The elder struck a series of surprisingly professional poses: hand in chin while deep in thought, reclining on top of his chest like a beached merfolk. Elyssandra excitedly shifted places, drawing him from a variety of angles.
Braiden peered over her shoulder, alarmed to find a series of excellent drawings, all in a fresh new sketchbook.
“He’s quite the subject,” she said, cheeks flushed, breathless, her eyes sparkling with artistic inspiration. “It’s exhilarating, getting to play with rough sketches without all the pressure of a perfect final picture.”
Whatever made the two of them happy, Braiden supposed, for as long as Bahul didn’t suddenly blindside them with a surprise surcharge for his modeling fees.
“I do wish we could stay longer,” Braiden told Mother Magda after indulging in his own portion of stew. “But there’s a reason we’ve come through this way again. Our friend Bones is in trouble.”
Mother Magda narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me. Is it the firewalkers?”
“A demon, actually,” Augustin said. “But you’ve encountered them, too? One hopes that they haven’t given you as much grief as the rockwalkers.”
Mother Magda chuckled. “It’s warmer in the Underborough now that the frosty cube is but a memory, but the firewalkers are no threat to us. We burrowfolk have long devised ways to quickly put out fires. Very important when all your homes are made of wood, you see. We use buckets of sand and soil, to be sure, but other methods, too. Observe.”
She waved a hand at a half dozen children at play. Braiden raised his eyebrows when he saw them squirting water at eachother out of wooden devices that reminded him of bellows for fireplaces, or even piping bags for icing cakes. They laughed as they soaked each other in harmless streams of water. It probably doubled as a lovely way to cool down in warmer weather.
“The little ones are our strongest deterrent against the firewalkers, if you can believe it. A few wandered too close to the village, but no more than that. Too frightened by our soggy little tyrants, I imagine. Squirts, we call them, those water pumpers you see them carrying. Squirts for our little squirts.”
The laughter of the little burrowfolk children felt like a gentle reminder for Braiden to keep his spirits up for the rest of the journey. They would find Bones soon enough. Everything was going to be all right.
Perhaps Braiden could convince Mother Magda to let them take a couple of squirts along for their journey. If only they were half as useful against demons.
Chapter
Twenty
The sweat dribbleddown the end of Braiden’s nose, striking the ground as he watched his own slowing footfalls. Hot. Too hot.
A belly full of stew had offered a delicious advantage in their first go around the dungeon, but this time, the warmth inside Braiden’s body only contributed to the discomfort of the heat coming from outside. The dungeon, while not quite sweltering, was far warmer than before, certainly the polar opposite in terms of temperature.
Braiden took a moment to struggle out of his rucksack, slipping the straps off his shoulders. He grunted as he pulled his sweater up and over his head, his undershirt already damp. This was too much for the heat.
“We must be coming closer to the fires,” Elyssandra said. She unclasped her own cloak, sighing with relief as she shucked it in favor of a far more sensible travel tunic. “We don’t know what’s coming up ahead. We need to stay on guard. This should help.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, searching at a familiar spot for a golden hairpin tipped with a sprig of red berries. She brought the pin to her lips, whispered something elven and secret, then twirled it between her hands.
Within moments, Elyssandra had sent forth a second red berry pin, recalling the first one and whispering to it hoarsely as she caught it between her fingers.
Braiden thought they looked familiar. These hairpins were used for scrying and scouting ahead. It was how they’d found Augustin while he did his shopping around the Noose.
Oh, gods. That was right. These things needed to transmit whatever images and information they received.
This was an extended game of sending the berries back and forth. It wasn’t a simple matter of automatically scrying, of viewing through a floating crystal ball as if it were the other end of a spyglass.
They hadn’t turned more than two corners before Braiden realized that Elyssandra was panting. Loose strands of her hair had come undone in all the places where she’d removed her pins, blond locks now plastered to her forehead with sweat. It was all the heat, but it clearly had much to do with her expenditure of magical essence, too.
“You don’t have to do that,” Braiden told her. “We’ll just be extra careful as we continue onward.”
“No, it’s all right,” Elyssandra said, wiping the back of her hand against her forehead. “I’ll just make them take longer trips. It’ll be easier for me that way. And just so you know — nothing ahead but boring brown earth. It’s the same sloping rocky passages we’ve been seeing in the rest of the dungeon.”
“I wonder where the frozen cavern from before might be located,” Augustin said. “Perhaps, with all the ice melted away, what we’ve seen in the past may now be barely recognizable.”
Braiden turned his head to answer, then nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw that the wizard had already stripped to the waist.
Beads of sweat clung to his tanned, powerful torso. Braiden would be more scandalized if the others weren’t too tired to trulypay his half-nakedness any attention. Even Elyssandra couldn’t drum up the excitement she might once have reserved for a glimpse of his chiseled physique.
“This feels like the same way we went as before,” Braiden said. “You might be right. Now that the ice has melted away and evaporated, all that’s left is rock. Hot rock.”
