by CJ Brightley
Her searching hand found the opening of one of the passages. “This way,” she gasped. Her own voice sounded very distant to her ears.
“Let’s go, boys!” Carden called out.
Lainie crawled through the opening of the passage, hearing the muffled footsteps and grunts and mutters and clanks of the miners behind her. The passage she had chosen sloped downwards, and men cursed as they stumbled on the rough ground.
An additional weight came into Lainie’s mind, of disapproval; the mage’s light was an offense to those whose realm this was. The darkness around her suddenly became more absolute. “Damn!” Carden shouted over the miners’ cries of surprise and fear. “What happened?”
His light must have been snuffed out. Lainie wished she could see his face. It would be a fine thing to see him properly afraid of these powers he was toying with. “They don’t like your light,” she said with an effort. “Just keep going down, it all goes to the same place.”
11
GUIDED BY THE mage light, Silas and the two ranchers continued up Yellowbird Canyon. For the first stretch, the way was broad and not too steep, with plenty of dry land alongside the creek.
When they had gone a distance, a darker object among some rocks in the creek caught Silas’s eye. He paused, and Dobay asked, “What’s that?”
Silas rode over to take a look, followed by the other two. It might be nothing, or it might be further confirmation that they were on Carden’s trail. As he approached, the object took on the form of a human body. He sucked in a hard breath.
“It ain’t my girl, is it?” Banfrey asked anxiously.
Profound relief settled on Silas as he came close enough to see more details. “No,” he said. The body hung up on the rocks was that of a man, weighed down by a pair of loaded packs. Various tools showed through holes torn in the packs. The man’s clothes were in shreds, his face battered beyond recognition, but the equipment in the pack revealed him to be one of Carden’s miners.
The flow of water nudged and jostled at the dead man. A moment later, it pulled him loose to continue his journey downstream, perhaps to be found by someone in the valley or perhaps to wash away down the rivers to the faraway western sea. Silas watched him go, an image in his mind of Lainie battered and drowned in the swift and dangerous creek. He pushed the horrifying vision away. He could only hope that Carden’s need for her and her own common sense – and the Defender’s protection – would keep her safe from any such accidents. To make sure, he sent up another prayer for the Defender to watch out for her.
Even more sobered by the grim discovery than they were already, the three of them rode on. The trail left by Carden and his group became visible again; there must not have been any rain in this part of the canyon since the mining party came through. Several leagues farther up, as the moon was starting to rise, they came to a place where the canyon narrowed and got steeper, the creek running down a series of small, rocky waterfalls. Though the trail continued on, Silas couldn’t figure out how Carden had been able to take his party and all their horses and carts up that way.
He reined Abenar to a stop. Cautiously, he reached out with his mage senses, worried that Carden might have set some sort of trap or ambush. His senses brushed up against something straight ahead, extending across the whole canyon. “Hold on,” he said to the others. He sent his mage light forward until the light reflected off of something that shimmered just on the edge of invisibility in the dark canyon.
“There’s a magical barrier across the canyon,” Silas told his companions. He prodded at the shield, and recognized the color and feel of the power, rich orange threaded through with cold black. “It’s Carden’s.”
He tested the shield some more and found a few spots where it had started to decay. Carden must not still be feeding power into it; he might be too far away, or might not have intended the shield to last longer than a few days, until he came back down that way. “I’d guess it’s been here for several hours or longer, maybe since midday. I should be able to break it down.”
With a sharp gesture of his left hand, he sent a dart of blue power to wedge itself between three of the weak spots. A web of cracks in the barrier spread out from the dart. He bore down with his power on the cracks, and they spread until they reached the weak spots. That part of the shield crumbled, the power dissipating into the air, then the rest of the shield dissolved.
Behind where the shield had been, just before the narrowing of the canyon, stood a number of saddled horses and three wooden carts with the dray horses still hitched to them. Carden and his crew hadn’t taken them into the upper reaches of the canyon, after all. Some of the horses were grazing, others were sleeping. A few stood facing where the shield had been, as though they had tried to walk back down the canyon and been stopped by the barrier. The threat of wolves, coyotes, and groviks had them all a little nervous, though Silas sensed now that the barrier had surrounded them on all sides; a few fragments still remained, the power in them strong enough that it was taking them a while to fade away.
Silas counted sixteen saddled horses and figured at least one man in each cart. Minus the dead man, that made eighteen men or more, including Carden, that he, Banfrey, and Dobay were going to have to deal with.
“Damn careless bastards,” Dobay said as he dismounted. He went over to the cart horses and began unhitching them. “Ain’t right to leave the poor beasts hitched up like this when you don’t know how long you’re going to be away.” Once the horses were unhitched, Dobay called out, “Ha! Go on!” and slapped a few of the animals on the rump. Almost as a body, the horses turned and began to wander back down the canyon. “They’ll be better off down in the valley than trapped up here,” he said.
Although Carden’s party had abandoned their horses, Silas, Banfrey, and Dobay decided to lead their mounts while continuing on foot up the narrower part of the canyon. It might be possible to ride later on, and if Lainie was hurt or exhausted from her ordeal, she might not be able to walk out. If the way became impassable for the horses, Dobay agreed to stop and wait with them while Silas and Banfrey went on.
With the moon now rising, adding its light to Silas’s mage light, the way ahead was easier to see. Some distance into the upper part of the canyon, they passed a feeder canyon on the right, the far side of the impassable creek. The trail left by Carden’s group continued past that canyon, then, some thirty measures farther up, veered left into a feeder canyon on the near side. Silas reached out that way with his mage senses but couldn’t feel anything up that canyon. The three of them followed the trail a short distance, then Silas found where Carden’s group had crossed the flowing creek and gone back down to Yellowbird Canyon. Was this where the unlucky miner had fallen in? Silas and his companions crossed this smaller creek carefully on horseback, then followed the trail back out to the main canyon.
By now, Banfrey was drooping in his saddle, and the horses’ pacing was becoming more sluggish. Silas had used about as much power on his mage light as he thought wise, so, reluctant to lose any more time but bowing to necessity, he suggested they stop for the rest of the night as soon as they came upon a good place to camp. They soon found a spot where the ledge alongside the creek widened out enough for them to spread out their blankets and lie down, where they could tie the horses within easy reach of grazing and water. They drank from their canteens and ate some jerky and flatbread, then Silas took the first watch while Banfrey and Dobay rolled up in their blankets and quickly fell asleep.
Silas sat in the quiet of the canyon, surrounded by the rushing sound of the creek and the small noises of the birds and insects and animals of the night. An owl hooted, crickets chirped; somewhere above his head, on the rim of the canyon, something rustled through the undergrowth. The night was cool, almost chilly, this high up, the air soft with the moisture of the recent rains. Silas watched the moon move slowly across the sky while he probed farther into the canyon with his mage senses. He detected traces of power farther up the canyon, Lainie’s
and Carden’s and the darkness of the ore, but they were weak, either far distant or left some time ago, or both. It had been quite some time, he realized, since he had felt any live bursts of power.
As the moon rose higher into the sky and then disappeared to the west over the tops of the mountains, Silas thought of a young woman with pretty hazel eyes and a shy smile that could shine unexpectedly brilliant. Did she have an idea, or even an inkling of hope, that someone was coming after her? Or, faced with a powerful rogue mage, at least seventeen miners, and the malign force of the ore, had she given up?
And, once he rescued her, how was he going to convince her that she had to go to Granadaia to be trained? It wasn’t a discussion he was looking forward to, especially when he himself didn’t like the idea, but, for her own safety, there was no choice but to do it.
His share of the watch passed without disturbance. If it weren’t for his worries about Lainie and the dangers posed by Carden, he would have been enjoying the peaceful night. He thought about finishing out the rest of the night without waking the others, but he needed to let the power he had spent on maintaining the mage light and breaking down the shield regenerate itself. If he was short on power and tired and stupid from lack of sleep, he wouldn’t be of much use when it came to facing Carden.
Dobay had seemed less tired than Banfrey, so Silas crouched down by the foreman’s bedroll and nudged him awake. “Your turn.” He spoke softly so as not to wake Banfrey. Dobay sat up, rubbing his eyes. “It’s been quiet,” Silas said.
Dobay drank some water and ate a little more jerky, then settled himself on a rock by the creek. He pulled a knife and a stick of wood from his shirt pocket and started whittling. Silas stretched out on his blanket and was soon asleep.
Banfrey shook him awake at dawn. A chill had settled into the canyon. Silas sat up, blowing into his hands to warm them up and rubbing them briskly over his arms. They made another quick meal of jerky and flatbread, along with some ripe berries Banfrey had found in a thicket a short way up the creek. “Had to keep myself awake, so I decided to walk around a bit,” he said.
The three of them started up the canyon again, leading their horses. The physical tracks remained clear, though Silas still hadn’t sensed any further live uses of power up ahead. He tried not to worry over what that might mean; most likely, Carden was shielding himself and Lainie, or they had put an impenetrable barrier of several canyon ridges between them and the reach of his mage senses. Or they just might not be using any magic.
They passed another side canyon where the track veered aside then crossed the creek and led back to Yellowbird Canyon, then came to a third. This time, the path continued up the side canyon. There had been rain up here; the trail was sometimes washed away but soon reappeared as footprints in the mud. They followed this canyon past one feeder canyon on the right, and then a second. A short distance up from the second feeder canyon, Silas found the place where the mining crew had crossed that creek over a series of rocks. Silas, Banfrey, and Dobay easily forded the creek with the horses; it was running much lower than the high-water line indicated it had been earlier.
Once across the creek, they followed the trail as it backtracked to the second feeder canyon, then followed that canyon around a wide bend. Past the bend, the canyon grew narrower and shallower as it rose steeply to merge into the mountainside. At the head of the canyon, a stream tumbled down from among the pines and firs on the slope to form the creek that flowed down the gully. Just to the left of the small waterfall, a dark, narrow crack opened into the mountainside. In the midmorning light, the trees closest to the crack had a gray, unhealthy look that reminded Silas of the grass around the mining dig that Lainie had shown him.
They left their mounts in the bend of the canyon, where the bank was wide enough for comfort and there was plenty of grazing. Silas put a keeper charm on the horses so he could call them back if they wandered off, then, taking their gear with them, the three men climbed to the top of the gully. The ground there was thick with footprints, all leading into the opening in the mountainside. Silas went to the opening and peered into the blackness of the cave. It was silent and seemed to be empty, but without knowing for sure whether or not the mining party was close by, he didn’t want to risk giving away his presence by using a mage light. He detected traces of Carden’s and Lainie’s power, but mostly he felt the dark, cold, malign weight of the power from the ore.
He returned to Banfrey and Dobay, who waited a short distance away from the cave entrance. “They went in there, all right. Let’s figure out how we’re going to do this.”
“Figure, nothing!” Banfrey exclaimed. “My baby girl’s in there with that renegade wizard and that son of a bitch Gobby! I’m going in, that’s how I’m going to do this.”
Dobay grabbed his arm. “Three of us against almost twenty men? An’ that wizard? We’ll get ourselves killed if we just go charging in, an’ that won’t help Miss Lainie none.”
“We’ll get her back, Banfrey,” Silas said, trying to sound calm. His impulse to go after Lainie seemed nearly as powerful as her father’s, but Dobay was right. “I know she’s still alive; I felt her power in there.” Alive, but in what condition, he didn’t want to think about. “Let’s make a plan first, and then we’ll go in with a fighting chance of getting her and coming back out again.”
Banfrey still looked ready to run into the cave right then, but he said, “Okay, then. A plan. Let’s make it quick, and let’s make it a good one.”
12
THERE WAS NO way of knowing how long or how far they descended into the mountain in the dark. For Lainie, the world was reduced to pain – the roughness of the rocky tunnel floor scraping against her hands and knees, the sharp twinge in her injured wrist every time she put weight on it, the prickling burn of the magical binding on her hand, the cold agony that flooded her veins and pressed down upon her lungs and heart. The Sh’kimech’s presence bore down on her, dragging her into the dark.
This was how it would be, her mind forever trapped in darkness, her body helpless to resist the will of the Sh’kimech. She wouldn’t die; much worse than death, she would live on like this. For how long? The rest of her natural life? Forever? Terror at the thought chilled her right down to her bones and dissolved her muscles into weakness. Only Carden’s compulsion spell driving her on kept her from collapsing into a quivering, immobile heap.
At long last, the downward slope of the tunnel leveled out, and the close walls were replaced by a feeling of a vast space around her. The sense of the Sh’kimech inside of her and around her surged. Here, said an infinite multitude of voices that were yet one voice. This is our home.
Lainie extended her magical senses, feeling the expanse of the cavern and the long veins of the Sh’kimech mindsoul that spread out from it, reaching far and wide throughout the earth of the Wildings. Once, they told her, speaking in chorus, they had been as numerous as the sands of the earth or the stars in the sky, but the long ages had diminished them, as had the theft of their mindsoul by Carden and others who had attempted to take their power for themselves. Without bodies, the Sh’kimech had no means of reproduction or procreation, no way to create new generations. The only way they could renew and replenish themselves was by adding the life-force of a mortal creature to theirs.
Come, join us, do our work, and live forever as one of us. The cold tendrils grasped and tugged at her.
No, Lainie protested, fighting back against their pull. I want to be with my Pa, and Bunky and Snoozer and Mala and Rat, and see Mr. Vendine again. I want to dance and play games and walk under the sun and stars.
As our servant, your body will remain yours. As you act as our hands on the surface of the world, you will walk under the light whenever you wish. Only you will never be alone, for we will always be with you, and our strength will be added to yours. You will have power beyond your imagining.
No! she cried out silently, or perhaps not silently. That isn’t what I want!
With all he
r heart and will, she pushed them away. The Sh’kimech retreated a bit and their grasp loosened, though they still didn’t let go.
A sharp, solid pain in Lainie’s side pulled her awareness back to the physical world. “Stupid bitch!” Carden’s voice came to her through the veil of the Sh’kimech’s presence around her. “I asked you a question, I expect you to answer!”
Lainie held out her right hand, the ore still bound to it by the glowing strand of orange magic. “Take – it – away,” she pled through the pain and the compulsion spell.
“When you answer me,” Carden said. “Is this the place?”
“Yes.” Yes, yes!, the Sh’kimech eagerly echoed within her. They wanted Carden, too, Lainie remembered. To destroy him. Or…
He is also strong, the Sh’kimech said. If you refuse to serve us, then perhaps he will do. He seems willing enough.
The pain of the ore in her hand and the magical binding disappeared, along with Carden’s compulsion in her mind. Lainie’s vision cleared, revealing a faint glow of orange light. Carden was crouched beside her, a mad smile on his face. The globe of light hovered over his head; now that their prizes were within their reach, the Sh’kimech had decided to tolerate it, at least for the moment. Ashy dust, the remnants of the lumps of ore, fell from Carden’s hand. Rage mixed with glee echoed through her – the Sh’kimech were angry at the theft and destruction of more of their mindsoul, but by taking their power, the man was willingly putting himself under their control.
They would use him as their weapon, and he wouldn’t even try to resist.
“You idiot!” Lainie shouted at Carden. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”