On the second day the tunnels widened out and stopped being tunnels.
We came into country instead. Black shelf rock going down in long steps, and standing formations that had been water once and had given up halfway, and a ceiling so far off that the green glow died before it got there. Sound went out ahead of us and came back late and wrong.
The wyvern hated it. It had been managing on three legs while the walls were close enough to lean on, and out here there was nothing to lean on, and it started stopping every few hundred paces to stand very still with its head down.
Light walked beside it the whole way with one hand on its shoulder.
Around midday he changed the order.
He moved Bren up behind the big man. He put the silent one in the middle. And he took the young one out of the centre and put him at the back, behind me, because the boy had spent all morning walking into the heels of whoever was in front of him and Light had run out of patience for it.
