by Hylton, PT
Clemens frowned. “Wait, you’re saying they’re changing it as we walk?”
“I’m afraid so. Which means this whole thing is pointless. We won’t make it through here unless they want us to. Hell, we may have been walking in circles this whole time.”
Abbey looked up suddenly. “You’re right.”
Elliot grinned. “Finally somebody gets me.”
She couldn’t help but smile. Something about being around Elliot, even in this dark, cold cave, warmed her. “You’re right, but you’re also a terrible listener.”
His face fell. “What do you mean?”
“Remember what the guard said at the mouth of the cave? Each must find his or her own path to the Heart of the Stone. I will allow you to find yours.”
“Must be Stone Shaper for ‘Wander around in the dark for a few hours while we fuck with you,’” Hekla muttered.
Abbey shook her head. “Think about it. Each must find his or her own path.”
Realization dawned on Elliot’s face. “They want us to split up.”
It was quiet for a minute, then Clemens broke the silence. “No way. All we have is each other. If we let them split us up, we’re helpless.”
“We’re standing in a cave controlled by Stone Shapers,” Elliot countered. “We’re pretty damned helpless already.”
Abbey put a hand on Clemens’ shoulder. “We don’t have a choice, not if we want to get through these caves.”
After a moment, Clemens reluctantly agreed.
The group continued until they got to the next fork, then Clemens went right and the other three headed left. Hekla split off at the next. Finally, Elliot and Abbey were alone.
The two of them only had covered thirty yards before the path split again.
Abbey turned to him and grinned. “This is it. Race you to the Stone Shapers!”
He looked like he was going to turn away, then he impulsively reached out and took her hand. She felt a bolt of excitement as he touched her.
“Abbey, we have to be smart if we want to survive this. Please be careful.”
“One thing I’ve learned is, being smart and being careful are rarely the same thing.” She squeezed his hand, then turned and trotted down the right fork. It took all her willpower not to look back to see if he was watching her.
She moved down the trail with brash confidence, not hesitating. Somehow, knowing that she was being watched instead of just suspecting it was a relief. Now that she knew the way she was walking didn’t matter, she didn’t pause at the forks. She just marched one way or the other and kept going.
After Abbey had walked alone for fifteen minutes, the Stone Shapers became brasher. They would let her see the tunnel shifting. She’d approach a fork to her right, only to have it close, forcing her to go left.
“You creepy bastards better be worth all this trouble,” she muttered.
After another forty minutes—and another torch replacement—she began hearing voices. At first she thought it might be her imagination, but they got louder as she progressed, growing from a barely audible murmur into discernible language.
“Stranger,” a voice said.
“Hello? How much farther do I have to go?” Abbey called, but the voices either didn’t hear or didn’t decide to respond to her question.
“Slave to the shape of things,” said another.
“You walk the stone. We shape it. We mold it with our thoughts. It takes the shapes we command.”
“Yeah, I get it, you’re special. Now show yourselves.”
“Why do you go where you don’t belong? Turn around, or you will be buried.”
“Not on your life, buddy,” she muttered grimly. Then, in a louder voice. “I’m not stopping! I just want to talk to you.”
The strange, echoing voices continued for the next hour. She tried speaking to them, ignoring them, and asking questions, but none of it worked. They just kept babbling in a strange mix of cryptic insults.
Just when she thought it was never going to end, another voice—a new voice—spoke. “Do you mean us harm?”
“No,” Abbey answered loudly. Her voice echoed down the tunnel.
“Are you here to steal our secrets?”
“No.”
“Do you seek our help?”
“Yes!” She practically yelled the last answer. Then she stopped short. A stone wall stood in front of her. There was no way forward.
“Then you may enter.”
The wall quivered, then all at once an opening appeared with a whoosh.
Abbey took a deep breath and stepped into the home of the inland Stone Shapers.
Chapter Seventeen
The man on the other side of the opening looked as old as the stones surrounding him. His hair was gone, revealing a perfectly round head. Deep creases lined his face, looking like cracks in stone. Even his mouth reminded Abbey of a jagged slice in a rock.
A guard stood on either side of him. Abbey noticed none of them wore shoes.
“What brings you to our home?” the old man asked bluntly.
Abbey recognized the voice as the one who’d asked her the final questions as she walked.
“I told you. I need your help.”
The man groaned thoughtfully, a rough sound like rock sliding against rock.
Abbey peered past the three men into the cave beyond, but saw only blackness. “Where are my friends?”
“They’ll be here soon,” the old man told her. “Or they won’t. Up to them, really.”
Abbey grimaced. She wanted to tell this doddering old fool he could take his cryptic remarks and shove them up his personal cave, but she held her tongue. There was too much at stake to go shooting off her mouth.
For now.
“My name’s Abbey. I’m from—”
“The Kaldfell Peninsula,” the man said, cutting her off. “It’s obvious. I knew a few of your kind years ago.” He tilted his head, distracted. “One moment.”
The old man inched his right foot forward and the cave around them began to quiver. A tiny opening appeared in the wall to his right. He leaned forward and spoke into it. “Do you mean us harm?”
“No,” a distant voice responded.
It was Elliot.
“Are you here to steal our secrets?”
“No,” Elliot replied.
“Do you seek our help?”
“Yes.”
The old man wiggled his toe and an opening appeared in the wall. Elliot stumbled through, blinking hard as he entered the brighter cavern.
Abbey smiled. “Beat you.”
Elliot ignored the comment and turned to the old man. “We need your help. Are you the one in charge here?”
There was a long pause before the man answered. “I guide and advise my people. I suppose you could say I’m one of the people in charge.”
“I’m Elliot.”
The old man simply nodded, not supplying his name in return. “Tell us about this help you need.”
Elliot gave a brief explanation of Magnus’ rule, the way he was oppressing the people of Gren, and their plot to deceive the Stone Shapers.
In the middle of the story, the old man held up a hand. “One moment.” He then opened another small hole in the wall and asked his questions. This time it was Hekla who answered, and she came stumbling through the opening a few moments later.
“Seas and stone, that was annoying,” she muttered.
After Elliot finished, the old man said nothing for a long while. The only sounds were the strange, thoughtful grunts he continually emitted.
Abbey’s patience was beginning to wear thin. Images of Dustin, Syd, and her father surrounded by Magnus’ Stone Shapers filled her mind. This was beginning to seem more and more like a waste of valuable time that would have been better spent fighting for her friends’ lives.
Eventually the old man spoke. “It seems my instincts about Magnus were correct. I never should have let him venture into the coastal areas. He should have stayed here where I could
keep an eye on him.”
Abbey and Elliot exchanged glances. If this man had allowed Magnus to leave, that meant…
“You’re Tomas,” she said. “The first Stone Shaper.”
He nodded. “That I am.” A slow smile spread across his weathered face. “They’ve heard of me on the Kaldfell Peninsula, then?”
“Um, sure. You’re very famous there.”
“Good, good.”
Abbey waited, but Tomas didn’t continue. “Are you going to help us?”
The smile faded from his face. “You topsiders, always in a rush. You’ve only just told me the problem, and you already expect a decision?”
Elliot held up a hand. “We don’t mean to rush you, sir, but time is a factor. We have friends who—”
“You have friends?” Tomas eyes flashed with anger. “I thought this was about the people of Gren. Now it’s about friends.”
“Our friends are just another example of how Magnus is using his power to oppress,” Abbey explained.
Tomas thought for a long moment. “No.”
Elliot took a step toward him. “No?”
“No, I will not take your side. I barely know you. The council would never approve this based only on the word of three outsiders, and I can’t make a decision this big on my own.”
Abbey and Elliot exchanged another glance. “There’s a council?” she asked. “Let us speak to them.”
Tomas let out a gruff laugh. “Impossible. The council is in Horg, our city. Outsiders who enter Horg are never allowed to leave. Even Stone Shaper children aren’t allowed to enter. Only full citizens, those who have walked the Path, may enter the great city.”
“Walked the Path? What does that mean?”
Tomas sighed. “It’s a test. Our children take it when they come of age, to gain the rights of citizens.”
“What about an outsider who walked the Path?” Abbey asked. “Would they have the rights of citizens? Would they be able to see the council?”
Tomas laughed again. “That would be impossible. The training takes years.”
Abbey knew this was foolish, that they should leave and head toward Ammaas where they could do some actual good, but she couldn’t help herself. The fact that there was an entire society of stone magic users hiding underground while Magnus starved the people of Gren infuriated her. As crazy as it was, she had to try.
Besides, she had the Etheric on her side. She could do this.
“Let me walk the Path.”
Elliot looked at her sharply. “Abbey, no.”
“Shut up. This isn’t your decision.” She turned back to Tomas. “Will you let me walk the Path?”
There was a long silence before he answered. “To fail is to die, but if you wish to walk the Path, I will not stop you.”
She set her jaw. This test was almost certainly created for people with stone magic, but she wouldn’t turn back. “Excellent. Take me there.”
“One moment.” Tomas opened another hole in the wall and asked his questions.
A few moments later Clemens walked through the opening, a wide smile on his face. “Ha, I told you guys. All I had to do to make it to the end was to keep turning right.”
Hekla rolled her eyes.
Tomas touched Abbey’s shoulder. “I will take you to the Path if you’re prepared to die.”
“I’m not prepared to die,” she said. “I’m prepared to win.”
* * *
The wagons headed toward Ammaas, and the storms followed.
Olaf, Viktor, and Fannar rode in the lead wagon. Dustin and Syd took up position in the rear wagon. If trouble came at them, it would be from that direction, and they wanted to have their leaders face it head on.
Dustin was doing everything he could to ensure that wouldn’t happen. He stood in the back of the wagon, the end of his staff pressed against the boards, and called the storm that followed them. It was strange to be stormcalling in a moving vehicle. He’d become reliant on the connection to the dirt when there was no seawater.
But Dahlia had stormcalled in the back of a wagon in Holdgate, albeit one filled with seawater. If she could do it, so could he.
The biggest challenge so far was keeping his balance while the wagon bounced along the dirt road.
Syd nudged his leg. “Nice work. Anyone who wants to follow us is going to have to get through a hell of a lot of mud.”
“That’s the plan.” It was probably paranoid of him to still be stormcalling five hours after leaving Nuur, since any pursuers would have been caught in the mud long ago. But he wasn’t taking any chances. “So what’s the plan when we get to the city?”
“Plan?” Syd asked, a smile in her voice. “We do plans now? I thought that was Abbey’s department.”
“Maybe ‘plan’ is too formal. Do you have a vague notion?”
“I don’t have plans, but I have vague notions a-plenty.” She paused a moment, and her voice was more serious when she spoke again. “I think our mistake in Nuur was that we struck from a place of weakness. We hoped the element of surprise would be enough, and it clearly wasn’t. We need to be more strategic. I’d like to send a small team to scope out the situation before we move the whole group into the city.”
“Seems like a good approach.”
“The key is to get to The Foggy Day without being spotted by Magnus and his people. If they see us, they’ll want answers.”
Dustin grimaced. “Yeah, especially since we’re showing up with two wagonloads of Tall Grass Raiders.” He turned back to the storm, but before he could focus his attention the wagon pulled to a stop, sending him stumbling. He only just managed to keep his feet.
Olaf called from the first wagon. “Uh, Captain? We’ve got a problem.”
“Sonofabitch!” Syd exclaimed. “How the hell did I forget about those?”
Dustin turned toward the front of the wagon and let out his own curse at what he saw.
Three massive boulders stood in the road, blocking their path, and the ground fell away on either side, forming a massive ditch.
Syd glared at Sigmund. “You couldn’t have reminded me about this? I thought you were supposed to be our Gren expert.”
The big Barskall shrugged. “You guys just left the city like a week ago. How’s this my fault?”
Dustin remembered how Gideon had used stone magic to create a gap large enough for their wagon to pass through. “They’re really serious about keeping non-Shapers out, aren’t they?”
“They really are,” Syd muttered.
Olaf, Fannar, and a group of Tall Grass Raiders were already out of the wagon, attempting to move one of the boulders. Dustin knew that was a lost cause. The boulders were massive; no way they were budging them.
Syd sighed, then called, “Hey, idiots, save your strength.” She hopped off the wagon. “I was going to send a small group into the city anyway. The rest of you might as well wait here for now. Where are those black sashes? I need six of them.”
She selected Dustin, Olaf, Sigmund, Fannar, and Viktor to accompany her into Ammaas.
Dustin called a hard rain before they left so they could plausibly claim the wagons were stuck in the mud if anyone showed up and started asking questions. Then the six of them put on their sashes, stepped between the boulders, and headed into town.
They reached the city in less than an hour. One moment they were cresting a hill, and the next a spread of stone buildings stretched before them as far as the eye could see.
Dustin let out a whistle. He hadn’t noticed the scope of the place on his initial visit. Ammaas was even larger than Holdgate.
He turned to Sigmund. “You’ve never been here before?”
“Once, long ago. The day they took Ragnar. It was supposed to be a diplomatic meeting to discuss an end to the fighting. We never should have trusted those Stone Shaper bastards.”
“How’d you make it out?” Syd asked.
Sigmund’s face darkened. “When it became clear the meeting was a setup, Ragnar ordered us
to run. Then he threw himself at Magnus, knowing the Stone Shapers would focus on protecting their leader, which would allow us a chance to escape. Even so, only Hekla, Elliot and I made it out. We went back, told the others, and decided to go into hiding. Since then, the capital city has sort of been off-limits for us.”
“Damn,” Dustin said.
Sigmund glanced at the strange, misshapen stone buildings all around them. “I didn’t mind the prohibition. This place gives me the creeps.”
Olaf adjusted his sash. “I’m looking forward to finally mixing it up with these Stone Shapers. I mean, their magic tricks look pretty cool, but I’ll bet a bit of Holdgate iron drops them the same as anyone else.”
“If you can get close enough,” Sigmund said. “Any Stone Shaper worth his sash would drive a rock through your skull before you got close enough to swing a sword at him. Why do you think the ekkja use bows so often?”
Olaf chuckled. “Their rocks can’t hit me if they can’t see me coming.”
“Yeah, you’re really known for your stealth,” Dustin said drily. “You can’t walk across a deck without waking every sailor sleeping below.”
They passed a pair of Stone Shapers heading the other direction. The Stone Shapers glanced at their sashes, nodded a quick greeting, and kept walking.
Sigmund increased his pace and moved up next to Fannar. “Tell me, brother, how are things in our homeland?”
Fannar chuckled. “Pretty shitty, actually. The crops won’t grow, the winters are so cold your nuts practically fall off, and every village thinks their neighbors are plotting against them.”
Sigmund’s eyes sparkled. “Ah, so it’s the same as always. Sea and stone, I miss that place!”
“Let’s see what we can do about getting you back there,” Syd said.
For Viktor’s part, he remained quiet during the walk. Despite all the time Dustin had spent with the Barskall Storm Caller, he still felt he didn’t truly know him. It was clear his brain operated differently than most people’s, but whether that was because of the abuse he’d suffered at King Elias’ and Dahlia’s hands or if he’d always been that way, Dustin did not know.