by JA Andrews
He sank into a chair at the table while Patlon closed the entrance. The wind whistled through with a final, loud protest before it swung shut and the mountain closed around him like a shield against the vulnerability of the Sweep.
Will dropped his head into his hands. Everything was so much worse than it had been a few hours ago. The room around him was silent until Hal explained what had happened to Alaric, Evangeline, and the dwarves.
“I know the mountain you’re talking about,” Douglon said. “The tunnels will take us almost that far.”
“Cousin.” Patlon’s tone was hard. “Escaping a dragon was one thing—although I’m not sure even that’s enough for Horgoth to forgive us for bringing outsiders into the tunnels. We can’t take a band of humans and an elf on a tour to the western end.”
“You don’t have to come,” Douglon answered.
“Horgoth,” Patlon answered, speaking slowly and clearly, “is going to kill you.”
“He’s wanted to kill me for years.” There was a rustling of paper and Will saw the edges of a map spread out on the table and Douglon let out a short laugh. “This is one of the first times he’d actually have a reason to. Makes the relationship feel more…complete.”
Patlon let out an irritated breath and dropped onto the bench.
“You with me, cousin?” Douglon asked.
“I’m always with you,” Patlon grumbled.
“Excellent. The route we’ll take will lead us here…”
The sound of Sora, Hal, and the dwarves discussing their route filled the room with echoing murmurs and Will stared at the table through his fingers. Killien was going to attack the enclave with an army of frost goblins. The truth of it tasted sour. He wanted to shake the man. To drag him back south on the Sweep, back to when he was rational. To break through the obsession that drove him to make the Morrow powerful. No, not obsession. Fear. The fear that if he didn’t strengthen the Morrow, the Roven would destroy what he loved. And now he was going to kill hundreds of people, bringing even more violence to the Sweep.
Were all wars started from fear? He turned the idea over in his mind. Perhaps. Fear that sank so deep that it grew up in the forms of anger and greed. Anger that the fear existed, and greed for anything that would stop it.
Was he here on the Sweep because of fear? Will spun his ring slowly, pushing away the immediate refusal of the idea and forcing himself to consider it. He’d first come because he’d been afraid Queensland was in danger. But after that, what had driven him the entire time, if he really looked at it, was fear. The fear that had been planted the night Ilsa was taken, the night Vahe had stepped into his life and murdered and stole. The night when the sense of safety he’d always lived in had shattered.
Alaric leaned over the map and asked the dwarves a question. It was such a familiar sight, Alaric in his Keeper’s robe, poring over some book or map. Whatever he’d asked, Douglon and Patlon both paused and considered the map before nodding. Will rubbed his hands across his face, scrubbing at the exhaustion. That was familiar too, Alaric asking the right question at the right time.
It didn’t take much soul-searching to see that the last year had been fueled by another fear, more recent than Vahe. Will ran his fingers along the cuff of the greyish robe he wore. The fabric was thin and the stitches along the edge were irregular. It was simple, basic fabric with no pressure and no expectations. A small hole had formed next to the seam, and he worried at it with his finger.
The bench shifted next to him as Sora sat down. She glanced down at his hands. He tried to smile at her, but somehow the effort fell flat. He pushed his finger at the hole, widening it a bit.
“I can lend you a needle and thread,” she offered, the hint of a different sort of question in her voice.
Will dropped the cuff from his fingers and ran his hands over his face again. “This isn’t really worth mending, is it?”
She considered him for a long moment, her eyes dark green in the light of the glimmer moss. He spun his ring, pushing aside the edges of the bandages to get at it.
“Do you think you’ll ever go home?” he asked her. “Could you ever go back and just be you? Somehow not tangled up in the expectations they have for you?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled his hand over toward her and began to pick at the knot on his bandage. “You shouldn’t need these anymore.” She picked at the knot in silence for a minute and Will watched her hands. Her nails were rimmed with dirt. Scratches and thin scars nicked her skin.
“Even with the Morrow,” she said quietly, “there were expectations. They saw me partly as a ranger, but mostly as a foreigner.” She worked the knot apart and started to unwrap the bandage. “But they had those expectations because it’s what I gave them. If I wanted the Morrow to see me as more, I would have had to have shown them more.”
She pulled the last layer of bandage off and picked up his hand, tilting his palm toward the glimmer moss. The skin was red and shiny. Sora ran her finger over the edge of where the blister had been and he flinched at the sharpness of the sensation. She raised an eyebrow.
“It’s sensitive.” He opened and closed his hand. There was a jolt when his fingers touched his palm, but not exactly pain.
Sora gave an approving nod and motioned for his other hand. “You’re the first Keeper I’ve ever met, Will. I don’t have any idea what a Keeper is supposed to be like. But I’ve seen you do some astonishing things.”
“You wouldn’t be impressed by pushing heat toward frost goblins, or starting candles with my finger if you’d spent time with other Keepers.”
“I’m not talking about that,” she said, nodding her head toward where Rass sat nestled in a corner, braiding together a wide, complicated band of grass. “It’s more like what you did with Rass.”
Will let out something between a laugh and a snort. “I’m never going to admit to Alaric that I knew her for weeks and thought she was just an odd little girl.” He watched her fiddle with the grass, picking a new piece off the floor next to her where she had a small bundle, and weave it into the rest. “Until she exploded the ground in front of me, I had no idea she was anything else.”
Sora shook her head. “You saw her as a little girl, when everyone else saw her as…nothing. No one else even noticed her.”
“She came and talked to me,” Will objected. “The first afternoon I was in Porreen.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I talked back, Sora,” he said, trying to to hide his exasperation. He shifted, wishing she’d hurry up so he could have his hand back.
Instead, she stopped and looked him in the face. “And you fed her an avak.”
Will drew his hand back in surprise until her grip stopped him. “How do you know that?”
“I told you I was watching you. Your stealthy creeping around had caught my attention.”
“I obviously wasn’t stealthy enough.”
“I hadn’t noticed Rass before that.” She pulled his hand closer and picked at the stubborn knot. “And I notice a lot. You set the avak on the bench and drew her out. Then you talked to her, just like she was anyone else.”
“She was better than everyone else. She was the only safe person in the entire festival.”
“And then somehow you convinced a pratorii to trust you. To walk with you, to eat food she’d never eaten.” The knot came loose and Sora began unwinding the bandage. “To leave the Sweep with you.”
“I didn’t do anything…special to make that happen.”
“I’m not saying you did. I’m saying it happened because of who you are. And it wasn’t just Rass who trusted you. Hal did too.” She pulled the last of the bandage off and lifted his palm to examine it. When she rubbed her finger across his palm, he almost kept it still.
Hal was over by the shelves helping Patlon sort through some supplies.
“He’s never going to believe I didn’t do something to trick him.”
“Maybe not, but I believe you. And I believe you
did nothing to trick Killien into trusting you either. Nothing more than seeing him. Seeing past the expectations that everyone else puts on him, past the expectations that he’s built up around himself. And befriending what you saw.”
“You don’t know that.” He spun his ring. It was so satisfying after not being able to reach it for so long.
“Yes I do.” She let go of his hand.
He rubbed his palms together, trying to press out the weird sensitivity. She kept her eyes focused on his hands.
“Because you did it to me too.”
Will’s hands froze and something hitched in his throat. She started gathering up the bandages.
“So, from the little I know about Keepers,” she said, “if I were in charge of choosing them, you’re the sort of person I’d want to pick.” She wrapped the bandages into a bundle.
He reached out and put his hand on hers to still them. Her skin and the jumbled edges of the bandage shot a painfully strong sensation across his hand.
“Come with me to Queensland.”
Chapter Forty
The words shoved their way out before Will could stop them.
Sora’s eyes widened. He squeezed her hand, ignoring the sharp twinge in his palm. “Once we’ve found Ilsa, will you come back with me? Not forever, if you don’t want to, but for a little while. I can’t stay here. I’ll have to take Ilsa home.”
She stared at him, speechless.
“You don’t have to tell me now, of course.” He let go of her hands, pushing down the regret that threatened to drown him. “But if you’re willing, I’d like to show it to you.”
Alaric cleared his throat from behind them and Will turned to see him watching Will with a wide smile. “We should get going. The way the mountains run, if we move quickly and make tonight a short night sleep, we think we can beat Killien to the enclave.” Alaric raised an eyebrow toward him and Sora. “If you two are ready.”
Sora pushed herself up and walked over to her pack. Will watched her before shoving himself up from the table. Alaric stepped up and slung his arm over Will’s shoulder. Evangeline asked Sora a question, and the two stood with their heads close together, looking in Sora’s pack.
“I see a new future for the Keepers,” Alaric said with a grin.
Will spun his ring. “That future is terrifying.”
Alaric laughed. “It gets better.” Then he paused. “But also it stays terrifying.”
They walked for hours through the dwarven tunnels, the blackness barely ruffled by the bowls of glimmer moss they carried. Douglon led with Rass. Evangeline and Sora went behind them, talking in low voices while Will and Alaric followed behind them. Hal brought up the rear, peppering Patlon with questions about the dwarves.
“Do you think there’s any chance we’re going to find Ilsa?” Will asked Alaric when the featureless walk through the darkness began to feel as though it was all they’d ever done.
“I don’t think finding her is going to be the problem.” Alaric pulled a cord out from under his shirt with a glitter of yellow light. “The problem is going to be getting to her. The mountain where the enclave is held isn’t terribly big, and the Roven are camped only on the southern side of it. Hal has been there a number of times. There’s a network of tunnels near the front of the mountain. The ones that head toward the back are barred and locked to keep people from doing what we’re doing, sneaking in. Patlon believes the humans tunneled all the way out the back side of the mountain, and that the locks shouldn’t be a problem. The dwarves and Hal seem fairly hopeful that we can find a back entrance and get in without having to walk through an army of Roven.”
“That would be nice.”
Lunchtime passed, noted only by Douglon passing a sack of hard rolls down that tasted of honey and pine nuts. Sora contributed some sticks of dried meat, and they kept walking.
The day was a strange mix of tedious walking through darkness, gnawing worry about what lay ahead, and pure enjoyment of talking with Alaric. The dwarves kept up the humming song as a backdrop. Will had to stop himself from talking too fast, asking too many questions. His mind felt awake in a way it hadn’t been in ages. There was something inside him that was free, reveling in the fact that there was nothing to watch out for, nothing to keep hidden. By the time Douglon called back that they were close to where they’d stop for the night, he felt more normal than he had in ages. Which considering he’d spent the day in darkness, was saying a lot.
This cave was nothing like the ones with the scattered lights. This was merely a room hollowed out of the side of the tunnel with a flat floor and more darkness. Will finished his cold meal and closed his eyes. The cave spun. It had been two days since he’d had a real night’s sleep. The others murmured around him, all their voices enveloped by the silence of the cave. He leaned back against his pack. Even the stone floor wasn’t enough to make him uncomfortable.
There was mention of several more hours of tunnels tomorrow, speculation on how they’d cross the open Sweep between their exit and the enclave mountain, and a debate between the dwarves about the likelihood of human tunnels actually reaching the back of the mountain. But Will couldn’t get his mind to focus on any of it. Soon there was only the feeling of his body sinking down against the hard floor and the mountain wrapping around him like a cocoon.
The next morning Will discovered Rass curled up next to him.
“I’m tired of tunnels,” she groaned when he roused her.
“I’m a little tired of them myself,” Will said, “but I don’t think it’s too much farther.”
“How long until we’re back near living things?” Will asked Douglon.
Douglon considered Rass with a small frown. “It’s not far to the grasses now.” He reached down and lifted her up. “Just a couple hours.”
“I can walk,” she objected. “You can’t carry me for hours.”
“You’re just a wee snip of a thing. The only fear is that I’ll drop you and not even notice.”
She made a petulant little noise, but wrapped her arms around his neck and dropped her head onto his shoulder. Douglon walked back into the tunnel, beginning to hum. Patlon grabbed some glimmer moss and everyone followed.
The hours dragged on. To pass the time, Will told one story after another, first just to Hal and Alaric, but soon Sora and Evangeline had moved close enough to hear too. He’d told four reasonably long ones and was convinced the walk was never going to end when they spilled out into a small storage room. The dwarves ordered everyone to wait, then moved to the far wall and shoved at a large rock. Patlon disappeared through a gap while sweet, fresh, clean air rushed in and swirled through the room. Rass picked her head up from Douglon’s shoulder and looked around sleepily.
In a few moments Patlon was back. “There’s no one nearby. But come out slowly, it’s bright.”
Will filed out with the rest of them. The wind brushed across his face and the clean scents of pine and earth revived him with an almost magical power. He stepped out into a shadowed, rocky gorge with trees stretching up around them, but still, the light was painfully bright. Rass sat in a wide patch of bright green grass, squinting and beaming and running her fingers back and forth through the blades.
The grassy slope they were on angled down, interspersed with bushes and pines until it flattened out onto a wide swath of grass that lay between them and the lone mountain that held the enclave.
Mountain was too big of a word for it, really. Large hill. Oversized outcropping. Whatever it was, it sat detached from the rest of the range, surrounded by a moat of grass.
Off to the south on the far side of the enclave, smoke from dozens of campfires rose into the air. Small bands of rangers roamed across the grass between them and the mountain, and as far out into the Sweep as Will could see. The sun hadn’t reached midday, and if Lilit had been right, Killien shouldn’t reach the mountain for hours.
Of course, they weren’t going to reach it any sooner.
The sky above them was a cl
ear, empty blue, and Will scanned through the trees around them for Talen. Not that there was any way the little hawk could know where he was. A twinge of sadness rippled through him. He cast out into the sky, but found nothing beyond the slow, ponderous energy of the pine trees. He thought of the little bird’s mind and threw an image toward it of where he stood.
The idea faded away, doing nothing. With another look across the empty sky, Will pulled his focus back to the others around him.
“You really think you can find entrances on this side of the mountain?” Alaric asked Douglon.
The dwarf nodded. “Hal says there are tunnels that come this way.”
“I see three places with possible entrances,” Patlon said, pointing out rocky sections of the mountainside. “What does the front of the mountain look like?”
“There’s a huge cave,” Hal answered. “Fifteen mounted men could easily ride abreast each other through the opening. Inside the cave is a lake that’s fed from somewhere under the mountain, and it pours out of the mouth in a waterfall down to another lake down on the Sweep.”
“How high is the cave?”
“A third of the way up the mountain,” Hal answered.
“That makes the top entrance unlikely,” Douglon said. “Unless someone just really liked digging uphill.”
“I think the bottom one is too low,” Sora said. “If there’s water in the caves where the enclaves meet, anyone stupid enough to tunnel down would have been flooded.”
“Agreed.” Patlon tugged on his beard and nodded.
Sora turned to Alaric. “We’re headed for that reddish cliff face about half way up.”
“You don’t seem worried that there are doors blocking all the passages that lead to the back of the mountain,” Hal said. “And they’re locked. The Temur Clan controls the mountain. They’re the only ones with keys. If there even are keys any more.”
“Locked doors aren’t a problem,” Patlon said. “Wide open grassland is a problem.”
“We’ll be seen by a half-dozen scouts if we try to cross here,” Sora agreed. “Most of the clans are here. And each will have their own rangers on the lookout for anything unusual.”