“Explore?” Blot swallowed hard. “You mean, actually go into its nest?”
“Relax, my friend. You can stay here by the fire if you like while I have a look about the back of the cave. There’s waybread in the pack; help yourself,” said Ander, clapping Blot companionably on the back. “You know, this is my big chance for a promotion; I can’t let Falon down. He’s been helping advance my career in this little nowhere place, and I owe him the very best entry I can make. And, Blot, you know-I imagine that he will do something nice for you, too. Before you came, I used to be inkmaker, and then I got to be assistant scribe after Del. Perhaps you’ll advance when I do- Falon will need another assistant scribe then. There would be two more coins a week in it for you, too. And it’s a much better job-you won’t have to do all the dirty work!” Ander laughed, taking one of the smaller branches from the fire. He shook the thin coating of ash away to reveal its glowing heart, tucked his collecting bag into his belt, and started into the cave system.
Blot said nothing as he huddled closer to the small fire. But as Ander disappeared through the narrow crevice, he quietly unsheathed his long knife and followed, his face set into a dark scowl. The dwarf had business to conclude, and the sooner the better; just passing through a place where a dragon had been gave Blot the shakes.
He moved as quietly as he could behind the assistant scribe, the red glow of Ander’s dim torch bobbing several feet ahead. Blot followed that glow through several ever-narrowing turns, the air in the cave growing more and more foul with the odor of decay, the walls and floor more slippery with unseen ice. A few yards into a suddenly wider tunnel, Ander’s smoking branch threw its flickering light up the high vault of the passage, showing thirty-foot-high ice columns and row upon row of frozen stalactites, glittering like thousands of needle-sharp teeth, ready to rain down on them at the slightest disturbance.
And then the torch revealed something else.
Blot’s stomach lurched as the faint light fell upon the source of the stench. The third hunter, or what was left of him, lay in a heap in the bottom of a great sinkhole, the most recent of many unfortunate victims. Blot could make out the bones of a moose, the skull of a bear, the jutting, crossed incisors of an ogre, all covered with the shed of large white scales.
Ander stood for a moment at the edge of the dark pit, unwilling to disturb the dead man. At last he knelt over the foul oubliette, and tenderly covered Rilliger’s ruined face with a fold of the man’s cloak. Ander reclaimed for Rilliger’s friends the new knife that his stiffened hand yet clutched, and then gingerly picked a bright, diamond-shaped scale from the heap and placed it in a collecting bag.
This was the moment Blot had waited for-Ander had his physical evidence. Now Blot could finish his own work. He carefully raised his dagger, preparing to carry out Falon’s orders. The final sentence. As long as Ander kept his back turned, it would be easy, he reminded himself. Just walk over and do it, push him into the pit with the hunter, blame it all on the dragon, and get out of there with the bag and the measurements. It would be easy.
It would be easy if he weren’t so scared.
As Blot clutched at the wall to keep from fainting, he dislodged one of the long icicles. Its slight clatter was followed by a threatening chorus of eerie crystalline music. Ander lifted his head sharply at the sound, but did not look Blot’s way as he tried to locate its source. Instead his eyes were fixed on the cave’s north wall, as if he had heard something else. Then Blot heard it, too.
The click and scrape of claws, dragging something heavy.
Suddenly the cavern filled with a smell so foul that Blot’s eyes watered uncontrollably and the hair inside his nostrils seemed to singe with every breath he took. He faltered, wiping his face, but had no time to recover before a noise shook the mountain and brought some of the shining crystalline ice daggers raining down upon their unprotected heads. His eyes tightly shut, Blot flattened himself against the wall while Ander dove for cover under a jutting rock. In a moment or two, the shaking stopped.