Jayne Castle [Jayne Ann Krentz] (43 page)

now as more cracks appeared in the black glass. The firelight seemed to blaze higher, bouncing furiously

off the glassy surfaces of the room. The members of the Cult of the Eclipse were screaming uselessly,

milling around in a strange panic.

"Which way?" Kalena glanced around helplessly.

"I saw some of them come through the glass over there earlier." He indicated a blank wall of glass that

hadn't yet begun to shatter. "They left a lamp on the floor to mark the door. Come on, let's get out of

here." Ridge put out a hand to grab Kalena's arm and swore in savage disgust. His hand fell aside and he

shook it as if it had been painfully injured. "I can't touch you. Figures. Come on, move! Stay close to

me."

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He led the way toward the far glass wall. Even as they ran, the black glass ahead of them trembled and

began to splinter. Kalena saw the flat, reflective surface shatter, revealing a dark opening behind it. Ridge

grabbed up the lamp that had been left on the floor and stood back to make sure that Kalena got through

the jagged tunnel entrance.

"Hurry" he snapped. "This glass is going to be down on us any second."

Kalena moved to obey, clinging to her Key case.

"You can't escape!" Griss' voice was a sobbing cry of anguish and fury behind them. "You must not

leave. You cannot leave!"

He lunged for Kalena, black robes flying around him. For a moment he looked like some evil bird trying

to score her with talons. Kalena glanced back in fear, wondering if the man's blind fury would be enough

to get him past the protection the Key case seemed to provide.

But suddenly Ridge was between her and Griss, moving with a lethal swiftness that Kalena knew would

end in death for the man who had once made the mistake of calling her whore. A wave of shocked

sickness washed through her. She wanted to cry out, to tell Ridge that she was safe enough with the Key

in her hands, but there was no chance. Kalena knew she couldn't have stopped him, even if she were

able to get the words out of her constricted throat.

He was her other half, her opposite, the dark side of life. Ridge could kill.

There was a blur of motion as Ridge's hand moved. Griss screamed again, his cloak swirling outward to

surround both himself and Ridge. For an instant the two men seemed to be trapped together in a violent

embrace, and then they both sprawled on the floor. Ridge and Griss rolled twice, Ridge winding up on

the bottom. Kalena couldn't see much else because of the enveloping folds of the cloak. Then she heard

a keening scream that ended with nerve shattering abruptness.

Both of the thrashing figures went abnormally still. Kalena couldn't move. The lengthening crack in the

floor snaked forward another few meters until it ran under the two men.

"Ridge! Get away from there. Hurry, the floor is opening. There is nothing underneath."

Ridge was already kicking himself free of the dead Griss and the tangle of the cloak. He got to his feet,

his sintar in one hand. Kalena realized he must have taken it from Griss and used it on the other man. In

the fiery light that danced around the room she could see that the blade of the weapon was red. This time

the color wasn't from Ridge's fury. The steel was red with Griss' blood.

Ridge rushed toward her, grabbing up the fallen lamp. "I told you to get out of here."

"Yes, Ridge." This was not the time to explain again that she couldn't leave without him. Kalena was

already turning back toward the yawning darkness of the waiting tunnel when she saw the central crack in

the floor widen abruptly. Griss' body hovered for a moment on an edge of fractured glass and then, with

a terrible inevitability, it tumbled into the black chasm.

"The tunnel, Kalena!"

She breathed deeply, trying to quiet her pounding pulse, and moved through the opening in the cracked

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and shattered glass. Ridge was right behind her. Safe in the corridor, he stopped Kalena for an instant.

Unable to help themselves, they both glanced back into the glass chamber. Stunned, they watched as the

bowl of searing fire fell from sight and the remainder of the glass floor disintegrated. The fire pit with its

hidden secret disappeared into a yawning black chasm. Several shrieking cultists fell with it, their cries

echoing horribly.

"Dammit to the Dark end of the Spectrum." Ridge's words were almost inaudible.

"Ridge, what is it?" Kalena glanced at him, more alarmed than ever. He was staring past her into the

disintegrating room.

"Someone else found a way out. I saw a lamp disappear into a wall on the other side of the room." He

shook off the obvious anger that threatened to consume him and swung around. "Maybe it was just my

imagination. It doesn't matter. There is nothing that can be done. We have to get out of here."

Ridge swung around, made another futile effort to grasp Kalena's arm, and swore furiously again when

he was unable to touch her. "Now we've got a small problem on our hands." He stared into the blackness

of the tunnel.

Kalena turned her back on the destruction of the glass room and followed his gaze. The light from the

lamp Ridge was holding didn't penetrate very far.

"I don't think this is the main entrance. The way Griss and the others brought me was well lit," Kalena

observed anxiously.

"I know. But some of the cult members came this way. I saw them enter the room. There was a lamp to

mark this exit."

Kalena swallowed. "I suppose you realize how lost we could get in these caves?"

"The thought has crossed my mind." He started forward cautiously. "We can't go back into that damn

glass chamber, though. We're going to have to try to find our way out using this corridor. And we'd

better move quickly. There's no telling how far that chasm will open. It could splinter half this mountain."

"No." Kalena spoke with a conviction that surprised her as much as it did Ridge. "It won't do that. It's

gone about as far as it's going to go. We're safe from it now"

Ridge glanced back at her, scowling. "How do you know that?"

She looked down at the case in her hands. "I just know"

He opened his mouth as if to argue, and then appeared to change his mind. He eyed the silvery case.

"Maybe you do. Anything else useful you can tell us?"

"Perhaps." She stroked the case in her hand. "This is a thing of light, not darkness."

"I know." He sounded impatient.

She raised her eyes. "It's possible it might lead us to the outside."

"How?"

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Kalena shook her head. "I ... I'm not sure. But now that the Dark Key has vanished, this case no longer

feels pulled toward it. It feels free again and I think that it will be drawn toward light. It belongs back in

the ice cave above the valley, not here."

"Kalena, are you trying to tell me you're in touch mentally with that damn Key?"

"Not exactly." She hesitated, seeking a way to explain something she didn't understand herself. "But I

feel the pull of it. Earlier that pull was toward the Dark Key. There was a drive to destroy it. But now it's

a different sensation. It's a weak sensation, though. Perhaps if I took the Key out of the case again—"

"No!" Ridge's refusal to even consider such an action was clear in the single word.

Kalena nodded. "Yes, it would be dangerous. And maybe unnecessary. I can still feel a faint sensation,

even through the case." She looked up again. "Do you want to risk having me try to lead us out of here

with this?"

Ridge stared at her for a long moment, and abruptly nodded his head. "All right. We haven't got much to

lose, have we? Go ahead. Give it a try. I'll count our steps. Whenever we come to a turn in the tunnels,

we'll try to leave a marker of some kind. With any luck we might at least be able to find our way back to

this point if we decide we're not making any progress. There has to be an exit out of this corridor, but it

might take a lot of trial and error to find it."

Kalena closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the quiet warmth emanating from the silvery casket in

her hands. For a long moment she felt nothing beyond a gentle, comfortable heat.

She experimented by deliberately turning to walk back along the corridor toward what remained of the

now ominously silent glass chamber. Almost instantly she was aware of a faint resistance. When she

swung around and started in the other direction, the resistance faded.

"It feels different when I go in this direction, Ridge. It feels right, somehow"

"Let's get going. Watch your step. There's always the possibility that the cult set a few traps."

"Why should they? These caves are enough of a trap in themselves."

"Mmm." He didn't sound convinced. "Just the same, don't get ahead of the lamplight and let me check

the corners before you go around them. The last thing we need to run into tonight is a hook viper."

"I think they've all fled," Kalena murmured. "Probably didn't appreciate the invasion of their caverns."

They walked for what seemed like hours, although Kalena knew it wasn't really that long. Around each

bend in the passage she hoped to find lamps that would indicate the new corridor was one of those used

frequently by the Cult of the Eclipse. Ridge stayed close, keeping a silent tally of their footsteps and

building small pyramids of pebbles every time they started down a new passage.

Whenever a choice of direction was offered Kalena halted, closed her eyes and tried to sense the Key's

emanations of warmth. Whenever the warmth dimmed, she opted for a different direction. It was a

tedious process, tiring mentally as well as physically. Kalena had a silent fear that she was only imagining

the slight changes in temperature that came from the case in her hands. She wondered whether she ought

to warn Ridge that she might be working on sheer imagination. No sense bothering him with that bit of

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useless news, she told herself.

Once during the walk down a particularly long passage, Kalena allowed herself to think about what had

happened back in the glass room. Ridge had been moving silently beside her for a long while and she

wondered if he was thinking about the same thing.

"How did it feel, Ridge?" Kalena asked quietly. "When you held the Key in your hands. What did it feel

like?"

He didn't look at her, but kept his attention on the corridor ahead. "Like I was connected to it. Part of

it."

"That's the way it was with the Light Key. But it wanted to take over. It was using me, draining me."

"I know. The Keys would have had us kill each other. Who knows what kind of energy that would have

released?"

Kalena chewed on her lower lip. "You think the Keys would have absorbed that energy and used it

somehow?"

"I don't know, Kalena. I don't think I want to know."

"The strange part is that I never really got a sense of evil around the Dark Key," she said thoughtfully.

"That makes us even," he muttered. "I never got a sense of sweet, pure goodness around the Light Key."

"I guess that's logical. The Keys are tied to opposite ends of the Spectrum, but not necessarily to any

real concept of good or evil. We've been taught that all our lives. They represent different, opposing

sources of power."

"Pure power can come from either end of the Spectrum," Ridge agreed slowly. "And according to the

Polarity Advisors, so can good or evil. But they're two different sets of concepts.
Balanced
concepts."

"Ah, but you males have always assumed that in a showdown, the Dark end would be stronger, haven't

you?"

Ridge shrugged. "Maybe. We think of the Light end of the Spectrum as being the feminine end, and I

guess it's fair to say most men think of women as the weaker sex. At least in a physical sense. The

Polarity Advisors have always assumed that absolute power wielded by women wouldn't be as strong as

absolute power wielded by men."

"Probably because Polarity Advisors are almost always male," Kalena suggested dryly. "Well, at least

the cult's stupid experiment proved that notion was a lie," she added, not without some sense of

satisfaction.

"Don't sound so smug, Kalena. We both had one hell of a close call back in that glass chamber and

we're not out of this yet.

But Kalena's spirits were reviving rapidly as the shock of the experience wore off. `"Do you suppose

that for the rest of our lives we'll argue about which of us was more powerful?"

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"No, we will not."

"Why not?"

"Because as of now I forbid any mention of the subject."

Kalena's mouth curved in the first real amusement she had felt in a long while. "That's what I like about

you, Ridge. You don't allow yourself to get mired down in complex philosophical quandaries. Very

straightforward in your thinking."

"I'm learning that if he's to stay reasonably sane, a husband doesn't have much choice," he answered, a