Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (67 page)

No one said anything for a long time after that, but just stood in the center of it all, marveling how good it felt not to watch carefully over every step they took for feel of tumbling to their death below.

He hadn’t realized until that moment he could finally breathe. It was as if he’d been holding his breath for days, and the full, deep breaths he drew in made his lungs ache with every inhale.

“We are very near the ocean,” he observed as the continual roar and thunder of water crashed against the mountain cliffs.

“That one,” Finn gestured over Lorelei’s shoulder. “The air is cleaner, I can see it rippling through the cobwebs like curtains in a breeze.”

“Praise be to all the gods,” Lorelei sighed relief. “That means we won’t have to go back out the way we came in.”

All three of them looked upward again, into the long and spiraling darkness from whence they’d come. It was impossible to gauge how much time it took them to make that journey, to know how many days passed since they’d entered the mountain through that hidden passage. Time had no meaning in the dark and the drakoren’s prodding during the descent inspired more than a little bit of madness in them all.

Finn looked crazed. Hair wild, beard growth thick and eyes wide as they took in the light, he was ready to strike at the first object that edged too close to his shoulder, no matter what it was.

Good, the mage thought. They were going to need to stay on their toes.

Lorelei stood between them both, and he wondered as he looked her over whether or not she was truly ready to do what they’d come to do. Her brow was furrowed, lines etched deep beneath the mussed copper strands of hair that fell into her face, and though she was frowning again, it was a studious look. One that spoke of resolve and acceptance, and for that he was glad. There was no turning back, and no one needed to point that out.

Once again she turned a circle, surveying the dozen or more passages slinking away from where they stood. The westernmost tunnel, where the air smelled sweet and tinged with the salt of the sea, was how they’d leave Great Sorrow, but it was not yet time to leave. They had to go deeper.

“The widest passage seems like it would be the most likely option,” she pointed out, spinning back in and pointing toward a gaping, chiseled maw in the stone. “I can’t begin to guess how large a dragon might have been, having never seen one. Master Davan said they were monstrous creatures, some big as cottages, but I don’t know if I believe anything he ever told me anymore.”

“Bigger than cottages,” Brendolowyn told her. “Taller, anyway, not generally as wide, but they were rather huge.”

“So a dragon would have needed a broad passage, right?”

“One would assume so, yes.”

“All of those passages are likely too small,” she decided. “There are only two I think would have been large enough for a dragon to travel,” she went on. “That one,” she pointed toward what they’d all agreed must be an exit and then pivoted on her foot toward the overwhelmingly dark passage diagonal from the exit, “and that one.”

“It is possible,” he agreed. “Though dragons did use their magic to walk among us undetected, much the way the U’lfer do—”

She cut him off quickly, adding, “But if you were infiltrating a mountain, you’d hardly walk through the back door in humanoid form.”

“And if you had a lot of treasure to hide in the belly of that mountain, you wouldn’t carry it as a human, would you?” Finn offered.

“No, it would be too heavy.”

The light of understanding finally dawned and Finn’s whole face stretched into an appreciative grin. “You’re a genius, Princess!” He stood between the two widest passages, glancing back and forth between the two. “If the dragon came into the mountain that way,” he pointed toward what they were sure was the exit, then went on, “it only makes sense it would fly straight through to that gaping tunnel right there.”

“The dragon made its hoard through there. I’m almost sure of it.”

Lorelei followed the crooked point of Finn’s finger, but their revelation was cut short by an unexpected tremor that shook the mountain again and made the earth tremble beneath their feet. Chunks of angry stone, lance-like stalactites showering down around them in a fit of dust that made them all cough and hack as they breathed it in. The three of them huddled together, Finn’s arm immediately lifting to duck Lorelei protectively beneath him before he brought the battered protection of his shield overhead. Brendolowyn had only a second to cast a temporary shield around them, but it spread in a veil of light and rocks thunked and battered at the invisible force he’d raised. They watched in awe as stone tumbled and rolled away, littering the ground in front of them.

Wispy hushes of laughter hissed out to meet them, and for the first time since they’d come into the mountain the drakoren spoke outside the terrified whispers of a thousand provoking thoughts that haunted the darkness of their dreams and thoughts.

“Clever girl, clever, yessss.”

The strangest thing was that the voice did not speak in words from any language any of them were familiar with, but its meaning translated clearly in their minds as it reverberated through the belly of the mountain.

The rasping, throaty sound was terrifying, and when one last stone crashed into the shield just above Lorelei’s raised head, she let loose a shriek that lingered long after the mountain began to still.

The force of the drakoren’s amusement caused Brendolowyn’s power to waver, the ball of light he cast nearly flickering out like a candle in the wind, the shield over their heads dissolving to allow the final shower of pebbles to thump against their shoulders. She screamed again when Finn grabbed onto her and drew her back down.

And then the ball of light he’d summoned grew brighter than the light of the sun, the drakoren drawing and sapping its energy until it exploded in a blinding jolt of brilliant white that left bursting yellow patterns on the mage’s eyes before all went dark again.

“It’s already interfering with my energies,” he whispered, his breath a hush of sound through the sudden silence.

“What do you mean it’s interfering?” Finn challenged. Boots shuffled in the dark, just inches away from him, but he couldn’t see anything and that strange blindness made him stagger on his feet.

“Exactly what I’ve said,” he snapped back. “It’s blinded me with my own light. Sapping my energy and jumbling my spells inside my mind. I can’t cast…”

Before he could finish, the U’lfer insisted, “Well, you need to work that out, Mage. We kind of need you.”

“Did the torches flicker out?”

“Nearly, but not all the way,” Lorelei said. “I dropped mine on the floor.” He could hear her shuffling, fingers scuffing across earth and stone below him before a dull, orange glow flashed through his blindness.

“Are you holding it toward me?”

“I am.”

“I think it’s only a temporary trick,” he hoped aloud. “I can see the fuzzy glow, but can’t make out what it is.”

“Well this is just great!” Finn huffed. “Our mage is blinded by his own light…”

“I said it’s only temporary.”

“What are we to do in the meantime? What if it attacks?”

“Finn, please,” Lorelei scolded him. “We’ll wait it out, and if it attacks, we’ll have to do our best to fight it without Bren’s magic, won’t we?”

The wolf harrumphed, muttering some gruff response she wasn’t meant to hear, but she ignored him and took several steps toward Brendolowyn. He could see the golden light growing, the darkness receding from his eyes. He blinked, keeping the lids down and willing away the strange blindness.

He’d been blinded before, long ago in battle, and knew that though it was an ancient magic, it was only temporary. It was blind luck, no pun intended, that he managed to summon fire so fierce it burned his enemy to ash while waiting for his sight to recover. He stood amid the fierce and roaring cheers of blood-thirsty spectators, feeling glorified and pitiful at the same time, and it took hours before his vision fully returned.

“It could take hours for me to get my sight back,” he finally confessed.

“Then we will wait,” Lorelei decided. “We will stay here, right where we are, and we will wait until you are ready to go forward again.”

“Like sitting ducks?”

“You’re a warrior,” she pointed out haughtily. “You’ll protect us.”

Once more, he muttered things under his breath not meant for her ears, and though Brendolowyn didn’t know if it was the loss of his vision that made his hearing more acute, but he heard what the U’lfer said and it cut him more deeply than he’d ever confess.

“This is probably how I die…”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Again, they were forced to huddle with their backs against the wall, but at least it wasn’t unearthly dark on the mountain floor, and the sweet, salted scent of clean air did wonders for their moods. Amazing, how a breath of fresh air could lift the spirits and make a person feel hopeful again.

Lorelei sat between them, her head rested against the stiff leather shoulder of Finn’s armor and her wide-open eyes staring into that strange, almost otherworldly place. She’d never seen anything like the inside of the mountain. Peculiar flowers with petals as thick and spongy as mushrooms huddled in obscurity, their centers glowing faint blue and lending an eerie quality to the dim light beyond the torches Finn stabbed into the ground to prop them up around them like a force-field of precious light.

He’d finally let himself sleep, losing consciousness shortly after sitting down and tipping his head back into the wall behind him. He hadn’t moved in more than an hour, his mouth hanging slack, a trickle of drool glistening at the corner as he snored softly. Every time his body twitched, nearly jerking awake as if from some horrid nightmare, she reached a hand out to soothe him and he instantly grew still.

She wondered what horrible things he was dreaming about. Sometimes she thought she could feel it, the undercurrent of his fears snaking out to wrap around her insides and squeeze. Death… No, that wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t afraid to die. He was terrified of leaving her alone in the world.

The realization filled her with the strangest emotions, her stomach tightening and clenching, her chest hitching with stifled breath. It made her want to cry, but it also made her glad they hadn’t cemented their bond before coming to Great Sorrow. It was bad enough having to feel the subtle hints of a loved one’s fear; she could only begin to imagine how difficult it would be to stomach if they were mated and privy to every thought and feeling the other endured.

“My lady,” Brendolowyn drew her from her reverie and she glanced over her shoulder to look at him. Eyes closed, he did not turn toward her, only waited for her to acknowledge that he’d spoken. “Is there any water left?”

“No,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“I can’t help thinking after having done this time and time again through only the gods know how many cycles we might have thought to better prepare.”

An appreciative laugh scuffed through his dry throat and he shook his head. “How would we prepare? The Alvarii gave us food. We filled our water skins in the spring before coming into the mountain. We could not have known it would take so long to reach the bottom of a mountain it took us less than a day to climb.”

“I don’t know. I just wish… I wish it was easier.”

“If it was easy, we wouldn’t have to keep doing it, Lorelei.”

“I don’t want to have to do this ever again. I don’t even want to do it now.”

“I know it is not easy to convince yourself. Llorveth knows this monster’s power is unlike anything I’ve ever faced, but you cannot allow yourself to lose hope. So much in this world depends on you.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“We never do, and yet we all have our burdens to bear.”

“Am I one of your burdens, Bren?”

He answered quickly, gasping the word, “No,” as if her question was the most absurd thing he’d ever been asked. “That is… No. I could never think of you in that way, no matter how it’s often pained me to…”

“To what?” she asked when he stopped himself and silently refused to go on. “What do I do that pains you? Why won’t you tell me what I did?”

“Because it doesn’t matter, Lorelei. It wasn’t you, not you as you are now.”

“But it was me,” she pointed out. “Everyone in Dunvarak believes it was me.”

“I saw only the briefest glimpse of your face,” he confessed. “It was you who saved us. There is no doubt in my mind.”

“Then it was me who caused you pain, and I would know why so I don’t make the same mistake, Brendolowyn. You are my friend and I care about you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He opened his eyes, squinting them as if testing his vision and then he turned his head in her direction. He still couldn’t see, she could tell by the way the violet orbs with their pin-prick pupils scanned her face as if she were a million miles away and he could barely make her out at that distance.

“I told you already it was my fault Finn did not make it out of the mountain in our past attempts. Yovenna says it was in a fit of jealous rage that I refused to hold out my hand to save him. Maybe that is true, I don’t know. All I know is since you reached through time and spared me from death, I have loved you in ways I should not. You don’t belong to me…”

“I don’t belong to anyone, Bren.”

“That’s… that’s not what I meant. You and Finn… you were meant for each other and I have spent so much time resenting him for that, begrudging him the right to what I thought should be mine, but the truth is if Finn dies and you and I are left together in this world, you will both love and hate me. I can live without your love, but I do not want to live in a world where you hate me.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing for a long time. Finn snored on beside her and Bren stared unseeing into the distance. The world was a cruel place, the gods’ design terrible. Who should have to think about such matters of the heart when there were seemingly far more important things to worry about? And yet, there they were and they felt like they were equally important when held up beside the end of the world. Life was a strange thing.