“If there is one,” Ortis said. “There are places in these mountains that are impassible.
“We could go down into the valley and work our way around,” Hobart suggested.
“Let’s find out if we need to, first,” Giorge said. “There’s no sense in taking an unnecessary detour.”
12
The old road continued along the valley floor until midmorning, and then it sloped up toward the mountain. By midday, the gradual slope had changed to a sharp but manageable incline as it followed along a ledge. The ledge, though apparently natural, had been widened considerably, and the rough-hewn rock face was pitted with erosion. It settled into a fairly level path not long afterward, and then wound its way around the southwest edge of the mountain. Then the cobblestones abruptly ended, as if the builders had simply decided they couldn’t be bothered with continuing to build the road. They had even left behind cobblestones stacked like cordwood against the mountainside.
“I wonder why they didn’t take those,” Angus asked. “Wouldn’t they have been able to use them on the other roads?”
“Who knows?” Hobart said. “They’ve been here a long time,” he added. “Something must have kept them from doing it.”
“There’s plenty of granite around here,” Giorge suggested. “It may have been simpler to abandon them here and cut new pieces where they were needed. They are pretty heavy.”
“I don’t know,” Angus said. “You saw that work crew south of Wyrmwood, didn’t you? It had taken them days to carve up just half of that rock. I think it would be cheaper and less time-consuming to transport already fashioned ones to where they were needed than it would be to carve new ones.”
“That may be,” Hobart agreed. “Does it matter?”
“It might,” Angus suggested. “It could indicate what it was that led them to abandon the construction project.”
“Whatever it was,” Hobart said. “We must be close to it.”
“Not yet,” Giorge corrected him. “If they had given up here, they wouldn’t have kept cutting away at the mountain. It’s carved at least as far as that outcropping up ahead, and probably quite a bit further.”
“That may be,” Hobart said. “But it still won’t be much further. As I recall, the cobblestones always trailed behind the men building the roadbed, and the men building the roadbed were behind the ones carving into the mountain. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got all the way around the mountain before they stopped carving into it, but the roadbed won’t go that far. Something stopped them.”
“Whatever it was,” Ortis said from near the neatly stacked pile of cobblestones, “it was significant enough to compel them to abandon their materials instead of working around it. There are a few rusted tools over here. Mallets, picks, chisels—the wood has rotted away, but the metal is still here.”
“They must have left in a hurry then,” Angus agreed. “But that doesn’t explain why they didn’t come back later to reclaim those stones. Something has kept them away.”
“I’ve heard tales of dragons,” Giorge offered.
“Bah,” Hobart snorted. “Not this close to Hellsbreath. They prefer the wilder lands.”
“These are the wilder lands,” Angus muttered, glancing at the cloudless sky, looking for any small—or large—speck that didn’t belong there.
“At least we don’t have to worry about loose cobbles anymore,” Giorge said, grinning and spurring his horse to a light trot on the level roadbed about a foot below the edge of the last cobblestone. Plants were growing in small clumps here and there, where dirt had accumulated on top of the stone.
“We’d better keep pace,” Ortis said. “There’s no telling what he’ll run into up there.”
“Not much, surely,” Angus said. “There can’t be too many dangers on the side of a volcano, can there?”
Hobart looked at him, shook his head, and spurred Leslie after Giorge.
“Falling rock, lava flows,” Ortis began, as he followed after them. “Mountain giants, spiders, snakes, wyverns—” The second Ortis continued as he passed. As his voice trailed off, the third one continued the list as he approached Angus “—dragons, nymphs, ogres, mountain cats. Those are only a few of them.” He paused only long enough to add, “We better catch up with them.”
Angus nodded, clicked his tongue, flicked the reins, and urged Gretchen into a light trot. Ortis fell in line with him at his side, but they didn’t have to go very far past the sharp outcropping. It hovered above them, a high overhang that made Angus feel as if a giant bird’s beak was about to snap down on him. He hurried through it but slowed his horse when he saw Giorge and the others stopped in front of a tall black wall. It was about twenty feet high and propelled out beyond the road dozens of feet, eventually curving back into itself and dangling over the mountainside.
“We know what stopped them,” Giorge said as Angus and Ortis joined them.
“It has stopped us, too,” Hobart said, dismounting and walked up to the bulbous black wall blocking their path. He lightly rapped it with a mailed fist, sending a shattering of glass-like black shards to the ground. “It’s recently formed.” he said. “There’s no way we can take our horses over it. Even if we could somehow climb up to the top, they couldn’t walk on it without falling through this fragile stuff. There will be too many air pockets in it.”
“We’ll have to turn back and try the valley,” Giorge said, nudging his horse to the edge of the mountain. “It does not look promising. If it would have been easy to go through the valley, they wouldn’t have bothered cutting up the mountain. See that?” he gestured, bringing the others closer to the edge. “There’s a bottleneck. The valley ends at that cliff face, and there’s no way out of it.”
“Let’s look at that map, Angus,” Hobart said. “Before we head back, we need to know what direction to take, and we’ve got a pretty fair view of things up here. If there are any other major obstacles, we should be able to see them.”
“I’m not convinced we need to go back,” Angus said, dismounting and walking up to the smooth black wall. “I wonder how wide this flow is?”
Hobart nodded. “It’s one of the volcanic rocks that can form when the lava cools. It’s brittle, and when it breaks, it forms sharp edges. I’ve seen people use it for knife blades; that’s how sharp it is. But you can’t fight with them very well; a blow from the side can snap the blade in two.”
“Well,” Angus said. “Giorge can tell us how thick it is, can’t he?”
“Me?” Giorge replied. “I’m seeing the same thing you are.”
“You can climb it, can’t you?” he asked.
“Not that stuff,” Giorge said, pointing at the black wall in front of them. “It will crumble in my hands.”
“The mountain isn’t. You should find much better handholds and footholds up there,” he pointed at the steep slope of the mountain heading up toward its summit, “than you had at Fenbrooke’s Inn. Surely you can climb up there and take a look for us?”
Giorge studied the mountainside for a few seconds before nodding. “I can climb up there,” he said, “but the horses can’t.”
“They don’t need to,” Angus said. “I need a sense of how thick this fragile wall is and what’s behind it.”
“A lava flow like this,” Hobart said, “is generally not the only one. They seep out periodically, and then go dormant again. There will probably be several layers, with this being the most recent one. They started rebuilding this road about two hundred years ago, and if they stopped because of the volcano back then, and if it recently vented again, there’s almost certainly quite a few eruptions in between.”
“Giorge?” Angus repeated.
Giorge hesitated only long enough to glance at Hobart, who nodded slightly, and then dismounted and began free-climbing up the slope. It wasn’t quite vertical, and when he began to slide, he was able to stop himself by flattening his body against the slope and pawing for handholds.
“All right, Angus,” Hoba
rt began. “You obviously have something in mind. Care to share it with us?”
“How do you feel about flying?” Angus asked, his eyes still on Giorge.
“Flying?” Hobart repeated, his voice almost a squawk. “I—” He looked keenly at Angus, his light brown eyes half closed. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Angus said. “It isn’t the way the spell is normally done,” he admitted. “But I think I can manipulate it safely enough to fly all of us and the horses over this if it isn’t very far. I’ll need some time to think through the alterations, though, and even then, I wouldn’t risk going very far.”
“It’s dangerous,” Hobart said, reaching up to push his long blond hair back. “More dangerous than you’re telling us.”
Angus shrugged. “All spells are dangerous,” he said. “It’s always a question of mitigating those dangers. But, yes, this is more dangerous than the typical spell.”
“Why not use the wand?” Ortis suggested. “It poked a hole through Hellsbreath’s wall easily enough, and that was made from granite.”
“It will depend upon what Giorge sees,” Angus hedged. “But I don’t think the wand has enough range to make it through it.”
“You can find out,” Ortis almost demanded.
The muscles in Angus’s jaws tightened as he remembered the recoil, being flung backward, hitting the wall.... If he braced himself, could he handle that recoil here? He should be able to; wands were not supposed to kill the one employing them. It would be useful to know the precise range….
Giorge reached a point well above the lava flow, steadied himself on a narrow ledge, shielded his eyes, and studied the landscape. Then he started back down, feeling for footholds and handholds as he went. He slid down the last few feet and turned around, brushing the dirt from his tunic.
“Well?” Angus asked.
“It’s too wide,” Giorge said. “There are several older flows on the other side of this one, but the roadbed continues beyond them.”
Angus frowned and asked, “How far is this flow,” he said, gesturing at the glass-like black surface.
“This new one goes back maybe ten feet, but it rises sharply from the edge. There’s another, higher one just beyond it, but it must be several years old; it’s overgrown with wildflowers. There aren’t any trees or shrubs, though, so it can’t be that old. There are other, older flows beyond it. It must have been erupting for a long time.”
“That rules out the wand,” Angus said.
“Why?” Ortis asked.
Angus shrugged. “The wand’s range is limited.”
“To how far?” Ortis asked.
“I’m not certain,” Angus admitted. “But it certainly won’t go through that many layers.”
“Why not test it and find out?” Hobart suggested. “If it can get us to the older lava flows, we should be able to climb them. Once they settle and get rained on, they become much more solid, and the roots of the plants add stability. We can walk our horses single file across them, if we can get up that high.”
“You know,” Giorge added. “This new one has to be covering up an older one. They layer that way. The brittle stuff might only be a few feet thick.”
“Or it could go much further,” Angus said. “There’s no way to know.”
“Yes there is, Angus,” Ortis said. “We paid a considerable amount to get you out of Hellsbreath, and we’d like to see what we paid for. Use the wand.”
Angus frowned. How could he explain how precious the wand was? How rare? Wasting its power like this…. “Let’s take a look at my map, first,” he said. “If there’s an alternate route, I’d rather take that.”
Ortis shrugged, waited for him to remove and unroll the map, and then pointed. “The quickest and easiest route lies beyond this lava flow. They may not have rebuilt this road the whole way, but it was there, and they were using it. Even after a thousand years, the remnants of it should be easy enough to follow, as long as the volcanoes haven’t buried other parts of it like they have here. Now, as you can see, it goes around this mountain and turns west, straddling the top of that cliff, and then turns southwest. At that point, we’ll follow along the valley floor for a considerable distance, and then come to a mountain with three summits. The temple will be nestled in among those summits, and the road—if it’s still there—will lead us there.”
“Which mountain is it?” Hobart asked, shielding his eyes and looking west.
“We can’t see it from here,” Ortis said without looking up. “The other mountains are in the way.”
“I understand that,” Angus said. “What are the alternatives?”
“We can’t get there by going through the valley down there,” Ortis said. “It’s a bottleneck. Even if we could climb out of it, we wouldn’t be able to take our horses with us.”
“I am not abandoning Leslie,” Hobart said, in a deadpan tone that suggested an unflinching position. “She has been with me since I started soldiering.”
“Millie’s too good a steed to leave behind,” Giorge added.
“Now,” Ortis said. “The river near Hellsbreath. You wanted to go that way, didn’t you? Well, if we had, we would have had to go over those two mountains.” Ortis pointed at a pair of tall peaks looming above them to the southwest. “They are too high. There are no known trails or passes through them, and a lot of dangers.”
“I’ve seen them up close,” Giorge said. “I’m an excellent climber, and I’d be hard-pressed to get past them. A lot of people have died trying.”
“We can’t come around from the Western Kingdoms, either,” Ortis continued. The mountains are even higher on that side of the range. Hellsbreath Pass is the only route west that we—or anyone else, for that matter—would risk taking, and it runs farther south before it turns west. That leaves only one other option. We can try to go around the other side of this mountain.”
“Let’s do that, then,” Angus suggested, eager to hold onto his wand’s power. “Surely it can be done.”
Ortis shook his head. “Don’t you think they would have done it if it were possible? They built the road on this side of the mountain for a reason. Twice. Besides, even if we can make it through the wilderness on that side of the mountain, our time is too short. The detour will add several days to our journey there, and several more on the way back. The winter will hit us before we’re out of these mountains, and I do not relish the idea of getting caught in an early blizzard. The Tween would claim us as its next victims.”
“So,” Hobart finished for him. “We seem to have two choices. First, we go somewhere for the winter, maybe Wyrmwood or joining a caravan, and come back to try again in the spring. Second, you use the wand to see if we can cut a path through this lava that our horses can follow.”
“The wand is yours, Angus, and so is the choice,” Ortis said. “But I believe the rest of us are in agreement; we would like you to use it.”
Angus frowned. The decision was, as Hobart put it, simple. Use the wand and try to go further, or go back and wait until spring. And it was up to him to decide. What should they do? He could try Teffles’ flying spell, but it was risky; it wasn’t designed for more than one person, and trying to incorporate the horses and his companions into its effect was not nearly as easy as he had made it sound. He flexed his wrist and forearm, felt the wand slide into his palm. He lifted it up to his face, turned it around so he could see the number of sigils remaining, and counted off each group of three as if it were one. Eight spells remained, and each one was precious. How many would it take to clear a path through the lava flow? One? Two? All of them? And what about the recoil? If it sent him flying off the mountain….
A slow smile fell into place. He wouldn’t fall; he would fly. He wouldn’t have a lapse of concentration on the flying spell while he used the wand; activating the wand only involved a simple series of gestures, and they wouldn’t interfere with his grip on the spell’s thread. Surely he could manage both at the same time….
“You can climb?” Giorge asked, studying him for a reaction.
“I can fly,” Angus said, drawing the magic into focus. It was not at all difficult to find the pale blue strands of magic he needed; there were strong clusters of them around mountains. “I suggest you take the horses back around that outcropping and stay with them,” he said as he dismounted and began tying the knots together. “I’ll let you know when to return.” If I am able to.
13
There was something liberating about flying—and something nauseating. But most of all, he wasn’t very good at it. Teffles’ instructions for the spell had given only rudimentary directions for how to go up, down, left, right, forward, and backward, but it didn’t have any indications for controlling speed. At first, he did everything too quickly, rising above the lava flow several hundred feet before redirecting his momentum sideways. Then he sped out over the valley at a dizzying speed. Fortunately, he was able to turn his face away from the wind he was creating before he vomited, and it scattered behind him instead of onto his robe.
Mostly.
Then he figured out how to orient his position and began moving in a wide circle over the lava field. His speed was now constant, but still remarkably fast, and it took time for him to figure out how to slow down. When he finally did, his speed dropped rapidly to a near crawl until he floated high above the edge of the mountain. Fortunately, despite his discomfort, he had not lost control of the spell, and he began experimenting with it, gradually shifting his position and altering his speed until he was able to wobble over the lava field and estimate the extent of the blockage. It was a sobering calculation, particularly if he was right about the wand’s limitations.
The city wall had been forty feet thick, and Hedreth’s was near the outer edge. The wand had penetrated through the ten feet or so of the wall, but it couldn’t have gone much further. If it had, it would have disrupted the dome protecting the city, and that was not one of the charges against him. If it had been, he would not have gotten out of Hellsbreath alive. As Hobart had put it, “Interference with the functioning of the dome or the efforts to control the lava flow is punishable by death, swift and without mercy.” He had listened very carefully to that one, and even an accidental disruption would have cost him his life. In fact, they likely would have let him die from the injuries caused by his mistake; it would have been quicker. Still, the dome was no more than fifty feet from Hellsbreath’s wall, and the range of the wand had to be between ten and sixty feet.
The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) Page 22