Chapter 1: The Knaves Visit the Spudfields

Watters and Endrei inch forward a bit, moving to give the others room as they descend, pushing the dancing shadows back with the woman's torchlight. By the time both Wax and Clomm have joined them, coming carefully down the ladder, there's enough light to illuminate the whole of the cellar. It is as the Spudfields described -- full of root vegetables and grains in bushels and barrels, preserves in jars and bottles, spare stores of various kinds in old crates and worn wooden boxes.

A few things take their attention as they quietly explore. The first is a jagged hole in the far masonry wall, damage or a collapse of some kind. It's a narrow opening, wider at the bottom than the top, and the cold draft coming from it is unmistakable. A quick look shows that beyond the opening lies a tunnel of some sort. Next is a piece of thick leather laying on the ground in the middle of the basement -- what looks like a strap, or perhaps a collar. Near the hole are a few scraps of cloth on the ground, and something that looks dark and sticky on the packed earth floor.

All five Spudfields crowd around the open trap door and peer down at the adventurers. Eliza is about to ask 'what do you see?' when Audree calls up to them.

"A hole in the wall?!" Conrad says, gently rocking his infant. "That's new!"

"We have barn cats," Daece adds, before he younger brother chimes in as well.

"And a dog! A big one! Doris is her name!"

"Son," Conrad says in an admonishing tone, "we've told you. Doris is gone. We buried her weeks ago, lad."

"Beyond that," Eliza calls down to Watters, "just chickens and goats and our sow and other farm animals. Why do you ask?"

"She did," Conrad says with a frown, peering down at the faces looking up at him from the torchlit gloom. Disappearing from sight, the man's footfalls can be heard overhead as he walks to a different part of the house.

Cold air continues to waft from the hole in the drystone cellar wall, and those not actively engaged in conversing with the Spudfields swear something can be heard on that chill zephyr -- a groan, a muttering, a hissed whisper.

The patriarch reappears at the edge of the opening in the ceiling. "I'm not sure how, but her collar is gone from where we'd hung it in the kitchen!"

The man's children exchange glances as Endrei eyes the piece of leather on the ground more carefully, and does believe it looks like it could be a dog's collar -- complete with a metal buckle and a few holes punched along part of its length. It's large. If it once fit a dog, the creature would weigh a dozen stone or more.

"I ain't seen her since before," the boy says, responding to Endrei. "Before Pa buried her. But I heared her! I'd know Doris's bark and growl anywhere, and I heared her down there, where you are, last night and before that too!"

Taking her excitable boy and moving him back behind her skirts, Eliza has heard enough from her son. "Look, I don't know what you're getting at down there, but I can tell you it was no dog I saw last night, dead or alive down there!"

Wax nears the dark passage as his companions quiet down, and as he feels the chill from the dark on his exposed skin he listens carefully. It's hard for him -- as it would be for anyone -- to describe what he hears. The deafening silence of being deep underground, punctuated from time to time with a soft, barely audible scraping sound, or more rarely, a thud, like a clod of earth falling. There is something more, though. A noise in the background, almost an absence of sound, like an ever-present wind that the ear has learned to not hear.

Then, from time to time, Wax hears it. A whisper? It's beyond faint and impossible to decipher, but it does sound like someone speaking, ever so softly.

After the careful listening of Elius Wax, the silent contemplation of Endrei, and the arcane whispers of Clomm, Watters can hold her zeal no longer. She ducks through the hole in the wall, entering the tunnel beyond, and her torch lights the way as her fellows come behind her.

The earthen tunnel looks hastily dug, and the floor, walls, and ceiling are soft. The damp and mottled dirt surrounding them smells strongly; each step squishes a few inches into the ground. Audree cannot stand upright but does not need to crawl... Endrei has considerably worse a time, having to stoop significantly to make progress. It is not easy for the big man to see, as Watter's form and garb block the light she's holding in front of her, and that from behind him seems to do little more than cast shadows.

Anyone looking carefully at the walls of the tunnel can determine easily enough that it looks like it was dug by hand, at least in part. The passageway narrows slightly as they walk, and after fifty feet or so Audree calls a halt. There are tracks before her, muddled and difficult to distinguish, and a few scraps of fabric, similar to those seen back in the cellar.