by JA Andrews
“Does it make it better? Or worse?”
Douglon let out a long, jagged breath. “Both.”
“I’m grateful for everything, of course, but…” She paused for a moment. When she spoke again it was determined, as though she was forcing out a confession. “Having all the knowledge from Ayda makes me somehow more equal to Alaric. He’s always known so much, and I was just an innkeeper.”
Douglon’s answer was kind. “I don’t think Alaric has ever thought of you as ‘just’ anything. He was ready to tear apart the world to save you. We even had to talk him out of sacrificing himself.”
She murmured something to him, and there was a long, awkward pause. Will and Sora took another step backwards.
“If my cousin’s finally finished cooking,” Douglon said louder, “we should get there before Hal eats our portions.” There was a shuffling noise. “Do you like the cavern?”
“It’s amazing,” Evangeline answered.
Their voices faded away.
Will let out a long breath. “I feel like I just invaded a private conversation.”
“We did.” Sora dropped his hand and walked forward again. “But it was that or interrupt, and she’s been working up the courage to ask that for a very long time.”
“How do you know?”
“We walked together earlier. What do you think we were talking about?”
Will stared at her. “You’ve walked for hours next to me without saying a single word.”
“Maybe,” she said with a smile, stepping out into the cavern, “I was waiting for you to tell me a story.”
Will stopped. “Really?”
“No.” She laughed. “I walked quietly with you because you let me. There’s not a lot of people who will.”
The cavern scattered splinters of reflected firelight across the floor.
“I thought if I talked to you,” he said, “you’d leave.”
“I probably would have.”
“Well, that would have been a shame,” he said. “Seeing as you were about the only person I was sure didn’t want to kill me.”
“Oh,” she said, “there were plenty of times I wanted to kill you.”
The soup was more delicious than a watery concoction of old vegetables had any right to be. Will told the story of the dwarf princess who was as ugly as a rock with a good deal of clarification from Douglon and Patlon. The sparkling cavern echoed with laughter and even though they’d have to wake soon, the fire burned to ashes before anyone settled for the night.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It felt like Will had barely fallen asleep before the dwarves roused everyone and they headed back into the tunnels. Will paused, taking in the cave again before stepping out of the cavern. After the glittering brilliance, the tunnel was dismal. Only the dwarves and Sora seemed to find any enjoyment in them.
An hour later, a small room opened off the side of the tunnel. Shelves lined the walls again, holding supplies, and a small table almost filled the middle of the room. Will and Sora put their packs on the table. Sora slung her bow and a thin quiver of arrows across her back.
Douglon looked at Will critically, then offered him a knife. “I’m sure you don’t actually know how to fight with that, Keeper. But maybe you’ll need to cut a rope or something.”
Will took it and put it on his belt.
Patlon went to a wide, flat rock at the far end of the room and after a small click, it shifted and a breeze swirled in. There was a breath of freshness to the air and Rass lifted her face. “I can smell the grass.”
Talen shifted his weight on Will’s shoulder and Will ran a finger down the hawk’s chest. “Almost out.”
“The rift is a short walk southeast.” Patlon set his shoulder against the rock and shoved. Slowly it swung open, revealing a slightly grayer blackness than the tunnels. The wind squeezed through the opening, humming and blustering its way in. “We’ll be watching for you.”
Rass hurried through the gap with Sora, and Hal followed.
Will looked through the opening with a sinking feeling in his gut. The tunnels were dark and close and lifeless. But through that door lay the exposed Sweep. He’d be shoved about by the wind, surrounded by endless nothing and endless Roven.
He turned to Alaric. “If we’re not back in a few hours…”
“We’ll find a way to get you out,” Alaric assured him.
Will nodded and ducked out into the open night.
Huge boulders crowded around him beneath the sky. Wind swirled past him, pushing at his clothes, saturated with the scent of trees and grass. The ground rolled away in front of him, down to the vast Sweep.
A heavy moon sat low over the western horizon, washing out all but the brightest stars and spreading a stark grayness across the grass. A little east of them it turned black where the charred grass began. The wind blew in chilly, fitful gusts, twisting and pushing at the grass, whipping the Sweep into constant motion.
Talen fluttered and shifted his weight. Will pulled the hood off the hawk’s head and Talen shot off his shoulder in a burst of wings.
Will cast out, but the only people he could find were Sora, Hal, and Rass. The tiny elf hurried down the hill toward the edge of the grass, her feet fairly flying across the ground. Sora stood at the end of the boulders and Will stopped next to her.
Hal stood a little away from the rocks, spinning slowly, facing up the slope, taking in the peaks behind, their snowy tops a cold white in the moonlight.
“It’s that way.” He pointed a little to the east. “The back entrance is not far.”
Sora watched him as he headed down the slope. “Do you trust him?” Her voice came quietly through the wind.
Will pulled at the end of his beard, pushing down the fear that had been growing for the last several hours. “I think so. At least he believes he’s going to help us.”
The feeling of exposure the Sweep always caused wrapped around him.
“And if he changes his mind?” she asked.
“Then you’ll have to use your amazing ranger skills and I’ll have to use my amazing magical skills to execute a heroic escape.”
The moonlight traced strands of her braid in silver and caught just the edge of a small smile. It was enough of a smile to draw out a little of his fear and let the wind snatch it away.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Thank you actually doesn’t come close to conveying how grateful I am.”
“I don’t trust Hal. And even though he’s not much of a fighter, he could take you easily enough.”
“I’d have been fine,” he protested.
She shot him an incredulous look.
He wiggled his fingers at her. “Keeper.”
She sized him up for a moment, then turned back toward the Sweep, the smile peeking back out. “If it was a Keeper we needed, maybe we should have brought Alaric.”
Will grinned at her. He pulled his eyes away and tried to focus on the blustery motion of the Sweep ahead of them, searching for whatever Hal could be aiming for. “Maybe, but he seems a bit preoccupied with a woman.”
“And you’re not?”
Will snapped his attention back to her, an uncomfortably tight feeling in his chest. “I—” The moonlight etched her amusement in silver and shadows and he tried to meet her eyes, but he couldn’t quite get his own to cooperate. “I’m not…” He trailed off weakly.
She laughed. “She’s your sister, Will. It’s alright. We’ll get her out. But we should move faster.”
Sora sped up, heading down after Hal. Will watched her for a moment, an awkward tangle of emotions smoldering in his chest. He blew out a long breath, hoping to push them away.
Rass waited for them at the edge of the grass. “There’s no one nearby.” She ran her hand across the top of the old brittle grass, then bent down and pulled a new blade of grass through her fingers. “The closest people are near the rift.”
“We don’t need to go that far.” Hal hunched closer to the grass and set out so
utheast across the Sweep.
It took half an hour to reach a little pile of scrub brush and some rocks piled in the middle of the grass, only stopping once when Rass motioned them all down as a ranger passed by them to the east. They hadn’t quite reached the fireline yet, but it wasn’t far off. The jagged edge of the rift was easy to see here. It was wider than Will had expected, stretching away southeast from them. At the scrub brush, Hal reached under the edge of a large rock and lifted. It hinged open and thumped back with a distinctly unrocklike sound, revealing a black hole beneath.
Rass leaned forward and sniffed the air and drew back. “I’ll wait here and make sure no one comes.”
Hal nodded and climbed down into the hole and Sora followed.
“Be careful,” Rass whispered to Will.
“You too.”
“I’m in the grass. No one can hurt me.” She shifted back and forth, her bare little toes digging into the soil.
“There’s nothing unexpected going on nearby?”
She shook her head. “Three Roven spread out far on the other side of the rift, the one who passed us earlier is still heading south, and there’s a herd of sheep with two shepherds grazing so far to the south you wouldn’t be able to see them, even if the sun was up.”
“You’re amazing,” he said, tousling the top of her head. He sat at the edge of the hole and felt along the wall until he found the rung of a ladder.
She smiled at him, then turned and tilted her head slightly. “That dragon isn’t home.”
Will stopped.
“He’s usually down by a city that sits on a bay, with a big cliff below it.”
“That’s Tun,” Will said. “That’s the city of the Sunn Clan. They are the ones with the dragon.”
“The grass goes all the way to the edges of the cliff and he lies there, looking at the ocean,” Rass said. “But tonight he’s much closer. Not near any cities or any people. He’s just lying in the grass.”
The wind shoved through scrub brush around him, shaking it against the sky. The heavy moon was almost low enough to touch the horizon, and the stars bright enough to brave the moonlight glittered clearly. Will scanned them, his mind kept offering the silhouette of wings in any dark spot. “How close?”
“It would take you more than a day to walk to him. But why didn’t he go home?”
“I’m not sure, but keep track of him. We’ll be back soon. I hope.”
“I’d like to meet your sister,” Rass whispered to him. “I hope she’s happy to come.”
“Me too.” He grabbed a handle on the lid. It swung easily, and Will pulled the not-rock down into place. A dim orange glow illuminated the base of the ladder.
At the bottom, a rough dirt tunnel ran off to the east. Hal hunched his head down to avoid the rough ceiling and the thin roots that hung down from it. The air was damp and earthy but not as stale as Will had expected. He blew out a long breath, trying to slow his heart. Somehow being here, below the empty Sweep, was worse than being under a solid mountain. The tunnel left him feeling trapped and vulnerable at the same time.
Sora held a bowl of glimmer moss ahead of her as she peered down the tunnel.
Hal dipped his finger into another one that sat on a rough shelf. “It’s wet. Someone’s been in this tunnel recently.”
Will cast out, but besides Sora, Hal, and the ceiling of grass above them, there was nothing living larger than a worm. “There’s no one in the tunnel, and Rass says no one’s nearby.”
Hal frowned at the bowl before turning and heading down the tunnel. Their feet made no sound in the soft earth, and the silence and the unwavering orange light made everything feel dreamlike. And not the good kind of dream. Will had the irrational fear that this tunnel would never end, or worse—lead him to that horrible barren rift.
The tunnel ran relatively straight. When Hal held up his hand to stop, Will’s fear that the tunnel wouldn’t end was instantly replaced by the fear that it had, and that he was about to sneak into Killien’s house. Hal motioned Will to come up with him. Will put his hand on Sora’s arm as he passed her and could feel her tension. He squeezed up beside Hal and found himself looking at the back of a piece of fabric.
“Anyone there?” Hal whispered, almost noiselessly.
Will cast out past the fabric, but found no one. He shook his head and Hal pulled back the fabric and stepped through. With his heart pounding loud enough to shake the Sweep, Will followed. Sora came through with the glimmer moss and lit the small room with orange light. The wall to their left held shelves packed with books, candles and paper. Hal let the fabric fall back and Will could make out that it was a wall hanging with the image of the Serpent Queen stretching darkly across it. Most of the fabric was darkish in the dim light, but the form of the queen, which slithered over mountain peaks and coiled around the moon, was utterly black. He reached out to touch her and his fingers ran across soft, thick fabric that caught slightly at his fingertips. Pulling his hand away, he wiped it on his pants to erase the feeling.
There were other wallhangings too, overlapping on the walls. On one shelf, a pile of gems glittered dully in the dim light. Off to the side, two greenish stones glowed with a watery light, like blades of grass under a stream. In the far corner, a set of leather armor hung, silver buckles glinting in the light. Sora walked closer, holding the glimmer moss up to it, revealing intricately tooled leather with runes covering most of the surface.
“Killien’s ceremonial armor,” Hal whispered. “I’ve only seen him wear it once, the day the clan named him Torch.” Hal turned toward the door and stopped so abruptly that Will almost walked into his back. He stared above the door at two empty wooden pegs.
“Killien’s sword.” Hal turned back to the armor, then spun slowly around the room. “Svard Naj, when we’re in the rifts, it’s always here. Killien never moves it. He’s almost superstitious about it.”
“Maybe he took it to show his new son,” Sora said, irritated. “We should move.”
Will looked up at the empty hooks. The seax Flibbet the Peddler had given Killien. The one the Torch had said was “too serious for a mere fight.” The empty hooks looked black and slightly ominous in the mosslight.
With one last frown at the hooks, Hal pulled open the door. It squeaked and Will’s heart slammed up into his throat. They all froze for a moment, but when no sounds came from the house, Hal stepped in to the hall. He led them to the right, and stopped near the end of the hall. Three doors sat closed ahead of them. Will cast out. There were two people, one behind each of the doors on the right. He told Sora and she nodded.
“Any idea which is Ilsa?”
Will shook his head.
“Stay here,” she whispered. She handed the glimmer moss to Hal and walked to the first door. Easing it open, she slipped inside. She was back quickly, and with a shake of her head, moved to the other room. In moments she was out of that one as well, shaking her head again. Will sank back against the wall. He cast out again, but there was no one else on this floor. Upstairs he could just sense someone, but there was no one nearby.
Hal motioned them back to the room with the armor and they crept quietly back down the hall.
“If she’s not here,” he said once they’d closed the door. “She could be anywhere.”
Will sank against one of the shelves. The fact that she wasn’t here loomed in front of him like a blank wall.
Sora paced back and forth down the room. “You have to have some idea, Hal,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “At the other end of this hall a door leads to the kitchen. Upstairs is a gathering room and Killien’s sleeping quarters.”
Sora froze, spun slowly around and fixed Hal with a dangerous look. “You better not be suggesting Ilsa is in Killien’s quarters.”
“No,” Hal said quickly. “He wouldn’t.”
A flicker of anger pushed past the fear and Will stared at Hal. The big man turned to him and held his hands out toward Will, his face earnest. “Killien
and Lilit are inseparable. And since she almost died, he barely leaves her side. He wouldn’t.”
Will pressed his hands against his eyes, blocking out the dim light of the moss. Sora’s footsteps paced quietly, Hal let out a long, slow breath, and the fear that had been growing in Will turned icy. Where had Killien put his sister?
“I’m going upstairs.” He pushed himself away from the shelves. “Killien is going to tell me where she is.”
“No you’re not.” Sora stepped between Will and the door.
“I’m not leaving here without knowing where she is.” Will stepped forward, but Sora didn’t move.
“If anyone goes upstairs, it’s going to be me,” she said calmly.
Will stared at her incredulous. “Absolutely not. Killien will kill you.”
One of Sora’s eyebrows rose the smallest bit. “I wasn’t asking your permission.”
“And I wasn’t asking yours. If my sister is here, I’m going to find her.”
Sora took in an irritated breath, then froze. Her eyes flew wide and she spun toward the door, sliding the knife from her belt.
Will cast out and felt the blazing vitalle of someone directly on the other side of the door. He swore under his breath. Killien.
Except this person was too small. He clutched at a strand of hope. Ilsa?
The door began to swing open and the three of them backed up. Will cast out again looking for vitalle to draw in, but found nothing but people. He reached for the knife Douglon had given him, gripping the hilt to keep his hand from trembling.
“You’ll be looking around the rift for a long time if you’re expecting to find Ilsa,” a woman’s voice came through the opening.
The door creaked the rest of the way open and the dim orange light of the glimmer moss barely reached the face of Lilit.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Hello, Hal,” Lilit said lightly, looking down at the bundle in her arms. “Sevien was restless, so I thought a little walk would help him. But maybe he’s a blessed child. Maybe he could sense rats in the storage room.” When she looked up to consider them, her face was stony. “Sora,” she acknowledged coldly, “and Will the Keeper.”