“We don’t know that. We don’t know what they are.”
“Exactly, and we don’t ultimately know why they’re here, no matter what they say. We have to make sure that monster gets killed one way or another. And if it’s following them and trying to get that sword, then that’s where we need to be.”
“With our crafty cunning,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Temi was looking back and forth between us, probably trying to decide how serious our arguing was. I had assumed Simon’s ulterior motive in stalking the riders had been to get more pictures of the monster; I hadn’t thought he’d been dreaming of killing it. Sure, he’d said something about killing it and saving the town, but that had been a joke, hadn’t it? Like I’d told Temi, I knew his entrepreneurial streak had been born out of wanting to help his people—or prove himself to his people anyway—but I’d never taken him for some knight-errant in geeky armor. I sure hoped this wasn’t about impressing Temi.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got some kind of clever trap in your pack then?” I asked.
“I did have the idea of setting a trap for it with that sword,” Simon said, “if we can get a hold of it, but I think we need to see what else those guys are going to pull out of this cave first. And it’s a foregone conclusion that they’re not going to tell us what it is; we have to be there when they get it.”
I sighed and looked at Temi. She shrugged back at me. And here I’d wanted a third person so I could have the deciding vote.
A breeze whispered through, again hinting of cooler weather. It also hinted of... I sniffed a few times. “That’s that acid chemical smell from the cavates.”
“They’re burning holes again,” Simon said. “We must be close.”
“All right.” Afraid I’d regret it, I whispered, “We might as well take a peek.”
“Famous last words?” Temi asked, though she followed us when we continued through the little dell.
The rock walls grew narrower, and we had to walk single-file. I watched the route ahead but also the tops of the boulders on either side, all too aware that something up there could jump down and land on us before we knew what was happening.
I stepped around prickly pear cactus and shrubs that were only slightly less prickly. I’d lost track of where the hiking trails were, but this area definitely wasn’t traveled often. We rounded a jumble of boulders and walked into a tiny box canyon, the ground flat and dusty and dotted with more cactus patches.
Simon gripped my arm and pointed at a big clawed and webbed print. A fresh one. The scent of the sea hung in the air, utterly out of place in the desert clime. If someone killed that monster, at least it could be thoroughly examined and we could figure out what exactly it was.
“There’s your hole.” Temi, taller than Simon and I, pointed at something behind a manzanita shrub growing out of a narrow crevice. The tracks led straight to it.
“If it charges out,” Simon whispered, “we can try climbing up those boulders to get away from it. I bet something that big isn’t that agile at scaling walls.”
I wasn’t going to take that bet. I hoped it’d gone down after the others and that we wouldn’t see it until they’d dealt with it.
I slipped an arrow out of my quiver and crept forward. Several of the manzanita’s ropy red branches had been snapped. A dark hole gaped behind it. Like the one in the cavate, it was perfectly round and not nearly as wide and inviting as I’d like. It sloped downward and toward the lake, the angle not so steep that one would have to slide down on one’s butt—or use a rope and grapple to climb out. That was something, I supposed.
Simon squeezed in beside me. He touched one of the tunnel’s walls. “It’s cool. We’re farther behind than we were last time.”
“I think... maybe we should stay even farther behind. Like how about we climb up on the rocks where we can watch down here and wait for them to come out? We’ll see whatever they carry out, and if we’re curious, we can go back into the tunnel after they—and the monster—are gone. Plenty of time to explore then, right?”
Simon frowned, but Temi was nodding. “That sounds wiser than crawling down there into the middle of trouble.”
Rocks shifted and clunked somewhere outside the canyon. I whipped my head in that direction so quickly that I almost fell in the hole. I couldn’t see anything, but a soft scraping came after the rocks settled. The rasp of claws on stone again? The noise sounded like it came from higher than ground level.