Page 35 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

I held my palms up like speaking hadn’t occurred to me.

Now, almost as one, we both looked and saw an opening in the rocks off this shelf.

As the alternative to exploring this cave was trying to get Galva up or down this sheer rock face with not very much rope and no pitons, I brushed snow off myself and went in.

She sighed a world-weary sigh and followed after.

It was getting proper dark in the cave.

Before we lost sight of the entrance, I fixed a nail in a crack of the tunnel, and took my worst stockings out of my pack. I unraveled a bit of cotton thread from one of these and caught it on the nail.

Galva nodded at this, made the Ispanthian gesture for good, like she was weighing something in her hand, her fingers pressed together.

I had a cantrip that would make the end of a staff or even a branch glow for a bit, but I had neither of these. I thought the end of my bow might work, even though it was tipped with horn, but I didn’t know if it would do anything funny to the ash wood, for a bow is a powerful thing, but wondrous sensitive. Would an arrow work? The fletching might burn, for there was warmth to the wee spell if not fire. I took the unravelling thread in my teeth, pulled an arrow, and my knife, put my hand on Galva’s shoulder to make sure where she was and to let her know I was stopping. I shaved off the goose feathers, which had gotten ratty from exposure to every kind of bad weather, and spoke the cantrip words, “Ins hobp-rebp alumb,” and touched my finger to the ash-wood nock-end of the arrow.

It flickered twice, like a candle about to go out, then made about as much light as a candle might.

But it made about ten times as much smoke, and sometimes sparks, though without much heat to them. It sizzled as well, which it never had before, and I think this was because I had pronounced the cantrip with thread in my mouth.

The smoke was prodigious.

We both coughed.

“Sorry,” I said, “it’s supposed to be for a staff.”

“It is better than falling into a pit,” she said and tented her mouth and nose in her shirt.

I didn’t know how long we’d have the wee brand, so I took note of the tunnel we were in. It was regular enough that I had to think it had been made by kynd, though it was small. We were stooping by the time we got ten yards in. And why would it lead to that shelf in the middle of the wall? Maybe steps of wood or a rope ladder had once led up to it, or up from it.

Another thought occurred to me, this one a bit ominous.

What if there had been no ladder?

What if that shelf was for something that flew?

I gave a little shudder and hoped the light would last. The two or three other times I’d used it in the past, I got about an hour. I hated using it, though; I would get a cracking headache the next day, the kind where light hurts your eyes. Magic always costs something. I determined that if we hadn’t found something promising by what felt like half an hour, or when I ran out of thread, whichever came last, I’d double us back.

It wasn’t much longer before the path split. I mean, I knew it was like to, and I hoped there would be some clue as to which of two ways would be best to take. But it wasn’t two paths we were offered.

The tunnel split into three.

“Right,” I said. “A god of threes.”

Galva nodded.

I wet my thumb with spit and tried each passageway for moving air, but they all felt still as a tomb. Maybe we were in a tomb. Ours, certainly, if we got lost down here.

“What do you think?” I said.

“If this god favors threes, perhaps the last one on the right,” Galva said, pointing at each opening in turn. “One, two, three.”

“Yah, but not all languages are written left to right. Some go the other way. And some of the older ones go top down, others bottom up.”

“Chodadu,” she said, nodding at the truth of my words.

“Right,” I agreed. “Fucked indeed.”

I used the smoky little light to scan the rock, see if I could make out any kind of writing. I couldn’t. So I consulted my other birth-gift and tried to feel how my luck sat. It sat pretty low, if the cold, hollow feeling in my chest wasn’t just hunger and being in the coldest place on or off a map.