Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2)

by Jennifer Melzer

  As if he knew what she was thinking, Finn wondered aloud, “Do you think it’s watching us?”

  “Not watching,” Bren called back. “Listening. Delving into the depths of our minds and determining how best to destroy us.”

  Lorelei swallowed against the aching dryness in her throat, a loud gulp that echoed through the cavernous vacancy of the hall.

  “We shouldn’t make it wait,” Finn decided. “We came here for a fight. I say we find this thing and kill it before it kills us. I don’t like things messing around in my head.”

  “I don’t imagine there’s much in there to mess around with,” Lorelei countered.

  Without missing a beat, he shot back, “Mostly mental conjurations of you naked, but I’m not sharing those with anyone.”

  “Conjurations,” she tittered, attempting to hide her embarrassment behind humor. It was the strangest time in the world for her to be thinking about him picturing her naked, but it somehow managed to ease the tension just a little. “That’s an awfully big word, Finn.”

  “I have a few of those in my vocabulary,” he shrugged. “Not many, but I hang onto them for special occasions. To try and impress the ladies, you know.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  “I don’t know, are you impressed yet?”

  Snorting laughter, she shook her head and returned her attention to Brendolowyn up ahead. He’d withdrawn his wisps, relying on torchlight alone to guide him, but their eyes were starting to adjust to that heavy and unnatural darkness. She could see looming doors in the distance, broad and tall and black, and she didn’t know how she knew, but those doors would lead them to the drakoren.

  Heading in that direction, she reached beside her instinctively and found Finn’s hand waiting to grasp hers. Tangling their fingers together, she squeezed. She needed that reassurance, as the closer they grew to that door, the darker her thoughts began to grow. She couldn’t grab onto them and pin them down, but felt them needling at her unconscious thoughts and growing her apprehension with every step.

  “Scared, Princess?” Finn asked softly, disentangling his hand from hers and lowering his arm across her back to draw her near.

  “A little,” she confessed.

  “Me too,” he admitted.

  Knowing he was scared should not have comforted her, but it did, and she snuggled in close to his chest as they walked and wished they could just turn back and run away. They could hide together somewhere, and let the world fall apart all around them.

  No.

  Even though she resented having that weight lowered onto her shoulders, that was not something she could ever do.

  She owed it to her people, her father’s people and her mother’s, to all the people of Vennakrand, to see it through to the end. Even the gods were counting on her. She didn’t know why, or what made her so special, if she really had the light of a god inside her, but in the end none of that mattered. It fell to her to make things right, and she was going to do it.

  Brendolowyn reached those ominous doors long before they did. He stood studying them, head tilted back as he read the inscription chiseled into the stone. When they finally approached, he gestured for Finn to come forward and help him budge them from their ancient, rusted hinges. Lorelei crossed her arms and watched them grunt and strain to wrest them. From time to time she glanced back over her shoulder and into the darkness. She swore she still saw ghosts, bodies with hollow eyes lurking on the edge of the faint light. She shuddered and returned her attention to the groaning doors, watching as dust and stone rained down over the men. Pebbles plinked off the floor and several small spiders scattered away from the disturbance and into the gloom to hide.

  Finn did a jerky dance, running frantic fingers through his hair and down his arms to rid himself of invisible invaders of the eight-legged variety, and she stepped in to help brush him off. Tilting her head around his jittery body, she was instantly drawn to the eerie, metallic smell of centuries of stale air crawling outward to choke them. Finn, still dancing, buried a cough into his shoulder, and Brendolowyn sneezed several times before finally stepping back and turning his head away from the gaping black chasm that would lead them into the belly of Great Sorrow.

  The darkness beyond that door was blacker than black, a seemingly immovable presence that barely budged as torchlight stretched in to chip away at it. Even when she stepped between them, holding her torch into the cavern, it was impossible to see further than a few feet in front of her. She stepped back with a gasp, as she looked down at her feet and realized just beyond her toes was a narrow walkway no broader than the width of her own shoulders.

  Her light hardly stretched beyond the reach of her arm, but she swore she glimpsed a labyrinthine series of dangerous passages, equally narrow and in some places no wider than a footstep where the walkway crumbled with time. Winding deep into the bowels of the mountain, there seemed to be no end to the darkness, and she sidestepped into Finn, who instinctively drew her close as all three of them stared into that chasm.

  “It is as I feared,” Brendolowyn shook his head. “The very air itself is cursed.”

  “Cursed? How?”

  “Light will barely part it, making it damn near impossible to see as we place one precarious foot in front of the other.”

  “You mean the torches won’t really light the way?” Her shriek of dismay echoed into the relentless black.

  “I’m afraid not, and the disrepair will be severe, as the dragon who overtook this hall will have destroyed many of the passages allowing travel toward its lair.”

  “How are we even supposed to get down there?”

  “Very carefully would be my guess,” Finn muttered.

  “We will have to stick close together,” Bren added. “As close as the narrow walkway will allow. We keep our eyes on our feet. The greatest danger, other than the darkness, will be loss of footing.”

  “Can’t you use magic to light the way?” she asked.

  She could tell from the twisted expression he wore, he did not want to use magic unless he absolutely had to. Even something as simple as a ball of light would slowly chip away at his reserve of energy, and if the endless darkness below them was any indication of how long they would need his light, she knew he would be completely drained long before they met with the enemy they’d come to defeat.

  “It’s okay.” She reached over and touched his forearm, swallowing her apprehension. “We will manage with the torches. Reserve your magic for a foe greater than mere darkness.” Offering him a reassuring smile, it was a hard gesture to make, but she knew she needed to be strong.

  “I will go first,” the mage offered.

  “No,” Finn insisted, reaching out to grip the sleeve of Brendolowyn’s robe before he was able to step beyond reach. “My eyes are better suited to darkness,” he explained. “I will lead the way. You bring up the rear, and always keep Lorelei in sight.”

  “As you wish.”

  For a silent moment, they exchanged something unspoken, an agreement that required no words, and then Finn cast a meaningful look down at her before he stepped beyond the reach of her hand and nearly disappeared into the yawning black chasm beyond the door.

  That darkness gobbled away at the light of his torch like some hungry monster that hadn’t been fed in thousands of years, making him appear as little more than a speck of orange fire glowing just beyond an arm’s length away.

  “Can you see far?” Bren asked him.

  “Further than I’d like to,” he called back. “Lorelei, stay behind me, hold onto my belt if you can.”

  She nodded stiffly, but she had to force her feet to move because at first they were unwilling to follow her command. Finally, she shuffled them forward, hand reaching out until she felt the soft, still-damp leather of Finn’s belt. She looped her fingers around it, probably too tight, but she couldn’t loosen them no matter how she tried. Her free hand held her torch aloft, the light fluttering as though some unseen wind rattled agai
nst the flame.

  Her mouth felt dry, her tongue thick in her mouth. It was like she’d swallowed mouthfuls of sand and couldn’t produce enough saliva to counterbalance that awful feeling. She reasoned that she should be comforted by the two men that were with her: the strongest, most powerful U’lfer warrior she’d ever known—a warrior she’d seen tear trolls to pieces and make unrecognizable puddles of bone and blood out of orcs—and a sorcerer who survived the arena of Bok’naal and made the journey with her lifetime after repeated lifetime and always made it out alive.

  She did not relax in the wake of that realization, but it did bring her some comfort to realize they had made the journey before, and all three of them had once come to the place where the monster waited to destroy them.

  All three of them were going to walk out of it that time.

  Whatever it took, they were going to do it right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The silence of that darkness was terrifying, to put it lightly. In the hall, it hadn’t seemed even half as overwhelming as it did once they began to make their descent. He kept expecting to hear scuttling, wings flapping as unidentifiable bodies swooped through the darkness, dripping water blooping into puddles. Anything but the stifling quiet beyond their own footsteps, their breath and the dribble of stone loosening beneath their boots. Every once in a while someone swallowed, a rigid echo of fear that almost felt comforting, but for the most part it was just quiet.

  Finn also had no idea what time it was anymore. Not that he’d ever cared much about time in the first place, but in the deep, black and empty belly of the mountain it felt exaggerated. Every minute was an hour. Each hour became a day. Eventually he convinced himself they’d been inching their way across the bones of the mountain since the dawn of time. Crumbling endlessly into the abysmal chasm below, the scarcely seen passage wound on for eternity. There was no end in sight.

  The foreboding gloom and the quiet gave a man plenty of time with his own thoughts. He could only expend so much energy on the watching of his own feet and the awareness of her finger looped through his belt. He focused on his stride, making sure he didn’t take steps too large for her to keep up with him. It was ridiculous. Even with his keen eyesight, he could scarcely see his boots and the muted golden light of their torches hardly carved a dent in the path before them.

  Gnashing away at his already worn resolve, the darkness preyed upon him. Minute whispers of doubt festered in his mind. The pact they made in Nua Duaan felt hollow and pointless, and coupled with the things Brendolowyn said to him while camped outside the mountain, his already bristling thoughts grew thornier.

  They poked at his tender mind, stirred the beast beneath his skin and made him irritable. He snapped without thought or reason whenever Lorelei spoke to him, then felt guilty about it afterward. Only he was too perturbed with the situation and the fact he was quite likely spending the last little bit of his life unable to even look at her because it was so bloody dark in that place.

  “It branches off there.” Lorelei gestured past him with her hand, a movement he scarcely saw, but when he followed the flailing line of it he discovered she was right. “I don’t know how I saw it, but I did. That looks like a platform of some sort.”

  “Well done, my lady,” the mage’s voice echoed forward, the very sound of it grating on Finn’s nerves. “It’s probably a service landing.”

  “You mean we’ll be able to sit down there and take some rest? This darkness is… exhausting. It feels like we’ve been walking for miles, but I get the strangest feeling it hasn’t been that far at all.”

  “We may. Finn, follow that passage.”

  The command made him feel like a thorn bush—jagged, prickly and ready to shred the next person who told him what to do. “Shouldn’t we keep going? We’ll never get to the bottom if we stop every time the mood strikes.”

  “We haven’t stopped once,” she pointed out. “And it’s been hours.”

  “Has it?” He wasn’t sure. It felt like hours, but was it really? He didn’t trust anything in that oppressive murk. He only knew he wanted to rage, to burst free of the constrictions of his armor and clothing, drop down on all fours and race dangerously downward until his feet touched solid ground again.

  “It feels like hours.” He felt the tug on his belt loop when she shrugged, the movement jostling him a little and making him feel as though he might plummet into the same darkness he’d wanted to race through only moments before. “I want to sit down, breathe easy. Even if just for a few minutes.”

  As begrudged as he was to comply, he was actually grateful for the feel of cold, damp stone against his back. The solidity and promise that he wasn’t about to tumble precariously to his death with a single misstep seemed to take some of the pressure off and he started to relax. Pushing his back hard into the stone, he rolled his head along shoulders that ached as though the world itself had been resting on them. Eyes closed, it didn’t matter much, he supposed. The glowing edges of his torch, which he held casually at his side and could feel burning upward and singing the hairs on his wrist, barely reached his lids to prod at them. He might as well have been blind, for all it was worth.

  “When I was a kid I used to play this game with my sister,” he rumbled into his shoulder and scraped his chin along the stiff leather absently. “She called it Blind Wolf Run. She’d strap a blindfold around my face and make me chase her through the woods behind the cottage, relying on nothing but my sense of smell. This feels sort of like that, only I don’t know what I’m sniffing for.”

  “Have we come very far, do you think?” She settled in beside him, on his right and though her nearness should have been a comfort, it only served to annoy him.

  “How should I know?” he snapped. “I don’t look back, I look forward, and the only thing I can tell you is we’re not even almost there. There is no bottom of the mountain.”

  “Finn…”

  “What? What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want anything. What is wrong with you? You’ve been testy and…”

  “What is your…? What’s wrong? Take a look around, Princess. You’ll realize pretty quick how stupid that questions is.”

  “I get it, Finn. Things are bad.”

  The momentary surge of her emotions poured through him, making him feel guilty. It was like spilling oil on an already out of control fire. Why were her emotions his to deal with too? She didn’t have to carry around his rage with her everywhere she went, did she? It was pretty gods damned unfair, as far as exchanges went. He was forced to contend with all her tender little feelings, but she didn’t get him at all.

  “Bad? That’s an understatement,” he sneered, even though he knew she probably couldn’t see him. It made him feel better, and that was all that mattered for the moment. “We’re tiptoeing through a sheet of obscurity, always just one step away from falling into the nothing. Things aren’t just bad…”

  “You’re not the only one here, you know. We’re all in this together.”

  “Yes, you’re absolutely right. Maybe we should build a fire, sit around it holding hands and singing songs. We could talk about your feelings and how hard they are for you to deal with. That’ll make everything better.” A trail of orange carved through the darkness as he brought his arms up in exasperation. “How do you feel, Princess? Scared? Confused? Hopeless?”

  “Finn.” Brendolowyn stepped into his line of vision, lifted his hand and conjured a wisp of light that spread dully out to prod at his eyelids. “You’re letting the drakoren get to you. Take a deep breath and try to remember why we’re here.”

  “You take a deep breath, Mage. Both of you just back off and leave me alone.”

  “No,” he refused. “We swore to look after each other, and right now you need looking after. You need something to distract you from—”

  Surging forward, he reached out on instinct and sunk his fingers into Bren’s robes. He jerked him close one-handed, could make out the carved shadow
s of his sharp face through narrowed eyes. “How about I punch you in the teeth and see how that works as a distraction.”

  “Finn!” she shrieked.

  The blast of energy shot him backward and into the wall so unexpectedly he barely had time to brace himself or curse before he collided with the stone. Neck snapping back, his head cracked into the wall and the last thing he felt was the heaviness overwhelming his massive body as it slid toward the ground. Dirty orange flickers of light prodded at the edges of his fluttering lids.

  Somewhere in the darkness, he heard a fretful voice mutter, “Was that really necessary?”

  “He needs a nap.”

  “And now we can finally be alone.” The mage’s voice carved through the heaviness pressing in all around him. Bodies rustled, but Finn couldn’t see them. It was like he had no eyes, and everything was so very heavy. He was too tired and weak to lift his head or open his eyes, not that it really mattered anyway. “We hardly ever get to be alone since we left Dunvarak. Those little hunts of his are barely long enough.”

  “We’ll have plenty of alone time when all of this is done.” They were kissing. He could hear the smacking wetness of mouths moving together, the whisper of fabric and leather as bodies stretched to achieve closeness. A long moan escaped her, followed by a scolding whisper as she withdrew. “You could have killed him with that little stunt, you know.”

  “I have spent the years of my life practicing the art of control, my lady. One does not come by this level of power through being reckless.”

  “I love your power,” she cooed. “Still, what if he’d cracked his skull? We need him alive. You heard what the seer said, Bren. We can’t let him die, no matter what we want. We can sort it all out when we have what we came here for and we are free of this place.”

  “He’s never going to stand aside so we can be together. Maybe it would be better to let him die here… The cycle doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is you. You are mine, as you should be.”