Chapter Fifteen

By nightfall of the following day, the Elves were deep within the mountains. They had ridden on through theThe previous night after escaping the Gnome Hunters at Baen Draw, working their way up into the rugged foothills that fronted the Breakline, pressing on until the dawn light began to creep out of the east and spill down into the bowl of the Sarandanon. They had rested then for a few hours, risen, eaten, and gone on. The rains had ceased, but the skies remained clouded and gray, and mist hung across the hills in a thick blanket. There was a dampness in the air that carried the smell of earth and rotting wood. As they climbed higher, the hills turned barren and rocky, and the smell dissipated. Now the air was cool and sharp and clear, and the mist began to break apart.

Noon came, and they left the hills behind and wound their way up into the mountains. Jerle Shannara had already told the company that they would ride until dark, anxious to put distance between themselves and their pursuers, determined that before they stopped they would be on terrain that would not leave a trail that could be easily followed. No one argued the point. They rode obediently through the gloom and silence, watching as the mist cleared and the mountains rose before them. The Breakline was a wall of jagged rock, of peaks that soared skyward until they disappeared into the clouds, of cliffs that fell away in sheer drops of thousands of feet, of massive outcroppings and ragged splits formed by pressure in the earth from a time when the world was still forming. The mountains lifted to the heavens as if trying to climb free of the world, an outstretching of the arms of giants frozen by time. As far north and south as the Elves could see, the Breakline was visible against the sky, a barrier forbidding passage, a fortress against encroachment.

The Elves stared at the mountains in silence, and in the face of such permanence felt an unmistakable sense of their own mortality.

By nightfall, they had passed beyond the lower peaks and could no longer look back on either the foothills that had brought them up or the more distant valley of the Sai-andanon. They camped in a grove of spruce cradled in a narrow valley tucked between barren peaks on which snow glistened in a thin, white mantle.

There was fresh water and grass for the horses, and wood for a fire.

As soon as they were settled and had eaten, Preia Starle departed to backtrack their trail to determine if a pursuit had been mounted. While they waited for her return, Tay conferred with Jerle and Vree Erreden about the vision that had revealed the location of the Black Elfstone. Once more, he recounted its specifics, taking care to describe everything related to him by Bremen. Jerle Shannara listened carefully, his strong face intense, his gaze fixed and unwavering. Vree Erreden, on the other hand, seemed almost disinterested, his eyes straying frequently, looking off into the night in search of something beyond what Tay’s words could offer.

“I have never been to this part of the Westland,” he remarked when Tay had finished. “I know nothing of its geography. If I am to divine the hiding place we seek, I must first get closer to it.”

“How helpful,” Jerle ventured irritably. He had been watching the local’s eyes stray as well and was clearly displeased with his attitude. “Is that the best you can do?”

Vree Erreden shrugged.

Jerle was incensed. “Perhaps you could do better if you had paid closer attention to what Tay was saying!”

The locat looked at him, squinting myopically. A slow fire kindled in his eyes. “Let me tell you something. When Tay Trefenwyd came to me to ask my help, I read his mind. I can do that sometimes. I saw Bremen’s vision, the one Tay just described, and my memory of it is quite clear. That vision is real, my friend. If it were not, I would not be here. It is real, and the place it shows is real, and of that much I am certain. Even so, I cannot find it without more than what I know right now!”

“Jerle, you have traveled this country often,” Tay broke in quickly, anxious to avoid a confrontation. “Is there nothing of what I have described that is at all familiar?”

His friend shook his head, a disgruntled look settling over his broad features. “Most of my travel has been confined to the passes — to Halys Cut and Worl Run, and what lies beyond. This particular formation of mountains — the twin peaks split like two fingers, in particular — sounds like it could be any of a dozen pairs I have seen.”

“But you’re not sure which?”

“What does it sound like to you?” his friend snapped.

“Which way do you think we should go, then?” Tay pressed.

He could not understand the other’s uncharacteristic display of temper.

Jerle climbed to his feet. “How would I know? Ask ‘my friend’ the locat here to give you his best guess!”

“One minute,” Vree Erreden said quickly, and rose as well. He stood facing Jerle, small and slight in the other man’s shadow, but unintimidated. “Would you be willing to try something? I might be able to help you remember if you’ve seen this particular formation.”

Tay jumped up as well, realizing at once what the locat intended. “Can you do for Jerle what you did for me?” he asked quickly. “Can you recover his memory like you did Bremen’s vision?”

“What are you talking about?” Jerle snapped, looking from one to the other.

“Perhaps,” Vree Erreden answered Tay, then looked at Jerle Shannara. “I told you before. Sometimes I can read minds. I did so earlier with Tay to get a look at Bremen’s vision. I can try it with you to see if your subconscious retains some memory of this formation we seek.”

Jerle flushed. “Try your magic out on someone else!”

He wheeled away, but Tay grabbed his arm and brought him about. “But we don’t have anyone else, do we, Jerle? We only have you. Are you afraid?”

The big man stared at him with something very close to rage.

Tay held his ground, mostly because he didn’t have any choice.

The night sky had cleared, and its broad expanse was filled with stars. Their brightness was almost blinding. Standing beneath their light in the shadow of the mountains, locked in this unexpected confrontation with his best friend, Tay felt oddly exposed.

Jerle carefully freed his arm from Tay’s grip. “I’m not afraid of anything, and you know it,” he said softly.

Tay nodded. “I do know it. Now please let Vree try.”

They sat down again, grouped close together in the silence.

Vree Erreden took Jerle Shannara’s hands in his own, holding them loosely, looking boldly into the other’s eyes. Then he closed his own. Tay watched the pair uneasily. Jerle was as tense as a cat prepared to spring, ready to bolt at the first indication that he was in any kind of danger. The locat was by contrast calm and detached, especially now, gone somewhere deep inside himself to find what he was looking for. They remained like that for a few moments, locked together, an odd alliance, neither revealing anything of what was happening.

Then Vree Erreden released Jerle Shannara’s hands and gave a short nod. “I have it. A place to start, anyway. Your memory is very good. The twin peaks in the form of a V are called the Pinchers — at least by you.”

“I remember now,” the big man said softly. “Five or six years ago, when I was scouting for a third passage onto Hoare Flats. Back in the mountains north of Worl Run, deep in the thickest mass. There was no chance that a pass would go through there, so we gave it up. But I remember the formation. Yes, I do remember!”

Then his enthusiasm seemed to diminish, and the hard edge of his irritation returned. “Enough of this.” He nodded curtly, more to himself than to them, and rose. “We have our starting point. I hope everyone is happy. Now perhaps I can get some sleep.”

He turned and stalked away. Tay and Vree Erreden watched him go, neither of them speaking. “He’s not usually like this,” Tay said finally.

The locat rose. “He just lost six men who trusted him to an attack he feels he should have better anticipated.” Tay stared at him, and he shrugged. “It’s what he’s thinking about right now. He couldn’t hide it from me, even though he clearly wanted to.”

“But those men dying, that wasn’t his fault,” Tay declared. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

The locat squinted down at him. “Jerle Shannara doesn’t look at it like that. If you were in his shoes, would you?”

Then he turned and walked off, leaving Tay to ponder the matter alone.

The company set off again at daybreak, working its way north through the mountains toward Worl Run. Preia Starle had returned during the night to report that there was no sign of a close pursuit.

None of them believed for a moment that this meant they were safe. It only meant that they had gained a little extra breathing room. The Gnomes were still out there searching for them, but the Elves would be hard to find in these mountains, where tracks had a tendency to disappear amid the jumbled boulders and twisting passes. If they were lucky, they might avoid discovery just long enough to find what they were looking for.

It was wishful thinking, Tay supposed, but it was the best they could hope for. They rode north for the remainder of the day without seeing anything of their pursuers, following a line of deep valleys that cut through the eastern edge of the mountains snakelike to the entrance to Worl Run. They camped that night on a flat overlooking the pass and the valleys leading in from the Sarandanon, close now to where Jerle remembered seeing the V formation he called the Pinchers. He was in a somewhat better mood this day, still withdrawn and taciturn, but no longer curt, helped perhaps by the fact that they now had a better idea of where they were going. He actually apologized to Tay in a rather offhanded way, commenting lightly at one point on the unfortunate shortness of his temper. He said nothing to Vree Erreden, but Tay let the matter lie.

Preia Starle seemed unfazed by Jerle’s shift in attitude and spent her time talking to him as if everything were fine. Tay thought she must know his friend’s moods well enough by now to have developed an appropriate way of responding to each. He felt a pang of jealousy, for there was no such closeness between them.

Again he was reminded that he was the outsider, come back into his old life from another, still trying to make himself fit in. He did not know why this bothered him so except that his life at Paranor was completely gone and his life here seemed to revolve around the duplicity of his relationship with Preia and Jerle. He couldn’t claim it was an honest one, because he hid so much of what he felt for Preia from both of them. Or thought he did. Perhaps they knew far more than they were letting on, and he was playing a game of secrets where the secrets were all known.

They rode out again at sunrise and reached the Pinchers by midday. Tay recognized the peaks immediately, a clear match for the rendering provided by Bremen’s vision. The peaks rose in a sharp V against the horizon, breaking apart in a deep split fronted by a tangle of small mountains worn by age and the elements and left bare save for sparse stands of fir and alder and struggling patches of grasses and wildflowers. Beyond, through the gap in the V, rose a wall of mountains so misty that their features were unrecognizable.

Jerle brought the company to a halt at the low end of a pass leading up into the peaks and dismounted. Overhead, hunting birds soared against the blue, wings spread as they circled in long, graceful sweeps. The day was clear and bright; the rain clouds had moved east into the Sarandanon. Tay felt the sun on his face, warm and reassuring as he stared upward into the vast expanse of cliffs and defiles and wondered at their secrets.

“We’ll leave the horses here and walk in,” Jerle announced. He smirked, seeing the look on Tay’s face. “We could only ride them a short distance farther in any event, Tay. Then they would be left exposed to any who follow us. If we leave them now, we can hide them in the forest. We may have to make a run for it before we’re finished.”

Preia added her support, and Tay knew they were right, although it made him feel uncomfortable to give up the animals that had carried them past so many close calls. It had been hard enough to gain possession of them in the first place. But those who pursued them would have to proceed afoot as well if they reached this point, so he supposed that was as much as could be hoped for.

Jerle chose one of the Elven Hunters to remain behind with the horses, a grizzled veteran named Obann, instructing him to take the animals and hide them where they would not be found, then to keep watch for the company’s return. Obann wanted to rejoin them after concealing the horses, but Jerle pointed out that it might prove necessary to change the hiding place if a Gnome search party drew too close and that it might further be necessary for Obann to bring the horses to his comrades if they were attacked coming down out of the peaks. Obann reluctantly agreed, took the horses in hand, and departed.

Then Jerle led those who remained, their number now reduced to seven — himself, Tay, Preia, Vree Erreden, and the last three Elven Hunters — up through the tangle of rock and trees toward the dark cleft of the Pinchers.

They climbed for the remainder of the day. As they proceeded, Tay found himself pondering anew the task that lay ahead. He might argue that the others of the company shared his responsibility for recovering the Black Elfstone, but the fact remained that Bremen’s charge had been given expressly to him, not to them.

Moreover, he was a Druid, the only one among them, the only one who commanded use of magic — of the sort, at least, that could offer them any real protection — and the one best equipped to find and secure the Elfstone. He had not forgotten the part of Bremen’s vision that hinted at the danger that surrounded the Elfstone’s hiding place, the suggestion of dark coils that warded it from those who would steal it away, the unmistakable sense of evil. He was aware that finding the Black Elfstone was only the first step.

Securing it was the second, and it would not be done easily or without risk. If the Elfstone remained undisturbed after all these centuries, it must be strongly protected. Vree Erreden and Preia Starle might assist in finding it. Jerle Shannara and his Elven Hunters might aid in retrieving it. But ultimately the burden fell to him.

Which was as it should be, he supposed on reflection. He had trained for this for the better part of fifteen years, for what constituted almost the whole of his adult life. His time at Paranor had been for this, if it had been for anything. Nothing else he had accomplished was in any way comparable to what was required of him now. Like other Druids, he had spent his time at Paranor immersed in his studies, in the pursuit of knowledge, and the fact that he had continued to develop his skills with magic did not alter me fact of his mostly sedentary existence. For fifteen years he had lived in an isolated, cloistered fortress, neither involved with nor engaged by the world without. Now, with his tenure at Paranor ended, his life was to be forever changed, and it began here, in these mountains, amid the ruins of another age, with a talisman unseen by anyone since the coming of Mankind.

So he must not fail, of course — that was of paramount importance. Failure meant an end to any hope of defeating the Warlock Lord, to any chance of creating a weapon that would destroy him, and, most likely, to Tay Trefenwyd’s life. There would be no second chance in a matter like this, no opportunity to go back and try again. This effort would mark the culmination of years of believing in and practicing the Druid magic. It would vindicate both what the magic had been created to accomplish and the purpose of his life as a Druid. It was, he imagined, the defining point of everything.

His concerns bridged outward from there. The company was weary from being chased, from running and hiding, from escaping traps, from lack of sleep and long hours of travel. They had not eaten well in over a week, bereft of the supplies they had hoped to obtain, living off what they hunted and scavenged during their flight. They were disheartened by the loss of their comrades and by the fear, steadily eroding the hard surface of their determination, that their quest would not succeed. No one spoke of these things, but they were there, in their faces, in their eyes, in the way they moved, apparent to anyone who bothered to look for them.

Time was slipping from them, Tay Trefenwyd thought. Like water through cupped hands, it was draining away, and if they were not careful they would find it suddenly gone.

By nightfall, they were at the mouth of the pass, and they camped within a thin copse of alder in the lee of the mountains. It was cool here, farther up on the slopes, but not so cool as to be chill. The rock walls seemed to collect and hold the day’s heat within the pass, perhaps because it dipped sharply into a low valley that spanned the east and west reaches. Eating sparingly, their water supply still good, they rolled into their blankets and slept undisturbed.

At daybreak, they went on. The sunrise poured down into the valley and lit their path with hazy streamers that flashed over the eastern horizon like beacons. Preia Starle led them, scouting several hundred yards forward of the main group, coming back now and again to report, warning of obstacles, advising of smoother paths, keeping them all safe. Tay walked with Jerle, but neither of them said much. They climbed out of the valley through its west end, leaving the shadow of the twin peaks, and promptly found their forward passage blocked by a massive berm that looked to have been formed of vast plates of earth cracked and gathered by a giant’s hands. Ahead, the wall of the Breakline rose skyward, its broken peaks gathered together by those same giant’s hands into bundles, all stacked together in haphazard and incomprehensible fashion, all waiting for someone to sort them out and put them back together again.

Preia returned to take them left along the berm for almost a mile to a trail that wound upward into the jagged rocks. By now, Jerle had exhausted what little there was of his recovered memory, and there was nothing for any of them to do but to press on until something in Bremen’s vision recalled itself. They scrambled onto the berm, avoiding fissures that dropped straight down into blackness, staying back from the thin edges of drops and off the steep crests of slopes where, if you lost your footing, you could slide away forever. Jerle had been right, Tay realized, in leaving the horses behind. They would have been useless here.

At the crest of the berm, they encountered a slender, twisting trail, barely discernible from the land about it, that led through a narrow defile into the larger rocks ahead. They followed it cautiously, Preia going on ahead, the Elf girl stepping lightly through the mix of light and shadows, there one moment and gone completely the next.

When they came upon her again, she stood at the defile’s end, looking out at the mountains beyond. She turned on their approach, and her excitement was palpable. She pointed, and Tay saw at once the cluster of mountains directly left of where they stood, spires jutting skyward at awkward angles, encircled at their base by a broad, high span of collapsed rock.

Like fingers jammed together, crushed into a single mass.

Tay smiled wearily. It was the landmark they were looking for, the ragged gathering of peaks that hid somewhere within their crumpled depths a fortress lost since the time of faerie — a fortress, Bremen’s vision had promised, that concealed the Black Elfstone.

It had been easier than Tay Trefenwyd had expected, finding first the twin peaks in the shape of a V and then the clustered mountains that resembled crushed fingers. Vree Erreden’s recovery of a forgotten memory and Preia Starle’s tracking had brought them to their destination with a speed and efficiency that defied logic. Had it not been for the intrusion of the Gnome Hunters at various points along the way, they would have arrived almost without effort.

But now, just as quickly, things grew difficult. They searched all that day and the next for the entrance to the fortress hidden within the peaks and found nothing. The massed rock, boulders and plates alike, stacked all about the jammed peaks, offered dozens of openings that led nowhere. Slowly, painstakingly, the members of the little company explored each pathway, following it into shadow and cool darkness, tracing it to a slide or cliff face or drop that ended all further approach. The search wore on, extending into the third day, and then the fourth, and still the Elves found nothing.

Tempers grew short. They had come a long way and at great cost, and to now find themselves completely stymied was almost more than they could stand. There was a nagging feeling of time running out, of danger approaching from the east as the Gnomes continued their inevitable search, of expectations losing momentum and disappointment settling in.

Jerle Shannara kept them going. He did not turn dark and moody as Tay expected or revelt to the temper he had displayed toward Vree Erreden after the loss of the Elven Hunters at Baen Draw, but stayed steady and determined and calm. He drove them relentlessly, of course — even Tay. He insisted they press on with their search. He made them retrace their steps. He forced them to look into each opening in the rocks again and again. He refused by strength of will alone to let them lose hope. He was, Tay thought on reflection, quite remarkable in his leadership.

Vree Erreden did not provide the help that Tay had hoped for.

There were no visions, no hunches, no displays of instinct, nothing that would give insight into where the fortress or its entrance might lie. The locat did not seem unsettled by this; indeed, he seemed quite sanguine. But Tay supposed that he was used to failure, that he had accepted the fact that his talent did not come on command, but mostly at times and places of its own choosing. At least he did not sit back and wait on its arrival. Like everyone else in the company, he went out searching, probing the recesses of the collapsed rock, poking into this nook and cranny, into that crevice and defile. He did not comment on the failure of his talent to aid them, and Jerle Shannara, to his credit, did not comment on it either.

In the end, it was Preia Starle who made the discovery.

Although the area they searched was sprawling and mazelike, after four days they had covered the better part of it. It became clear to everyone by then that if the vision had not misled them, then the fortress was concealed in a way they had not considered.

Preia rose before dawn on the fifth morning of their search and went down to stare at the jagged crush of monoliths. She did it out of frustration and a need to study the landscape anew. She sat back within the shadows of a cliff face east, watching the light ease out of the peaks behind her, lifting to chase the darkness, to change the gray of fading night to the silver and gold beginnings of the new day. She watched the sun’s bright rays fall across the towering span of the mountains, seeping down the faces of the cliffs like a paint stain down wooden walls, the color dipping into each dark crevice, etching out the shape and form of each rock wall.

And then she saw the birds. They were large, angular, white fishers, seabirds miles from any visible water, rising out of a cleft in the rock face of a peak centered within the cluster, several hundred feet above where she sat. The birds appeared in a rush, more than a dozen of them, lifting away with the coming of the light as if by unspoken command, soaring skyward and disappearing into the new day east.

What, Preia Starle wondered instantly, were seabirds doing in those barren peaks?

She went to the others at once with her report. She described what she had seen, convinced it was worth investigating, and immediately Vree Erreden cried, as if shown a revelation. Yes, yes, this was what they were looking for! The company was galvanized into action, and though stiff and sore from the efforts of their search and from sleeping on the stone of the mountains for five nights straight, and though hungry for food they did not possess and weary of eating the food they did, they went out of their camp and up the mountainside with a determination that was heartening.

It took them until midmorning to reach the cleft from which the white birds had flown. There was no direct route up, and the path they were forced to follow twisted laboriously back and forth across the cliff face, its navigation requiring deliberation and care with every step. Preia, leading the way as always, got there first and disappeared into the opening. By the time the others had arrived to stand upon a narrow shelf fronting the cleft, she was back with news of a pass that cut through the rock.

They went forward in single file. The walls of the cleft narrowed where the searchers walked, hemming them in. The warmth of the sun turned to dank, cool shadow, and the light faded. Soon overhangs and projections formed a ceiling that shut them away entirely. That there was any light at all was due solely to the fact that the defile was so rife with fissures that small amounts of illumination penetrated at virtually every turn. Their eyes adjusted to the gloom, and they were able to continue. The birds, they realized, were able to maneuver easily at the higher elevations, where the walls broadened. They found white feathers and bits of old grass and twigs that might have been carried in for nests. The nests, of course, would be farther on, where there was better light and air. The company pressed ahead.

After a time, the overhangs dropped so low that they were forced to proceed at a crouch. Then the defile branched left and right. Preia told them to wait and went right. She returned after a very long time and took them left. After a short distance the defile widened again, and they were able to stand once more. Ahead, the light grew brighter. They were nearing the passageway’s end.

Fifty yards farther on, the cleft opened out onto the edge of a vast lake. The lake was so unexpected that everyone stopped where they were and stood staring at it. It rested within a vast crater, its waters broad and still, undisturbed by even the faintest ripple. Overhead, the sky was visible, a cloudless blue dome that channeled light and warmth to the crater. Sunlight reflected off the lake, and the lake mirrored the rock walls surrounding it in perfect detail. Tay scanned the cliffs and found the nests of the seabirds, set high in the rocks. No birds were visible. Within the shelter of the mountain walls and across the flat expanse of the lake, nothing moved, the silence vast and complete and as fragile as glass.

After a short, hushed conference with Jerle, Preia Starle took them left along the edge of the lakeshore. The shoreline was a mix of crushed rock and flat shelves, and the scrape of their boots as they proceeded echoed eerily in the crater’s cavernous depths. Tay cast his magic forward of where they walked, hunting for pitfalls, exploring for hidden dangers. What he found were lines of earth power so massive and so old that they tore apart his fragile net and forced him to rebuild it. He drew Jerle close to him and gave warning. There was tremendous magic at work here, magic as old as time and as settled. It warded the crater and everything that lay within. He could find no specific danger from it, but could not trace its source or discover its use. He did not think them threatened by it, but they would be smart to proceed with caution.

They went on until they were nearly halfway around the lake.

Still there was no sign of life, no indication of anything beyond what they could see before them. Neither Tay with his Druid magic nor Vree Erreden with his locat talent could discover what they searched for. The sun had moved out of the shadow of the cliff rim so that it blazed directly down on them, a burning orb against the blue. They could not look up at it without being blinded, and so kept their gaze lowered as they walked.

It was then, with the advent of high noon, that Tay Trefenwyd saw the shadow.

He had moved off the waterline momentarily to higher ground, trying to see the far shore through the dazzling reflection of the sun on the lake’s still surface. As he searched for a position that would lessen the brightness, he saw how the sun had thrown the shadow of a rock projection far overhead across the length of the lake onto the cliff face several hundred yards ahead. The point of the shadow climbed the rock wall to a narrow fissure and stopped.

Something about the fissure caught his eye. He sent his magic to probe the opening.

What he found, carved into the rock above, was writing.

He went forward quickly to catch Preia, and together they turned the company inland. Moments later they stood before the fissure, staring upward in silent contemplation of the writing. It was ancient and indecipherable. It was Elven, but the dialect was unfamiliar. The carving itself was so weathered it was almost worn away.

Then an inspired Vree Erreden stepped forward, had Tay and Jerle boost him, and reached up to run his fingers over the writing.

He remained suspended for a moment, eyes closed, hands moving, stopping, moving on. Then he slid down again. As if in a trance, he bent to the rock on which they stood, and without seeming to look at what he was doing, his eyes focused somewhere beyond what they could see, he scratched words onto a smooth surface with a piece of jagged rock.

Tay bent close to read.

THIS IS THE CHEW MAGNA. WE LIVE HERE STILL.

TOUCH NOTHING. TAKE NOTHING.

OUR ROOTS ARE DEEP AND STRONG.

BEWARE.

“What does it mean?” Jerle whispered.

Tay shook his head. “That magic wards what lies beyond this opening. That any disturbance will bring unpleasant consequences.”

“It says they are still alive,” Vree Erreden observed, his voice a hiss of disbelief. “That can’t be! Look at the carving! The writing is out of the time of faerie!”

They stood staring at the writing, the fissure, and each other.

Behind them, the Elven Hunters and Preia Starle waited. No one spoke. There was a sense of time dropping away, of past and present joining and transcending the passing of lives and history, There was a sense of standing at the edge of a cliff, knowing that one false step would send you hurtling to your death. Tay’s awareness of the magic’s presence was so strong that it seemed he could feel its touch against his skin. Old, powerful, iron-willed, and conjured out of purpose and need, ir filled up his senses and threatened to overwhelm him.

“We did not come this far to turn back,” Jerle Shannara observed quietly, looking over at him. “Not for any reason.”

Tay nodded. He was determined as well. He glanced at Vree Erreden, at Preia Starle, at the Elven Hunters who stood behind her, and finally once again at Jerle. He gave his friend a crooked smile.

Then he took a deep breath and stepped forward into the dark mouth of the fissure.