didn't do well on tests, that was his problem. Finally, he tossed the free end of the rope down to Caitlin and Mal. "Come on up!" he called, peering through the opening at them. "The view's grand!"

While he waited for his friends to make the climb, an easier job, since this rope had knots in it, Rivenbark squatted down and picked up the skull. He stared into the empty eye sockets and asked, "Well, where's the rest of you? Or, did you just decide to quit while you were a head?"

Shrugging, he put the skull down and walked down the short tunnel. At the end of it was a jumble of bones. Rivenbark sifted through the pile and picked up what he thought was a damaged rib. It had not been so much broken as crushed, and several of the larger bones in the torso had been smashed and splintered.

"Rivenbark?"

Rivenbark turned at the sound of Caitlin's voice. "Down here," he called. "With the rest of our smiling young friend." He turned to look into the chamber beyond the tunnel. It was empty except for a stone ladder leading to a hole in the ceiling.

Rivenbark looked back down at the shattered skeleton. "You didn't do this to yourself by tripping over your own feet," he said, "so how did it happen?"

Caitlin walked up behind Rivenbark. "Look at the walls," she said.

"What?"

"They're glowing."

Rivenbark looked at the walls of the chamber for the first time. It was true. The walls were giving off a soft, greenish/white light. "Oh,' he said with a marked lack of interest. "I hadn't noticed." He returned his gaze to the skeleton.

"Caitlin? Rivenbark?"

"Down here," Caitlin called, as Mal climbed into the tunnel.

"I don't think much of this," Mal said, looking around. While Caitlin and Rivenbark could stand normally in the tunnel, the roof was several inches lower than Mal was tall, so he was forced to stand in an awkward hunched over position.

He walked over to where Caitlin was standing and Rivenbark was kneeling. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Have you noticed the walls?" Caitlin asked, pointing.

"Yes," Mal said. "At least we're able to see in here. But I'd like to straighten up before my back gives out, if you don't mind." He started to step around Rivenbark and into the spacious chamber beyond, but Rivenbark held up a hand to stop him.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," he said warningly.

"Why not?"

"Your first step into that room is likely to be the last step you ever take."

FORTY-THREE

"What are you talking about?" Caitlin asked in exasperation as Mal took a step backward.

Rivenbark gestured at the pile of bones just outside the tunnel. "How you think he died?" he asked. "Look at the bones. I'd guess that there's a pressure trap out there."

Caitlin frowned. "Rivenbark, we're in an underground cavern in the middle of nowhere. What could possibly make you think--"

"Look at the floor. See all those cracks?"

"With all the water in this place," Mal said quietly, "It isn't surprising to find the floor cracked.

Rivenbark shook his head. "Those cracks are the perfect way to hide a pressure trap. You have to tear up the floor to get the plates in, and the trick is always to hide the damage afterward. Making it look like damage done naturally is one way to do that."

Mal frowned. Rivenbark sounded different, somehow. Firm and certain and serious. There was something very persuasive about him.

"I know a simple way to settle this," Caitlin said. She walked back down the tunnel, picked up the skull and returned. "Here," she said, tossing the skull over Rivenbark's head and into the room. "This will prove it one way or the other."

Caitlin and Mal both tensed as the skull hit the floor and rolled, clattering along the stone. After a moment it stopped, grinning inanely back at them.

"See?" Caitlin said, starting to step forward. "There's--"

"No!" Rivenbark cried, grabbing her. "Listen to me, Kate. This is my field. I know what I'm talking about!"

Caitlin stared at him, the look on her face clearly saying that, had Rivenbark known a bit more about his field of study, he would have still been at school, but she stayed in the tunnel.

"That's the oldest trick in the book!" Rivenbark said, pointing at the skull. Then he paused. The statement has just reminded him of a great story. Then he looked at Caitlin and decided not to tell it. Just as well, really. It wasn't exactly suitable for a mixed audience, anyway. "It probably takes fifty or a hundred pounds of weight to set off the trap. That way, someone tosses out a rock, nothing happens, they waltz into the room and blammo!" He smacked a fist into his open palm. "Paste!" he said, wincing and wishing that he hadn't punched his own hand. The rope burns didn't like being punched.

"So, what do you suggest we do?" Caitlin asked acidly. "Stay here until we grow old or jump back into the river?"

Rivenbark turned to the wall of the tunnel and began to examine it carefully. "Maybe there's a switch here to deactivate the trap."

"Fine," Caitlin said, yawning and sitting down. "Wake me up if you find it."

"I'll find it."

Caitlin nodded and then sat down next to Mal, leaning against him. He put his arms around her and told Rivenbark, "Take your time."

It took him nearly an hour, but Rivenbark did finally find a section of the tunnel wall that slid back to reveal a large lever.

"Hey!" he cried happily. "I told you!"

Caitlin awoke with a start at Rivenbark's shout, and she and Mal walked over to look at Rivenbark's discovery.

"It isn't labeled," Caitlin observed.

"Why should it be?" Rivenbark asked. "Do you think the person who put in will forget what it's for? Shh!" He stared at the lever, flexed his hands, rubbed his palms together and then winced and wished that he hadn't. He grabbed the lever and moved it carefully until it stopped in a new position with an audible click.

"Great, Rivenbark!" Caitlin said with a smile. "Let's go." Just as she started for the tunnel, however, there was a second click, followed by a third. Caitlin froze. "What was that?" she asked.

"This lever has three positions," Rivenbark said.

"Three?" Caitlin echoed.

There was another click. "Four," Rivenbark amended.

"Four? On, off and what else?"

Rivenbark took his hands off the lever and frowned. "Well," he said, "I'd bet that one is a dummy. It doesn't do anything. The other is probably a delay."

"A delay?"

"You know," Rivenbark explained, "The first person out is safe, so the whole group goes in and splat!" He clapped his hands together sharply and then yelped in pain while Caitlin jumped.

"Don't do that!" she snapped.

"Can you tell which setting is which?" Mal asked.

"I think we're about to find out," Rivenbark said with a grin.

He just managed to stop himself from rubbing his hands together again, and then he took hold of the lever. "Now, don't anyone make a sound." He ran the lever through its four positions again. "There!" he said with a grin. "That one's the dummy!'

Caitlin stared at him. This was, in some ways, a new Rivenbark. "How can you tell?"

"The feel of it, and the sound. It didn't trip a mechanism like the other settings did. It's sloppy work, really." He took a deep breath. "Well, that's two explained, anyway."

"Two?" Caitlin asked.

Rivenbark nodded. "I think we can assume that the position it started in is on."

"But, what if you're wrong?"

"Ah, well it doesn't pay to think about that too much. I believe we can go on, now."

"What? How?!"

"Listen Caitlin, you really have to learn not to get worked up like that. I've found that a calm, relaxed approach to life--"

"Stop it, Rivenbark!" Caitlin snapped, her voice rising. "Just tell me--"

"Caitlin," Mal said softly. "Calm down and give him a chance."

Caitlin glared at him, but she didn't say anything.

"This is easy!" Rivenbark said, gesturing at the lever. "We're going to assume that the position the lever was originally in activates the mechanism, because you don't go to all that trouble to install a lethal little trap and leave it off, right?"

Caitlin nodded, and Mal said, "All right."

"Good." Rivenbark jerked the lever to another position. "This one's a dummy. It doesn't do

anything." He held up a hand as Caitlin opened her mouth. "And, don't ask me if I'm sure. I can tell by the feel and the sound of it. Trust me. It's just here to confuse the unwary."

Caitlin nodded again.

"Now, all that leaves are these two positions." He moved the lever again. "One of them certainly deactivates the mechanism, while the other is probably a delay, allowing one person to cross safely. We don't dare let more than one go, because it may have a weight sensitive override. Follow me?"

"Yes," Caitlin said. "But you don't know which setting is off and which is the delay."

"That's the beauty of it," Rivenbark told her gleefully. "I don't have to." He moved the lever to one of the last two positions. "One of you can go now."

Caitlin and Mal looked at each other, and then both of them said, "I'll go," simultaneously.

It looked like an argument was about to start, and then Rivenbark said, "Let Mal go."

"Why?" Caitlin cried.

"Because I want to go ahead and get the heaviest one of us across."

"Oh."

"Slowly, please," Rivenbark told Mal. "Don't run. Some of these things are a little unsteady."

Caitlin watched tensely as Mal walked to the tunnel mouth and then set one foot gingerly on the chamber floor. When nothing happened, he stepped out of the tunnel completely. When nothing continued to happen, he turned and smiled back at Caitlin and Rivenbark. Then, slowly and carefully, he walked across the room until he was standing next to the stone ladder.

"Is this far enough?" he called back.

"I certainly hope so!" Rivenbark replied.

"What now?" Caitlin asked. "If that's the delay setting, and I walk out, it'll set off the trap,

right?"

"Oh, definitely," Rivenbark said. "So I do this." He moved the lever again. "Now it's either off or on delay. Either way, you can cross safely."

Nervously, Caitlin stepped out of the tunnel. She walked gingerly across the floor until she was

at Mal's side. Turning, she waved to Rivenbark. "Your turn!"

"Yes, well, this is the tricky part."

"Why?"

"Well, I'm going to put it back into the position it was in when Mal crossed. It that's the delay,

it's probably designed to prevent anyone from doing what we're trying to do. There may be a timer."

"And?"

"And, if there is, then, if you activate the delay, turn it off, then activate it again, and cross the floor too soon after the last person did, it sets off the trap."

"So you wait a reasonable length of time before crossing," Mal said.

"Yes," Rivenbark said slowly, "but if you leave most of these on delay for too long, a second backup mechanism kicks in, and it eliminates the delay, so the next person to cross sets off the trap."

"So, how do you know how long to wait?" Mal asked.

"You guess!" Rivenbark called back.

"How long are you going to wait?" Caitlin asked.

"No time at all," Rivenbark said, though he said it so quietly that only he could hear it. He took a deep breath, clicked the lever back into the position it had been in when Mal had crossed, and, with a bloodcurdling screech, he launched himself from the tunnel mouth, fairly flying across the chamber floor.

From somewhere deep in the ceiling came a grinding sound, and a large chunk of rock slammed into the floor just behind him. He threw himself forward and another massive slab of stone slammed down right on top of him.

Caitlin screamed and turned to Mal who was staring at the stone with a fixed expression on his face. She looked back at the rock to see Rivenbark crawling out from underneath it. Then he was at Caitlin's side, and she threw her arms around him and hugged him.

"I thought you were dead!" she cried.

"Me, too," Rivenbark said, dazed. "What happened? That rock should have crushed me!"

He turned to see the two slabs being pulled back up into the ceiling by some kind of mechanical arm.

"I used the deflection spell," Mal said, "I'm getting the hang of it, more or less. It worked, anyway."

"It sure did!" Rivenbark said with a grin. "Nothing to worry about at all! Why don't we see what's up this ladder, hey? One at a time, please. I'd better go first."

FORTY-FOUR

"How far underground do you think we are?" Caitlin asked, looking down at Mal when she was halfway up the ladder.

"I don't know," he replied with a shrug.

"Come on!" Rivenbark called from the room above. "We need to keep moving!"

"All right, all right," Caitlin said tiredly. Shaking her head, she continued up the ladder. Rivenbark seemed invigorated for some reason, and she'd begun to think of Mal as untiring, but she wanted nothing more than to lie back down and get some sleep, preferably for several hours. Or maybe several days.

After Caitlin reached the next floor Mal followed her up the ladder. By the time he finished climbing, Rivenbark was already across the room looking at a large wooden door.

"Let's just hope it's not locked," Caitlin said quietly, as she and Mal walked over to join Rivenbark, who was kneeling in front of the door, studying it carefully.

Other than the door, the room was empty. The walls of this room glowed with the same odd light.

"Well?" Caitlin asked after several uneventful minutes had passed.

"I think it's all right," Rivenbark said hesitantly. "Let's find out if it's open." Slowly, he reached out and lifted the latch. Then he gave the door a gentle shove. It swung open easily, revealing a long narrow hallway. At the end of the hallway was a ladder leading to an opening in the ceiling.

"Oh, fine," Caitlin said with a sigh. "Another ladder. Didn't whoever designed this place believe in stairs?"

"Come on," Rivenbark said with suppressed excitement, starting down the hallway. He moved carefully, every sense strained to the limit, searching for hidden mechanisms. Finally, after an agonizingly long time, he reached the ladder. He examined it critically before starting up it, and, when he finally did start to climb, he did it gingerly, testing every rung before letting his weight rest on it.

When he was halfway up, Caitlin, standing at the base of the ladder, yelled, "Hurry up!"

Startled, Rivenbark jumped and nearly fell, only managing to save himself at the last moment. Hanging with one arm wrapped around the ladder, he glared down at Caitlin, breathing heavily, and said, "Don't do that!"

"Rivenbark," she said firmly, "I'm tired. I get irritable when I'm tired, and I don't intend to spend the all day climbing one stupid ladder! Now, hurry it up!"

"All right, all right," Rivenbark said placatingly, patting the air with his free hand. Turning, he climbed quickly up the last few rungs and on to the floor above, where Caitlin and Mal quickly joined him.

By the time they reached him, Rivenbark was standing next to another stone ladder and staring up through the hole at the top of it with a concerned look on his face.

"What is it?" Caitlin asked, walking toward him.

"You're not going to like it," he warned.

"What?"

By this time, she was beside him, and Rivenbark simply pointed up. "Look," he said.

Caitlin looked up, groaned and then closed her eyes. "Oh, no..."

"What is it?" Mal asked, hurrying over.

"Ladders," Caitlin said, infinite weariness in her voice.

Mal looked up and then shook his head. Stretching upward was a ladder that seemed to simply go on and on and on. There was a landing on the floor above them, perhaps ten or fifteen feet overhead, but there was nothing after that for an unimaginable distance.

"Well," said Rivenbark with a chipper smile that Caitlin wanted to slap off of his face, "The sooner we start, the sooner we'll get done!" Whistling, he started up the ladder.

"Do we have to?" Caitlin asked, looking at Mal.

"Yes," he told her with a rueful smile, "I think we do."

The climb turned out to be every bit as bad as Caitlin had feared it would be. Her aching limbs moved leadenly, and she began to think that the ladder had no end. Whenever she looked up, all she saw was Rivenbark, who had, fortunately, stopped whistling after the first thirty feet, and who was beginning to climb more and more slowly. She knew that Mal was below her, but she didn't dare look down. Heights had never been one of her favorite things.

When she finally reached the top, Caitlin stepped off of the ladder and onto a cold stone floor saying, "No more ladders. No more ladders."

Rivenbark was slumped in one corner of the room, sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, panting. Caitlin sank down beside him. At the sound, he opened one eye and said, "I don't...ever want...to see another...ladder...as long as I...live!"

Caitlin nodded. "Right," she said.

Mal walked over and leaned up against the wall. "It isn't a good idea to sit down," he said. "Not right after a climb like that, and not on cold stone."

"It was either sit down or fall down," Caitlin said, looking up at him.

"Right," Rivenbark agreed breathlessly.

There was a long pause while they all tried to calm their breathing and regain some strength in their limbs. Mal spent the time walking slowly around the room, massaging his arms and legs. Finally, Caitlin asked, "Rivenbark, is this all really worth it?"

"What?"

"All of this," Caitlin amplified, waving one hand at the room around them. "Is everything that we've been through worth it? I mean, we don't even know if there's anyone alive who can fix the sword. We don't know if this dwarf we're on our way to see will know anything about it."

"Of course it's worth it!" Rivenbark cried. He tried to stand up but gave up the attempt halfway through and slid back down the wall into a sitting position. "I really want to get back into the college. I can't do anything without accreditation. Besides, look at yourself, Kate! Look at everything that you've gained from this trip already, and we're not even finished yet!"

"And, what if we can't get it fixed?" Caitlin asked. "What then?"

"We'll get it fixed," Rivenbark said firmly. "Don't you worry. We'll get it fixed all right!"

Caitlin shook her head. "Even if we do get it reforged, they might not let us back in, you know. After all, we did steal the sword form the school in the first place."

"Don't worry about that, either!" Rivenbark said with the beginnings of a smile. "When we get the sword reforged, they'll take us back. Never fear!"

"This means a lot to you, doesn't it?" Caitlin asked.

Rivenbark looked earnestly at her. "It means everything."

"All right." Slowly, Caitlin struggled to her feet, wincing as her muscles protested. "Let's get on with it, then."

"I knew I could count on you, Kate!" Rivenbark said. Then, looking slightly alarmed, he said, "Wait for me!" He bounced to his feet eagerly. "Let me go first!"

"If we let you go first, we'll still be down here next year."

Caitlin led the way through a small archway and into a hall that branched in two directions. The walls were now dressed stone, but they still glowed as those in the previous chambers had done.

"This looks a lot nicer," Mal said. It almost appeared that they had moved from a cave to a castle.

"Which way do you think we should go?" Caitlin asked, staring at the branching corridor.

"Well," Rivenbark said thoughtfully, "What we really ought to do is check out both ways carefully and then--"

"Left it is," Caitlin said. "Let's go."

"Wait a minute!" Rivenbark yelled, running after her. "We can't just--"

"Oh, yes we can," Caitlin said, cutting him off. At that moment, she rounded a turn in the corridor and stopped, a smile on her face. "Stairs," she said blissfully.

Rivenbark followed her around the corner, with Mal not far behind him.

"That settles it," Caitlin said. "We go this way."

"But," Rivenbark began.

"Listen, Rivenbark. I'm not going up anymore ladders. We're going this way."

Rivenbark looked toward Mal in despair, but Mal just shook his head. "I'm not going to argue with her," he said. "She's meaner than I am," he added with a smile.

"Well, at least let me go first," Rivenbark said, turning back to Caitlin. Then he gave a squawk of dismay as he realized that she was already on her way up the staircase. "Wait!" He ran one hand along the bannister, looked surprised, repeated the action and then launched himself up the stairs crying, "Wait!!"

He was still two or three steps behind Caitlin when one of the stairs collapsed beneath the weight of her foot. With a cry, she fell forward. Rivenbark darted after her and leaped on the stair that she was in the process of falling off of. In the process, he bumped into Caitlin, who, already overbalanced, was sent sprawling headlong.

Mal ran up the stairs to see if Caitlin was all right. Before he reached her, however, she stood up and glared at Rivenbark. "Well, thanks for your help!" she said bitterly.

"You were falling off of this stair!" he said.

"So you thought you'd hurry the process along?" Mal winced at the acidity of her tone, but it didn't seem to phase Rivenbark.

"I had to get onto this step."

"What about me?!" Caitlin demanded.

"Caitlin," Mal asked quietly. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she snapped. "But not because--"

"Why don't you give Rivenbark a chance to explain?"

"Look!" Rivenbark said, pointing down at his feet. "This step didn't break or collapse, it sank

into the floor."

"So?"

"Feel the bannister," Rivenbark suggested.

Rolling her eyes skyward, Caitlin rubbed one hand quickly across the bannister. Then she frowned and did it again. "It's so slick you can't hold on to it!"

"Right. I have a feeling that, if I take my weight off this step, all of the steps will collapse, turning this thing into a slide that we won't have any chance of getting up."

"What should we do?" Mal asked.

"Tie a rope around my waist and then see if you can reach the top of the stairway. That way, if anything happens when I move, you can pull me up."

Mal and Caitlin started up the stairway, rope in hand. Ahead of them, the stairs curved. Before his friends were out of his sight, Rivenbark said, "You know, there's something very strange about this place."

"What do you mean?" Caitlin asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

"Take these stairs, for example. Most traps of this sort would work when you put your weight <i>on</i> the step, not when you took if off. That way you wouldn't have a chance to get past it."

"Then tell me why," Caitlin demanded, "You bumped into me like that."

"Well, just in case."

"Maybe whoever designed the traps just didn't do a good job," Mal suggested.

Rivenbark shook his head. "And that skeleton. Did you notice that it didn't have any gear?"

"So what?"

"So why would someone take the gear and leave the skeleton like that?"

Caitlin frowned. "Why would anyone take a skeleton?"

"Don't you see?" Rivenbark asked, exasperated. "It was because of the skeleton that I figured out there was a trap in the first place!"

"So, it was lucky for us."

"But it wasn't! Those traps are designed so that, if you pay attention and work at it, you can get around them."

"That's idiotic, Rivenbark!" Caitlin said. "No one designs traps for people to get around."

As Caitlin and Rivenbark had continued talking, Mal went around the curve and eventually found the top of the stairway. Coming back down he said, "The rope's tied. Let's go."

He climbed back to the top of the stairway, this time with Caitlin beside him. "All right!" he called down to Rivenbark. Go ahead."

"Right!" Rivenbark called back. Taking a deep breath, he lifted his foot off of the stair. There was sharp click, and then all of the stairs collapsed, turning the staircase into a slide. Looking behind him, Rivenbark saw that a panel of blades had risen out of the floor at the base of the stairs. He shook his head and decided not to mention that part of it to his friends. "Haul me up, Mal!" he called.

FORTY-FIVE

"There really is something peculiar going on here," Rivenbark said, shaking his head. "These traps are too easy."

"Easy?!" Caitlin cried. "That collapsing ceiling could have killed us!"

"But it didn't," Rivenbark pointed out in the voice of someone who has just proven his point, crushing the opposition with irrefutable logic.

"But it could have," Caitlin pointed out. "Those traps were designed to kill people."

Rivenbark shook his head. No," he said. "They were only designed to kill stupid or careless people. There's a big difference. Take my word for it. Those traps were not meant to kill us, only to test us."

"All right, Rivenbark!" Caitlin said, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Have it your own way."

"Thank you." With that, Rivenbark began to lead the way down a long narrow dark hallway. At the far end was an illuminated opening.

"What do you suppose that is?" Caitlin asked.

"I don't know," Mal said.

"Don't worry!" Rivenbark called back over his shoulder with a grin. "I'll figure it out."

The opening, which was a rectangle ten feet high and three feet across, proved to be the entrance to a nearly bare stone chamber, also rectangular. The room was thirty feet long by twenty feet wide. At the far end, directly opposite the opening, was a large, ornately carved wooden door with a large metal latch and keyhole.

This chamber, unlike the rest of the tunnels and rooms they had been in, was brightly lit by several lanterns. The brilliance was dazzling after the dim light in the rest of the cavern. Tapestries brightened the walls, and a large chair sat in the center of the room on an ornate rug.

"What should we do?" Caitlin asked in a whisper, peering into the room. "It looks like someone lives here."

"Do?" Rivenbark asked. "We should go in. We're invited." He walked boldly into the room and headed for the far door, with Mal close behind him. With a shrug, Caitlin followed and instantly wished that she hadn't, as a huge stone slab dropped to the floor with a resounding boom, blocking off the opening they had entered by.

Mal rushed back to the slab, and he and Caitlin tried to shift it. It was immoveable.

Rivenbark, meanwhile, hadn't even bothered to turn back at the sound and was now kneeling in front of the wooden door.

"Rivenbark!" Caitlin called. "Come and help us!"

Waving a hand to dismiss the slab, Rivenbark said, "Don't worry about that. I expected that to happen. You won't be able to move it."

"You expected it?!" Caitlin shrieked. She started to run across the room toward him, but Mal caught her by the arm. "Leave him," he said quietly. "It's up to Rivenbark to get us out of here. He can't do that if you beat him unconscious. Don't distract him."

Caitlin stared at him for a moment and then wilted. "You're right," she said in dismay. "I know it. But the idea of relying on Rivenbark's skills scares me."

"Cheer up," Mal said. "He's done fine so far."

"He hasn't had to pick a lock so far," Caitlin said.

"He picked the locks on the shackles in the shadow gnomes' cavern," Mal reminded her.

They walked across the room to stand behind Rivenbark, who was now peering into the keyhole with a magnifying glass and a mirror and humming quietly to himself.

"Well?" Caitlin asked after a moment.

"I don't think we got this far in class," Rivenbark said in a conversational tone, "But I'll have a go." He continued to stare at the keyhole.

After several more minutes, Caitlin said, "Don't you think you should do something besides look?"

"You can't be too careful," Rivenbark said. "The first rule is to look before you touch."

Caitlin waited several more minutes, fuming, and then snapped, "Get on with it, Rivenbark! I don't want to be stuck here for the rest of my life!"

Rivenbark shrugged. "All right," he said. "But it'll be your fault if I kill us all." Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a small pouch. He opened it carefully and, after sorting through its contents, pulled out a lockpick. "This should do it," he said happily.

He lifted the lockpick, stared at the lock, inserted the pick and began to feel his way around the mechanism. His head was tilted to one side, and his eyes were closed. He looked calm and relaxed, and Caitlin, who hadn't even realized that she'd been holding her breath, began tp breathe again. This was not the same Rivenbark who had set to work on the lock of the library door all those months ago.

Rivenbark pressed upward with the lockpick and twisted. From deep inside the door came a sharp click.

Caitlin relaxed.

"Uh-oh."

Caitlin tensed up again. "What is it?"

With a deep groaning sound, the side walls of the room began to move toward each other very slowly, but inexorably.

"Keep working," Mal told Rivenbark. The he moved toward one of the walls and tried to hold it back. He strained, pushing against the wall with every ounce of his strength, but it was no use. The walls were barely moving, but even that motion was too much for him to counteract.

"Well?" Caitlin asked suddenly. She'd been peering over Rivenbark's shoulder watching him. At the sound of her voice, he jumped, and the lockpick clattered to the floor.

Groaning, Caitlin closed her eyes.

"Sorry," Rivenbark said. "I guess I'm a little tense."

Mal gave up his futile attempt to hold back the walls. "You can do it," he told Rivenbark softly. "Just take it slow and easy."

"Slow and easy," Rivenbark repeated. He reached toward the door with his lockpick and missed the keyhole. Caitlin, who had reopened her eyes just in time to see this, groaned again. Rivenbark tried for the keyhole a second time and missed a second time. He cleared his throat, closed his eyes and his hand shot forward. When he opened his eyes, the lockpick was in the keyhole.

"There you are!" he said with a grin. "Nothing to it!" Concentrating, he began to move the

lockpick.

Caitlin stared at the walls, fascinated by their slow approach. She was trying to decide which way she wanted to be facing when the walls met. She wasn't able to make up her mind.

"How are you doing, Rivenbark?" Mal asked gently after a few moments.

"Well..." Rivenbark said slowly. "I..." SNAP!

"What was that?!" Caitlin asked quickly.

"I broke my best lockpick," Rivenbark said ruefully.

"Rivenbark..." Mal said.

"Oh, don't worry," Rivenbark told him. "I have a spare." He began to rummage through his tools. "Someplace..."

"Rivenbark..." Caitlin said.

By this time, the walls were only fifteen feet apart.

"Now, where is that spare?"

"Hurry up, Rivenbark!" Caitlin said anxiously. "We don't have much time!"

"I think I put it...oh, yes!" He slid a narrow tray out of the pouch and looked beneath it. "Here it is! I...what's this?" He pulled something else out of the pouch. "Well, look at this!" He held the object up. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

Caitlin, staring at the walls, said, "Rivenbark...open the lock!"

"It's a measuring stick," Mal said quickly.

"Right!' Rivenbark said with a grin. "It's the measuring stick that Davak used on me in the jeweler's cell."

"Rivenbark!!" Caitlin yelled. The walls were only ten feet apart.

"Every time I made a mistake," Rivenbark explained, "Dropped something or put a stone in the wrong place, he used to hit me across the knuckles with it."

"This is all very interesting," Caitlin said quickly, "But why don't you--"

"I bet he put this in here," Rivenbark said. Then his face brightened, and he held the measuring stick out to Mal. "You take this, and, If I make a mistake, hit me across the knuckles with it."

"Rivenbark," Mal said. "I..."

"I'll do it!" Caitlin cried, snatching the stick. "Now, go!" Her eyes darted from Rivenbark, to the walls, which were now only seven feet apart, and back again.

"Right." Rivenbark picked up his lockpick, reached toward the keyhole, and, as his hand started to shake, missed.

Caitlin, fear and adrenaline pushing her, smacked him viciously across the knuckles with the stick.

"Yeeowch!!" Rivenbark cried, rubbing his hand. He looked up at Caitlin and nodded. "Right," he said.

Caitlin stared at the walls, now with perhaps four feet of space separating them, and raised the measuring stick again.

Rivenbark took a deep breath, inserted the lockpick, felt around inside the lock, and then moved his hand three times very precisely. Something clicked inside the door, and the walls stopped moving. Caitlin and Mal, their backs toward opposite walls, were face to face. As Rivenbark yelled with delight, they leaned forward, kissed, and hugged each other.

"I did it!" Rivenbark yelled. "I did it!" He took the measuring stick out of Caitlin's hand. "I'll hang on to this, thanks!" Then, with Caitlin and Mal's congratulations ringing in his ears, he opened the door and stepped through it into the room beyond.

FORTY-SIX

"What in the world...?" Caitlin turned to look at every corner of the room, her eyes wide. "Look at this!"

"I'm looking," Rivenbark assured her. "I'm looking!"

The room was spacious and well filled. It contained a large fireplace, several comfortable looking chairs, and a very well stocked bar. Several very expensive tapestries and paintings adorned the walls, a rich carpet covered the floor and well crafted knickknacks were scattered across various tables. A general air of opulence filled the chamber.

There was, however, one jarring note. Several dark footprints, leading from a door in the far wall, wandered across the elegant rug to the bar, and one of the fine crystal glasses was smeared with ash and soot.

Mal picked up the glass and stared at it curiously.

Rivenbark picked up a clean glass and filled it with dark ale. "This is the life!" he said happily, taking a sip. "I could get to like this."

"Listen!" Caitlin said suddenly. "Can you hear that?"

"Yes," Mal said, tilting his head.

In the distance, there was a steady ringing sound, as of metal beating against metal.

"What is that?" Rivenbark asked.

"A bell?" Caitlin guessed.

"A forge," Mal said firmly. "Someone's working in a forge."

"Are you sure?" Caitlin asked, looking at the richly attired room.

Mal nodded. "I've heard that sound most of my life. I'm sure."

"That would explain the footprints," Rivenbark said, setting down his drink. "Come on! I think we've found our dwarf!" He followed the footprints to the door, pulled it open and walked into a corridor.

"Which way?" Caitlin asked.

"There," Rivenbark said, pointing.

They walked down the corridor past several doors, all of which were closed. Eventually, they came to a staircase leading down.

"Okay," Caitlin said. "I'm tired of stairs now, too."

"Don't you want to find out who lives here?" Rivenbark asked, excitement in his eyes. "Don't you want to know who set these traps and why? Don't you want to know if he can tell us anything about the sword?"

"Not at the moment," Caitlin said. "What I'd really like is the see the sun again, and to get some sleep, not necessarily in that order."

"The noise has stopped," Mal said.

"What?!" yelped Rivenbark. He froze, listening. Everything was silent.

"Well," Caitlin said. "I guess that's--"

"There!" Rivenbark said happily. The ringing noise had returned. "Let's find out where it's coming from before it stops again!" Turning, he started to run down the stairs.

"Rivenbark," Caitlin called after him. "What happened to being careful?"

"I've decided to take after you!" Rivenbark called back.

Caitlin looked at Mal. "I've created a monster," she said.

"Come on," Mal replied. "We don't want to get separated." He started down the stairs, and Caitlin, with a sigh, followed him.

When Rivenbark reached the bottom of the stairs, he found himself in another corridor. He darted down it, stopping periodically to listen for the ringing sound, until he came to a large archway. With a smile, he waved for Caitlin and Mal, now visible some distance behind him, to hurry up.

Inside the room beyond the archway was a large forge. There, working on a glowing rod of metal, was a dwarflike blacksmith.

He was bald, with a halo of white hair surrounding his head. His hair flowed down in thick sideburns to a ragged beard that he apparently trimmed himself without the aid of a mirror. It grew in ragged patches, some of which were very long, while others had been cropped short. His eyes were a startlingly brilliant blue, a color not normally found in dwarves, and his fingers were very long and slender.

He looked up to find the three friends staring at him, then grunted and returned to his work. After a moment, during which Caitlin, Mal and Rivenbark simply stared first at him and then at each other, uncertain what to do, the smith laid the metal among the coals, walked over to a large pot of bubbling red liquid and stirred it with his hammer.

Looking up again, he examined first Caitlin, then Rivenbark, then Mal. Finally, pointing his hammer, which still had red liquid dripping off of it, at Mal, he said, "Bellows."

Startled, Mal asked, "What?"

"Bellows! Can't you hear to understand what is said when you hear it? Or are you just stupid?"

Flustered, Mal said, "No! I mean, yes. I mean...I"ll work the bellows."

"Uh, excuse me," Rivenbark said, stepping forward.

"You are excused."

"Um...uh...thanks...but, uh...who are you?"

"Am Kapwynn Deeperdig."

Mal, busy pumping a huge set of bellows, started to laugh.

"What?!" Kapwynn snapped, glaring at him. "Dekai ke'haig?"

"Sorry," Mal said, shaking his head. "I didn't mean to laugh, but..." he clamped his mouth shut.

"What is it?" Caitlin asked.

"Well," Mal said, "there is no Deeperdig family. It's a character from dwarven children's stories. Magical fairytales about the greatest blacksmith in the world and his magical forge, that sort of thing."

"What interesting stories dwarves tell their children," Caitlin said drily.

"If never believing who I am, that what for did you come here to bother me for?" their host snapped indignantly.

"Well, actually," Rivenbark said, "We were on our way somewhere else, looking for someone else. And we don't really know where we are now, anyway."

Kapwynn looked at him. "Oh, an intelligent one," he said. "You are in my forge. Stir the soup."

"What?"

"Soup!" He pointed at the pot of red liquid. "Stir!"

Shrugging, Rivenbark walked over to the pot. There was a large, wooden, soot covered spoon beside it. Rivenbark held the spoon up and said, "It's...well..."

"Soot adds flavor. Stir!"

Rivenbark stirred. Then, leaning forward to sniff the soup, he said musingly, "I wonder if I have any of my garlic left..."

"Listen," Caitlin said, walking to Kapwynn's side, "All we want to know is how to get out of here."

"Go up."

"Now, look, shorty!"

"The traps!" Rivenbark interrupted. "Why did you design them the way you did?"

"Traps are there to stop self from being bothered, but didn't want to have no guests at all. What do you want from me to do for you?"

"To tell us the way out!" Caitlin cried.

"Are you really the world's greatest blacksmith?"

"Rivenbark," Caitlin said warningly. "No."

"Should be by now. For three thousand years I have been blacksmithing."

"Rivenbark..."

"Well, we have this sword we'd like you to take a look at. No one's been able to fix it. Maybe you could--"

"Kapwynn Deeperdig can fix any sword. Give."

Despite Caitlin's continued objections, Rivenbark got the sword of Githon out of his pack and handed it over to their host.

He gave it a cursory examination, said, "Not can fix," and tossed the pieces into a corner.

With an anguished cry, Rivenbark leapt after the fragments.

"You see!" Caitlin said smugly. "He's a fraud."

"NOT AM!!!" Kapwynn bellowed. Clapping their hands over their ears, the three friends dropped to the floor as the cry echoed around the chamber. After a moment, Mal climbed shakily back to his feet. "Well, he's got more than dwarven volume," he said.

"Bellows!" Kapwynn told him, and Mal set back to work.

"The sword..." Rivenbark said.

"Not can fix sword," Kapwynn told him firmly, "Because not can be fixed."

"What?!!" Rivenbark wailed. "But, we have to get it fixed."

"Don't listen to him, Rivenbark," Caitlin said.

"Who here does know something of what is known of magic and weapons?"

"Well..." Caitlin said hesitantly.

"What is the first rule of magic and weapons?"

"Um...I can't...quite..."

"Self melds with self."

"Oh, right."

"Sword not can be fixed, because you don't have three pieces of sword."

Rivenbark looked at the three pieces in his hands and counted them. "But..."

"Those are parts of three different swords."

Mal, Caitlin and Rivenbark all tried to object at once, but Rivenbark's voice proved to be the most penetrating. "That's ridiculous!" he cried. "Anyone can see that these three pieces fit together perfectly!"

Kapwynn nodded. "Yes," he said. "And I had to break nearly six thousand swords to get three such fragments."

There was a very long moment of silence. Mal even forgot to pump the bellows. Then a confused babble broke out. Rivenbark's voice came out on top again. "What are you talking about?!"

"Self spent many many years, more than a human lifetime, making many identical swords. Self magicked swords. Self then broke all swords into three pieces., found three pieces from different swords that matched, and put them out to be found."

"You can't break a magic sword!" Caitlin protested.

"You mean you cannot," Kapwynn countered.

"But...but...the cuts and melted areas! They were caused by--"

"Self. Were done before I put magic on swords. Simple."

"You are a twisted little man," Caitlin told him.

"Not am man," he replied.

Rivenbark was aghast. "But...but...why would you do such a thing? Why would anybody?"

"Practical joke! Good one, hey?"

"Don't listen to him, Rivenbark," Caitlin said. "The little lunatic is making it up as he goes."

"Believe not?" Kapwynn asked.

"That's right," Caitlin told him firmly.

"Follow, then."

Kapwynn walked out of the room and down the corridor until he came to a particular door. He flung it open and cried, "Look!"

Inside the room were broken swords. Thousands of broken swords.

"Now, wait a minute," Caitlin said. "This doesn't prove anything!"

Shaking his head, the blacksmith walked into the room. "Some people," he said, "Don't believe their eyes when they are in their face!" He dug through the piles of broken metal and came back carrying several lengths of blade and two hilts. Turning to the friends with a smile, he said, "Follow back to forge."

Once back at the forge, Kapwynn wasted no time. He picked up two lengths of blade and then held out his hand. "Give to me piece with hilt."

Rivenbark handed him the hilt of the sword of Githon, and he stuck the three pieces into the flame. As they watched, the three pieces began to glow red, and Kapwynn quickly reforged the three pieces into a single sword.

Rivenbark stared at the completed sword, his eyes wide, while the smith chose a hilt and another section of blade from the pile. "Give to me middle section," he commanded. Then, while the three friends watched, he reassembled and reforged a second sword and then a third sword. All three swords, when complete, were identical, even down to the pits, scars and melted areas.

"There!" Kapwynn said proudly, examining his handiwork. "Great joke, hey?"

Mal and Caitlin were still staring at the weapons in dismay, when Rivenbark began to laugh. He began to laugh louder and louder, until he couldn't stand up. Kapwynn began to laugh with him, and soon they were both rolling on the floor.

Caitlin shook her head. "They're both crazy," she said.

"How is Rivenbark going to get back into the college now?" Mal asked.

"Oh, don't worry about that!" Rivenbark said, still laughing. "They only had one sword before, and I'll give them three!"

Caitlin shook her head. "It isn't going to be enough, Rivenbark."

He nodded. "Yes it will be. They'll let me back in just to stop me from spreading the story around! It's a shame I'll have to promise to keep it quiet!" he said, wiping his eyes. "It really was a great joke!"

FORTY-SEVEN

Rivenbark set a pitcher of ale on the table and then sat down. "So," he said with a smile, "How was your trip?"

Caitlin smiled. "Great!" she said. "We went to Wolfshead peak and met up with Karg. He got the fighting master there to give me some more training! I can get class credit for it, and that means I'm just about ready to get my certificate!"

"Hey, congratulations!"

"We also went by Fang Mountain. Mika has finally decided that Mal is good enough. She's going to fill out the paperwork telling the school that he's her apprentice!" She smiled at Mal, who was sitting beside her holding her hand.

"And then," Mal said, "we went by the farm to see my family."

"I was more nervous, then!" Caitlin said.

"They loved her," Mal said. "Of course!"

"But, how have you been doing?" Caitlin asked. "You look good."

Rivenbark smiled and scratched his left cheek. Having come to the conclusion that his moustache was never going to come in properly, he had decided to grow a beard instead. The results after the first few weeks weren't outstanding, but he was going to stick with it.

"I'm doing great!" Rivenbark said. "But...I could use your help with something, now that you're back."

"Sure," Mal said. "What is it?"

"Well, you know, I'm trying to get into the...um...advanced training program sponsored by...uh...this organization in town."

Caitlin grinned. "Would this be one of those groups that you claim doesn't exist?"

Rivenbark cleared his throat. "Well, um...anyway, I'm trying to get into the program, and, in order to do that, I have to pass a test."

"What sort of test?"

"Well, see, that's the tricky part. I have to set the test myself. I get graded on my choice of test as well as on how I do on the test."

"Okay..."

"So, I want something really good, you know? To impress the....uh....this organization." He looked quickly around the room and then leaned in closer and lowered his voice. "Now, this group, they...uh...they have half of a key that they picked up somewhere. Now, if we could find the locksmith that made the key, I could...Caitlin? Don't do that...."

Rivenbark leaned back in his seat, starting to scoot away from the table, but he wasn't quick enough to stop Caitlin from emptying the contents of the ale pitcher over his head. He looked down at his ruined clothes in dismay.

"Barkeep?" Caitlin called. "Could we have another pitcher over here?" She looked at Rivenbark, who was opening his mouth to say something. "Better make it two!"

The End . . . Wait! Rivenbark!!!! Don't touch that!!!!

Bio:"I am a college biology teacher living in the southeastern US with my wife, one dog, and one cat, which is plenty of cats but several dogs too few. All in all, I think the universe is a lot sillier than we can possibly imagine, which won't stop me from trying."

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Ralph Benedetto, Jr.

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E-mail: benedete@esn.net