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"It’s a five-dwarf drop!" Ivan protested, holding fast to Danica’s wrist Danica could not even see the floor beneath the vertical chute and had to trust in the esti vision That esti But Danica had heard the thunderstrike of Cadderly’s dragon-awakening clap, knew in her heart that her love was in dire need She pulled free of Ivan’s grasp, scrambled the rest of the way down the narrow chute and without hesitation dropped into the darkness
She prayed that she could react quickly enough when at last she reached the end of the drop, hoped that the dih held up in the chute would show her the floor before she slaray and turned her ankles to the side as she hit, launching herself into a sidelong roll, half twisting as she went Her roll took her over backward, so that she ca not absorbed enough of the fall’s energy, Danica sprang into the air, turning a backward so forward this ti, , swift strides
Wefl, 111 be a wine-drinking faerie," Ivanthe spectacle from above For all his coer without him, and he knew that any hesitation noould force Danica to face the co trials alone
"Don’t ye try to catchtechnique was not so different than Danica’s But while Danica rolled and leaped, so direction with subtle, stressless twists, Ivan just bounced
He was up quickly, though He adjusted his deerantlered hel cloak as she ran back the other way, following the continuing sounds to the east
Vander dropped down next, the tight chute posing iant) drop Shayleigh dropped into his waiting arht after Ivan and Danica
Pikel ca eyed the nestled dwarf curiously for aTour club?" Vander started to ask, and he understood a split second later, when Pikel’s club, tu down behind the dwarf, bounced off his skull
"Oops," the green-bearded dwarf apologized, and in looking at Vender’s scowl, he was glad that they had no tinje to stand around and discuss the matter
Danica would have outdistanced Ivan in no ti cloak and would not let go They heard the rumble of Fyrentenni-h they couldn’t lad when he noted that Shayleigh, still holding her torch, was gaining on theh a few chae The on’s chamber and made the breath
Shayleigh passed Ivan, see as desperate as Danica, and the dwarf prorabbed a hold on her cloak, too He understood their urgency, understood that both of thees of a deep-fried Cadderly, but Ivan re to say about it, they would not run helter-skelter into old Fyren’s waiting h’s torch showed that they were nearing yet another wide chalow, it seemed, and that led them to one inescapable conclusion
For all of his earlier protests and stubbornness, Ivan Bouldershoulder showed his true loyalties at that point Thinking that the dreadful Fyrentennih dwarf yanked back on both cloaks, springing past Danica and Shayleigh and leading the way into the chamber before he had even had time to draw out his double-bladed battle-axe
A flicking tongue hit him two steps inside the door - hit hih skidded in behind, to find the chaiant red toads They spotted Ivan, spotted his boots at least, sticking out froht Danica started for it but was intercepted by a mini-fireball, and then another, as two h hurled her torch out in front of her, had her bow up in an instant, and put it to deadly work
Ivan didn’t knohat had hit him, but he understood that he was quite uncoet his arms around to retrieve the axe strapped to his back Never the one to listen to his own many coan thrashing about, trying to bite, trying to find soed on soain Ivan did not question his misfortune, just snapped his head up as forcefully as he could
A toad leaped long and high at her, but Shayleigh’s three arrows, fired in rapid succession, broke the dung’s round Two h she hit theht One clipped her shoulder, the other crashed against her shins, and back she flew
She would have hit the cavern floor hard, but Vander, coiant hand and kept her on her feet The firbolg was beyond her in an instant, his great sword slashing back and for toads in half
A thirdin froh, holding his tree-trunklike club tight over one shoulder, both his hands grasping the weapon’s narrow end With a whoop of delight, the green-bearded dwarf batted the flying toad aside It dropped, stunned, and Pikel stood over it squishing it with repeated strikes
Danica fell to her back and rolled about frantically to avoid the fiery blasts She tucked her feet in dose, hoping to roll back to a standing position, and grabbed at her boots, drawing two daggers, one golden-hifted and sculpted into the ion
She ca two hits on the nearest toad It closed its eyes and squatted do to the floor, and Danica couldn’t tell if she had killed it or not
Nor could she pause to find out Another toad was near her, flicking its sticky tongue
Danica leaped straight up, a ht She leaped again as soon as her feet touched stone, forward and high, before the toad could flick its tongue again This time, Danica came down hard on the creature’s head One foot planted fir close to her ankle, her other foot flying high, straight above her As she cohtened the h the toad’s bulbous eye
The weight of the blow forced Danica down fro out the next target
At first she thought the toad she saw to the side to be a the most curious of crossbred creatures But then Danica realized that its antlers were not its own, but rather belonged to the indigestible dwarf it had foolishly pulled in
The antlers jerked, this way and that, and Ivan’s slirunted and contorted weirdly, twisting all the way about so that he was looking at his own heels, protruding fro in disbelief
"Ye think yeme outa here?" the dwarf asked, and Danica saw the now-dead toad’s eyes hued
The fa played in Cadderly’sit backward instead, sang it sideways, rando out whatever notes seeh the marrow of his bones; he felt as if he would break apart under the ical assault He was exactly where a priest of Deneir should not be,the notes of the tied painfully in hisdoors in the pathways of the revelations the song had shown to hiuttural, croaking, and his throat was filled with phleg his spine stung hio insane, had gone insane, had gone to a place where every logical course seemed to meander aimlessly, where one and one added up to three, or to ten Cadderly’s ery, furious at what? He did not know, knew only that he was filled with despair Then suddenly he felt invulnerable, as if he could walk past his ers under puny Fyrentenniainst the har, still he denied the universal truths the song had shown to hi terrible within his own es and the shivering pains
His h the accessedinto an endless pit froon, or the dragon would eat him, but either way, Cadderly felt that it did not ht he could hold onto formoment was that he had overstepped his bounds, had rushed in his desperation into ulti chaos
Still he croaked the discordant notes, played the randos of half-truths and untruths in his mind One and one equaled seventeen this time
One and one
Whatever else assaulted Cadderly’s mind, he continued to call upon the si one and one
A hundred different answers caenerated randomly in this place, his mind, wherein no rules held true
A thousand different answers, generated without pattern, without guidance, shot past hi thoughts, knowing them to be lies
One and one equaled two
Cadderly grabbed onto that thought, that hope The sile note of harmony in the discord
One and one equaled two!
A thin line of Deneir’s song played in Cadderly’s mind simultaneously, but separately, fro priest, and he clutched it eagerly, not intending it to pull hi within this sphere’s slippery chaos
Now Cadderly searched the dangerous sphere, found a region of emotional tumult, of inverted ethics, and hurled it with all his on’s rage continued to play, and Cadderly understood that he had not penetrated the innate ical resistance of the beast Cadderly realized that he was sitting then, that so his mental journey, the earthquake of Fyrentenni had knocked hiain Cadderly searched out the particular region of chaos that he needed - it was in a different place this tiain he hurled it at the wyrm And then a third time, and a fourth His head ached as he continued to deon with false emotions and false beliefs
The cha that Cadderly heard e from somewhere down the tunnel behind him, back in the toad room, perhaps He slowly opened his eyes, to see oid Fyren sitting quietly- regarding hion said in calive ht about such a tirade"The dragon blinked its reptilian eyes and glanced all about curiously "Now, about this small task that you wished me to perform"
Cadderly, too, blinked many times in disbelief "One and one equals two," he muttered under his breath "I hope"