A suffocating darkness pressed in on Corvan. Tsarek insisted they travel in darkness to conserve their last fire stick. He claimed there were no rocks on the sandy floor, at least none that he could remember.
Corvan was glad that the insignia on the hammer gave off a feeble blue light—like a flashlight with the batteries almost depleted. It was enough to keep him from stubbing his toes on the occasional rock that did show up. Tsarek stayed ahead of the pool of light as if he were afraid it would bite his heels.
“Is it much farther, Tsarek? We’ve been walking for hours.” Corvan made no attempt to curb his growing frustration.
“Just a bit more. The roof is—”
“Ouch!” Corvan exclaimed as his head scraped the ceiling.
“It is even lower up ahead,” Tsarek said. “You might want to crawl.”
Corvan got down on all fours on the sandy floor. “How much farther to the tight spot?”
“Not far.”
Corvan soon realized that not far likely meant something different to Tsarek than it did to him. After jamming the hammer under the strap of the pack, he rolled up the cloak under his belt to free up his legs. He was about to ask Tsarek if they could take a break when the lizard twisted around in the narrow confines of the passage and pointed ahead.
“This is the place where you will need to take off your pack and push it through.”
Corvan pulled out the hammer and unbuckled the straps. He had to roll onto his side to remove the pack. “If I push it in front of me. It might get stuck.”
“Perhaps if you tied it to your leg with the krypin and pulled it along behind you?” Tsarek said, but then he shook his head. “No, that won’t work,” he muttered. “If the pack gets stuck, I could not get past you to release it from your leg. Then we would both be trapped.”
Corvan shivered at the thought. His father told a story about a caver named Floyd Collins. In a tight crawl, a rock fell behind him and trapped his legs. His rescuers could see him, but they couldn’t pull him free. They tried to tunnel around him, but he lost too much body heat and died from hypothermia.
“Then I guess there is no choice but to leave the pack here,” Corvan said. “I’ll leave the rope here as well. If I get through, you can bring me one end and I can pull the pack through from the other side. Is there enough space to turn around after the tight spot?”
“Yes, it comes out in a larger cavern. I believe it might be the outer limits of the Cor. The band of rock we call the Cor shield transmits light from deep inside the Cor. I saw a bit of dim light inside the crack. Either we are a long way out, or the Cor was in a dark phase.”
Corvan didn’t understand all that Tsarek was saying, but there was at least some hope of getting through.
Tsarek scrambled into the darkness, and Corvan followed with the soft glow from the hammer lighting the way. Soon the tunnel became so low that he had to wiggle snakelike along the floor.
The sleeve of the cloak snagged on a rock. Corvan pulled on it, but he was unable to move forward or back. Panic welled up at the thought of the millions of tons of rock above him. The passage seemed to squeeze in even tighter. Everything in him clamored to thrash about to get free of the constricted space. Musky-smelling dust clogged his nose. He gasped and tried to pull in a breath, but the intense pressure on his chest cut off his breath. It was as if he were drowning once more, but this time in solid rock.
The hammer cast the light of its circular words on the wall by his face. The script seemed more natural that way. He couldn’t read them, but somehow the words reassured him that things would be okay. The soft glow calmed his mind, and he breathed slowly until his pulse returned to normal.
Imagining his cloak and the jagged rock that had hooked it, he rotated his shoulder until the trapped sleeve slid free. Keeping the light of the hammer out in front, he wiggled on.
“Look this way, sir.” Tsarek’s muffled voice came from Corvan’s left, where two gleaming eyes looked at him through a narrow crack in the wall. “This is the spot, sir. You must get through this hole to make it into the cavern I am standing in.”
Corvan inspected the crack. The passage he was crawling through ran horizontally, but the crack ran vertically. Where the two met, a small trapezoidal opening had formed, but it was far too small. He lowered his forehead to the cold rock. “My shoulders won’t fit through there.”
“You must try, sir. There is no other way out. If you do not make it through, you will most certainly die in there.”
Most certainly die … his stomach clenched at the thought of wriggling backwards through the tunnel to die of starvation and cold in that last cave. Kate would also die if he didn’t find her. The memory of her face when she had passed through the last cavern had been haunting him. He was certain her eyes had been begging for his help, despite what Tsarek had said about her and the black band.
Summoning his courage, he breathed in and out a few times to steady himself and then wiggled in closer to the small opening. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” he mumbled.
“It is not worth the effort, sir. I have tried the creature called cat. They are tough and not at all tasty.”
Corvan looked at the unblinking eyes. His mother had wondered what had become of her favorite tabby.
“It’s just an expression,” Corvan said. “It means there are always other solutions if you look hard enough and take the time to think things through. I’m not going to die of hunger in the next ten minutes, so let’s examine the problem carefully. My shoulders won’t get any smaller, but maybe there’s a way to make the hole larger. How about the hammer?”
“I do not think this hole is very stable, and there is a large overhang of rock above it on my side. It could crack off and collapse at any time. It may not be the best skinning of a cat to try the hammer. The risk is great and—”
“All right, I get the picture. How about a fire stick? You said it could burn through rock.”
“Not this rock. This is the Cor shield. A fire stick will not burn it, and if we try, the stick will explode.”
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Corvan held the hammer closer to the vertical crack. The rock around it was shiny and black, like the piece of obsidian he had in his collection at home.
“This is the main wall around the Cor?”
“I believe it is. At least this side smells like the Cor.”
Corvan sniffed at the of air coming through the hole. It was damp and smelled of rotting compost. “It doesn’t smell very good.”
The eyes blinked rapidly. “It smells like home.”
“Then I must make it through. If I twist diagonally in the opening, that might give me a bit more room, but I need to take the cloak off first. It could bunch up and trap me.”
As he squirmed out of the cloak, Corvan realized just how cold the cave walls were. Pulling his legs up behind him, he dug his toes into the soft sand and rotated his body around until he was heading toward Tsarek. He pushed into the crack and stopped. “If this is a shield wall, will it close and squish me like the blue wall around your fire stick?”
“I don’t think so, sir. This one is black, so it is a very old crack. It’s the new ones that can close up on you. Those ones are a lighter color with more light inside them.”
Corvan gingerly touched the hard crystalline surface. Nothing changed. “All right, then. Here goes nothing.”
“Excuse me, sir? Where is the nothing and where will it be going?”
Ignoring Tsarek’s questions, Corvan extended his arms into the opening and pushed forward.
Tsarek backed away from the hammer’s glow. “You are doing it, sir. Keep coming—not far now.”
Corvan pushed until his feet no longer gripped in the sand behind him. Wriggling and squirming, his body moved into the crack.
“Your hands are through, sir. It’s working!”
The rock surface tore at Corvan’s shoulders as if the Cor shield was doing its best to keep him out of the Cor. Panicked, he jerked erratically in the tiny space, banging his knees against the rocks behind him. He gained a few precious inches and his face emerged from the other side of the crack with the hammer held out awkwardly in front of him.
“You are here, sir. I am so happy,” Tsarek exclaimed.
Tsarek’s face was level with his and by the hammer’s glow he could see lizard was standing on a narrow rock shelf. Below Tsarek, a scree slope of broken shards stretched away into the darkness.
“My head may be through, but my shoulders are stuck. I need to get one shoulder out and my body will follow.”
Corvan wiggled his left hand. The lizard held out both claws and intertwined them so Corvan could wrap his fingers around them.
“Okay, Tsarek, lean back and pull.”
The lizard leaned back. Corvan’s shoulder moved an inch, then jammed tight. The folds of his shirt bunched and pinched at his flesh.
“I think my shirt is part of the problem. Can you climb up by my shoulder and pull some of the cloth through the opening?”
The lizard scrambled up the wall and got in close to the trapped shoulder. A sharp yank was followed by the sound of tearing cloth.
“So sorry, sir. I have ruined your garment.”
Cool air flowed over his arm as Tsarek reappeared with a piece of Corvan’s shirt sleeve draped over a claw.
“I think we must remove the skin from a different cat, sir.”
Corvan managed a wry smile. “We’ve got to free my shoulder. Take the hammer and carefully chip away at the rock lip that has it trapped.”
Tsarek shook his head so vigorously his scales rattled. “I cannot touch the hammer. It may kill me, and you will be stuck forever.”
“Then wrap my shirtsleeve around the handle, like you did on the Castle Rock.”
“That may work. Just a moment.” Tsarek bent to the ground, and Corvan heard the soft hiss of a fire stick. Brilliant light stabbed his eyes. “Put out the light! Corvan cried out. “It’s too bright!” He clamped his eyes shut to push away the pain.
“Sorry, sir. There, is that better?”
Corvan opened his gritty eyes. All he could see was milky white orbs. “Is it still on?”
“No, sir, it is out.”
Corvan recalled this happening when his father was welding metal and his goggles had fell off. His dad couldn’t see much for almost a week.
His cramped body tightened with fresh fear, and he forced himself to calm down. His eyesight should eventually return. For now, he had to find a way out of the crack.
“Move the fire stick farther away from me on the other side, then light it again. I will drop the hammer and you try to chip away the rock by my shoulder.”
Tsarek scrambled out of the way as Corvan relaxed his fingers and let the hammer go. As it fell from his hand, a fresh wave of nausea coursed through him. Forcing himself to relax, Corvan focused on the white lights floating before his eyes. They had already faded slightly. That was a good sign.
“I am ready, sir. Please hold still.”
A sharp crack was followed immediately by a deep gong and a rumbling whoosh past Corvan’s ears. The air filled with dust. He choked and coughed, and his chest squeezed painfully against the rocks.
“What was that?” Corvan asked.
The only reply was sliding rock and crashing boulders on the slope below.
“Tsarek?”
Distant thudding echoes were mixed with the clatter of small rocks peppering down from above. The acrid taste of fear mingled with the dusty talc in his mouth.
“That was a close one, sir,” Tsarek said quietly in the dense air. “I barely touched the black rock and the whole wall shook. A piece of the slab above you came down and just missed your head. The rest of the boulder hangs above and may come down at any moment.”
A small rock clattered down, glancing with a sharp blow off Corvan’s head and bouncing down the slope. A low grinding followed.
“The rock is sliding. Pull your head back!” Tsarek pushed frantically on Corvan’s head, then stopped. The cavern was silent.
“Sir,” the lizard’s tense voice whispered in his ear, “we must push you back or pull you out now. That huge rock balances just over your head and soon we will both be crushed. We must make your shoulders smaller.”
As soon as Tsarek said those words Corvan recalled a diagram in one of his dad’s caving books. To release a trapped person, the rescuers would break one of the trapped person’s collarbones and then push the shoulder in toward the body.
He shuddered.
The rock grumbled.
Tsarek tensed.
Pain would be better than death. “Tsarek, you must use the hammer again.”
“Sir, if I touch the wall, the rock will surely come down on us.”
“Not the rock, Tsarek. This time you must hit me.”
Tsarek’s eyes widened. “Sir?”
It took a while to convince the lizard of the necessity of the operation and the method by which it had to be accomplished. At first, Tsarek argued vehemently against striking Corvan, but slowly he began to understand. In the end, Tsarek refused to use the hammer and went to find a smooth rock.
Corvan was starting to have second thoughts by the time Tsarek came back. “I am ready, sir.”
“Make sure you hit me hard enough. I don’t want to do this more than once.”
The lizard’s claws caressed Corvan’s skin, making sure of the placement of the long, thin bone. Corvan closed his eyes and waited.
There was a long pause. Corvan was just about to ask Tsarek what he was doing when an intense jolt of pain ripped through his body. In a haze, he heard Tsarek talking in his ear, begging him to push with his legs. The lizard was tugging at his torn shirt and pushing in on his broken collarbone.
Corvan tried to yell at him to stop, that it hurt too much, but no words came out. He thrust with his feet and a ragged cry escaped his throat as his body slid free of the crack. He tumbled painfully down the rocky slope until he came to rest against a large boulder.
Tsarek was beside him. “Are you still alive?” he whispered.
Corvan groaned.
Tsarek put a paw over Corvan’s mouth. “I know you are in much pain, sir, but you must wait here quietly while I get your pack,” Tsarek whispered. “There are buraks in the outer reaches of the Cor, and they feed on anything or anyone they can find. They have the most excellent hearing and with all our noise they will come to investigate.”