I landed flat on my face, and spent the next few seconds spitting out dirt.

My hands were out in front of me with gravel embedded in my palms. My knee had rammed itself into something painfully solid. My other leg was pinned under some kind of weight. Basically I was folded up and smushed. After my eyes had finished tearing up, I started to blink them open, then realized with a rush of panic that they were open.

Dark. Pitch-dark. Hand-in-front-of-your-face, no-can-see dark. Not to mention cold and wet. Water drizzled like a light rain from somewhere in the darkness behind us.

I tried to make a lightglobe and got a pitiful spark. No amount of effort would get it any bigger or brighter.

The weight on my leg moved. Instinctively, I kicked.

“Ow!”

Piaras.

“Sorry. Where are you?”

“Right where you kicked,” came his pained retort.

A blue lightglobe flared to life, and hovered briefly above Mychael’s open palm before he released it to hover by his right shoulder, and he peered into the dark as best as he could see with elven eyes.

“Tam?” he called in a low whisper.

“Clear as far as I can tell,” Tam said quietly from somewhere ahead in the dark.

No Khrynsani. But for how long?

Mychael’s lightglobe showed me that I’d somehow managed to slam my shoulder and knee into the corner of what I assumed was our supply crate. No wonder I hurt.

Mychael, Tam, and Imala were on their feet; the rest of us had landed on other body parts, none of them particularly dignified. I grunted as I got to my feet and rotated my shoulder. Not dislocated, no breaks.