The cave stayed mine for six days before it started feeling strange. Not because anything happened. Because nothing did. No goblins clicking at each other over the meat shelf. No Silas drifting through the entrance. No voice from the far side of the cave telling me I was stirring too hard, heating too fast, walking too loud, thinking too much, or existing in an irritating manner. Just work. Wake up. Fire. Kettle. Shelf. Bottles. Trail. Back before dark. By the third day I had stopped expecting to hear his stick tapping stone behind me. By the fifth, I caught myself talking once when I burned a batch of tonic and turned around to blame him for distracting me. The cave answered by being a cave. Fair. I threw the ruined tonic out by the stream and made another batch. * * * The routine held. I ran two trade points myself. The hollow oak and the shrine with the broken saint. Kept the batches small. Counted the silver twice before putting it away. Bought flour, salt, lamp oil, and another strip of smoked venison from the southern village on the fifth day. No trouble. One woman at the market looked at my coat too long. That was normal. Coats get looked at in winter. I came back with the satchel full and the cave still waiting where I had left it. I hunted every few days. A rabbit on the fourth morning. Two pheasants on the sixth, one taken with a thrown stone and one with a short Ven that spoiled the lift of its wings just long enough for me to close the distance. The boar meat from before still filled the shelf niche by the cold shard. The frost on the rock had thickened into a white crust along the back wall. The heat crystals by my bed had blackened a thumb-sized patch of stone from constant use. At dusk I trained. Earth through the sword, into a target stone set against the wall beyond the entrance. Earth through the hammer into frozen stump rounds I had dragged down from the ridge. Heat through the hammer in short, ugly charges. One strike. Let the iron cool. Another strike. The sword still fought me with fire. Not every time. That was the annoying part. Sometimes heat ran clean along the length and sat there, hidden, waiting for contact. Sometimes it flashed out of the tip in a short burst and left the blade warm but intact. Sometimes the edge glowed red and then died like it had changed its mind halfway through. And sometimes the whole thing threatened to become a very expensive lesson in why steel and bad ideas shouldn't spend too much time together. I accepted the first two and avoided the fourth. That left me with enough working uses to keep going. Good. No point arguing with a method that already killed things. * * * The black crystal work went slower without Silas. I left the large one alone. I enjoy being alive. The smaller fragments were bad enough. I used them sparingly. A minute. Two at most. Enough to sit still with one wrapped in cloth on the table and let my head adjust to the pressure behind it. Afterward the world kept a little more shape around charged objects. The heat crystal by my bed left a dense little drag in the air when I passed my hand in front of it. Fresh anti-rot wash had a thin line to it if I held the bottle at the right angle. Even the old cave wards near the entrance left residue in the stone. Faded. Uneven. Still there. Nothing dramatic. Still useful. Useful enough that on the seventh night I did one more minute than I should have. The headache after that sat behind my eyes until dawn. Served me right. * * * The ogre came on the eighth night. I woke to stone scraping stone. Not outside. Inside the entrance tunnel. I lay still under the blanket, listening. Another scrape. A slow, heavy drag. Then a wet snort. Half asleep, I pushed myself upright and rubbed my face with one hand. "Silas," I muttered into the dark. "If this is you, it's not funny." No answer. Just a thick, shifting shape blocking the weak white cave-light from the outer passage. Wonderful. I pulled a spark into my fingertips. A bead of orange light flared over my hand and drifted forward three paces. It found a wall of grey skin. Then teeth. Then one small eye sunk too deep in a face that looked like somebody had carved a man out of bad rock and given up halfway through. The thing ducked under the top of the passage and took another step in. Huge. Three meters, maybe a little less because the tunnel forced it to hunch, but close enough that my brain chose fear over arithmetic. For one clean heartbeat I thought only this: That is scary. Then it opened its mouth and let out a low, irritated grunt that sprayed spit over the rock. The sound hit the cave walls and came back bigger. My hammer was by the shelf. My sword was hanging from the peg by the bed. Both were six steps away. The ogre took another step. I rolled off the ledge, hit the floor hard, and drove my left palm into the stone. "Shape Stone." The ground in front of the ogre surged upward in a jagged lip. Too heavy to stop. Good. I hadn't been trying to stop it. The ridge caught the front of its foot and spoiled the step. The ogre lurched forward, one shoulder smashing into the side wall hard enough to send dust and loose grit showering from the ceiling. I was already moving. Two steps. Three. I grabbed the hammer off the shelf with my right hand, snatched the sword belt with the left, and the shelf chose that exact moment to collapse under the impact shaking through the cave. Glass hit stone behind me. Something expensive broke. Of course it did. The ogre ripped itself free of the crooked stance and came on, head low, one massive hand reaching. No room for the sword. Hammer it was. I pulled Earth into the head and met the charge with a side step and a full swing at the wrist. The impact cracked like a split log. The ogre bellowed. Its hand folded wrong at the joint but it kept coming, because large stupid things are unfair that way. The backswing nearly tore my shoulder out. The creature's other arm slammed into my ribs and threw me into the wall beside my sleeping ledge. The heat crystals burst out of their niche and clattered across the floor. White pain punched through my chest. I hit stone, slid, and kept my feet. The ogre turned toward me again, hunched and furious, one ruined hand hanging low. In the tight tunnel mouth behind it, cold night air curled past its shoulders. That gave me an idea. Bad ideas were still ideas. I feinted left. It followed with the good arm. I ducked under it, planted my palm against the floor at the base of the wall, and shoved. No finesse. Just force. Stone erupted knee-high along the ogre's right side, pinning its leg against the entrance wall for half a second. I drew heat into the hammerhead as hard as I dared and stepped in close. The iron flashed orange under my grip. I drove it into the side of the ogre's jaw. The strike landed with a flat, ugly thud followed by a burst of white sparks and burnt skin. The ogre shrieked. A real shriek this time. High, shocked, almost human for one awful instant. It tore its trapped leg free, ripping the stone lip apart and taking half the entrance edge with it. Rock split. Snow and cold air blasted inward. Something above us shifted with a grinding crack. I saw the ceiling move. I hit the floor and shoved Earth upward one more time, at the weakened seam over the mouth of the tunnel. The rock shelf above the entrance dropped in a broken sheet. The ogre threw itself backward, one arm over its head. Stone hit shoulder, back, and already-bad wrist. The rest slammed into the threshold and sprayed fragments through the tunnel. Then it was outside. I heard it crash through brush, stumble, recover, and keep going into the dark with a string of hoarse, furious grunts fading down the ravine. I stayed where I was for a count of ten, hammer up, chest heaving. Nothing came back. The cave had gone still except for loose pebbles ticking down from the cracked entrance and my own breathing, which sounded ugly and thin. I lowered the hammer. Then sat down hard on the floor because my legs had developed opinions. The right side of my ribcage felt like it had been kicked by a horse. My shoulder was worse. The shelf lay in pieces. Two bottles had survived. Seven had not. One of the heat crystals had cracked straight through the middle. There was blood on the hammerhead. Not mine. That helped. I stayed there until the cold from the broken entrance reached the bed. Then I stood up, found the unbroken lamp crystal by touch, lit it, and started taking stock. The large black crystal box was untouched. Good. The herb shelf was ruined. Bad. The meat niche had held. Important. I pushed the fallen stone away from the entrance enough to keep air moving and not enough to invite another surprise. Then I dragged the bedroll farther back, kept the hammer beside my hand, and slept in bursts until morning. * * * At first light I went outside. The snow in front of the cave was churned flat, red in places, and full of broken stone. One trail led down the ravine through broken brush and churned white ground. Dark blood marked the left side every few paces. One heavy handprint stained red on a boulder where the creature had caught itself after slipping. I crouched and put two fingers against one of the footprints. Deep. Fresh. Still there. The ogre had gone only a short distance before it steadied. That was the part I liked least. I straightened slowly and looked down the broken line through the trees. Back inside, the cave looked smaller. I had seen what fit through that entrance. I picked up the cracked heat crystal from the floor, turned it once in my hand, and set it aside. Then I took the hammer, walked to the mouth of the cave, and started planning where the first trap would go.

Chapter 35: The Big Shape in the Dark