by Lisa Shearin
“I’m still getting that impression,” Jash said. “As in, I’m still feeling a shaking.”
“That’s you,” I told him.
“Oh. Well, you can hardly blame me.”
I didn’t. We had to find the Heart of Nidaar, and not only did the Heart probably not want to be found, it didn’t even want us walking on the continent it had claimed for its own.
Agata still had her hands flat on the ground. “I would compare it to a growl.”
“Do you still say someone was at the controls when the Heart caused that monster wave?” I asked.
“Normally, I’d say yes, but—”
“This isn’t normal.”
“No, it most definitely is not.”
“Kansbar didn’t mention anything about the Heart being sentient.”
Agata stood. “I’m not getting open hostility, more like a warning. The Heart is so attuned to Aquas that it can sense those who don’t belong standing or walking on its surface. I think it’s not having a more violent reaction because we carry pieces of it in the pendant and ring. It may be confused as to how pieces of itself came to be outside of the city. Whenever we land, I should dismount first. Hopefully that will prevent the Heart from striking with an actual earthquake.”
“At least we’ll be flying and not walking,” Jash noted. “Mithryn, my love, have I told you how beautiful you are today and every day?”
The dragon gave him a flat look.
“Did you get a direction?” I asked Agata.
“See those two really tall mountains to the left?”
“Yes.”
“And the slightly smaller one in between?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the one. Or the best I can tell with this growling. It should get clearer the closer we get.”
“Should.”
Agata shrugged. “Gem magic isn’t an exact science.”
Jash squinted against the setting sun. “How far would you say that is?” he asked me.
“If we fly all night, we should be close by sunrise. Barring any interruptions—or eruptions.”
“Barring those.”
We all knew this would be the easy part. The difficulty and danger would come once we were underground and closer to the Heart.
I suspected that Sandrina Ghalfari had been able to track our fleet through me. We had both signed our names in blood to the front page of Rudra Muralin’s record of Kansbar’s torture. That had done more than enable us to read the words on the pages; it had linked us on some level, the same level that had allowed Sarad Nukpana to infest my dreams. We’d all signed and read the book. Yet, I couldn’t locate Sandrina. I didn’t know why. Perhaps, since Sandrina and the interrogation record were both using Khrynsani magic, she was immune from tracking by non-Khrynsani forces.
There were entirely too many questions and not nearly enough answers, or even logical reasons.
If Sandrina had already reached and gained control of the Heart, she’d also be able to track us using the shards in our possession. I’d taken to warding myself. Agata and I had agreed to do the same to the shards once we started our flight inland.
“Will warding the shards affect the Heart’s ability to perceive us as friendlies?” I asked her.
“I will still be able to correct our flight path as needed,” Agata said. “And I would imagine the Heart will still be able to sense the shards.”
Jash shifted uneasily. “Is that a good or a bad thing?”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I would advise that the crews stay on the ships as much as possible,” Agata told me. “The Heart’s influence lessens over water.”
“So ‘less influence’ is what stirred up that mammoth wave?”
Agata tried a smile. It didn’t quite make it. “Less is relative.”
“What’s to stop it from kicking up another wave once we’re gone?”
“We—and any Khrynsani or Sythsaurians—will keep it occupied with our presence. I believe the Heart will save its strength for what it sees as a more immediate threat.”
“And since we have two pieces of it, the Heart likes us?” Jash ventured.
“I wouldn’t go that far. However, I don’t think the Heart will destroy us outright until it has more information.”
“So we don’t make any sudden or aggressive moves.”
“I wouldn’t advise it.”
I had a pleasant thought. “And if the Khrynsani have yet to reach the Heart and don’t have a piece of the stone with which to soothe or at least confuse it …”
Agata’s smile made it this time. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near them right now.”
Chapter Four
The Heart of Nidaar had growled at us. It’d thrown rocks at my team.
There had been a bit of an avalanche while we were gone.
The rest of the team weren’t where we’d left them. They were mounted up with Sapphira and Amaranth hovering over the water about twenty yards from the beach.
Seeing the slabs of cliff that’d landed entirely too close to where they’d been, I would’ve taken to the air, too.
“Oops,” Agata muttered from her saddle in front of me as Mithryn coasted down to the beach.
“What the hell did you do up there?” Dasant bellowed over the water.
“Think the Heart’s finished throwing things?” I asked Agata.
She tossed a glance back up at the cliff. “If something’s already loose it’ll still fall, but I think the Heart’s finished—for the moment.”
“Long enough for all of us to land for a few minutes?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but probably.”
I signaled for Dasant and Calik to land on the beach, but to stay as close to the water and as far from the escarpment as possible. We landed, and Jash and Phaelan quickly switched dragons. Since Phaelan had only ridden a dragon once—and since I’d been the one who had insisted on bringing him—we’d decided that he’d be on Mithryn with me. While they switched dragons, Agata and I told everyone what had happened topside.
Phaelan hated magic, but right now he looked like a man who wanted nothing more than to be able to levitate.
“So the entire continent is possessed?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t call it ‘possessed,’” Agata said. “More like protective. It knows we’re here. However, since we have the shards, it’s not acting openly against us.”
Elsu snorted. “It’s not trying to kill you. Us, it tried to squash. We barely got airborne in time.”
“We won’t be touching down until close to dawn,” I told her. “No landing, hopefully no problems.”
“So, once we land, how are we supposed to find and get into the city?” Malik asked. “Walk politely?”
“I’ll take Mithryn on point, and Agata will fine-tune our direction as we go—and see if she can talk the Heart into believing that we mean it no harm.”
Our mission was to prevent the Khrynsani and Sythsaurians from getting their hands on the Heart of Nidaar. If they obtained it as a power source, the portals to the Sythsaurians’ world would open, allowing vast armies to pour into the Seven Kingdoms. Every option was on the table to keep them from the Heart, including destroying it. The Saghred had to be emptied of souls before it could be smashed to bits. The Heart of Nidaar was self-sustaining, no souls needed for fuel. The Saghred had been the size of a man’s fist, but the Heart of Nidaar was said to be considerably larger—and embedded inside of a mountain. Even if it could be destroyed, we might not be able to get close enough to do it. But we wouldn’t know that for certain until we found it.
We veiled ourselves and the three sentry dragons before we rose above the top of the escarpment. Veils were a quiet magic, and we were highly adept mages. Even so, those who would be hunting us were equally as skilled.The earthquake nine hundred years before had left behind a landscape that looked like mountain ranges in miniature. It would have been a slow a
nd dangerous passage on foot, but our dragons skimmed over the jagged peaks, leaving only a few feet between us and them. It was too close for Phaelan’s comfort.
While everyone on the team had flight experience with sentry dragons, Dasant and I had logged the most time in the pilot’s saddle. Sentry dragons preferred the pilots they’d trained with, but they would adapt to other hands at the reins. They just needed to be experienced hands, or shenanigans would follow.
Sapphira had her pilot/partner Calik at the reins. They would fly as one. Mithryn and Amaranth would likely try and pull a fast one, but it’d merely be a test of our piloting ability rather than actual mutiny. These were three of the best sentry dragons in the Rheskilian squadron. They were professionals and knew how to act like it. They were also highly intelligent and mischievous. The girls would push our boundaries, but once we proved ourselves qualified to hold their reins, all hijinks would end.
Mithryn was out in front with Sapphira and Amaranth behind and to the left and right, Amaranth slightly higher, with Sapphira a little lower. We were all on alert for any form of attack.
Our flight positions weren’t merely defensive.
The area between the coast and the mountain range that was only a distant haze had been mapped, but only in the most rudimentary sense. Landmarks had been marked that were either helpful in orientation or dangerous and to be avoided.
The most recent maps had been made three hundred years ago, the time of the last official expedition to Aquas. The land could have changed since then. No one knew whether the Heart had caused other earthquakes, or whether the land, once disturbed, had continued to shift and settle.
Since marking corrections on a map while flying was impossible at best, suicidal at worst, each dragon had a spy gem mounted on her chest harness. Mithryn’s gem faced forward, Amaranth’s was aimed straight down, and Sapphira’s gem was angled to catch the rear view. Once we’d returned home, combining the views would provide an invaluable source of mapping information for future explorers.
I was counting on the map I had memorized still being somewhat accurate.
I was counting even more on Agata Azul’s skill.
Our ship’s healer had cleared both Agata and Talon for travel. Flight had been do-able; traveling to Nidaar on foot would have been impossible for both of them. They’d nearly drowned in the Heart’s attack on our ships, and while the healer had declared their lungs free of seawater, they had both taken a beating. We all wore filters over our mouths and noses that connected to our helmets, not only to keep dust from getting into our lungs, but to warm our breath in the night air. Deserts might be hot during the day, but the temperatures dropped rapidly at night. Talon and Agata needed to be protected from both dust and cold as much as possible.
The sun had sunk beyond the horizon, but the last rays still illuminated the peaks of the mountain range in their glow, turning the land we flew over from gold and copper to brown and black.
We had been airborne for only an hour. We would not stop until we reached our destination, the base of a mountain whose peak cut a ragged gash across the twilight sky.
We didn’t know what we were going to find and what condition it would be in when we found it. The Heart was in perfect working order. But what about Nidaar? The Cha’Nidaar had never been seen again after my ancestor’s encounter. Without a population, the city would not have been maintained.
We’d be playing this one as we went along, with our primary goal being to keep the Khrynsani from getting anywhere near it.
However, there was one thing we knew we’d be encountering once we got close to the mountains.
A maze of deep canyons.
The Heart had cracked the land like a giant spiderweb, radiating outward from the mountain range. The earthquakes had caused massive splits in the ground, forming rifts and canyons, revealing entrances to dozens of cave networks, any of which could be dead ends.
The weather wizard attack seemed to confirm that the Khrynsani and Sythsaurians had a head start. I had read every book and document, and memorized every map that was in the Khrynsani temple library. But what if the Khrynsani had access to other sources of information? Better, more accurate sources?
The maps didn’t show what was beyond the mountains. The Khrynsani hadn’t cared to know. What they wanted was inside one mountain. Kansbar Nathrach’s party had landed fifty miles south of our location. I had the coordinates from Rudra Muralin’s torture of my ancestor. I knew the mountain they had camped at the foot of. But they had been blindfolded when the Cha’Nidaar had taken them deep inside the mountains to the hidden city, walking for at least half a day. Some of it could have been backtracking to confuse them, but Kansbar hadn’t known, and as a result, neither did I. When he was taken out of the city, he had been blindfolded again, the blindfold removed only when he was on the surface, presumably far away from Nidaar.
The Cha’Nidaar had told my ancestor that they wanted to be left alone. Their queen had told Kansbar that they would never be found again. So far, the Cha’Nidaar had made good on that promise.
The information in all the books I’d read seemed to have come from the same, ancient source. The most revealing had come from Rudra Muralin’s record of my ancestor’s torture, and even that was severely lacking.
Supposedly, the Cha’Nidaar were goblins much like ourselves who left Rheskilia about fifteen hundred years ago for an unknown reason. Some sources said it was due to political differences, others social, and still other religious. We goblins were a contentious lot; it could have been all three and a few more piled on besides.
Regardless, they had set out for the west, to Aquas, a continent as shrouded in mystery then as it was now.
The language that goblins spoke then was as far removed from what was spoken now as it was possible to be. The records of the Goblin language from that time were as confusing as they were sparse. I had attempted to locate an expert in ancient Goblin languages, but there were none to be found, which was hardly surprising considering Sathrik’s penchant for imprisoning and executing not only those who disagreed with him, but also those with higher intellectual capabilities than himself. Of all the Mal’Salin kings, Sathrik had ranked toward the bottom in terms of intellectual curiosity. He had gladly turned over his thinking to Sarad Nukpana. That had been his fatal mistake.
Nidaar was deep inside a mountain. There would not be any trails for us to follow. All we had were knots of intersecting canyons, at least one of which opened into a network of tunnels that led into the interior of the mountains.
It would be up to Agata Azul to lead us through the maze to enter the city of Nidaar.
And up to me and the rest of us to protect her while she did.
Chapter Five
We were still a few hours’ flight away from the base of the mountain range as the sky had just begun to lighten at our backs.
We had all spent the night keenly alert to any physical movement on the ground or magical movement against our senses. I didn’t want to stop until we’d reached our destination, but we needed a rest before we got any closer. The nearer to the mountain that contained Nidaar, the greater the probability of danger.
I scanned the ground for a place to land.
I didn’t choose it.
It chose me.
Directly below was the same scorched and blighted landscape we’d flown over all night. Though the closer we flew to the mountain range, the more broken the ground was, which made sense. The closer to the Heart, the cause of the earthquakes, the greater the destruction. Looming over a relatively flat expanse were the remains of a plateau. One side had collapsed in a tumble of broken rocks, leaving a sharp outcropping behind, though from this angle, it looked more like a cliff.
An all-too-familiar cliff.
I’d been there before. Not in person, but in my dreams.
The dreams I had shared with Sarad Nukpana.
I’d never determined whether my subconscious had chosen the location for our conversati
ons—or was it Sarad’s doing?
If Sarad had somehow influenced it, and here I was in the exact location of that dream…
My mind thought “trap”; my gut said unpleasant coincidence.
Normally, I’d go with my gut, though when dealing with Sarad Nukpana, there was no such thing as a coincidence.
I banked Mithryn toward it for a flyover to see the surrounding land from a cliff-top viewpoint.
Yes. This was it.
I scanned for any sign or remnant of magic. Nothing. I did it again. Still nothing. All I could see was rocky desolation.
I signaled to the others that we were going in.
I chose a spot to set us down. It was clear enough to land, and there was not a living soul to be seen. I’d felt Mithryn’s stomach growling beneath me for the past hour. No doubt she’d love to find a living soul—with meat attached.
The ladies had eaten yesterday morning. Sentry dragons could go for nearly two weeks between meals, though unless you wanted to fly on a hungry dragon, putting them on any kind of diet was ill advised. They were highly trained, but to them, goblins were highly tasty.
I wouldn’t mind feeding them a couple of crunchy Khrynsani.
Sentry dragons could land nearly anywhere. Used as they were in the military and law enforcement, they were accustomed to landing while being shot at. The dragon would simply incinerate their attacker, land, and get down to business.
However, that approach wasn’t nearly as effective when the offensive party was the ground itself.
As she was the dragon carrying the lady in charge of persuading the Heart of Nidaar to behave, Mithryn landed first.
Or at least she tried.
The instant she touched down, the ground began to growl. Agata was right. It was an excellent word to describe it.
I indicated with my legs to Mithryn that she was not to take off again.
The dragon turned her long neck and gave me a side-eye and a rumbling growl of her own.
“Yes,” I told her. “I’m sure.”
She had landed gently, and even politely. The ground didn’t open and swallow us, and the shaking decreased to a faint vibration. It wasn’t a warm welcome by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d take it. It wasn’t like we had a choice.