Shadow Of The Mountain (38 page)

A sliver of light near the top of the shelf caught his eye. There was a narrow window above the shelves covered in a black cloth, but already he could tell it was far too small to escape, even for someone as slender as he.

Yet Tenlon was more interested in a book on the highest shelf, lined in the splinter of light that shone throw the window’s covering. He swore he’d seen something that made his mouth go dry, but could it be true?

His spell was losing its strength, dimming with each passing second. Before the orb’s energy crackled out, he raised it to catch a glimpse of the golden writing that lined the spine. He let out a long breath.

It was the
Book of Aramid
.

“That’s a nice trick,” a voice said from behind.

Tenlon’s heart shuddered to a stop and the Light of Serra vanished, leaving behind a white hole that burned through his blindness.

***

Tenlon stumbled back into the shelves. He jumped for the narrow window above, ripping down the black curtain and knocking over a small table of empty vials and glass bottles.

A beam of daylight poured in through the swirling dust of the basement, landing on a tattered sleeve and hand chained to the stone wall in the corner opposite him.

“Wretched fool!” the voice snarled, trying to cover a head of long, knotted, black hair with shackled arms. “Are you trying to take the eyesight from me?”

Tenlon couldn’t even speak. There had been someone down here with him the entire time!

It was a woman, but she was in a terrible state. All she wore was a tattered and filthy tunic, while her legs were grimy and bare. There were two wooden pails next to her and he could see her wrists were worn raw and bloody from the iron clasps that held her prisoner. She still struggled to keep her face from the light.

“Well?” she asked venomously, keeping in the shadow. “Does the idiot speak?”

Tenlon was still leaning against the bookshelf, staring at her in shock. She had nearly given him a heart attack, and now he was having trouble putting thoughts into words.

“Splendid,” she went on. “The idiot does not speak.”

“I can speak,” he told her, his voice squeaking like a rusty door hinge. Replacing the curtain, he left the edge of the window uncovered so as to give them at least a little light.

She settled back against the wall, stretching her legs out. “Minimally, it seems.” She tossed her head, shifting a long piece of hair from her face.

Tenlon suddenly came to his senses. He moved to a garment balled up at his feet, his boots peeling away from the floor as if he stood in a pool of dried syrup. Shaking the garment out and moving toward the woman, he saw that it was a tattered blanket.

“Ah. A chivalrous idiot. Truly a rare sight during these turbulent times.”

“My name is Tenlon.” He stood before her, folding the blanket in half.

“Be wary of my buckets, idiot Tenlon,” she told him as he carefully laid the blanket over her scabbed and dirty legs. “One is filled with shit while the other has my dinner, although the two are often a challenge to tell apart. I shit in both usually. Eliminates the puzzle.”

Tenlon stood over her, running his hands up her chains to where they met the wall. The links were thick and someone had hammered the iron spikes in deep. There were white gouges set within the stone where the hammer had struck. They rattled as he pulled on each, but there was no give.

“Tugging on the chains,” she said wistfully. “I remember those fanciful first hours.”

Tenlon looked at her wrists more closely, carefully moving the iron bands away from the blood-crusted skin. He would need a hammer and pick, and an entire afternoon to get her out.

“Your name is Lesandra,” he told her.

She smiled and looked up at him, her face still in shadow. “Idiot Lesandra,” she said, sounding as if she’d been rehearsing it.

Tenlon tried to think of how long she would have been down here. They had fled the battle of Goridai well over a week ago and were to reach Ebnan a few days afterward, but she could have been chained up much longer than that. And where was Darien?

“You’re Amorian,” she spoke, almost as if it were an accusation.

“Yes. You seem disappointed.”

“You’re just a boy. I thought they’d send warriors to help us.”

Tenlon returned to the small table he’d knocked over, checking the glass vials. Again his feet stuck to the floor, but he found one half-full bottle of clear liquid.

“That was the plan,” he said, pulling the cork and smelling strong alcohol within.

Returning to her, he poured a little of the alcohol onto the edge of the blanket before gently dabbing it across the scabs of her wrists. If it stung, she didn’t seem to notice.

Lesandra almost started to doze off at his touch. Tenlon feared she might be worse off than he had initially thought.

“Eyes open,” he ordered.

She snorted a soft laugh, opening her eyes but keeping her head tilted against the wall.

She was pretty, he thought, even now. In her early thirties, eyebrows dark and thick, lips full, a smile both fleeting and mischievous. She was starving and dehydrated, maybe even hallucinating. He had to get her out of here. They both had to get out of here.

“I haven’t seen anyone summon the Light of Serra in a long time,” she told him.

“The pity of it is,” Tenlon said, patting a sore on her forehead with the blanket’s edge, “it’s the easiest spell for Magi, but absolutely the most challenging for me.”

“I would hardly consider it a spell. Not in the traditional sense, at least. While still impressive, I would regard it more of an energy manipulation than anything else.”

“Oh really?” Tenlon asked, though he tended to agree with her. Even some children could conjure the Light of Serra.

“Of course. You don’t get to choose the first spell,” Lesandra’s said softly. “The first spell chooses you.”

Tenlon smiled, having heard the axiom before.

“A scholar then?” she continued, confident enough not to wait for a response. “My, how you are a far way from home and even further from your station. Tell me, where did you study?”

“Iralic.”

“Of course,” she arched an eyebrow, a tiny knowing smile on her face. “Dragons.”

Tenlon shrugged in agreement. “It was all I ever wanted.” His days of quiet study and academy life seemed to belong to someone else now.

“Is it safe?” she asked timidly, eyes begging him for a thread of hope. “The package you were bringing us? It’s an egg, isn’t it? Darien and I knew it would be. Please tell me they don’t have it.
Please
…”

Tenlon bit his lower lip. “It’s safe,” he told her. “For a while, at least.”

This seemed to calm her and she fell silent for long minutes as Tenlon wiped her arms and face with the alcohol, cleaning her as best he could. She was grimy, with sores and bruises all over her limbs. He didn’t want to think of what she’d been through.

“Why can’t I see the stars, young Tenlon?” she finally asked.

“No more ‘idiot’?” he wondered with a smile.

“No,” she whispered. “No more ‘idiot.’”

He moved her buckets away and sat down before her. “We cannot see the stars because we are in the shadow of the mountain.”

She laughed at that, the sound of it empty of all humor. “And I was supposed to ask you about the stars, Lesandra. Not the other way around.”

She tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes again, long hair hanging across her face. “I was supposed to do a lot of things that never happened.”

“What went wrong?” he asked quietly. “Where is your brother?”

“Darien?”

“Yes.”

“I imagine some of him is in the dried puddle beneath the stain on those floorboards.” She motioned behind him and above. “And maybe a little bit is even sticking to the bottom of your boots.”

Tenlon rose carefully, the beam of daylight showing the rusty brown of blood around the edge of his heels. He’d been trudging through a dried puddle of blood that had streamed down through the floor of the first level.

“Either way, his screams ended a few days ago, I suppose. The dripping of his life stopped shortly after. It’s hard to tell how long it’s been when your only measure of time is the frequency of squatted shits into a bucket, which, ultimately, is going to be thrown off by the lack of a well-balanced diet.”

Tenlon heard the locking bar at the top of the steps slide open, rubbing against the wooden door. The sound made him feel sick.

“Is it too much to hope that you have an army nearby?” she asked.

“Where are we?” Tenlon ignored her, hearing the door swing open with a rusted squeal. Bright light filled the staircase.

Lesandra laughed dryly, keeping her eyes closed. “We are in the house I share with my brother.” She spread her chained hands wide. “And I welcome you.”

Tenlon’s heart rose to new heights. They were being held captive in Darien and Lesandra’s house!

Desik had their names, and surely he’d find where they lived. It would be the first place he looked, wouldn’t it? He was out there, right now, searching for him. Tenlon could almost sense it.

Heavy boots slowly began to tread down the steps, one at a time, the stairs groaning beneath massive weight.

He crouched low before Lesandra. “Listen to me,” he whispered, taking her face in his hands. “Open your eyes, and listen to me.”

He shook her gently until he could finally look into her eyes. “A man is coming for me. He will find us, but you must stay alive. Do you understand? We are not alone. Stay alive.”

The steps grew louder, closer. Tenlon could see thick legs coming into view at the corner of his vision. Black trousers, limbs like birch trunks.

“One man?” she closed her eyes, jaw tightening. A tear slid down her cheek. “One man cannot help us here.”

Tenlon leaned in close, whispering into her ear. “I’ve never met anyone like him,” he promised her. “You’ll see. Just stay alive.”

Tenlon rose to his feet and turned to face the mountainous man standing at the foot of the stairs.

He was a silhouetted shadow with his head bent to the side so as to fit beneath the ceiling, truly a giant if such ever existed. His left shoulder and bicep were overly swollen with muscle, throwing his body shape off into a twisted abomination.

One huge hand wrapped itself around the banister while the other slowly lifted, waving Tenlon to him with unnaturally long, dagger-like fingers. The gesture almost loosened Tenlon’s bladder.

He walked over to the man, who took a step back into the light pouring down from the open doorway, nodding his head to the stairs.

Tenlon was to go up.

The smell of the Volrathi was enough to make him wretch—smoky and putrid, bitter as stomach acid. All of Tenlon’s senses were repulsed by him.

Before taking the first step, the man’s words froze his legs.

“Have you ever seen,” he asked, “eyes like mine?”

Deep and throaty, his voice sounded like blood-stained claws drawn across the gravel.

Tenlon looked up at him, seeing the eerie black pools of ink where his pupils should be. His skin was pale, close to white in the light that filled the narrow staircase. His blood-red lips spread apart in a foul smile, revealing teeth stained yellow and chipped, jagged like crenellated battlements atop a colossal tower.

The question reminded him of his time in the king’s tent, what felt like a decade ago.

Tenlon used every inch of strength he had to force the voice of his next words from quivering.

“Once,” he said shakily, turning away to climb the stairs. “On a dead man.”

The laughter of the Volrathi rumbled low behind him as he went up, voice so deep the vibration could be felt in his chest.

Chapter 21

Natalia ran through the forest, the neck and back of her tunic damp with sweat. She could hear the steady trot of Karin and Argos close behind, both atop the dapple-gray mare her handmaiden had affectionately named Dusty. They held to a thin trail high along the ridgeline and an open valley of green spread to their west, rising to sharp mountain peaks capped with white snow.

Dusty’s hoofbeats were padded by the soft earth and Natalia timed her breaths to match the thudding rhythm. The mount was overburdened with two riders and their packs, but she was a well-traveled beast and had yet to show any sign of failing the last two days.

Their trail gently sloped downwards and she slowed her pace. Injuring herself now could be fatal. Men still scoured the forest, searching for any who tried to flee into the virtual emptiness of the northern woods.

Thoughts of those Gallans within the walls of Corda were like rusty nails plunged into her heart. Images of burning buildings and bloated bodies flashed through her mind. The Amorian capital had been sacked and never before had she imagined such a future.

That first day out, after taking the horse and…dealing with its owner, they had seen countless enemy hunting groups roving the well-trodden routes. She kept to the narrower game trails and figured it may have saved their lives. The tall scrub and pines kept them well hidden during those dangerous and most important first miles.

The daylight hours were long and tiring, the nights and early mornings uncomfortably cold. The further they traveled, the fewer armed men they saw, but still she never let her guard down. A single mishap—no matter how miniscule—would see an end to their little adventure, and most assuredly their lives as well. It was real danger they faced now. Cunning was paramount, and Natalia’s ever-present fear was that she hadn’t enough of it to see them through.

Argos still maintained a slender finger-hold on life. The wind would bounce around the lofty slopes, and often she would catch the sick odor of his wound like a cheese of the foulest stench. Already he looked like a corpse and, were it not for Karin holding him in place, he’d have tumbled lifelessly out of the saddle at first chance. Still, the young Amorian was hard as iron, and men such as he never gave up without a fight. Death was the ultimate enemy to a soldier. Kreiden had told her that.