by Raven Bouray
Chapter 25
Emmaline’s eyes flew open and she found that in her sleep she must have lifted her hands to ward off the fatal blow of that madman’s dagger. Dusty, dirty palms slowly descended, and she pushed her body up from the ground. They really had to get out of here. These dreams were getting stranger and more dangerous, seemingly by the night.
She could still feel the pressure of the high altitude around her body, the thrill of free falling as if she really had been a bird. The terror felt real too and that was less exciting.
Fresh water was just the thing to chase her nightmare away and her neverending flask provided her with enough water to wash off her filthy hands and even rinse off her face. Neither seeing nor hearing Kelithor in her immediate vicinity, she stood and tended to Arya. His absence no longer made her as nervous as it had a week ago, and so far he always returned.
It was no different this time as she spotted his figure from far off in the thin mist. When he was close enough to see the whites of her eyes, he uttered the words that she was loathe to hear but expected all the same. “There are no more paths ‘bove the earth.” He looked ahead and gestured to Arya, “Or at leas’ no tha’ she could go to.”
Emmaline put her hand protectively on her friend’s back and glared at him. “I’m not leaving her here in this place. You can just forget that.”
“We will be under the groun’ for at leas’ seven days. And it will lead to the heart o’ this place.”
“The heart? What’s there?”
“Magic and danger. Beasts changed by the power here and oft’ no’ for the better.”
Her hand absentmindedly stroked the silken hair of her mount. “So there is no other way out of here but underground?” The thought of being trapped again prompted bile to bubble in her belly. Her throat felt tighter, and she noticed a fine tremble in the hand that was not stroking her horse.
“No.”
She swallowed. “Don’t elves live in trees?”
“Some, yes. Why?”
“Did you? And if you did, then how can you be so calm about going underground, out of the air and sky and touch of nature?” The tremble in her hand rose now in her voice.
“There are worse thin’s than being undergroun’.” He turned once more to her. “Did ye no’ go wit’ the stone men? Dwurves?” His mispronunciation prompted a chuckle from the nervous Emmaline.
“Dwarves,” she corrected. “What does that have to do with anything? And how did you hear that?”
“They live undergroun’, do they no’?”
Emmaline overlooked that he didn’t answer her second question. “Not in small tunnels that barely fit one person, let alone a horse. They had vast and grand caverns that were lovingly smoothed and polished where seven or eight dwarves could walk side by side comfortably and more than ten could stand on each other’s heads. They had a system that lit up the entire city from one opening in the top of the mountain where sunlight entered. It was achieved with mirrors and operators and made everything seem so much more magical. And at night, there were special cold fires that a Venerated had created that they used in the night, and murals lined nearly every wall detailing important historical facts and--.” Excitement brightened her tone and she knew that she seemed much like a child rather than a woman grown but only blushed when she found that he was staring at her through his hood. “But no, I don’t like the underground.”
“Is it the dark tha’ bothers ye or the size?”
“Both, I suppose.”
“Wha’ is more?”
“I don’t know. None of it sounds very pleasing. Why?”
Kelithor made an impatient sound, “Will tell if I need ta find a big tunnel or if a ligh’d will do.”
“Darkness then. We should have just used the main toll road instead of coming down here and have to risk dark, dangerous caverns.”
“No.” He turned from her and started to pack up his share of the campsite.
She pouted then and her stomach rumbled. She pulled out another vegetable and bit into the hard tuber. These tasted so much better cooked and they would probably taste even better in a soup. Despite the harsh taste, her belly at least was not growling at her anymore.
“Come,” he uttered while walking past her.
Emmaline sighed before she jumped onto Arya’s back, and her horse obediently followed him. “I haven’t seen any grass here. How is Arya supposed to keep healthy?”
“No worry.”
“Yes, I do need to worry. She’s my horse.”
“She eats.”
“What exactly does she eat? Roots, sticks, perhaps rock? You can’t still have that bag of grain for her here.”
She heard his audible sigh of irritation, a fairly common sound now, and he reached into his cloak before pulling out a sizeable bag. “Oats.”
“That small bag of oats wouldn’t last her a day. You were feeding that to her before all this.”
“Small hand of this fills her belly for a day.” And just to silence her, or so she thought, he turned and dug his fist into the bag before he pulled out a small handful. Arya lurched forward, and Emmaline nearly fell backwards off her hindquarters as the horse snuffled the grain and ate it right out of his hand.
“Where did you get that?”
“Ye do no’ need to know.”
“That bag is still looking a little light.”
“Do no’ worry,” he replied firmly and she bit her lip to keep from replying firmly in kind.
They continued forward until a large, black maw in the earth caught her attention. A cold sweat prickled up on the back of her neck as she stared at the cave and while they drew ever closer, the cool sweat beaded and fell down her back in a small river. Her heartbeat pounded in her chest and roared in her ears.
Arya had even grown nervous in response to her rider, and Kelithor’s voice floated through the pounding of her heart, “Calm.”
Emmaline was about to give a sarcastic reply but was more interested in the shuffling under his cloak. He pulled out a rod about the length of her thigh and struck it on the ground in a swinging motion. A light blue glow erupted from the tip of the rod and held a steady brightness when he brought it in front of him.
For someone who says that they aren’t a mage, Kelithor certainly had quite a few magical things on hand. Her flask, the grain bag, seemingly endless supply of money and now this wand; it was all rather suspicious. “If you had that the entire time, then why didn’t you use it to begin with?”
The blue light bathed the tunnel entrance, and she saw more rock through the encompassing darkness. The oppressive air still made her nervous despite the new light source, which was very pretty. While she stared at the wand, the blue light reminded her of her father’s eyes, and her heart pounded and ached for another reason. “I was no’ sure how it works. Now I ken.”
She contemplated knocking out Kelithor with a rock before he dragged her into the cave and trying to find her own way out of this mess. It would be her fourth...or fifth escape attempt. But if he happened to wake up after, he would hardly be pleased with the headache he would most certainly have and even less with her.
Emmaline just had to get through this so she could go home. To the capital after they got out of here and then home again. It was the thought that kept her going.
Kelithor held the rod high and began their descent into darkness. Luckily for her, the tunnel was around two horses wide from the entrance and didn’t make her feel all that cramped. This was hardly anything like staying with the dwarves. Kelithor’s comparison was laughable.
The ground was tilted in the way that signaled that they were going deeper and deeper into the earth, and her fear returned rather quickly this time. Deeper, darker, what if they died here? Emmaline let out a chirp of fear as she felt and heard a slight rumble to the cave around them. Another quake was going to hit them. As her agitation escalated, the rumbling seemed to follow it.
“Ye said that ye were birthed on an isle, yes?” Kelit
hor’s question cut into her panic and it was odd enough that her focus turned to him.
“I don’t really remember but yes. I was.”
“What do ye ‘member?”
“The first thing I remember is…” She paused, thinking now back nearly twelve years. “I was sick. Fevered. And I rode with my mother and father in their carriage. My mother kept putting a cool rag onto my forehead and telling me that everything would be well. I was kept in the carriage until my fever had broken and I don’t really know how long that took. My parents say it was a while, like I told you, but as for time, it passes differently when you travel.”
“Fever?”
“Well I’ve always loved to climb trees. I was climbing one while we had stopped for a while and one of the branches broke and gave me a bad wound and I hit my head as well. The wound festered, and my memory had left as well. Like I told you before,” she reiterated for him.
“Wha’ else?”
“We were almost through Erisin by then, and I saw the White Bridge that spanned the Half-Sea. It glittered in the sunlight. And then I met my grandfather. He was angry that father hadn’t told him about me before just bringing me to meet him in the castle. But I don’t understand that because my grandfather never cared much for girls. Girls can’t be the next King.”
“Tha’ seems a common thin’ ‘ere. Female no’ ‘ave power,” Kelithor observed.
“It is. But after I met him, we stayed in the castle for a few days and I met my Uncle. I like my Uncle.” Emmaline hoped that he had recovered from his sickness. He is good man. “After that, we went home, and I just watched the countryside really. I left again for my first fostering at seven and fifteen for my second. I was almost sixteen for that one though. What about you?”
“I am wha’ ye see. I am a fighter.”
“But what about your family?”
“No’ importan’.”
“Of course family is important,” she told him exasperatedly.
“No’ if they are all dead.” His tone was that of someone commenting upon the weather.
Emmaline was taken aback, both by the nonchalance of the statement but also the implication. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorrow does no’ bring them back.”
“No, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am sorry that you have no family.”
“It has no use.”
Emmaline was about to fire back a response of her own when Kelithor made a cutting motion across her line of sight, which only served to make her indignant. How dare her cut her off? She was nearly going to tell him so when a loud and long scraping sound echoed through the cavern a fair distance away. Something was down here with them. Something that sounded rather large.
Chapter 26
“What is it?” Her voice was breathy with the barest of whispers, but she knew he had heard her well enough.
“Shh,” he hissed back.
“Is it--.” She began again when his head swiveled back to glare silently at her. “Fine.” She sighed.
Kelithor brought the light from in front of his body to the back and wiggled it slightly. Emmaline supposed that meant he wanted her to take it. With lack of any further instruction, she reached down and over to grasp it in her palm. The warmth it contained surprised her and she nearly dropped the magical torch from atop Arya’s back.
When the light was safely in her possession, he moved forward in a half crouch and was utterly silent with each footfall. When he disappeared from her line of sight, she heard that scraping sound accompanied with a hissing huff and the clicking of something else. Claws, maybe?
The tunnel in front of her was still dark, and she squinted and strained her eyes to try to see past the inky blackness. She was concentrating so much that she almost screamed and fell off Arya when he came back into the pale blue light. It was as if the darkness melted off of him like shadows, and she wondered if it was something he could just do. “Basilisk,” he muttered to her.
Emmaline immediately went through the mental catalogue of beasts from her lessons. “We can be turned to stone?”
Kelithor made a noise that could only be described as something between a laugh and a snort. “No. The bite is poison an’ it is verreh fas’.”
“You mean venomous,” she corrected him. “If it is given through a bite or scratch, it’s venomous. If you drink, eat, or have it on your skin, it’s poisonous.” Now that he had said it was venomous, she remembered the text and portrait of the animal quite vividly. A long, large, lizard with razor sharp teeth and six legs. It lives in the underground and goes above ground to hunt at times that food was scarce. A gorgon, that was what she was thinking of. Gorgons turn creatures and people to stone.
“We wait an’ let pass. If we don’ get its heedin’, then we be fine.” He chose to ignore her correction of his explanation.
“You aren’t going to kill it?” Not that Emmaline wanted to kill it, but her companion had been quick to draw his blade and fist on the few occasions that he had been in contact with anyone but herself.
“It’s no a monster. Beasts attack if they be fearful or hungry or attacked. I will no kill a beast for bein’ a beast, as lon’ as it leaves us be.”
The scraping and clicking noises grew louder for a time, and then softer where they waited. Emmaline had dismounted to let Arya rest a bit while they huddled down for what seemed like hours in the dark. The blue light from the wand kept her calm while the sound faded further and further away.
Kelithor gestured for her to mount up again, and they started back down the tunnel. Thirty or forty paces down, she spotted an offshoot of the path they currently occupied and she shivered. The sound of the creature was very far off now, but she turned away and tried to think no more of it.
The oppressive darkness and low light which bathed their way was taking its toll on Emmaline. Her eyes were getting heavy from the combination and she gave a quiet yawn.
“A big room is ahead. We rest there.” Kelithor did not look back at her, but she could not help the slight blush to her cheeks. She could hear her mother. Ladies did not yawn. It was unbecoming of her to have done so in anyone’s presence.
She would takes days of her mother’s prim and proper talk, and of being pinched and poked by uncomfortable dresses, if that meant she was home. Alas though, she was not, and wishing it would not make it so because it hadn’t worked so far.
True to his word, the tunnel opened up into a room that she could at least walk around in. It was probably as wide and long as four or five of her placed end to end and at least two of her tall. This was more like a dwarven tunnel than any she had been in thus far.
There was more of the pale green mossy plants here too. They glowed on the ceiling and some near one wall which sported a small rivulet of water trickling from some unknown area.
It pooled in a bowl on the cave floor and must drain somewhere else more slowly because from her vantage point, it had a bit of water in it now. And moss, real moss, grew around it. Emmaline dismounted Arya and walked to the pool of water briskly. Getting to her knees in front of it, she leaned forward and inhaled the scent of green growing things and the freshness that seeped off of them. It was soft to the touch, and she resisted the urge to bury her fingers deep down and take some with her for a keepsake. “How deep are we?”
“I no’ know. Deep enough. If path stays clear, we be at the heart in three or four days. Then another few til we fin’ the way out. If they have no’ moved it.”
“Is there running water somewhere near here?”
“What?”
She sighed and turned to look at him, “Running water -- an underground stream, a lake, a pond, or a waterfall?”
“Why?”
What was it with his one worded answers? “Because I have dust and dirt coating nearly every part of my body. My hair is in so many tangles, I may have to shave it off to remove them all, and I haven’t had a proper bath in three weeks.” She was disgusting. “As if I hadn’t said anything before this. I k
now I’ve mentioned it at least once before.”
“Ye worry abou’ bathin’ still?”
“Yes. I’m sure that you don’t smell very sweet under that thick cloak of yours either.”
“Milte. Imίrt fao soltha. No fao afáis.” He sounded incredulous but aside from his foreign speech, he left her alone to caress the moss and trail her fingers through the small puddle of liquid. She sat up and put her hands fully into the nearly noiseless trickle of warm water and washed her hands. The water darkened from where it left her skin to splash into the basin and her palms look much less dark and more pink when she was finished. With the next handful, Emmaline washed off her face and neck as she did with her canteen of water nearly every day, but something about this was better. Dinner was obtained shortly after her nightly cleansing while Arya nibbled on some of the moss growing on the cave wall.