by JA Andrews
“You can’t listen with your ears,” Douglon’s voice came from behind him. “Listen with the part of you that understands the permanence of the stone. The part of you that knows that life should continue, that you should continue, that dying goes against what should be. The part of you that understands eternity.”
Will glanced back to see Rass reach out tentatively toward the wall. “When I talk to the grass, it is always growing and dying and growing again. There is nothing lasting about it.” She let her fingers trail along the rock.
“Don’t think about the voice of the grasses. Think about the voice of the Sweep, lying still and strong and unmoved for a thousand years.”
Rass’s brow furrowed and she pressed more of her hand against the wall, dragging her whole palm along it. She shook her head.
“Give it time, wee snip,” Douglon said. “The rocks speak slowly.”
They walked for more than an hour. At some point, Patlon began to hum a deep, thrumming tune. The melody echoed off the walls mixing with new strands of the song. Douglon joined in, humming from the back of the group, and the echoes became more layered and rich, the pulse of the song rang through the mountain like a drum.
Eventually the darkness paled and the tunnel, which had run reasonably straight, twisted sharply to the left. Will squinted into the hazy light that filtered around another turn not far ahead. The tunnel continued in the excessively serpentine way for four more turns, each growing gradually brighter before Hal mentioned it to Patlon.
“It’s giving your eyes time to adjust,” the dwarf answered. “You’d have been half blinded if you just stepped into what’s ahead.”
Even so, when the tunnel turned the last time, Will could barely open his eyes. The air was saturated with a blue-tinged light, as though they had stepped out into the middle of the shimmering sky. After the closeness of the tunnel, the cavern gaped open taller than pine trees and wide enough that the other side was lost in hazy brightness. The faint smell of trees and earth wafted past, but everything looked like sky.
“Move in,” Douglon grumbled from behind them.
Will took a stunned step forward along with everyone else, and the floor beneath him shot out fierce glints of light, flashing reflections of the glimmer moss like specks of blazing fire.
“It glitters everywhere!” Rass’s little voice skipped off the walls and echoed through the chamber.
The floor itself was a pale blue, but glitters of orange from the mosslight skittered across it with every step, like infinitesimally small fairies flitting by faster than he could see. On the rough walls, the lights tripped from crevice to ridge, scattering like shattered glass.
“Welcome to Hellat Harrock’lot.” Douglon’s words echoed as well, deeper and richer. “The Cavern of Sea and Sky. You may be the first foreigners to set eyes on it.”
“Another thing the High Dwarf is going to love,” Patlon muttered.
The cavern wasn’t as large as Will had first thought. His eyes adjusted and revealed the far side of the oblong cave only a hundred paces away. Four tunnels branched off, dark mouths opening in the blue-white walls. The ceiling was just the continuation of the walls, arching over them in a low hanging dome. Near the far side, the ceiling was cut by a gash letting in a trickle of light.
“We’re close to the surface,” Douglon said. “It’s only a short climb up that shaft to an outcropping of rock on the mountainside. Judging from the light, it’s close to sunset. Thanks to that little chimney, we can have a fire and a proper meal. We can get a few hours sleep before we need to leave.”
In a wide, flat area there was a circle of ash on the floor and a small pile of wood stacked up against a nearby wall. Patlon lit a fire, and the flames sent millions of tiny shards of light reflecting across the cavern. Sora took out the rabbit that had been wrapped around the heatstone. The stone had stopped glowing, but the entire package was still warm. The strips of rabbit were hot and dripping with juices, and they were divided up and eaten within moments.
Will set Talen on a thin piece of firewood and ripped off small bits of rabbit, feeding them to the hawk who seemed perfectly content to sit on his perch in his hood.
Everyone gathered near the fire except Sora, who faced out into the cavern. He walked over to her, watching the floor glitter and flash below his feet, like he was treading on the stars. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
She shook her head.
“A place like this makes me understand why you like caves.”
“Everyone loves places like this. But it’s the small, common caves that feel like home. The tunnels that wander through the mountains.”
He thought about the passageways they’d traveled through all day, the darkness, the silence, the lifelessness. There was nothing homey about them.
“You think I’m crazy,” she said.
“No, I think you’re scowly,” he answered, “and have an odd definition of homey.”
With a small shake of her head she strode across the cavern. “Come.”
He let her walk a few steps before following. “I also think you’re bossy.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
He followed Sora to the nearest tunnel mouth. She paused at the opening, and with a disapproving grunt, she walked to the next.
“This one.” She stepped in and turned a corner out of sight. Her voice came back in an echoey, hollow way. “Come.”
Will followed her. Around the first turn, the tunnel dimmed and he found her waiting, arms crossed. The corners of the floor were lost in blackness, and shadows filled more spaces on the wall than seemed reasonable. “What are we doing in here?”
“You are going to see what tunnels are really like.” She turned and disappeared around another corner, proving this was just as serpentine as the one from earlier.
“What if we get lost?”
“It’ll make a great story,” she answered. “Hurry up.”
In two more turns the darkness crept out of the corners and seeped into the air itself. He could barely make her out in front of him. “Not to sound like a frightened child,” he said, letting his hands run along the wall as he walked deeper into the darkness, “but I’d be thrilled to find out you had a bit of glimmer moss tucked away somewhere.”
She turned back towards him, and he was almost certain she was laughing. She took one of his hands and started walking again, pulling him along.
“Not much farther.”
One more turn and the tunnel straightened out. His eyes stretched wide, but there was nothing to see but blackness. He could feel Sora’s hand in his, but there was no way to pick her out from the dark.
She walked a dozen paces more and then stopped. He tried to hold her hand loosely, fighting the urge to cling to it. The darkness was so thick it felt like a thing in itself.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered.
There was nothing at all to hear. Beyond Sora’s slow, measured breathing and the unnerving sound of his own heart pounding, which he was sure she could feel through his hand, there was utter and complete silence.
“No,” he whispered. “I hear nothing.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to hear.” Her words slid through the darkness, calm and pleased. “The tunnel is like a cocoon, like the walls of a fortress so thick that nothing can get through them. Not noises, not armies, not other people’s expectations, not even the Serpent Queen.”
Will closed his eyes and tried to find what Sora felt. “It all feels too heavy. Like the rocks will crush us.”
“You’re thinking of the mountain as an enemy. It’s life and shelter and warmth and endless, timeless permanence.”
Her words almost made a difference. For a breath he felt the solid mass of the mountain above him like a shield. But it grew heavier until it was ready to smash down and flatten them all. His grip tightened on her hand.
“You’re not seeing the mountain for what it is, Will. You’re imagining what it’s capable of, but you’re not seei
ng what it is now, what it’s been for thousands of years. When you walk through the forest, you don’t imagine it will burst into flames at any moment, do you?”
“No,” he admitted.
“This tunnel is more permanent than the trees. Think about what the rocks are, what they do. Wind and storms that terrify us don’t affect them. Nothing is indestructible, but the rocks are close. They’re…” She gave a short growl of irritation. “I can’t explain it. Here, feel what it’s like for me.”
Emotion surged into his chest. Contentedness, security, belonging. Like he was a child again in the years before Ilsa had been taken, tucked under a wool blanket, lying in his bed in the dark cottage, alone but safe. The walls of the cottage surrounded him, blocking out the foxes and packs of little brush wolves that roamed the forest. All the dangers were outside the walls and inside there was nothing to fear. Just the endless night, a black backdrop waiting to be filled with imaginings.
The freedom in that moment was liberating. Freedom he hadn’t noticed as a child.
The sensation drained out of his chest and he ached with hollowness in its wake. He gripped Sora’s hand in the darkness of the tunnel and he understood. The tunnel walls stood solid around them, holding off the mountain, holding back the sky. The Sweep and its politics, Killien and his plans, Queensland and its responsibilities, all those things were outside the walls. And in here there was just the silence of endless years of stillness. Nothing rushed, nothing expected.
“Oh,” he breathed.
“Now you see?” Her voice was quiet, low enough that he almost missed it.
“Yes.”
They stood in silence for a breath and Will realized his shoulders were relaxed. He breathed in the stillness of the tunnel.
A jarring question broke through the quiet.
“How did you do that?” He wished he could see Sora’s face. “Your emotions are always so tightly controlled, I can barely find them. How did you make me feel that?”
“I just did what we tried in the rift. I tried to let you feel my emotions.”
“But I wasn’t trying.” He hadn’t been, had he? “I have to…open up to someone. It doesn’t just happen. I have to want to feel them.”
“Maybe you want to know what I’m feeling more than you think you do.” There was a note of amusement in her voice.
“I don’t—that sounds like I’m stalking you.”
Her laughter echoed off the walls, bouncing back on itself into a jumble of sound. “Do you really think that if I were trying to get away from you, you could stalk me?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant.”
“Shall I leave you here in the tunnel and you can try to track me?” Her fingers loosened on his hand.
“No!” He turned and brought both hands to clench hers and she laughed again. He cleared his throat. “I mean, maybe some other time. Right now, I just want to stay here and absorb all this comforting silence you just showed me.”
“Of course you do.” Her fingers wrapped around his hand again. “Because there’s nothing better than being deep in the mountain.”
The stillness of the tunnels became a palpable thing again.
“Living with your people was so bad that you won’t go back? Even for this?”
She didn’t answer. All he heard was the sound of their breath and the silence of the mountain.
“There was another thing my clan believed about me…”
The words trailed away, absorbed by the mountain.
“When I was twelve, Lyelle, the daughter of the holy woman, fell ill. They brought me to her and she recovered. From then on she was allowed to play with me.” A wistfulness crept into her voice. “It wasn’t just that Lyelle was my only friend, she was exactly the sort of girl I would have picked. She was funny and smart and brave.
“The other children never left the cave without adults.” The wistfulness was gone, replaced by something Will couldn’t name. “The mountains are too wild. But she wanted to sneak out with me. We went out twice with no problems, and she grew more eager to do it again.
“The third time we went…” Sora’s voice stopped and her hand trembled. “By the time I sensed the wolves, it was too late. They were too close.”
The horror of the idea stole his breath.
“I climbed up on some boulders.” The words sounded like they were spilling out of their own will. “But Lyelle wasn’t tall enough to get up. And I wasn’t strong enough to pull her…” Sora’s hands clenched his. She drew in a shuddering breath. “It was over so fast. I didn’t…”
They stood in the darkness while she took several breaths. When she began again, a coldness had crept into her words.
“I was too young to understand why the holy woman didn’t blame me.”
The truth of it hit him like a fist in the gut. “She needed the people to believe everything was related to your power.”
He took her silence for agreement.
“She quoted some ancient text claiming to court the friendship of the Serpent Queen was to court death.”
“The next winter I fell sick, and in caring for me, my mother did as well.
“I wasn’t even fully recovered when she died.” The ache in her voice dug into Will’s chest. “Terra told the clan that she’d been a good mother, but it had always been only a matter of time. Because to draw too close to the Serpent Queen brought nothing but death.”
“None of this was you,” Will whispered to her, pulling her hand to his chest. “None of it.”
“I know.” She paused. “At least most of me does. But there’s a part that’s still twelve, watching them take away my mother’s body.” She let out a long breath and her grip loosened. “So no, Will. Not even the tunnels could draw me back. Because the farther I am away from home, the easier it is to remember that I’m not twelve, I have no power, and I’m not cursed to kill everyone I love.
“Or it was. Until Lilit was dying and Killien demanded the same thing from me. I was that girl again.”
She pulled gently on her hand and he let her pull it away from his chest, but didn’t let go of it.
“Killien was desperate,” Will said. “But still, he should have known better.”
Sora didn’t answer him.
“There’s an easy solution to Killien, though.” He felt Sora waiting. “You should curse him.”
She smacked him on the shoulder with her other hand, but he heard her laugh. “If I curse anyone, it’s going to be you.”
Will drew in a breath of the cool tunnel air. “The stories the holy woman told about you aren’t you. She doesn’t have the right to choose your story. She’s stolen some power over you, but if you take it back, there’s nothing she can do to stop you. She’s twisted and controlled the entire clan. What they need is the truth. If you tell them, if you claim your own story and stop letting her control it, you’ll be free of her. And it will loosen her control over your entire clan.”
When Sora didn’t answer, he let the subject drop. “I see what draws you here.” Will’s voice echoed off the wall beside him. “But you forgot to mention the best part.”
She waited in expectant silence.
“This would be a great place for storytelling. Can you hear the little echo? So dramatic. I heard a tale once in Napon about a young woman who was chased by trolls into the hill caves—”
“Will,” Sora interrupted with a laugh, “let’s just enjoy the silence.”
“Right.”
The story pushed at him, begging to be told, but he squeezed his mouth shut.
Next to him Sora shifted. “It’s killing you not telling me, isn’t it?”
A voice interrupted his reply, calling down the echoey tunnel to announce the soup was cooked.
“Of all the reasons to have to go back to the rest of the world,” Sora said, “hot soup is one of the best.” She turned and walked back the direction they’d come, and he fell in beside her, running his free hand along the wall beside him as they turned i
nto brighter and brighter sections of tunnel.
After several turns Sora paused. He could see her clearly now, looking attentively ahead of them. He opened his mouth to start the troll story again, when she tightened her grip on his hand and motioned him to be quiet.
Voices floated down the tunnel.
Evangeline’s voice bounced off the walls, jumbling with itself, “Thank you for coming with Alaric. He’s relieved that you came.”
“Can’t expect the Keeper to get out of any troublesome situations on his own,” Douglon answered. “And I didn’t have anywhere else to be.”
There was a long pause. And Will took a step forward, but Sora stopped him.
“Why are we stopping?” he whispered.
“Don’t interrupt this.” Sora’s voice was firm.
“Interrupt what?”
“Do you hate me?” Evangeline’s words came out in a rush and Will felt a jab of awkwardness.
He leaned close to Sora. “We should not be listening to this.”
“I know.” She started backing down the tunnel and Will followed, but he could still hear Evangeline clearly.
“Do you hate me because I’m alive, and I’m the reason she…” She paused. “The reason Ayda isn’t?”
Will’s gut tightened at the question. He set his foot down as quietly as possible, backing away and barely breathed during the silence that followed.
“At first it was hard,” Douglon answered. “But Ayda was exhausted. And with her people gone, she was utterly alone. In a way no one could fix.” The dwarf’s voice stopped and Will held his breath. “In a way I could never have fixed.”
“I’m so sorry.” Evangeline’s words were almost lost in the tunnel.
“I’m luckier than most,” Douglon answered. “When someone you love dies, you usually have nothing but memories. I have something…more.” The stillness of the tunnel waited for him to continue. “Sometimes…when I listen to the trees…I can almost hear what she would say to them.” His voice was soft, but the longing in it caught at Will’s chest. “Almost.”