*
With Mire, Garrett, Skew, and Marcus ensuring the corridors were clear of Lycans, Thorne accompanied Zaine and the two Regals to the Mines. The floor angled down into a torch-lit tunnel. A door, which looked like it had been carved from the very rock around it, stood at the end.
Thorne pulled open the door, immediately releasing an icily cold draft of air. This would have frozen Nathaniel to his core, had he not been wearing the fur cloak his Grandfather had given him. Even so, he grimaced as the frigid wind streamed past his face, causing his eyes and nose to run.
It hadn’t been the only gift.
Before they’d left Thorne’s office, the Hunter had thrust a rag-bound package against his chest without so much as a word. Inside, a sword of a finer steel than he had ever laid hands on, had glinted up at him. Glimmering, as if fresh from the forge. It was slightly shorter than the ruby-encrusted longsword the Hunter carried in the scabbard at his back, but no less impressive. Nathaniel adjusted the thick, leather belt that carried the sword across his tunic, with a slight groan. Its weight would take some getting used to.
‘I don’t think we can trust her,’ Nathaniel said in a low whisper to Zaine, nodding at Vaera’s back.
The Hunter’s face may as well have been fashioned from stone, in how it remained so impassively steady.
‘Whether we can or cannot, it makes little difference,’ the Hunter said matter-of-factly. ‘Thorne will not force Vaera to stay in Sanctuary against her will and you could not expect to go far within Obsidia. Certainly not without an arrow through your chest, were you to attempt the journey without her.’
Nathaniel rolled his eyes. The thought of how far they had to travel, with this troublesome girl, left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Past the entrance to the mine, Nathaniel found himself in a large, gloomy cavern. The dark punctuated by a dim column of moonlight in the centre, streaming in through a manhole-sized fissure in the rock above, about a hundred feet or so from where they stood. That must have been where the Shadow’s men dropped me, Nathaniel realised.
A number of tunnels veered off in various directions from the cavern. To the left, to the right. Some appearing to head up towards to the surface. Some diving downwards, deeper into the earth.
Much to Nathaniel’s chagrin, Thorne led them towards one of the deeper tunnels.
‘Dead ends,’ Zaine said simply, when Nathaniel pointed at the rising tunnels.
A few pickaxes and wheelbarrows, layered with coal dust, lay inside the tunnel. Some of the axes had been left buried in the wall, with Nathaniel coming close on several occasions to walking straight into a wooden shaft, as they stumbled through the gloom.
They came into another cavern at the tunnel’s end, with Thorne taking a turn into yet another tunnel, this time rising upwards. Yet Nathaniel was to be left disappointed when it levelled out, long before it would have led to the surface. More tunnels followed, with Thorne seemingly picking and choosing which way they went at random.
I wouldn’t have had a chance, if I’d tried to escape.
Once they’d travelled through what felt like several miles of tunnels, they came to an abrupt stop by one of the wheelbarrows that was leaning up against the mine’s wall. The wheelbarrow was covered by a large rag, which, when removed, revealed a pitch-black crawl space carved into the wall.
‘You want us to crawl through that,’ Vaera looked between the bulky clothes she bore and the narrow tunnel in horror.
‘It’ll be a bit of a squeeze but you’ll be out of it momentarily,’ Thorne reassured her.
With a nod from Thorne, Zaine herded a reluctant Vaera into the tunnel, relieving her of the travel pack. The girl’s groans echoed back to them, as the Hunter followed her in.
Nathaniel and his Grandfather remained, scratching their plumes of red hair awkwardly as they waited for the other to speak. It was strange. He’d only known Thorne for a few weeks but he felt reluctant to leave him.
‘I–’ Nathaniel began, before his jaw snapped quickly shut once more, thinking better of it.
‘It’s going to be tough,’ Thorne said, ‘but if I could do it, I know you can.’
‘You’ve been to Obsidia?’ Nathaniel frowned at his Grandfather.
‘Oh no,’ Thorne gave a wry chuckle, ‘let’s just say I… had a similar journey when I was your age.’
Thorne suddenly grasped his shoulder and looked at Nathaniel very seriously. ‘Promise me you won’t use Majik,’ he said, his voice dropping so low Nathaniel had to lean in to catch the words.
‘I–’
‘Please,’ Thorne pleaded with him, ‘you don’t realise the dangers.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nathaniel asked.
Thorne licked his lips nervously as he spoke. ‘There’s a reason the Spire chains the power of Warlocks,’ he explained. ‘To use Majik, even when chained, is to wrestle a mountain. Unchained… the mountain could collapse upon you.’
The thought of not embracing that euphoric feeling he’d first experienced in the library, filled Nathaniel with a strange sense of dread.
‘Then come with me,’ Nathaniel said, ‘you could teach me how to control it!’
Thorne shook his head sadly, ‘I can’t leave Sanctuary, just please, promise me.’
‘Very well, I promise,’ Nathaniel agreed reluctantly.
Thorne seemed relieved. He released Nathaniel’s shoulder and nodded towards the tunnel. ‘You don’t want to keep Zaine waiting, now,’ he said with a wink.
Thorne frowned, as he watched his grandson disappear through the tunnel, dwelling on a nagging thought. Once the door is opened…
Chapter 21
Nathaniel did not consider himself to be especially claustrophobic but the crawl space beyond the wheelbarrow had been a testing experience. His muscles had seized up sporadically, as he wriggled through and his throat felt tight, as if he were sucking air from a straw. The fact that he had to push his roll bag along in front of himself as he squeezed through, hardly helped matters either. When the roll bag finally disappeared out of the tunnel and a gloved hand reached down toward him, it was a massive relief.
After the mines and tunnels of the Lycan Sanctuary, the pale moonlight bouncing off Dalmarra’s towering walls seemed almost too bright for his eyes. Nathaniel blinked when that same gloved hand held out his belongings to him.
The other Regal, Vaera, was a few paces away, brushing off coal dust from her clothing. She glowered as soon as she noticed Nathaniel watching her, and he hastily turned his attentions elsewhere. A cloaked man stood beyond Zaine and Vaera, clutching the reins of three horses: two mares and a rather restless stallion, which Zaine had gone over to comfort.
Outside of Dalmarra’s walls, acres of green fields seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions. To the West, a rather ominously dense forest, double the breadth of the city, swallowed whatever moonlight dared stray too close to its edge. It made Nathaniel uncomfortable just to look at it.
‘Be thankful, Regal, that your home does not lie in the Silent Forests’ path,’ Zaine made Nathaniel jump, appearing so suddenly by his side.
‘Have you-?’ Nathaniel said, nodding in its direction.
‘I have.’ Zaine stared at the forest for a few seconds, through narrowed eyes. ‘It was an… interesting experience.’
It is just a forest, Nathaniel thought, frowning. Yet the longer he stared at it, the more the discomfort within him grew, like rot from the roots. He shivered despite his cloak.
‘We’re going to put some distance between us and Dalmarra, before setting up camp,’ Zaine announced. ‘Pick one of the mares, you two.’
*
After several hours, Zaine brought their horses to a halt outside a small clearing of wide-coned trees and bushes. Nathaniel dismounted and led his white nosed, chestnut mare – Bela – around the half circle of trees and into the clearing. It was an effort to walk normally, given how long it had been since he’d last been in the saddle. If Zaine noticed, he k
ept quiet, whilst Vaera, perhaps not as subtly as she thought, gave him a sidelong look that bordered on a sneer.
They tied the horses to the trees behind them, before setting up the campsite. The Hunter, quietly amazed – at least that was the meaning he took from the twitch of Zaine’s eyebrows – at Nathaniel’s inability to light a fire, had shown him how to do so. As soon as the wood began to smoke, the Hunter disappeared into the trees surrounding their camp in search of food, leaving Nathaniel alone with Vaera.
The Regal girl had drawn a menacing dagger from her belt, the moment the Hunter had melted into the shadows. Nathaniel’s hand twitched towards the pommel of his sword but he resisted the urge to bare steel.
Vaera’s attention was largely fixed on the blade in her hands, as she set about sharpening the dagger’s edge. However, it was intermittently broken by a dark glare at Nathaniel, from across the fire. Garrett had been certain she’d come to kill him. While Vaera hadn’t as much confirmed this, her silence was hardly contributing to Nathaniel’s comfort, sitting alone with her. Certainly not whilst she had a dagger to hand. He found himself wondering whether he could parry a knife mid-flight as he watched her balance the blade’s handle on her palm. It seemed like something the Hunter would manage with ease, but him…? Never mind that, what was to stop her from sticking it in his back as he slept? The Hunter had to sleep at some point.
‘Are you deaf, Kinslayer?’
Nathaniel gave a start, almost drawing his blade by accident.
‘What?’ Nathaniel blinked at Vaera.
The girl fingered the dagger in her lap, her blue eyes looking at him contemptuously.
‘What exactly do you plan to do, when we reach Obsidia?’ she asked.
‘So, you’re talking to me again?’ Nathaniel replied exasperatedly.
The girl whipped her neck back arrogantly. ‘I am only curious as to how you will convince the Elders of your story.’
The emphasis she put on story made it somewhat clear that she still believed his account to be fictional.
‘If you still think I’m lying, what are you even doing here?’ Nathaniel demanded.
Vaera sniffed and returned to sharpening her dagger.
For the life of him, Nathaniel could not understand why the girl hadn’t left already …or attacked him. If she truly believed he had killed Tolken, by rights, he should already be dead.
‘I see you haven’t killed each other yet.’
Nathaniel nearly tripped over his feet, as he tried to scramble up, whilst fumbling for his sword at the same time.
Zaine stood in between two trees, with a deer casually slung over his shoulder. Vaera’s dagger was embedded in the tree, mere inches away from Zaine’s ear. Vaera’s arm was frozen in place before her, the blood completely drained from her face.
Zaine dropped the deer by the fire and proffered the girl’s dagger back to her.
‘You have good reflexes,’ he told her calmly, as if he hadn’t been two inches from death, placing the blade back in the palm of her hand. ‘Take a care that they don’t rule over you.’
Wide-eyed, Vaera squeaked an apology and quickly returned the dagger to her belt. The Hunter knelt on the ground and pulled out his knife.
‘You can put that away now,’ he said. Nathaniel hadn’t even realised he’d drawn his sword.
The knife in Zaine’s hand paused above the deer’s belly. He had become as still as a statue. His silver eyes didn’t even blink.
‘Zaine?’ Nathaniel whispered.
‘On second thoughts, arm yourselves,’ he said quietly.
The ruby hilt had materialised in the Hunter’s gloved hand, not making even the tiniest sound as it was drawn from the scabbard at his back.
Alert, Nathaniel spun his head around the camp, looking for whatever foe Zaine had sensed through the surrounding foliage. Beside the fire, only grasshoppers disturbed the fragile silence of the night.
Vaera had a dagger in each hand this time, though she held them hesitantly before her. Given the frown that creased her brow, it seemed she too could not discern what trouble the Hunter had unearthed.
Remembering the blindfold practice Zaine had subjected him to, Nathaniel began to wonder if this wasn’t a continuation of the Hunter’s bizarre training practices.
‘Out where I can see you, slowly,’ Zaine’s voice cracked like a whip.
Whatever he could see, whoever they were, Nathaniel hoped for their sake they’d do what the Hunter said.
A hand, then an arm, then two, rose slowly out of the thicket of tall shrubs that formed the back of their camp. His curly hair tousled and littered with tiny green leaves, Gabe gave them all an uneasy grin.
Nathaniel groaned as he lowered his sword.
‘Nice to see you too, Regal,’ Gabe winked at him, ‘and you, my lady.’ The Lycan bowed graciously with his arms aloft, a cocky half-smile upturning his lips, as he looked at the blonde Regal over Nathaniel’s shoulder. Her raised daggers, however, made it clear she had no intention of returning his flirtatious manner.
‘And the rest of you?’ Zaine said.
‘Who says I didn’t come alone?’ Gabe shrugged. ‘Can I put my arms down now? I’m starting to ache.’
‘So you won’t object to me making sure?’ Zaine said, pointing at the bushes with his sword.
Gabe licked his lips uncertainly.
‘Wait!’
Another pair of hands rose from the bushes and another, paler than the first, soon after that.
Brey’s vibrant green eyes looked upon them all innocently and Kaira’s brown had retained their naturally cool edge. Nathaniel’s stomach knitted itself into knots, when Brey looked at him. The crooked, playful smile had taken leave for a tight-lipped stare. The look Kaira gave him seemed to be edged with steel as well, though what he could have possibly done to spite the Féynian was a mystery to him. Nathaniel was relieved when Zaine resumed his line of questioning.
‘How did you find us?’ Zaine interrogated them. ‘The trees shield the campfire and I’ve made multiple sweeps behind us. I find it hard to believe any of you three would know what signs to look out for.’
‘Maybe we got lucky?’ Gabe grinned smugly.
Nathaniel scoffed. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone could just stumble upon the Hunter, unless it had been his design all along.
‘For the love of Ozin, Gabe, just tell the Hunter already,’ Kaira rolled her eyes.
‘You had to spoil it didn’t you?’ Gabe shook his head at the pale girl.
‘So, a random accident then?’ Nathaniel said sarcastically.
‘Not quite…’
The three Lycans turned back to the thicket of bushes behind them.
One of the bushes emitted a deep sigh, then bristled as a large shape rose into the night.
‘Samir?’ Nathaniel called out to him.
Heaving a large sack over his shoulder, which Nathaniel would have been surprised to find contained anything other than books, the tall Scorched boy reluctantly joined his fellow Lycans.
‘Hello,’ Samir spoke down to his feet.
‘You tracked me, Samir?’ Zaine inquired. With the Hunter’s face looking as impenetrable as stone, it was unclear whether he was, impressed, curious, or furious.
The boy mumbled something in the affirmative.
‘Samir was brilliant!’ Brey said loudly.
‘I mean, I might have found you in the end…’ Gabe grumbled.
‘I had heard the Scorched were practiced trackers,’ Zaine said. ‘But as far as I’m aware, you’ve been in Sanctuary for years.’
‘We cut our teeth on the desert sands, soon after we learn how to stand on two feet,’ Samir said defiantly. Perhaps it was Nathaniel’s imagination, but Samir seemed to suddenly stand taller, prouder. He pushed out his chest in front of them in a kingly manner, as he spoke. Nathaniel could almost feel the heat of the Scorched sun blistering his skin, the warm air drying out his throat.
‘A child of the Sun who cannot find his
way across the endless dune sea, is a child who will not survive into manhood,’ Samir said, as if reciting from one of his books. All at once the grandeur slipped away as he finished and the humble boy, who hid behind books, stood before them once more.
‘Why do I recognise you, Lycan?’ Vaera broke the silence. The Regal had taken to her feet, a vague look of recognition crossing her eyes as she squinted past the fire at Kaira.
‘Why do I feel the same, Regal?’ Kaira raised an eyebrow daringly.
The two girls held a stalemate of a stare, both appearing to hold cards close to their chest that could harm the other.
‘Must be my mistake,’ Vaera muttered after a moment.
‘Perhaps,’ Kaira agreed.
They looked away, deciding to pocket their cards for another occasion.
‘Did any of you decide to tell Thorne before you left?’ Zaine asked.
‘Do you think fire-eyes would have let us go if we had?’ Gabe said.
‘I think ‘fire-eyes’ would have your hides, had he the merest inkling,’ Zaine had taken a deathly tone of voice, as he advanced towards Gabe.
The Lycan maintained a brave face to his credit, though his eyes kept flickering to the Hunter’s unsheathed sword.
‘No, Brother Grey doesn’t know,’ Kaira stepped out ahead of Gabe. ‘But we wanted to come and you cannot afford the time to take us back… and, I might add, we’re certainly not leaving.’
She crossed her arms and stared at the Hunter, as if in challenge.
Gabe gave the dark-haired girl an urgent look, as if to say: I hope you’ve got more to persuade him with than that!
Her eyes remained fixed on Zaine’s, who was as expressionless as ever. It felt longer, though Zaine decided upon a course of action in seconds.
‘As you wish,’ Zaine said, turning his back on the newcomers. ‘But remember, my priority lies with the Regals,’ he added warningly before returning to the deer.
Nathaniel thought he should have been angry at the Hunter but, in truth, he felt strangely relieved to see the Lycans… even Gabe. The Lycans themselves looked surprised that the Hunter hadn’t sent them packing, back the way came.
Nathaniel Grey and the Obsidian Crown Page 13