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knew the memory was false. All
she could try was bargaining.
    “I would rather know now, in case I
would be unable to fulfill your request.”
    “Oh, it would be in your powers,” the
fey replied. “Follow me.”
    Before Amina could argue more, the
creature had flitted off as swiftly as a darting star and stood waiting for her
by the entrance to a narrow shaft cleft in the rock. “She could be thinking
to lose me in the ways of this cavern and leave me to die,” thought Amina.
    Well, she had already offered her life.
If the creature was just playing games with her, she would be no worse off than
she was now. Following was the only chance of finding and rescuing the miners.
And if the creature demanded the impossible in payment, she would either find a
way to meet her demands or find a way out of paying. She was a Memory Keeper,
one whose life was given in service to her people, one who was supposed to have
the courage, and the intelligence, to find ways when others couldn’t. She was
through with cowering before the thought of what might become; it was time to
deal with what was .
    She strode briskly after the fey,
holding her lantern high. As they walked, Amina activated the light trance
Keepers used for making memories; if she needed to find her way out by herself,
she would be able to retrace her steps. They squeezed through narrow
passageways, hurried across caverns broader than the one she had entered at the
bottom of the root stairway and turned this way and that. She would think the
fey was deliberately trying to trick her, but they were always moving
downwards. Amina could tell that by the ache in her calves.
    The cool dampness of the cave seemed to
press in upon her, gradually getting heavier, as if the air itself was testing
her. Still, Amina followed the flickering form of the fey creature. They left
the passageways of rock and the sounds of dripping water and moved into
passages that were dirt and rock. The way got harder, the passages narrower. At
times Amina had to bend over, ducking her head and walking with a crabbed step.
At other times she had to climb up and over piles of dirt and rocks that
shifted and tumbled away beneath her feet. The air no longer smelled fresh, but
close and breathless.
    And then she heard a murmuring
sound—more water? Air moving past an opening?
    The fey stopped and slid back against a
depression in the side of the passage they were in. She pointed ahead into the
blackness. “Up there and down,” she said.
    “You can lead them out this way, but I
won’t let them see me. And I won’t let them see my home, either, so only you
will see the way. After you lead them out, come back and I’ll tell you my
price.”
    Amina looked at her and saw something
flicker in the other’s eyes—something that wasn’t spite or ill humor. But she
didn’t have time to linger and seek what it was she had seen.
    “Thank you,” she said to the other,
sincerity ringing in her voice. She could tell now that the murmur up ahead was
voices, low and muffled by the dirt and rock, but voices. “I will come back,
and learn your price.”
    The other ducked as if avoiding her
gaze, and then vanished, as if she had never been there. Amina held the lantern
up, but there was no crack or crevice behind where she had been standing that
she could have gone into— fey, Amina reminded herself with only a slight
shiver.
    Then she turned and started climbing up
the narrow passage. It became so steep she had to hold the handle of the
lantern in her mouth in order to free her hands to grasp at the rocks and pull
herself up step by careful step. The passage took a sharp turn to the left and
climbed a bit more and then, at what Amina thought was another turn to the
right, dropped off precipitously. She gasped, scrambling backwards a bit. Below
her was a section of the mine—and there, down below, slumped against rock walls
and curled up against each other were the trapped miners.
    She had found them.
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    It was