“Of course, Your Highness.” Elen took a swig from her bottle and headed out.

They descended into a wooded defile and along its rugged ground until they reached a dead end. Here, the dregs of a waterfall dribbled down a sheer rock face. In the spring and early summer, it was a thundering fall with a large pool beneath, perfect for cooling off after a hard hike. This late in the season, with autumn’s slackening of rains, the pool was mostly mud and stones except for a deep crescent where the central fall concentrated, still strong enough to churn the water. On either side, rocky scree lay in slopes too unstable to climb. The only way out was to go back up the defile.

42 A SWALTER DELVING

Kem tipped his head back. “We can’t get up that!” he objected when before—just days before!—he would have waited for her to show him what her intention was instead of instantly finding fault.

Everyone looked at her as if they were thinking the same thing. Everyone except the haunt. He paced out the pebbled rim of the pool until he reached the cliff, slick with oozing water. He set a hand on the rock, swiped up a few drops, and set them to his lips. The steady splash of the falls wasn’t too loud to drown out his voice.

“Of course,” he said as he turned to give Elen a knowing look. “It’s a swalter delving. The entrance must be hidden behind the waterfall. It is certainly abandoned. Had you ventured to enter a swalter delving where swalters were currently living, they’d have shot you with their paralyzing arrows, eaten out your eyes and tongue, and left you to crawl blind and mute back the way you came, while being gnawed on by rats. Their lynxes don’t eat human flesh.”

Everyone stared at him, speechless. Even Elen. His tone was perfectly straightforward, as with accepted fact.

However, Luviara recovered quickly. “Swalter delvings are simply old folk stories. Swalters live in forest lairs, often near caves, it’s true, but never permanently beneath the rock.”

The haunt said, “Maybe they live so in these days, but swalters existed long before the empire. You didn’t see it, but there was such a delving at—”

He broke off, remembering that the others didn’t know he and Elen had gone exploring in the Heart Temple while the rest slept.

Elen jumped in. “Our pursuers are miles behind us, but that doesn’t mean they can’t catch up. This way.”