by Carson Rae
As we lie down to sleep, he pulls me against him so that I am cradled by his body. I don’t know how I’ll sleep with his arms wrapped around me, his body pressed against mine, his warm breath on my neck. But I do. And when I wake, the sun is shining.
We fill our packs with as much as we can possibly carry, leaving everything else behind for the next traveler who shelters here. We tie on our snowshoes and hobble out into the hazy sunshine.
The world is blinding, sparkling gray. Pine boughs are so laden with ashy snow that they droop almost parallel to their trunks, and the bottommost are buried in snow near the ground. The snowshoes keep us from sinking too far, but Storm observes that they are nowhere near as effective as good Invierne-made snowshoes. The top layer of snow has already melted and iced over, so we crack through the surface with each step and sink a little before taking the next.
Waterfall leads the way, and we have not gone far before my shins and calves burn with effort. We find the place where we left the path to go to the way station; it’s now buried in snow and unidentifiable to me as a trail, but both Waterfall and Storm recognize some landmarks and point us in the right direction.
We double back the way we came as the sun climbs—it’s blurry and leached of color, and it remains low on the horizon, even at midday. When we reach a giant sequoia, dead and hollowed out by lightning, we depart from the trail again and hug the base of a steep mountain slope. For once I’m glad for the snow, for the slope is so steep that the snow gives us purchase we wouldn’t otherwise have.
Something rumbles in the distance, and Waterfall goes very still.
“What—?”
“Silence!” she snaps. Her bright green eyes turn inward as she listens. More rumbling echoes. Far away, then closer. She puts a finger to her lips and says softly, “We go quickly and quietly. Do not make a sound. The Eyes of God continue to shake the ground, and now there is too much snow. So much that even the mountains cannot contain it.”
The rest of us exchange alarmed glances. We follow after single file, pushing through the snow as fast as our awkward gaits will allow.
We dip into a small, pine-choked ravine. The trees are smaller here, and so tightly packed that it’s hard to squeeze through. My right snowshoe snags on a trunk, and it rips off. My heart sinks as the entire shoe unravels beside me in the snow.
Experimentally, I take a step without it, and my leg sinks well past my knee.
Strong hands grip my armpits and lift me up. “Hold on,” Hector whispers in my ear. “I’ll try to fix it.” He props me against a tree and bends to retrieve the snowshoe.
Waterfall turns around to see what has caused our delay, and when she sees the broken shoe, fear sparks in her eyes. She gazes up the side of the mountain, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
Hector curves the outside branch of my snowshoe back into place, but his gloved hands struggle to tie it down. He yanks off his gloves with his teeth and tries again, looping twine to secure the branch to the haphazard weaving that makes up the bottom of the shoe.
“Try it,” he whispers. I put my foot into place, and he wraps the remaining twine around my boot to hold it. “This won’t last long. Go carefully.”
We catch up to the others—slowly, so as not to knock my shoe off again. Waterfall watches us approach with unveiled impatience. She keeps glancing upward, like she’s a small rodent expecting a hungry raptor to swoop down at any moment.
The ravine breaks into a clearing. Everything is so choked with snow that it’s hard to know for certain, but I suspect we have been traveling a frozen creek bed and now stand upon a small pond. “Just ahead,” Waterfall says, pointing. “Into the trees and to the right is a—”
A great crack rends the air, followed by the smack of branches and a muffled crash. I nearly jump out of my skin, and then I realize it’s probably just a tree, bent to breaking under the weight of snow.
But Waterfall says, “Run for your lives,” and she takes off across the clearing in a wide, rounded gait that could never outrun anything.
We follow as fast as we can. A rumble sounds above our heads, and the earth trembles in response. Red freezes and stares up the mountainside, horrified. Belén sweeps her up and hobble-runs with the little girl tucked under one arm. The extra weight is almost too much, and the snow sucks at each of his steps, threatening to pull him down, down, down.
My breath comes in gasps and my lower legs burn as I tear after them. Hector is right beside me, and I know he could go faster if he wanted to. “Go,” I say between breaths. “Don’t wait . . .”
My voice is lost in a miasma of rushing and crunching. Wind lifts the hair from my neck, and I look up expecting a flash flood, but it’s a wall of white coming down on us. When it hits the trees, they bow before it a split second before being overwhelmed. Powder geysers into the sky.
I run blindly, legs pumping as fast as I can make them go. My snowshoes tangle, and I crash to the ground. I try to get up, but the snow sucks at my clothes. Bruising fingers clutch my arms and yank me to my feet. Together, Hector and I wade forward. We’re not fast enough. I take a deep breath, preparing to be buried alive.
But I’m not. The crunch of snow at our backs is deafening at first but is followed by a silence as deep as death. We stare at each other in awe, both of us covered in powder and white as ghosts. Somehow, we’ve escaped the path of the avalanche.
Hector wipes snow from his eyes. I’m hip-deep in the stuff, for I’ve lost my snowshoes after all. I look down, and sure enough, Hector’s legs are sunken too.
Our companions are just ahead, looking back at us wide-eyed and breathless.
Except Waterfall. “It’s not far,” she calls from the tree line calmly, as if we are out having a casual stroll. “I’ll lead. Everyone walk in my tracks. It will pack the snow a little and make it easier for the queen and the commander to walk without snowshoes.” To me she hollers, “Yell if you get stuck.”
Something about her nonchalance gives me strength, and I press forward, refusing to think about how close we just came to death.
We weave through a stand of young pines, over a lip of what I think is granite but might just be a large snowdrift, and come face-to-face with a mound that’s too perfect and round to be natural.
We pause to catch our breath. “The entrance is snowed in,” Waterfall says. “We’ll have to dig.”
Mara groans. “Of course we will.”
26
WE fall to our knees and shovel at the snow. It’s much softer here, and our gloved hands do the trick. Suddenly a chunk of snow breaks free and falls away, opening up a dark hole. We scramble back from the edge.
Waterfall says. “The snow is so deep that we’re at the top of the entrance.”
We work at the edges, opening up the hole and packing the snow down until Red is able to scramble up and over. After a moment her head pokes up over the edge. “It’s dark and smelly,” she says with a wrinkled nose.
Mara pulls her tinderbox and one of her precious candles from her pack, lights the candle, and hands it over the edge to Red. The rest of us climb inside and spread out, taking stock.
The tunnel is roughly arched, with an uneven floor that slopes gradually downward. Beams brace the walls at regular intervals, though some have toppled into the center. They are in various stages of decay, and shimmery with cobwebs.
“We’ll collect wood and resin for torches and firewood,” I say. “As much as we can carry. Storm and I can use our Godstones for light if necessary, but I’d rather save our strength for emergencies.”
“There’s plenty of wood along the way,” Waterfall says. Her sharp features seem nearly skeletal in the shadows cast by our single flame of light. “These beams burn well, and torches are stashed throughout. Some are very old, but they’ll be better than nothing. When we encounter the stashes, though, I suggest we take several, because a few stretches of our journey will take us through tunnels that were never well used.”
In demonstration, s
he bends over the shadow of what might be a wooden crate and pulls out a torch that is black and dry with age. She holds it toward Red, who lights the end with her candle. It catches instantly, washing the icy tunnel entrance in shades of orange. “Ready?” she says.
I grab Mara’s hand and say, “Will you be all right?”
She breathes deep through her nose and says, “I have to be, don’t I?” Then she pulls her hand away and steps resolutely forward.
“Be alert,” Storm says. “We’ll be going farther and deeper than my sister has ever been. I know that in Joya d’Arena, rumors are something to scoff at, due to the prevaricating, deceiving nature of your people. But in Invierne, rumors of danger should be taken seriously.”
“Hopefully, it is less dangerous than volcanoes and avalanches and freezing temperatures,” I say, but Storm just shrugs.
Belén grabs a few more torches from the crate, we tighten the waist straps of our packs, and together we turn our backs on the entrance and follow Mara into the belly of the earth.
PART III
27
AFTER being on the open road for so long, it feels deeply wrong to be closed in, to see only as far as the torch’s meager splash of light will allow. We will be in these tunnels for days, according to Waterfall. But we can only see as far as the next few steps.
We walk in silence, ears pricked to detect what our eyes cannot see. So far there is only the scuffing of our feet against fallen gravel, our heavy breathing, and distantly, an echoing plink-plink of water. I dread the moment I hear anything else.
These tunnels were not created for comfort. Their sole purpose, at least at first, was to penetrate the mountains as quickly and deeply as possible in search of the zafira. So our path twists and curves to take advantage of natural caverns and fissures. The floor is rough, and we step carefully, wary of a twisted ankle. When the tunnels narrows to a crevice, we remove our packs to squeeze through sideways, one by one. Even the packs don’t fit—we are forced to unload them, hand the larger items through, and repack them on the other side.
I’m one of the last to go, and I squeeze through, back and breasts scraping rock, worrying what will happen if we encounter a place too tight to get through.
When I reach the other side, I find Mara crouched over, hands on knees, breathing heavily. I start toward her, thinking to offer comfort, but Belén gets there first. He grabs her hand and pulls her against him, wraps his arms around her, and whispers something.
I back away, feeling like an intruder.
Twice we encounter branched corridors that appear as gaping black holes to the left. We stop so Waterfall can study them. Runes, like the ones we saw in the Temple of Morning, are carved into the wall beside them. Both times, Waterfall makes the decision to pass by.
It’s impossible to mark the time here. I’ve no idea how long we’ve traveled or how far we’ve come when I consider calling a halt for the day. Maybe it’s too early. And we have a lot of ground to make up after being stuck in the storm. But my legs tremble and my lower back aches from the weight of my pack.
It is Belén who decides for me. He stumbles, ramming his shoulder into an outcropping. He doesn’t cry out, but I’ve so rarely seen Belén be clumsy that it stops me cold. Thinking of the night he fell asleep on watch, I give the order. “Let’s camp.”
“Oh, thank God,” Mara says.
We drop our packs and plop to the ground. Mara starts pulling cooking utensils out of her pack, but I put a hand on her forearm. “No need, Mara. We can eat cold food tonight. Just rest.”
“Please, Elisa? I need to . . . do something.”
“Oh. I see. In that case, I would love some tea.”
She smiles gratefully.
Red drags a toppled wood beam toward the center of our tight camp. She and Mara attack it with ax and handsaw. It falls apart a little too easily. They get a fire going, and the light is so much brighter than that of a mere torch that we all breathe a collective sigh of relief.
We don’t need a fire for warmth—though the tunnel is chilly, it is considerably warmer than the outside wintry air—but I decide that so long as we can find wood, we should have a fire every night. Just to force a little normalcy on this strange journey.
Hector settles beside me. “Only two approaches to guard,” he says, pulling a whetstone and oilcloth from his pack. “We’ll only need one person on watch at a time.” He starts to whisk the dagger against the whetstone, and I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes to absorb the familiar sound. For the rest of my life, however long that might be, hearing blades being sharpened will remind me of Hector and Belén.
“No watch tonight,” I tell him. “I know it’s risky, but we’re desperate for rest. I need everyone sharp.”
“We’re just trading one risk for another,” he says. “But in this case, I think it’s a good trade.”
Red squeals, and we both jump in our seats. Hector is on his feet in an instant, with me not far behind. Her form is barely visible in the shadowy blackness just outside the range of our firelight. She crouches down, staring at something.
“Skinny Girl?” Belén says. “What is it? Are you all right?”
She turns to glare at him. “My name is Red Sparkle Stone.”
“Of course. Apologies.”
She picks up something off the ground. “I found this. It crawled across my food. I stomped it. At first it was glowing, but not anymore.”
She hands it to Belén, who nearly drops it. He holds it away from himself, as if it might bite him. It’s the size of my fist. Even in the gloom I can make out segmented legs. Lots of them.
“A deathstalker,” Hector says. “Larger relative of the common cave scorpion. They glow when frightened. Their sting is painful and mildly poisonous but not usually serious. The problem is when they swarm. Multiple stings can be lethal.”
“Ugh,” I say.
“Yes. I agree they are ugh,” Storm says.
“Let’s hope we never see more than one at a time,” I say.
“I’m going to have nightmares,” Mara says.
“Too bad we don’t have a small cage,” Hector says, and we all look at him in puzzlement. “We could trap them. Use them for light.”
Warm affection wells up inside me, and I feel a silly grin spread across my face.
“What?” he says.
“It’s just . . . I like how practical you are. Willing to use any tool at your disposal.”
He studies me a moment. “I’m like you,” he says.
We’re still staring at each other when Belén clears his throat. “I suggest we keep our packs closed and our bedrolls tied tight whenever they’re not in use.”
The thought of slipping into my bedroll and finding a deathstalker by accident gives me a shiver. “Agreed.”
“My cousin got stung by a deathstalker,” Waterfall says as she flips out her bedroll. As she slips inside, she adds, “He died.” She closes her eyes to sleep.
28
THE next day—or maybe only a short time later—I wake to utter darkness. I can’t see my hand in front of my face, and I have a moment’s breathless panic, but then a spark sears the blackness, followed by a softer, wider light that fills our campsite.
Mara is hunched over the fire, blowing onto the small flame. Her tinderbox is on the ground beside her.
“I’m so glad you can do that in the dark,” I say with a yawn as the others stir around me.
“Me too,” she says. “But we’re going to have this problem a lot. The wood is too dry to bank properly. Whoever stands watch will have to keep an eye on it. We should always have wood within arm’s length, just in case.”
I nod agreement. “If necessary, Storm and I can make our Godstones glow, though we couldn’t keep it up indefinitely.”
But I warm myself with the thought. So long as I have the Godstone, I have light.
After a quick meal of smoked horse meat and pine-needle tea, we shoulder our packs and set off. Our path grows
steep, so steep that at times we skid our way downward into the belly of the mountain. It seems so wrong that we should go down when every instinct in me screams to go up, toward light and air. Waterfall insists we’re on the right path.
When the tunnel curves to the right and then levels off, I’m delighted to give my calves and shins a break.
A crack sounds, then an echoing clatter that ends in a splintering crash.
“My sister!” Storm cries out, rushing forward.
I can’t see over everyone’s heads, so I push forward, elbowing them out of my way.
Waterfall is crumpled to the ground. Her left leg has broken through the floor. The resulting hole is jagged with splintered wood. She pulls on the leg, but it’s clearly stuck. “A false floor,” she says, her eyes wide with pain. “You should all step away.”
Now that she mentions it, my steps sound hollow, and the ground beneath me has a slight give. We edge backward, testing each step before putting full weight on it. “We’ll get you out of there,” I assure her. But I don’t stop backing away until my heel meets with a slight lip, followed by solid ground. We were walking across ancient planks of wood, I realize with a pounding heart. Disguised by centuries of dust and gravel.
“I’m bleeding,” she says matter-of-factly. “I can feel it going down my leg.”
Oh, God. I hope she hasn’t nicked an artery.
“I’ll throw you a rope,” Hector says. “Try to get both arms through the loop. Once we have you secured, we’ll send someone to start widening that hole.”
He pulls the large coil from his pack and starts to loop and knot, his fingers sure. I put a hand on his forearm. “We can’t lose her,” I say quietly. “She’s our only way through this place.”
His return gaze is solemn. “I know.”
He finishes his knot. “Ready?”
She nods, and he tosses it her way. She grabs the end, manages to get one arm through . . . when the floor cracks again and she sinks deeper. She grunts in pain.