Wyndeling hung the nightgown by the fire, and Tess passed the time in her room wearing nothing but a cloak, contemplating all the possible forms a place called the Thane’s Hold could take. When Wyndeling finally returned with the dry nightgown, Tess sighed. The rusty blood stains remained, and Tynaiv’s smell was gone.
As Tess entered the main room, Linden rose from his chair and cracked his neck, a map sliding from his lap.
“How far?” Tess said.
“Not far. We can be there before morning.”
“Then we should hurry with supper,” Tess said, rubbing the weariness from her eyes.
They ate leek and mushroom soup. Tess even found a bottle of blackberry cordial in the pantry, to raise their spirits. Wyndeling hooted softly from the back of Tess’s chair.
“Will you come with us to Crescent Cave, Wyndeling?” Tess said.
“I’m certainly not going to take up residence with that addled bear, if that’s what you are implying.”
Tess smiled. At least someone she could trust would be with her.
With an abrupt thud, Osiris burst through the back door, his legs and belly dripping wet. “All me cubs be safe and sound in Den Five?” he bellowed, shaking out his shaggy fur. Cold water splattered against the walls and into the sizzling fire. “Ye best be giving ole Osiris a bowl of that sweet-smelling stew.”
Osiris was exuberant about something. But rather than inquire, Tess obeyed and served him leeks and mushrooms. After a mouthful, the bear casually reported that four Atheonians and a hound had crossed Ruby Creek that morning.
Tess started. “You let them cross?”
The glint in the old bear’s eye reminded Tess of a rascally mouse she was always chasing from Jesse’s stall. “It were one hard decision. True, I be bending me oath a bit.” Osiris abandoned his spoon and plunged his muzzle into the bowl. “Little gem be a marvelous cook, aye.” He snorted and smacked.
“Osiris, tell us.” Tess took a chair across from the giant bear, whose elbows just reached the table while he sat on the floor.
“I be learning a thing or two.” Osiris winked proudly at Tess. “Following yon brutes. They walked with the salty villain, cool as y’like. While they went along, this ole bear lent his ear to their chatter.” Osiris paused to lick his bowl clean. Satisfied there was no more soup, he leaned against the wall with a paw on his belly.
“Vagrants at the new castle be waiting on orders to storm the place. And a whole army has taken the town Redfoot.” Osiris pounded the table, as if to say ta-da. “Well, me fine companions? How d’ye be liking that?”
“It’s horrible,” Tess said.
“No mistake, no mistake,” the bear conceded. “But I also be seeing me friends the goldfinches.” Linden and Tess exchanged looks. “They be a fine class of wild animals, and no mistake.” The bear eyed Wyndeling. “And the Prince of the Birch Herd be on his way to Redfoot this very moment. And the whole Council of the Nest be gathering up north to be fighting for the castle. How d’ya like that?” He thumped the table again.
Linden rose and started gathering his gear. “Well done, Osiris.” He radiated. “The forest is joining with Glademont once again. I’m afraid we must cut short our stay,” Linden said as he left the table to strap his quiver to his back. “And we will need use of the raft.”
“Ye be going to Crescent Cave by raft?” Osiris looked grave, though still leaning against the wall.
“If I’m right, the stream outside this door leads to the lake,” Linden said. “It forks east and south about three leagues from here, and the southern tributary leads to Crescent Lake. We’re going to find the Thane’s Hold.” Linden looked to Tess. She straightened and nodded.
Osiris furrowed his bushy brows. “Hrmmm . . . right, right.” The great bear mobilized, pushing himself off the wall and lumbering toward the back door. He opened the door and looked back at his confused guests. “Well? Are ye to help save New Glademont or no?”
Tess hesitated, not knowing how to say goodbye. Osiris gave her an amused look.
“Ye ain’t got rid of me yet, little gem. The tides o’ time be changing, and ole Osiris has his part to be playing. Get thee onto yon raft and be good to yer prince, now.”
“Thank you for everything.” Tess smiled sadly and gathered her satchel and riding boots.
“Glademont’s gratitude to you, sir.” Linden solemnly shouldered his longbow. “You are a good and faithful servant to our dione.”
“Truer words, young prince. Truer words.” Osiris patted the man on the back with a giant damp paw. “I’ll be off on my way, as well. My friends the finches might can guide me to your brave brother, young gem. Perhaps he’ll be needing me in battle, aye?”
“Oh, Osiris.” Tess embraced his gray head. “Would you look after him? I’d be so grateful.”
He grumbled good-naturedly and nudged her to the door. “Now, now. All shall be well.”
Tess and Linden left Den Five to board the raft. Wyndeling flew to perch on Tess’s arm. She addressed the shaggy bear.
“Your ways are strange to me. However, the lady seems to like you. That must count for something.”
“A mighty compliment indeed.” Osiris untied the raft with his teeth and tossed the rope aboard. “And fare thee well, wild owl.”
Osiris’s raft buoyed its passengers southward. A dim lantern swayed on its hook and cast strange shadows on the cavern walls around them. Steering was rarely required, but Linden obliged with the pole when necessary. More often, he busied himself studying his maps. Tess sat cross-legged at the front of the raft, looking into the gloom. Wyndeling bobbed on Tess’s shoulder.
“Did that man kiss you again?” the owl said.
Tess felt her lungs would shatter with guilt and surprise. Wyndeling had seen them after all.
“I ask because you still have the shenìl,” Wyndeling continued. “Your last encounter could not have been entirely unfriendly.”
Tess looked to see whether Linden could hear. His face was buried in a map while one hand absently held the raft pole.
“Our last encounter baffled me,” she said. “I cannot tell his reasons for behaving as he does.”
“I do not know how humans choose their mates, my lady. In my clan, the males display their superior qualities, and the females make their decisions. It is a quick and straightforward business, for we birds are not disposed to fooling with romance. With perhaps the exception of the heron.”
“With humans it is more complicated.” Tess twisted her engagement pearls.
“I would never lay eggs for an owl that had threatened me or those I hold dear.”
Tess groaned. “You are not helping.” She risked another glance at Linden.
“I should like to see you marry the prince, my lady. He is more worthy of you.”
“He doesn’t want me, Wyndeling. He looks down on me for . . . for who I used to be.” Tess’s mouth pulled tight in the corners.
“But Tynaiv is the enemy of Glademont, my lady. It is dangerous to linger with him. For your country, but even more so for you.”
Tess blushed. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I’ve never ‘lingered’ with Tynaiv.”
Wyndeling chastised her with her curved beak. “We have a saying in the Hinge, my lady: a silver tongue betrays its fork.”
“What does it mean?” Tess said.
“It means the smooth ones should not be trusted.” Wyndeling pulled at Tess’s braid. “Are you listening, my lady?”
Tess smiled reluctantly and stroked Wyndeling’s soft chest. “You wouldn’t let me ignore you, would you?”
Wyndeling inched closer to Tess’s cheek, and when Tess sighed, she noticed her lungs felt sturdier. It was nice to have someone to talk to—even if she was a temperamental owl.
“Not far now,” Linden called from the back of the raft.
> Tess drew her knees up under her cloak as they glided downstream, contemplating Wyndeling’s words: a silver tongue betrays its fork.
Half an hour passed, then another as Tess drifted underground on Osiris’s raft. She was starting to fall asleep when Linden uttered a sound of apparent relief.
“Ah, the shortcut,” he said, pointing in the distance. Tess squinted at the dark and thought she saw a wide fissure. “Steady yourselves.”
The raft swerved to the right, and Tess flattened herself against the logs. Linden grunted and heaved, pushing against the stream bed to slow the vessel. The wood scraped against the dark rocks that bordered the stream to the right. Favoring his good hand, Linden thrust his pole into the fissure, bracing against the pull of the stream. The raft came to a bumpy halt, swerving directly into the rocks, barely staying adrift. The prince’s narrow shoulders bent against the pole.
“Climb out.”
Obediently, Tess scrambled to her feet and steadied herself on the pole hook. She leapt into the damp darkness and landed in the mouth of a narrow cave. She crouched under a dripping, hard surface. The sound of rushing water echoed against the close walls around her. Stalactites thrust downward from the low ceiling. Rising to meet them, stalagmites jutted from the cave’s edges, but the ground beneath Tess’s feet was smooth enough.
“Look out,” Linden called as he tossed a rope near Tess’s feet. She wrapped it securely around a stalagmite.
Breathless, Linden crawled into the mouth of the cave within a cave, holding his bow and quiver in one hand, lantern in the other. Tess could see the stain where the wound on his hand had reopened.
“Where are we?” she said.
“A shortcut I found on the map.” Linden grinned.
Tess hardly thought it amusing. “A bit dangerous, wasn’t it?”
Wyndeling cleared her throat with a hoot. “Well, I am for it. I’ve already been underground far longer than I ever dreamed. The sooner we find Crescent Cave, the better.”
Tess did not like leaving the safety of the raft, but she did not protest. She followed Linden along a narrow path between the glistening stalagmites, crouching along in the darkness with only the lantern to keep them from dashing their limbs. Even without the lance-like rock, Tess would have been on edge. Each plopping droplet sounded like a footstep, and each plunk of falling water on her boots felt like the enemy bearing down. They walked for what seemed like hours.
“Do you still know where we are?” she whispered after a time.
Linden jumped at the sound of her voice. She was not the only nervous one.
“We are sloping toward the lake,” he said. “Maybe another hour.”
Before long, the path took a sharp left turn and widened enough to fit two people side by side. The path’s slant grew steeper, and Tess had to grab on to the larger stalagmites to keep her footing. They were cold, smooth, and rippling in her palm. She wondered if she was the first to touch them in centuries.
When Tess next managed to look up from her feet, she saw a faint glowing in the distance.
“Put it out,” she breathed, and Linden extinguished the lantern.
The light ahead glowed a sort of green, more like moonlight than candlelight. They approached with caution, and Tess saw that the glow came from many lights—some green and some blue—hanging from long silver threads. Dewdrops reflected on the threads, and the little lights on the ends swung like ornaments from their string. There must have been thousands of them.
“No,” Wyndeling called out.
Tess felt Linden’s arm across her waist as Wyndeling’s wings flapped in her eyes. The three companions toppled backward and landed on the damp rock. Tess heard a faint scraping as several of Linden’s arrows slipped from his quiver.
“What on the continent . . .” The floor in front of Tess completely disappeared, plummeting into a pitch-black abyss. The glowing lights formed a canopy over the vast pit, which had a primitive, spiraling staircase carved into its sides. She shuddered to think what would have happened if Linden hadn’t pulled her back.
“Are you hurt?” Linden asked as they untangled themselves.
Tess wiped the hair from her face and rolled away from Linden, embarrassed. “I am all right, Your Highness.”
“Some of my arrows didn’t make it.” Still splayed on his backside, Linden held up an arrow that was broken in three places.
Tess checked her braid for the shenìl, then pulled herself to her knees. “It seems we have nowhere to go but down.”
“I don’t like the looks of those stairs.” Linden frowned under the eerie light. “I don’t see an end to them.”
Wyndeling tsked at them. “What toil it is to be human.” She shook her head. “I’d not trade my sight for your fingers, nor my flight for your limbs.”
Tess smiled. “Wyndeling the Red,” she asked, “would you see what’s at the bottom?”
The owl stretched her red wings. “With pleasure.” And she departed without a sound.
They waited. Linden inspected his quiver and disposed of the useless arrows. Tess watched him with interest, realizing once again how much she didn’t know about Prince Linden. She thought of how precisely he had shot an arrow at Tynaiv’s shoulder, not two days before.
“So, you learned to make arrows?” she said. Linden looked up from his handiwork, both brows pressing into the space above his nose. Then his gaze dropped again.
“You can’t learn combat without real weapons, can you?” he murmured into an arrowhead.
“All this time, you were . . . ?” She nodded at the arrow.
“This, and studying histories from the archives. We were trying to give ourselves the kind of training no one in Glademont could provide.”
Tess gazed up at the blue-and-green glow. “But, you say you didn’t expect Glademont to go to war. You were just . . . ready for the possibility?”
He grimaced. “If I were preparing for a war I knew to be coming, my lady, I failed more fantastically than would an infant.”
Tess slid off of her heels and let her shins stack beside her. She stared at her hands in the folds of her nightgown.
“You were right to revoke the marriage. . . .”
Linden started. “That is not what I said, Tess.” The nickname jolted her. “That isn’t what I intended.”
Linden walked to her and crouched, reaching for one of her jittery hands. Tess’s heartbeat quickened.
Silent and sudden, Wyndeling returned, swooshing to land at Tess’s feet.
“There is another tunnel at the bottom of the stairs, my lady. I took the liberty of exploring it.”
“Wyndeling.” Tess avoided the prince’s hand and pulled herself to standing. “What did you see?”
“A pool lies at the bottom of the pit, but there is a tunnel at the foot of the staircase that leads to the lake. And free air.” Wyndeling sighed.
“Well done, Your Highness,” Tess said, still avoiding Linden’s stare.
He ran a hand through his caramel hair. “I’m glad I read those old maps correctly. At least I’m good for something. Thank you, Wyndeling.”
“You are most welcome,” the owl said. “I hope I’ll soon have a nice fly through the moonlight.”
“I hope so too, Wyndeling.” Tess kindly patted her friend’s feathery back.
The party prepared to descend the stairs.
Chapter 36
The militia’s headquarters—a small cave cut into a rocky crater just north of the training ground—now contained five Glademontians and two Hinge Foresters. Ryon sat on a roughly carved stool, his open hands nearly touching a hissing black stove. Nory, Rette, and the Colonel also gathered around the heat, dressing their wounds. Jesse stood some distance away, grazing on stout forest grasses that Rette had kindly gathered. Evening, who volunteered to keep watch, padded thoughtfully at the mouth of the c
ave.
From Ryon’s knee, Profigliano kept one eye squarely on the Colonel. Ryon attempted to sort out what had happened to Glademont since he left.
“How did you get out of the castle?” he said to the Colonel. “There were birds everywhere.”
“The vagrants hardly know the castle as we do,” the Colonel answered. “The honorable General Bud led us to a hidden hatch in the wine cellar.”
“Why didn’t more of you escape?” Ryon said.
Nory gingerly prodded his taped nose.
“We weren’t running away,” he said. “We were going to find help.”
“You were coming to find us?” Ryon said.
The young man laughed, his bare chest clenching. “Redfoot,” he said. “We’d be too exposed if we tried to get to Wallaton, so we decided to risk the Hinge and race to Redfoot for more men.” His mirth dissolved. “Otherwise, we’re cooked.”
“But Redfoot was taken. Didn’t you know?” Ryon gazed at the men, astonished.
“No one knows anything in there.” Rette’s strawberry blond hair shifted as he shrugged. “We’re completely cut off. Redfoot is lost, is it?” He massaged his pale forehead.
“Not quite.” Ryon suppressed a proud smile. “That’s why we’re here. There’s a whole army forming: the Friends of the Militia.”
“As in our militia?” Nory’s eyes grew wide.
Ryon nodded. “Animals from the valley and from the forest. Half of them have gone south to liberate Redfoot and defeat Atheonian forces there. And we’re here waiting for the other half. To attack Atheos at the castle.”
Nory and Rette exchanged awed expressions, their bandages forgotten. Nory spoke first, straightening his stocky torso.
“I’ll be a sea turtle.”
Fyrian's Fire Page 23