Lynol didn’t reply. She couldn’t! It was taking all of her concentration to keep the flames going. Focusing her mind on her amulet, she willed the flames to leap up even higher and slowly move toward the two growling cats. Her amulet grew warmer in her hand, and the blue radiance increased until she was covered in it. God, don’t let me fail she thought as she concentrated on the fire spell and the snarling cats.
The two angry cats backed away from the approaching, leaping flames; loud, frustrated snarls echoed off the high cliff walls. They didn’t want to give up their prey so easily. They paced back and forth in front of the wall of protective flames, seeking a path around or above to get to their intended victims. Looking at the three humans behind the blaze, the cats roared and scratched the ground in front of them with their enormous claws, leaving more deep furrows in the sand and rock. They slowly backed away, shaking their heads back and forth snarling in anger.
Lynol, holding her brightly glowing amulet, focused upon the flames, causing them to continue to march slowly and meticulously toward the two snarling beasts, forcing them even farther back. Several times she felt the spell wavering, the flames weakening. Each time the cats would move closer to the flames, ready to pounce. Focusing desperately on her amulet, she willed her fading strength into the spell. She began to feel faint and dizziness began to sweep over her, but she continued to focus, forcing the leaping flames ever closer to the two snarling beasts. Then, with a last effort of her waning strength, she forced the flames to leap up and rush toward the cats.
With screams of pain and anger and a last threatening growl, the cats turned and retreated, bounding up a narrow defile in the stonewall to the side of them Lynol had failed to notice earlier. As soon as the cats were out of sight, Lynol released her hold on the fire spell and the wall of flame instantly subsided. She wouldn’t have been able to hold the spell for more than another few moments anyway.
Turning around, she faced her two friends, feeling faint and exhausted. This was the greatest exertion of sorcery she had tried to date. Only their dire predicament had forced her to risk tapping the power so deeply. Waves of dizziness washed over her, causing her to stand upon unsteady feet. She saw the amazed and confused looks upon her two closest friends’ faces.
“I would have told you eventually,” she said faintly, her gaze becoming blurry as she began to slide weakly to the ground, only to be caught and held up by two strong arms. Looking up, she saw Kalvin, who had a concerned, yet tender look upon his face. “I just need to rest for a few minutes and eat something, then I will be fine,” she said weakly, her voice a quiet mumble. Then everything went black.
-
Kalvin picked Lynol up in his arms and carried her to the wall of paintings, leaning her gently against it. Dresdia hurriedly opened up her pack, digging out some dried fruit she had packed that morning. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen; Lynol was a sorceress! Her best friend had the legendary powers of the ancient Sylvars! The prophecy Lynol had read aloud to them was frightening. What did it mean for Lynol and her future? Dresdia was afraid to think about the dangerous implications. She hurried back over to Lynol with the dried fruit, hoping she was okay.
Lynol opened her eyes and felt a hard, flat surface against her back. Where was she? For a moment, she couldn’t remember. She closed her eyes to shut out the light. When she opened her eyes again, she found the face of Kalvin watching her anxiously. The memory of the cats came flooding back. Lynol struggled to stand up and the world spun. She sank back against the wall feeling weak, angry at her body’s betrayal. She couldn’t believe how weak she felt.
“The cats are gone,” Kalvin said with worried concern in his voice. “You scared them away. I don’t think they will be coming back.”
Kalvin placed a canteen against her mouth and Lynol took a few sips of the cool, refreshing water. She could see the look of deep concern and worry on his face. She felt helpless and embarrassed by her sudden weakness. Some sorceress she was if she was going to pass out every time she cast a decent spell! She knew that she needed to regain her strength so they could leave. Those cats could come back at any time, and she knew she didn’t have enough strength to enact the fire spell again. She had never imagined anything like them living on the mountain. Lynol shivered, feeling suddenly cold as the full realization of what had just happened struck her.
“You’re shivering,” Dresdia said with growing distress in her voice.
Then Kalvin touched her arm, bringing her out of her worrisome thoughts. “Just relax, it’s over.”
“Try these, Lynol,” Dresdia said anxiously, handing her the dried fruit. She was worried about Lynol’s obviously weakened condition.
With furtive glances, Dresdia watched the defile where the dangerous cats had fled, hoping they wouldn’t return. She had never been so frightened in all her life. Kalvin shouldn’t have brought them here. They could all three have been killed by those horrendous animals! If not for Lynol, there was no doubt in Dresdia’s mind they would have.
Lynol nodded weakly and chewed. Finally, she swallowed, then, forcing the words out, “I will be better soon.”
After a few more bites and additional water, Lynol began to feel her strength slowly returning and the shivering stopped. She looked at her two friends. She felt her mind begin to clear and then with a dawning realization, she realized that Dresdia and Kalvin both knew her secret! She knew from this day on their lives would never be the same. The days of unknowing innocence would be left forever behind them.
-
Far up the slope of the mountain a few minutes earlier, Jalene froze in sudden surprise; she had just felt a sudden, powerful shift and flowing of the power from somewhere close by. Clyton and Kason halted also, seeing the surprised look on Jalene’s normally emotionless face. Pausing, Jalene looked slowly around, seeking the source of the power she sensed.
“What’s her problem now?” murmured Clyton, frowning at Jalene. He almost wished they had never agreed to make this trip. The woman was demonic, driven by some inner force that made him nervous.
She had been up before dawn driving them to get going up the mountain. They had been forced to eat a cold breakfast, as Jalene didn’t even give them time to build a cooking fire. The one they had built the night before for warmth had been completely out this morning. Clyton was supposed to tend the fire during the night to keep it burning for warmth, as well as protection, but had fallen asleep so the fire had died.
Jalene peered around, looking for the source of the disturbance. There was nothing visible and other than that brief surge of power, she could detect nothing else. “Firestorm Mountain,” she said quietly to herself with narrowed eyes. Perhaps what she had felt had been a further weakening of the sleeping spell, which held Gilmreth.
She felt uneasy. She had never felt a disturbance of the power like this before. It mystified her, and she wondered what it implied. The sooner they completed their task and she could get back down off this infernal mountain, the better.
Turning in her saddle, she looked at Clyton and Kason with scorn. “Come on you two, I want to reach the cave early in the morning, don’t get slack on me; I won’t tolerate it! I’m not paying you to be laggards!” Turning, she began making her way determinedly along the narrow path, which Kason had pointed out earlier.
Jalene preferred to keep the two men behind her whenever possible since they were leading the two pack animals. In the morning, they would be at the cave, and before the day was out the treasure she was seeking would be hers. She would then be able to rid herself of these two imbeciles. The thought brought a demonic smile to her cold face. Then, soon after that, Gilmreth would be hers to command!
Chapter Six
Early the next morning Jalene was glaring with malicious anger at the massive jumble of rocks and stones that lay blocking the hidden entrance to the cave. This wasn’t a result of mere chance or an accidental rock fall. The laborious work of time and the overpowering hand of nature could neve
r have sealed the entrance this thoroughly. Jalene suspected sorcery was the culprit, or at least the original culprit.
The entrance was totally buried under tons and tons of rock and dirt. She suspected that Malcon Sylvar himself must have sealed it behind him when he entered the cave to confront Gilmreth. The sorcerer, not expecting to survive, had brought the tunnel down behind him as he entered Gilmreth’s lair. The passage of time and the weather had done the rest.
With her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowing to angry dark slits, she examined the heavy boulders, dirt, and stones that barred her way trying to decide what to do. From the looks of the rock fall, the entrance at one time had been quite large. It would have had to be to allow the dragons to escape.
They had scoured the immediate area searching for another entrance, scrambling over rocks, boulders, and scrawny, blighted vegetation. If other entrances existed, time had erased all traces of them. No, this was the only entrance that had survived and her only way to get into the cave that led deep into Firestorm Mountain. If she wanted to gain access, it would have to be through this heavily blocked entrance. She hadn’t expected this to be easy, but she also hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, either. Jalene let her breath out slowly as Clyton walked up to her. The two men had been extremely useful, but that was nearly at an end; she was getting tired of their constant griping and complaining.
“If the cave is behind those rocks, it will stay there!” bellowed Clyton loudly, his back aching painfully from all the excruciating climbing he had been doing along the steep slope and cliff face, which supposedly harbored the blocked cave.
He breathed deeply from exhaustion, trying to catch his breath. Eyeing the rocks and folding his arms rebelliously across his heaving chest, Clyton spat on the ground, ignoring the disapproving glare from Jalene. He was fed up with this expedition; the sooner they were rid of this troublesome woman, the happier he would be! All he wanted now were the gold coins, which hung so seductively from her belt. Maybe it was time to see how powerful she really was. It was damn cold up here on the mountain. With a chill wind blowing across the slope and even with his heavy coat on, he still felt the penetrating cold.
“I’ve crawled all over these filthy rocks,” Clyton heaved belligerently, not caring how Jalene reacted. Sauntering up closer to Jalene, he looked at her challengingly. “There’s no way to get past them, it’s like someone sealed up the cave with the intention of ensuring that no one ever entered it again, if there actually is a cave! It looks to me like a big pile of rocks that slid down the mountain in an avalanche years ago. We might as well start back, there’s nothing more we can do here.”
Jalene’s anger flared at him like a raging flame; turning away, she moved her fingers in a quick flickering motion, using her sorcery to probe what lay hidden behind the rocks and boulders. She could sense the large void just beyond the collapsed rocks, which protected the sealed entrance. They extended some distance into the cave, more evidence that part of the roof had been collapsed long ago.
Shrugging out of her pack, she opened it, taking out two small containers containing special potions she had mixed up before setting out on this journey. She had suspected the cave entrance might be impassable, perhaps even blocked by rockslides over the years, particularly since Clyton and Kason had no knowledge of the caves existence. The two had supposedly been all over the mountain in their trapping expeditions.
She unscrewed the lids off the two palm size containers and poured the liquid contents carefully together into a larger wooden bowl. She had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to use this. These two chemicals were highly dangerous and just carrying them in her pack had made her extremely apprehensive. She wasn’t sure that even these would do the job with as much blockage as there was at the cave entrance.
Clyton and Kason moved closer, watching her curiously and sharing a cautious glance. What she was doing was mystifying, but they had come to expect that from this peculiar, demanding woman. For several days, she had become more on edge, her voice growing harsher and becoming more uncompromising as they neared the spot marked on the map. Whatever malignant force drove her, they wanted no part of it. Their eyes met knowingly. As soon as Jalene went to sleep tonight, they would kill her and take the gold coins for themselves. With all those coins, they would be able to stay off this infernal mountain for quite awhile. They could live a life of luxury in Draydon for many months, if not years!
Placing the bowl in a deep cavity at the base of a large boulder, which seemed to be holding much of the collapsed debris behind it, Jalene backed away quickly. The bowl started to smoke and sizzle as the two powerful ingredients began to react with each other. An acrid, caustic smell began filling the air.
The two men’s eyes started to water, and they began coughing as the fumes irritated their throats, causing them to burn. Slowly they backed away, not sure what was about to happen. They stared at Jalene wondering what she had done.
“What the hell is that?” demanded Kason, coughing violently from the smell.
“If you value your lives, I would suggest you get back very quickly,” Jalene said contemptuously, turning and running nimbly across the steep slope to take up a position behind a large boulder a safe distance from the cave entrance.
Kason uttered an oath, realizing Jalene had probably just put them in danger. Curbing his rising temper, he grabbed Clyton by the shoulder. “Run! It’s not safe here anymore!”
The two men turned and ran in the opposite direction, throwing themselves behind a small boulder. They had no sooner taken cover than a large explosion obliterated the massive stone at the cave entrance, shaking the mountain. An enormous shock wave slammed into them, hammering them to the ground and shifting away at the rubble shielding the cave. Bits of rock and loose dirt cascaded down on the two men, nearly burying them. A thick, pungent gray smoke rose up, obscuring the face of the mountain.
Struggling unsteadily to their feet and coughing hoarsely, they brushed the debris off themselves. They saw Jalene scampering toward the smoke shrouded entrance of the cave. As the chill breeze rapidly dissipated the smoke, they could dimly see a small, narrow opening that disappeared into darkness where the cave entrance was supposed to be. Jalene paused briefly at the entrance, peering in, before scrambling inside to vanish quickly from their sight.
“Damn her!” rumbled Clyton, angrily. “I’ll personally throw her off this infernal mountain. Her screams as she falls will be music to my ears!”
“Let’s just make sure we retrieve the gold coins first,” Kason warned, agreeing with Clyton’s assessment of the situation. “We’d better follow her to make sure those coins stay safe!”
The two men scrambled quickly back up to the cave, slipping and nearly falling in the loose rock that now lay scattered before the entrance. The newly blasted passage was just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. They could hear Jalene’s hurried footsteps fading in the distance.
“Let’s go,” Kason muttered, not happy about entering the cave.
He hated being in tight quarters, but he was curious to find out what she was after. It had to be extremely valuable. Perhaps they could add whatever Jalene sought to the gold coins. If it was indeed as valuable as she acted, they may never have to work again. They looked at each other greedily, their thoughts taking similar avenues. Once she had what she was after, they would kill her and leave her body in the cave.
-
Moments earlier, Jalene had scrambled through the narrow passage blasted out by the chemicals she had mixed together. The chemicals had burned a passage through the rocks and dirt, which had sealed up the cave. It was a formula listed in her thick book of sorcery spells, though she wondered if this was really sorcery. What other miracles had the ancients possessed that had been forgotten in antiquity?
The small tunnel suddenly widened and fell away to the sides, and Jalene stopped and reached into her pack. She took out a small round globe. Running her hands over it she focused her sorcery, wea
ving a simple spell that harnessed the power the small globe needed. Almost instantly, a bright pinpoint of light began burning in its center, growing and spreading until the globe began to shine with a brilliant white radiance.
The globe was an artifact from the Golden Age; she had stumbled across it in the ruins of an ancient city. The harsh, dry weather of the desolate desert had partially preserved the ruins. Much of the city had been buried in the shifting sands, its few surviving structures burned out crumbling hulks of what they once were. Jalene had found the globe deep inside of one of the buried buildings. She had spent much of her life exploring the desolate wastelands where no one else dared to venture. She preferred the solitude it offered, and it had given her the time she needed to hone her sorcery skills.
Holding the globe up high, Jalene saw that she was standing in a large, manmade tunnel. The sides were smooth and the floor flat, with the ceiling nearly fifty feet above her head. Occasional cracks ran haphazardly down the walls, showing that the passage of time had manifested its effects even here. She reached into her pack again and removed an ancient scroll. Unrolling it, she examined the markings in the bright light. The yellowed, brittle scroll was an underground map of the huge complex of the ancients, which lay hidden beneath Firestorm Mountain.
No one, she believed, knew that here beneath the mountain centuries in the past the great dragons had been created. The master sorcerers of that ancient time had pooled their vast resources to create a race of stupendous creatures to do their bidding. After studying the map, Jalene rolled it up and carefully placed it back in her pack. Holding the light before her, she began walking at a rapid pace down the wide, dusty tunnel. Her footsteps echoed hollowly off the walls in the vast tunnel that surrounded her.
-
After nearly twenty minutes of walking, the tunnel branched. A smaller tunnel went off to her left, and the larger tunnel continued down to her right. Pausing, she stood between the two. From the larger tunnel, a foul stench pervaded her senses. There was no doubt what resided in its dark, fathomless depths.
Gilmreth the Awakening Page 16
