Tygra brandished his warhammer, his attention divided between Silurian and Melody.
“Enough!” Melody’s staff pulsed so brightly that everyone had to look away. “Standing here bickering like a bunch of ten-year-olds isn’t going to get us out of here. We go in the order Silurian suggested.” She held up her free hand to Karvus who was about to interject. “Not because he said it, but because it makes sense. I must go first, that is obvious. Silurian should go second and it should be Tygra helping him. If you,” she looked directly at Karvus, “were to help him, I’m certain you’d kill each other before you made it halfway up.”
She faced Tygra. “You are very strong, of that you have already proven, but to expect you to carry a full-grown man up a thin rope is too much to ask.” She turned back to Karvus and pointed with her staff. “And that is why you must climb last. To help Tygra if the burden becomes too much.”
Karvus wasn’t happy but there was no way around it. It irritated him to acquiesce but the woman made sense. He wasn’t used to taking orders, especially from women—worse yet, a Zephyr woman. They were slaves where he came from.
He swore under his breath. Wait until he got that witch outside. He smiled inwardly. Then they would see if witches really could fly—right off the side of the mountain.
“Alright,” he grumbled. “But I’m warning you. The only thing that sword better be skewering is those yippy cats or I’ll skin you both.”
Silurian’s eyes narrowed. He bladed his stance.
Tygra’s forearms flexed.
“Silurian!” Melody admonished.
Karvus was disappointed when Silurian lowered his sword and slid it into its bejeweled scabbard. Karvus had admired the exquisite sheath as soon as he had seen it in the Serpent’s Nest. It was going to make a great addition to his trophy collection. Soon, he assured himself. Once the witch took flight, her companion would follow in her wake.
Climbing up the rope proved more difficult than Silurian imagined. Tygra’s arms wrapped beneath his armpits made him despise it that much more.
He had to admit, to himself anyway, that without the constant assistance of the brute, there was no way he would have made it this far, and they were barely half way up the short climb.
He stopped to rest, aided by Tygra, and looked up.
How his sister climbed in those bulky robes while hanging onto her staff made him shake his head. She scaled the rope like a squirrel climbing a pole.
The chittering din from above grew with excitement. The noise filled him with dread, especially for his sister.
From the sound of it, there were more aquacats than they had first assumed. Melody would be hard-pressed to deal with them all at once. They had already witnessed the pack mentality governing the creatures’ actions. As soon as she was in their comfort range, he didn’t doubt they would all spring on her at once.
Had she stood in the middle of a field waiting their approach, she would’ve faced a difficult fight. Poking her head out of a hole on the side of a mountain with a sheer drop on one side was insane.
Bits of snow and dirt tumbled down as the aquacats scrabbled at the rim in anticipation.
Silurian took a piece in the eye and had to look away, blinking rapidly and rubbing the stinging eye on his shoulder.
Melody’s voice sounded hollow from above, “Watch yourselves. I’m going to blast them.”
The tunnel above brightened twice in quick succession, followed by two concussions—the noise so loud in the close confines of the shaft that Silurian thought his eardrums had ruptured.
The chittering from above died away. Whether a result of Melody’s blasts, or because his hearing had been compromised, he couldn’t tell. All he heard now was the heavy breathing of the two Kraidic warriors, the creaking of the thin rope, and an odd rumbling noise sounding a long way off.
Melody’s voice reached him from above. “Uh oh.”
The way she said it didn’t sound good. Blinking away the last vestiges of dirt he squinted up the shaft.
Melody poked her head out of the top of the fissure—the sun illuminating her blonde hair.
“What’s, uh oh?” he dared to ask.
“Get down! Off the rope!”
The rumbling rose to a roar as Melody slid down to them. Before he could even begin to fathom the significance, her boots crunched his fingers from the rope.
Tygra grunted, bearing Silurian’s full weight.
“Move!” Melody shouted at them. “It’s an ava—”
Her words were lost to a thunderous explosion in the tunnel. The light disappeared behind an inrushing layer of snow and debris—large chunks pummelling them incessantly from above.
Melody dropped past Silurian’s shoulders in the ensuing deluge that took him and Tygra in the face. He reached out she was gone in a flurry of snowfall.
He tried to duck his head and hang on to the rope but the weight of the inrushing snow was too much. It was surreal falling down the shaft amongst an avalanche. As much as he despised Keen, he thought how awful it must be as the lowest person on the rope.
In the moment it took the snow to fill the shaft, Silurian worried about landing on Melody, but he was powerless to do anything. Layer after heavy layer pummeled him as he fell, caught in the snow slide.
The avalanche was over almost as soon as it had started but the amount of snow it had dropped into the chute was considerable. By the time Silurian came to terms with what had just happened, the roar in the shaft had diminished to a distant rumble and then total silence.
Feeling no worse than he had before he’d fallen, he pushed his head through the top layer of snow.
Sunlight streamed blindingly from above, highlighting the sifting snow around the opening on the heels of a whistling wind. Shading his eyes, he began searching for Melody.
He realized he was still inside the shaft, its circumference no wider than his arm span. No one else was visible below the plug of snow he found himself trapped within.
He fought the sudden anxiety threatening to unravel his nerves. He had to keep a clear head. Melody and the Kraidic warriors were buried somewhere beneath him. He didn’t care about Tygra or Keen, but the thought of what might have happened to his sister instilled in him an urgent sense of panic.
Testing his legs, the injured shin pained him. He was stuck tight. His good leg wiggled more freely than his injured one. He scooped at the snow around him but every time he shoved aside a few handfuls, the granular snow around the edge of his excavation fell into the spot he had just cleared.
He tried to push down on the snow to lift himself higher but the powdery snow gave way beneath his palms.
Taking a deep breath, he lolled his head back to think.
The rope!
The rope hung taut from the opening. He grasped it and pulled with all his might but he couldn’t lift himself from the snow. He groaned. He was stuck fast. His body held upright with no way to generate any leverage with his legs.
He squinted at the opening and listened, hearing only the wind. The avalanche must have taken the aquacats with it.
He lolled his head back again. He had to find Melody—and fast. The frustration of his ineptitude fueled his anger. He located his sword behind his shoulders, thankful it had remained in place. As he contemplated what he might do with the sword, a peculiar warmth seeped into his lower extremities.
He attributed it to blood circulating into his feet as he wiggled his toes within his boots.
The rope pulled through his gloves. Before he knew what was happening, the plug of snow collapsed into the cave.
A soft pile of snow at the bottom of the shaft arrested his fall. He rolled over a couple of times and slid to the bottom of the pile to be met by orange glare. Melody’s smile was a welcome relief. “You’re okay?”
She offered him a hand up. “I thought you were suffocating. I saw the bottom of your boot wiggle but I was afraid to melt the snow in case I set you on fire. Are the others with you?”
“No.” His eyes rested on the mass of snow piled at the bottom of the shaft. “They must be under there.”
She put her staff down and started moving snow aside.
Silurian rose shakily to his feet, testing his leg. “Leave them. You think they’d help you? They’ll try to kill us once they realize the aquacats are gone.”
Melody paused for a moment but didn’t look up. Without a word, she resumed digging into the mound of dirt and snow.
“Think, Mel. They were about to kill me when you emerged from the Gimcrack. Tygra went after you—the fact that he was going inside a monster’s mouth didn’t deter him in the slightest. We shouldn’t be helping them.”
She stopped again, her back raising and lowering with heavy breaths. She gazed at him, her golden locks tangled and filthy, matching her face. “I can’t leave them to die.”
“You want to save them so they can kill you? Think, Mel, think. They’re Kraidic. They can’t be trusted.”
She stood up. “They’re still people.”
“Aye. People bent on killing us. Animals if you ask me.”
She stared up the shaft. “We need their help if we want to get you out of here.”
“I’ll manage.”
She kept her attention on the exit tunnel and the pile of debris at its bottom.
Silurian understood by the way her shoulders shook beneath her robes she was crying. He put a hand on her upper arm and turned her to face him.
“I thought I’d lost you again. I felt so useless. Me, the Wizard of the North, and I was powerless to avert the slide. What good is my magic if I can’t even stop a bit of snow.” She looked away. “Or carry you when you’re hurt?”
“Nature packs a wallop. No wizard could’ve prevented what just happened. The important thing is, we’re alive. You and me. That’s what matters.”
“I know. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t care about them,” she indicated the pile with a nod, “but I can’t leave them to die. I just can’t. Without them, we’re going to be stuck down here for a long time. We need to get to King Malcolm before Helleden does.”
Silurian ran his tongue across the front of his teeth, thinking. He scrambled painfully up the pile and grasped the rope. With a mighty heave of his arms he lifted himself into the air, wrapped his legs about the rope, and dropped to the ground in agony. He muffled a curse and slid down on his rump. The avalanche hadn’t done his injury any good.
He settled carefully onto his knees, muttering, “You’re right. I can’t climb out of here,” and started digging.
Breathing became more difficult with each shallow breath. The skin on his face seemed as if it were afire. The irony wasn’t lost on Karvus, buried helplessly beneath a mountain of snow.
Other than the rapid beating of his heart, and the difficult breaths he blew out, no sound reached him.
Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined his life ending beneath a layer of ice and debris. Especially at the bottom of a hole, in the side of a mountain, in the kingdom he had been taught to detest from a young age. Instead of conquering Zephyr, the land had become his bane.
His hands pinned helplessly at an uncomfortable angle and his head mashed within a suffocating press of cold snow, he sweated profusely in his layers of fur and armour.
He wanted to scream. He’d come too far to die this way. Having the wizard in his grasp, only to have nature intervene was a cruel twist of fate. And he had done this for what? To appease the sorcerer who killed his father?
At the time of his father’s death, he thought Helleden had saved him the bother of disposing of Krakus, but given time for reflection, that scenario was an affront to everything Kraidic warriors believed in. It wasn’t the sorcerer’s place to usurp Karvus’ honour. The one to dispatch Emperor Krakus should have been his successor. That was the Kraidic way. Survival of the fittest. The empire deserved the strongest Kraken leading it.
Krakus had been a ferocious leader for many years but his time had drawn to an inglorious end. Karvus had sensed it that first day with Helleden.
Lying there, waiting to die, a calm infused him, clarifying his thoughts. His father had cracked awaiting his meeting with Helleden. Reflecting on it, it was totally out of character for Krakus. Perhaps the sorcerer had placed a spell on his father.
He swallowed—the dryness in his throat painful. If it was any consolation, he had delivered the killing stroke. As was his right as successor, but had his father deserved his fate? After everything Krakus had done for the empire, to be ravaged and torn to shreds by his own hounds was harsh even by Kraidic standards.
His ire rose. His father had died an ignoble death at the hands of the sorcerer who now compelled him, the new Kraidic emperor, to do his bidding. To hunt down and kill a wizard who had never done anything against the Kraidic Empire.
He acknowledged his people’s long-standing hatred of magic users, but if that were the case, should they not abhor Helleden, regardless of the spoils he promised?
Lying buried in the snow awaiting a slow, suffering death, the only spoils he would realize was that of his decaying body.
He seethed. He should’ve buried his axe in Helleden’s face that first day in his father’s tent…
Something pulled him from his thoughts. Was that scratching he heard?
His left ear itched dreadfully with the ice melting inside it and there was nothing he could do to get at it. Every time he rubbed his head against the snow, more ice slipped into his upper ear.
Something struck his left boot. At least it felt like his left boot. It was hard to tell—his extremities had gone numb.
Something scrabbled up his leg to his waist, the pressure on his lower body had lessened noticeably. Two sets of hands grabbed his belt and pulled him clear of the snow.
Concussed in the original fall, he was vaguely aware of sliding across and down a pile of snow, landing heavily on the stone floor and rolling over. The long-haired man who wanted nothing more than to kill him stood over him. A blonde-haired woman crossed into his vision. The witch!
His mind roiled with the ramifications. The people he had been sent to kill had saved him. But why? At once his thoughts focused on the only real friend he had in the world, a man who probably hated him outside of his role as his personal aide.
“T-T-Tygra?” he croaked through quivering, blue lips.
The witch and the swordsman left his dimming vision. Shivering uncontrollably, his world went dark.
Melody’s staff discharged a steady blast of flames against the pile of rock she and Silurian had collected from the snowfall at the base of the exit shaft. The rocks glowed orange, exuding heat into the small cavern.
After pulling the Kraidic warriors from the snow, she set to work on Silurian’s leg. Considering the state the men were in, they weren’t leaving the cavern anytime soon so she decided to expend the little energy she had left.
Not wanting to cause him excruciating pain, she pulled a potion from her bottomless satchel and dispensed a couple of drops onto a piece of wizard’s bread. It wasn’t long before the effects knocked Silurian out.
A great yawn split her grimy features. Though three men lay around the rock pile, she sat alone with her thoughts for several hours, afraid to fall asleep herself lest they freeze to death.
Silurian, Keen and Tygra slept restlessly. Silurian’s mangled shin appeared much better, but she feared for the man named Tygra.
She yawned so deeply that her eyes watered. She had expended more energy than she thought herself capable of in an effort to heal the others. She had no choice. If they didn’t escape this ice cave soon, it would become their tomb.
She forced her eyes open wide, trying to shake her gathering lethargy. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d slept. Her eyelids grew heavier each time she blinked and remained closed longer each time. She was certain she dozed more than once only to be awakened by the ever-creeping cold. She fretted over the ramifications of being asleep when one of the Kraidics awoke but she w
as so tired.
She also dreaded Silurian waking first. He had changed drastically. He was no longer the virtuous, carefree, loving soul he’d been before Phazarus stole her away.
She had never known a more caring person than her brother had been once upon a time. He had the knack of finding the good in even the direst of situations. Her mind drifted back to their time on Mount Cinder—outwitting Hairy the troll and eluding the evil Thonk. Through all the hardships they endured during those scary, hopeless days, Silurian had been the epitome of optimism.
Reflecting on it now, his insatiable, happy spirit had been the sole reason they survived long enough to save the prince.
She shivered. Her brother’s words and actions no longer exhibited his old zest for life. Cynicism and hatred had taken the sparkle from his eyes. Sadness enveloped her. She drifted. Peacefulness settled in…
She opened her eyes in terror. She’d fallen asleep. The cave was cold and dark except for the faint light filtering in from above. Silurian and Tygra lay by the cold pile of rocks, their sleeping forms noticeably shivering.
Keen was nowhere to be seen.
She swallowed and looked behind her, expecting to see a battle-axe chopping down, but there was no one else in the cave.
She had no idea how long she’d slept, but the wooliness in her brain had lifted.
Her staff!
In a panic, she slapped the ground until her fingers wrapped around the comforting wooden staff.
She was never more thankful for its touch as a scratching noise and creak of leather armour sounded from within the shaft that led to the cavern below.
A chunk of what appeared to be frozen meat shot out of the chute, followed by another.
Keen poked his head out of the top of the chute, his green eyes finding hers. “About time you woke up. I’ve gathered us food.” He indicated with his chin a pile of frozen fish chunks he’d amassed against the back wall of the cave. His battle-axe sat propped against the wall next to the pile.
She blinked several times, trying to come to terms with the whole ordeal. The lake lay two caverns below. Judging by the amount of meat he’d amassed she must’ve slept for a long time. “How long have I been out?”
Soul Forge Saga Box Set Page 87
