Sanura boosted her husband into his saddle, distressed by how light he was getting. His illness had continued it unstoppable march across his body, until its brown splotches were more common than his gray skin. Exhausted by the day’s ride, he no longer even gave a pretense of helping with the camp in the evening. The mornings were even worse. This last morning, Sanura had to feed and dress him before finally breaking camp. Only by recalling how much he improved while riding on previous days could she bring herself to allow him to mount Grass Eater.

            The antelope seemed to sense the poor state of his rider and took special pains to make his gait as gentle as possible. His rider did get better as the day went on, and they were almost riding normally by midday.

            They had left the ship behind two weeks ago. After pulling into the very small port town of Guom in the far west of the south-in arm, they road off into the interior of the continent, the wide and wild section of mountains and forests where the four arms came together. Einian had made her home high in the southern mountain range. As the travelers reached those heights, a light dusting of snow announced the arrival of winter.

            The mountains were only sparsely inhabited by humans, causing Sanura more than a little concern. “What can we expect up here besides a bad tempered Elder?”

            “Nothing too bad. Bears and mountain lions, mostly. We’re too far off the travel lanes for much in the way of bandits, and this area doesn’t have really strange creatures like the Yudoko Territory or the north-out arm,” Arva said.

            Mollified, the soldier returned to keeping a careful eye on Celeres. Even if he had perked up under the relative warmth of the sun, she was not eager to drag him into a fight in his current condition.

            When she was not worrying about Celeres’ deterioration, Sanura refined her second-sight. By now, she knew every string, block, and curl of the true names within her husband. With Arva’s help, she had identified the mark the hirudin had infected and had carefully traced every insidious knot it had built within him.

            In odd moments, she practiced her new skill on the rest of the world. The weather alternated between sun and snow for the two and a half weeks they picked their way through the mountains. Distantly, the soldier could see the crystals in the clouds feeding on the water floating around them, until they were heavy enough to fall.

            A full snowstorm caught them in the afternoon they started up Mt. Anguis, within half a day’s ride of Einian’s caves. They huddled inside a bubble of warmth cast by Arva as wind and snow rushed by outside. Celeres had almost collapsed out of his saddle when they stopped, and the Cheldean declared they would wait for the storm to end before making their way to the caves.

            Arva and Sanura woke in the morning, but Celeres did not. He lay limp in his blankets, resisting all of their shakes and shouts that tried to disturb his slumber.

            “What do we do?” Sanura asked Arva imploringly after they gave up trying to rouse their companion.

            Arva was silent, his face intense.

            “Arva-” Sanura started, panicked.

            The Cheldean waved her silent. “I’m listening.”

            After far too long a time, Arva leaned back, nodding. “He’ll be fine for the next few days.”

            “What-”

            “We’re not that far from the sword,” he said briskly, cutting her off. “You and I will go get it, practice taking some things apart, and then use it to heal Celeres. I’ll cast some proxies to feed him and keep him hydrated. We use them sometimes with the seriously ill. It’ll keep him for about a week before wearing off.”

            “Does he even have a week?” she asked pointedly.

            “Probably not, but if we run into too much trouble getting the sword, I’d feel pretty stupid if his body ran out of resources and died before the mark’s plague could kill him.

            “We’ll leave the antelopes here. We’ll be traveling a bit faster without them through the drifts, and I don’t want to strand them near the cave entrance. I’ll use the feeding spells on them, too, before we leave.

            “Chadder!”

            “Yes, boss?”

            “You’re going to stay here with Celeres. If we’re not back in three days, go get him help. Don’t worry about the antelopes. If they wander off, we can always track them down later.”

            “Go it, boss.”

            “Sanura, pack some food and whatever you think would be useful inside the caves. And get two of Mangalam’s necklaces out of my pack. I’m going to be singing magic for about an hour, so you don’t have to hurry too much to get it done.” With that, the Cheldean dismissed her and concentrated his attention on Celeres.

            The soldier set about her duties, donning her armor and strapping on her sword. A fur shirt went over the steel armor in a mostly futile attempt to keep off the cold. Aside from a bit of food and water, the only additional item she took was some rope and a Yudoko lamp Arva owned. Everything else she left in the camp, figuring that if it wasn’t possible to return quickly from the caves, none of them would need such camp equipment ever again.

            Arva had spoken true about how long the proxies would take him. He had to repeat part the songs he had used on Celeres five more times to cover the antelopes. By the time he was done, the man was pale and shivering..

            “Alright,” he said, exhausted. “Now I’ll cast a traveling proxy on us. You first. It’ll give you a chance to get used to the motion while I cast it on me.”

            Sanura nodded and waited patiently while he sang an intricate song in three voices. She could actually feel the music flowing over her, changing the way her body interacted with the invisible laws of the world.

            Shaking, Arva sat down hard after finishing the proxy. “Go try out your new feet,” he instructed her. “I’ll met you a hundred steps or so above the camp.”

            Sanura nodded and crossed the dry spot maintained by Arva’ proxy of warmth around the camp, experiencing an odd double bump as she walked. Feeling far too light, she stumbled a bit but caught her balance. She got a real surprise as she stepped up onto the snow piled against the proxy bubble. Instead of sinking against it as she expected, the soldier’s foot bounced off the snow and threw her high into the air. She landed in an undignified heap on the far side of the camp, bouncing lightly a few times before settling down. Thankfully, Arva’s engrossment in casting the proxy on himself kept him too occupied to notice her embarrassing landing.

            Gamely, Sanura got back to her feet and tried a few experimental jumps. She found she could push herself far into the air with very little effort, easily leaping over the antelopes’ heads. Her landing seemed to depend much on what she wanted: she could bounce back high or hold it down so she returned to the ground after a couple of very small bumps. This was how Arva meant for them to get to the cave, leaping up the snow covered slopes like a ball of rubber sap.

            Ready for the effects of the proxy this time, Sanura leapt across the camp and out into the snow. Unfortunately, she misjudged how her balanced was tweaked by the magic and her foot twisted out from underneath her as she landed. Limbs pinwheeling, the soldier bounced down the mountain, finally sliding to a stop on a shallow slope a few hundred yards below the camp.

            Pushing herself up barely dented snow below her, a side effect of the proxy Sanura did not notice. She was so irritated by her clumsiness that the absence of snow clinging to her also failed to make an impression. Instead, she busily worked on a way to get up the slope.

            After a couple of failed attempts, Sanura found the trick. As she landed, she leaned forward, digging into the snow as much as the proxy would let her. Every jump was a challenge, as she juggled anticipating her next landing spot with keeping her balance and deciding how hard to push off. By the time she had made her way above the camp, Arva had finished casting his own proxy and was bouncing up to meet her.

            “You’ve figured out how to move with the proxy?” he asked.

            Sanura nodded.

            “Good. We’ll be moving up and to the right. Try to keep up.” With that, Arva bounded away, leaping high into the air.

            For two hours, the travelers jumped and soared over the snow, leaving only the shallowest of indentations behind. Sanura felt the strain with every step, her calf muscles protesting at the unusual exercise. Still, Arva showed no signs of slowing during their ascent, so she gave her all to keep up.

            The cave entrance was a human-sized hole set into the mountain under the shelter of an overhanging cliff. They paused outside to rest their legs and don Mangalam’s necklaces.

            “Do we know where the sword is in here?” Sanura asked.

            “No,” Arva said calmly.

            “Are you going to cast a proxy to find out?”

            The Cheldean looked at her reprovingly. “You know how noisy proxies are, or how bright from your point of view. Does that really seem like a good idea to you?”

            “Oh. No,” she said belatedly.

            “We’ll have to go through the caves looking listening for a black spot in the true names around us,” Arva said, revealing his own agitation by repeatedly rubbing his palms together.

            “So, what’s keeping us?”

            “Nothing.”

            Arva entered the cave while Sanura followed, suppressing a small shudder at the mountain of stone above her. The soldier carried their light, illuminating the smooth lumps of the stone walls. If the Cheldean was hampered by the shadows his body cast before him, he did not mention it to his companion.

            The narrow passage of the entrance soon spilled out into a chamber that caught the light of the lamp on the far wall, revealing its secrets. Thirty or forty holes studded the walls and floor, creating the eerie impression that they had entered a room made from bubbled cheese. Some of the holes could easily accommodate a warrior astride her war antelope. Others would require a child to squeeze through the narrow openings.

            Sanura found the number of choice quite intimidating and wondered how they were going to make a decision on how to proceed. She looked to Arva, whose head was cocked as if he was listening to something intently. Recalling his comment at the entrance, she turned to regard her surrounding with her second-sight. The results baffled her. The walls of the chamber crawled with not-colors, shifting and swirling shapes dominated by not-greens and not-blues. The air itself had a not-red tinge that drifted along in thin wisps. All of these had a brightness something less than most of the proxies she had seen but definitely more than the true names of regular objects. If there were any gaps in these caves like the Nameless Sword should have, she could not see it among the ocean of not-colors.

            She though Arva might be having better luck with his methods. The Cheldean was moving carefully, stopping after every step to listen. After an interminable wait, he broke that off and moved around to the various exits, titling his head into each and pressing his ear to the stone near them. After examining one hole half the height of a human for quite some time, he gestured for Sanura to join him.

            “We can talk as long as we’re quiet,” he whispered. “The sword seems to be down and to the right of the entrance. Unfortunately, it sounds like Einian herself is somewhere near it. We’ll move in that general direction and backtrack when we have to. Keep your second-sight up and warn me if you see anything you don’t like. Any questions?”

            The soldier shook her head.

            Crouching down, she followed Arva into the tunnel. The first three rooms were uneventful, mostly resembling smaller versions of the first chamber. The fourth was a bit more problematic.

            They crawled out of a very low tunnel into a cozy room with only one other exit. Unfortunately, that exit gleamed with a sinister looking not-yellow proxy in Sanura’s second-sight. She warned Arva about it while they caught their breath after their crawl.

            Arva confirmed her apprehensions after testing it with his own skills. “It’s a pretty nasty piece of work. If it detonates on you, it will peel the skin right off your body and leave you to die.”

            “And some fool came into this place just because he kills dragons.”

            “Mostly on Zonneshin’s orders. The dragons have usually backed Maand in the second universe, so he’s occasionally campaigned against his former lover’s allies. Zonneshin won’t leave his patrol over Tiran’s surface, so he has to use agents to reach underground where the dragons live. Einian would have been a target to ensure she couldn’t help recreate the dragon line if he ever manages to wipe them all out.”

            “On. Zonneshin seems to enjoy making enemies.”

            “He has only two passions and isn’t particular about which he fulfils first. Hard to believe how much life on Tiran depends on him. Makes you wonder about the design skills of the Elohim sometimes.”

            “So, what are we going to do about that,” Sanura said, pointing towards the exit.

            “Hope that Mangalam’s proxies work like he said. Casting one of my own is too risky.”

            The woman stared at him hard.

            Arva shrugged. “I’ll go first,” he said and stepped forward.

            Sanura grabbed him and hauled him back. “What if it kills you?” she hissed.

            “Then back up and try one of the other tunnels. And avoid any other proxies you see that look like this one.” With that, the Cheldean strode forward and emerged past the proxy unscathed.

            “I guess the necklace worked. Come on through,” he said.

            Nerves scorched, she followed the irresponsible and aggravating man, wondering how hard it would be to duplicate the proxy’s effect manually.

            Other rooms followed. Some held the usual collections of stalactites and stalagmites. Others held oddities that made the Yudoko’s exotic tunnels look mundane. In one room, the corpses of dozens of people dangled in the air, held up by stone spears that grew from the floor. They had not decayed but had mummified, preserved by the dry air and untouched by insects. Bizarrely, some of them had four or even six arms.

            In another, thirteen boulders drifted through the air, crashing into each other and the wall in earsplitting booms. Remarkably, neither walls nor stones seemed harmed by such collisions. The travelers dodged the rocks and hurried on.

            The worst room contained a creature Einian had caught and was torturing. It had once been a mighty four-legged beast that would have loomed over the walkup Celeres’ family lived in, crushing the puny humans under its claws while their weapons bounced harmlessly off its pearly-white scales. Now it wallowed in a pool of blistering lava that ate away at its scales, crippling the flesh it reached through the cracks it made in the creature’s armor. A viciously strong proxy ringed the bowl, apparently trapping the beast in the pool. Sanura thought it was one of the most beautiful creatures she had even seen and longed to be able to help it.

            The creature noted them as they passed by but closed its eyes when it reached the conclusion that there was little these two pitiful creatures could do to end its suffering. Arva seemed to be of much the same mind and silently directed Sanura past the beast. While they crossed the rim of its prison, the pain of its existence forced it to shift its position. That sent waves bouncing off the walls of the pool and back up onto its body. A low, hollow groan escaped it mouth as the lava licked across the scales, finding fresh places to inflict pain. Sanura thought it was one of the saddest sounds she had ever heard.

            Several rooms and using the rope to descend a wide chimney later, Arva brought them to a halt. “We are very near to the sword and to Einian. I can’t say that Einian won’t be able to detect us, despite Mangalam’s opinion that only proxy-enchanted eyeballs might penetrate the magic. The Elders are strange, and they break almost as many rules as the Firstborn. So, we scout the situation, back out, and make a plan. Do you want to wait here or come with me?”

            “With you, of course.”

            “Okay. Leave the light here, and we’ll go.”

            Arva caught the flatness of her expression at that instruction and asked, “Are you sure you want to go?”

            The soldier was quiet for a long moment then nodded sharply, “Let’s go.”

            Still concerned, Arva took her hand and led her into the next tunnel. It was not as bad as Sanura had feared. The light of the lamp faded quickly, but the not-colors of her second-sight let her see a distorted view of her surroundings. She realized the Cheldean must have been using his hearing for a similar effect since they entered Einian’s home, which is why he led despite letting her carry the lamp. She wondered just how many times he had had used his powers in such a way.

            Far along the tunnel, Arva pulled her down to the floor and than crawled the rest of the way to Einian’s residence. Moving as quietly as she could, Sanura maneuvered herself so she could see the room. Their tunnel intersected one of the long walls of the vaguely rectangular room, one of several tunnels judging from the exits she could see in her second-sight.

            On the right was a rotating object with an odd blank spot in it. It puzzled her for a while until she recalled her extensive study of Celeres’ true names. The object was a corpse, probably little more than a skeleton. It twirled in its little circle, held by a rope or cord suspended from the ceiling, although she could not find what caused the slow spin. Maybe it was the blank spot.

            On the left was a second object with some unusually dark true names woven into its structure. It shifted its position a bit, clarifying its living nature. That had to be Einian, going about whatever odd business a child of the Firstborn attended to deep in the bowels of Tiran.

            Sanura was wondering how they were going to get around their unwitting host when Arva pulled her close and whispered in her ear. “Wait here,” he said.

            The soldier’s stomach dropped as the Cheldean stood up and quietly snuck over to the floating corpse. How could the man be that stupid? Even with the dark and Mangalam’s necklace, it seemed awfully reckless to move out into the open.

            Arva bobbed back and forth in front of the corpse, trying to match its timing. The woman wondered what he was doing, then belatedly realized the blank spot in the corpse must be the Nameless Sword. The sword and the Elder were in the same room, and Arva had decided to trust in Mangalam’s proxy instead of waiting for Einian to leave her prize’s room for another part of her home. That struck her as an unreasonable plan for reasons she could not pin down.

            In front of the corpse, the Cheldean finished his preparations. Moving in synch with the spinning skeleton, he reached out and plucked the sword from its body. Amazingly, he achieved the feat without a single noise. Despite her blindness in normal sight, she could sense the radiant smile on his face. He had walked boldly into the room, perfected his timing, and stolen the prize with no interference. He had even carried it halfway to the exit without disturbing whatever reverie Einian was currently in.

            A burst of adrenaline and the pounding of her heart followed the arrival of the realization of the flaw in the Cheldean’s plan. The creature in the lava! The creature of the pit had seen through Mangalam’s proxy!

            The explosion of the light from Einian nearly blinded her dark-extended pupils, but Sanura still saw the energy crash into Arva. The sword fell from his grasp and skidded across the floor. The Cheldean thudded into the wall and fell limp to the ground, his clothes aflame. Sanura leapt up, desperate to avenge her friend rather than judging her chances realistically. She pounded toward Einian, yelling at the top of her lungs. Falling into the dark as the stone disappeared below her turned the battle cry into a terrified scream.