Their voices stopped, and for a moment the pit was so quiet Jig could hear them all breathing. His ears swiveled, searching. There was something else. A clicking, scraping sound.

“The lantern?” Riana asked.

“It slipped free in the fall,” Barius said.

At the same instant, Jig whispered, “Something else is down here.”

This time everyone heard him.

“And here we sit, arguing like children. Earthmaker help us, we’ve been waiting like lambs at slaughter.”

On their hands and knees, they began to scour the dirt. Jig’s cut fingers stung, and he jabbed himself in the palm with what felt like a splinter of bone. The owner of the sword? It did nothing to help his fear. Smudge had grown so hot Jig had to set him on the ground.

“Stay close,” Jig whispered. The waves of heat beside his leg told him the spider had obeyed.

“I have the lantern,” Barius said triumphantly. Jig could hear him scrounging for something. Sparks flew, surprisingly bright, as the prince scraped flint against the steel guard of his dagger.

The sounds Jig heard were growing louder. There were dozens of them, whatever they were.

“I hear it too,” Riana said.

Barius paused. “I hear nothing.”

Jig wasn’t surprised. The monsters would be cracking Barius’s bones for marrow by the time those puny human ears heard anything unusual.

“Light the lantern, boy,” Darnak snapped.

“I’m trying.” The sparks continued, but with no effect.

In those brief flashes, Jig thought he saw movement at the far side of the pit, but he couldn’t be sure. He moved toward the others. The creatures were closing in from both sides. In the blackness, his imagination conjured up one horror after another. How soon before huge insects closed their pincers around Jig’s throat or giant lizards dripping with black goo sank their fangs into his exposed skin?

He pulled his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to present as small a target as possible. They were so close. A squeak of fear slipped past his throat. What was taking so long? Lighting fires was a child’s duty, so why couldn’t a full-grown human manage it? Panic ripped away common sense, and he lunged at the prince.

“Give me that!” He kicked someone in the process, but by following the source of the sparks, he managed to snatch the lantern into his own lap. One of the shutters was open, and the glass pane was slid to one side. Jig squeezed his fingers through the opening and felt the wick. It had slipped down through the crack into the oil supply, and only one corner still protruded. No wonder Barius hadn’t been able to light the thing. He could shoot sparks all day without hitting that slim corner of wick, and Jig’s fingers weren’t small enough to pull the wick back out.