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"Hello, father," she said. "We've come to help."
"Oh, Grimley! How thoughtful!" Grizel cried from within the cave. "Your meat-bringer's brought us a baby present! How did he know it would be just the thing? Our poor little Grippeldice is famished!"
All through the night the unicorns galloped, bearing their riders and themselves higher and deeper into the maze. Though they stumbled and slid and sometimes fell on the steep, glassy surface of the maze floor, they pressed on, driven by fear of pursuit, struggling against the keening wind. Pegeen's aura was their beacon, but the black cracks in the glittering crystal had a way of not appearing until Eagledown was almost upon them.
By first light they were still deep inside the maze, in front of the mouth of a tunnel. Colin twisted on Snowshadow's back and listened carefully. Several times during the night he'd heard the shouts of men, and once had seen torchlight far back down the maze. But now, except for the banshee wind, he heard nothing.
"Seems we've lost them," he yawned, stretching. Though the unicorn water had cleansed even the stiffness of being frozen in one position from his body along with his illness, and he felt better than he could ever remember having felt, physically, he was nevertheless weary from lack of sleep, and sore again from riding bareback all night long. Maggie arched her back and pointed her toes and stretched, too. Pegeen dismounted and walked over to inspect the tunnel.
"Very little wonder I could never get a clear picture of the
maze from the castle," she said, returning to them after satisfying her curiosity. "If I had a brain in my head, I would have realized that an iceworm boring through a glacier isn't going to make the same sort of maze a rich lord has his gardener plot to amuse the houseguests. We must be now in a part of the glacier where the ice is so thick the worm couldn't melt all of that on top. See? He's simply drilled through it."
"I hope he didn't go underground instead of backup," Maggie said. "I could probably melt our way out, but it would take time."
"No. There's light at the other end," Pegeen assured her. "That's what I wanted to check. But I think we should walk through. Carefully. The worm's breath and the pressure of his passing seem to have fused most of the glacier's natural fissures, but perhaps we won't find it so inside the tunnel. I'll take it slowly."
They passed through three more of the tunnels without mishap. Fortunately, the darker it got inside, the brighter the princess's aura grew. By the time they had negotiated the last tunnel, morning had broken.
A short, steep climb led them above the tunnels, to a high plateau whose rock was so thinly coated with ice that the maze walls were less than thigh-high in places, allowing the fugitives to gaze out over acres of channeled ice.
On all sides of the plateau, deeper ice contained high walls and tunnels similar to those through which they had just passed. Far down to the right, the castle fused with the glacier. The unusual angle of their vantage point to the valley allowed them also to see the ruined village, teeming with the active black spots which were Fearchar's troops. The Blabbermouth River still wore its morning cloak of mist so heavily upon its surface that it masked the water completely.
"Under other circumstances, I'd enjoy a day like this," Pegeen told them. "It's not often so clear in the valley. It's amazing the detail one can see." She shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked across the ice and into the valley. "Why, most days you can't even see where the river is, much less-oh, dear." She pointed. "Look, there to the south. Do you see them?"
Colin and Maggie shaded their eyes and squinted in the direction of her finger. A double handful of specks probably twenty furlongs from the river moved slowly toward its banks. At the head of the specks was a speck twice as large as the others, and from the top of it the sun glinted molten copper.
"Your royal brother-in-law has arrived," Colin told Maggie.
She nodded slowly. Pegeen's face bore a stricken, guilty look.
"This is all my fault," she said. "I meant to help. I never intended to lure him into a trap. But you see, when I coded that message telling him where we were, I simply meant to let him know what he might do to lift Fearchar's wretched curse from that poor little baby. Now all of those good men will be slain!"
"And we won't be able to do anything but watch," Colin said bitterly.
Primrose looked down her long muzzle at the scene in the valley. "Yes, your friends will surely perish. For my mai-Sally is very brave. She cannot but triumph."
Eagledown snorted. "I thought you'd caught on, but I guess you're a little slow, aren't you, nag? Your precious Sally isn't down there. She's up here prowling this worm-eaten glacier, looking for us with a big flaying knife."
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