Soldier Scarred

by D. K. Holmberg

  Endric stared at him, trying to come up with some answer, but there wasn’t any. There wasn’t anything to say, and there was no reason to argue. All he needed was to go along with Urik and see what he might know.

  “Where are we going?” Endric asked, grabbing the reins of the horse.

  Urik shook his head. “Not with her.”

  “We’re walking?”

  “Where we’re going, I think we have to.”

  Endric patted the side of the horse and removed the reins, tucking them into one of the saddlebags. “Return to the city,” he said. He wasn’t certain whether it would make any difference, but it seemed the right thing to do and say.

  When he patted the horse on the flank, she started away and down the slope. Endric watched her departing and had a moment of remorse. Would he regret allowing her to depart like that? And if he did, would Urik live up to his promise and work with him?

  “Let’s go.”

  Urik considered him for a moment. “It will be difficult.”

  “I’ve been through difficult. That doesn’t concern me.”

  “This might be more difficult than anything you’ve been through before.”

  “Then we should start.”

  19

  It was near dusk when the mountain exploded.

  The ground grumbled, more than any of the tremors that had come before, and debris from up the slope spilled down, cascading around Endric’s feet. He crouched, getting into a position so that he could brace himself if needed, and looked up at the peak of the mountain. Ash spewed higher and higher into the sky, and flames streaked with it, reflecting off the dust. The air stunk, a hot and biting odor that burned at his nose and throat.

  Urik remained standing. He stared, his hands clasped in front of him, up the slope of the mountain. There was an unreadable expression on his face, but Endric had seen it on him before. It was almost a yearning, as if he longed to understand more.

  “You need to get down,” Endric said. “If something larger comes tumbling toward us, it will knock you off your feet.”

  “Then it will knock me off my feet,” Urik said.

  “Don’t be a fool. I’m not dragging you out of here.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to drag me anywhere,” Urik said.

  Endric shook his head, pushing back the annoyance he felt. “Don’t do this, Urik. These tremors have been going on for the last week, at least. Possibly longer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve been far too close to the mountain the entire time,” he said.

  The rumbling died off and the stream of debris up the slope stopped. Endric stood, dusting his hands on his pants.

  “Did they give you any idea of where you need to go?” Endric asked.

  “Nothing other than that I should continue to climb,” Urik said.

  He started off, making his way directly up the slope of the rock rather than taking the narrow path that wound along the side of the mountain. Endric was forced to follow, climbing and scraping his hands and occasionally his knees as he did. The darkness made it difficult to navigate, but Endric pushed on, determined to get to the summit.

  After climbing for a while, Urik reached another path and hurried along it. Endric clambered up the rock, struggling to keep up with the older man, surprised by Urik’s mobility. How was it that he was able to move more quickly than Endric? Urik disappeared around a bend, and in the darkness, Endric lost sight of him entirely.

  He hurried after Urik, keeping his gaze down at his feet, fearful that he might take a wrong step. Each foot was placed carefully, not wanting to slip as he went, and he paused at the bend in the path where Urik had disappeared.

  Endric still saw no sign of him.

  Where had he gone? He should have been right here, but he was missing.

  He couldn’t simply have disappeared—not like that. There would have to have been some answer as to where Urik had gone. In the darkness, he couldn’t tell.

  Had he gone back down the slope? Had he fallen? Or had he started up the side of the mountain again?

  He paused, hoping for a glimpse of moonlight to guide his way. Instead, it was a flash of red from another explosion that showed him where to go.

  There was an opening along the path.

  When the explosion occurred, creating an outline of darkness, Endric saw a cave recessed in the side of the mountain.

  The opening to the cave was too perfect to be naturally occurring. Could this be a mine?

  Why here? It seemed too high—and remote.

  Endric started in, keeping his hand on the wall. It was warm, though this high in the mountain with the wind gusting around, he would’ve expected it to be cooler. There was no light, and he was forced to shuffle along carefully, sliding one foot in front of the other while keeping his hand trailing along the stone, hoping that he didn’t stumble.

  As he went, the darkness began to lighten.

  Were his eyes adjusting, or was there something else that would explain the change?

  He continued to approach and as the light became increasingly clear, Endric was more and more certain that whatever was there was real.

  But what was it?

  Something grabbed him in the darkness.

  Endric jerked around, trying to shake off whoever had grabbed him. Or whatever. The idea that something was in the cave with him sent his heart racing. Memories of groeliin came to mind, reminders of the day he had found their breeding grounds. He hadn’t thought there would be something similar this far to the south, but what if there were groeliin hiding in the mountains here? There certainly was teralin. Could the groeliin have spread without being detected?

  “Easy, Endric.”

  “Urik. Why did you run off—”

  “Quiet.” He raised a finger to his lips, silencing him.

  Urik made a motion with his hand and dragged Endric deeper into the cave. Now that it was lighter, Endric didn’t feel the same reluctance to release his connection to the walls of the cave, but still dragged his hand along the stone.

  “What is it?” he asked with a whisper.

  “I don’t know. There are rumors of the temple somewhere in the mountain, and when I saw the opening—”

  “How did you see the opening in the darkness?”

  “I’ve been keeping my hand out, searching for something. How else would I have seen it? How did you see it?”

  “There was a flash of light.”

  “Yes. I felt it in here. If you thought the tremors were unpleasant when you are outside the mountain, wait until you feel one inside this cave.”

  “Is this where the Conclave wanted you to go?”

  “I don’t know where the Conclave wanted me to go. I’m coming here because I don’t have the answer. I thought that I could find something, but maybe it’s nothing more than the inside of the volcano.”

  “This mine is man-made,” Endric said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve been inside enough mines over the years to recognize that much. It’s nothing like the naturally occurring caves that exist in the north.”

  Urik frowned at him. “One day, you will need to share with me what you experienced in the north.”

  “That’s not mine to share.”

  “Because of the Antrilii?”

  “Because it’s not mine to share,” Endric said.

  Urik grinned at him. “And if I were a member of the Conclave?”

  “I doubt that would change a thing.”

  “Then it is an Antrilii experience.”

  “Urik, please don’t push this.”

  Urik grinned. “I’m not pushing. I’m trying to understand you better. If your experiences with the Antrilii are what have changed you, then I would like to understand that. Isn’t it much the way you have tried to understand me?” Urik spoke in a whisper. His voice carried only to Endric, barely enough to reach him.

  “The Antrilii are secretive, and rightly so. Everyth
ing that they’ve experienced has driven them to remain secretive. It’s not my place—or my intent—to reveal their secrets.”

  After a long moment, Urik smiled slightly. “So be it.”

  They continued to creep forward, moving more carefully now, and Endric made a point of paying attention to how heavy each step landed, not wanting to thud along the tunnel, not wanting sound to reverberate. As they went, the light continued to grow brighter, and he began to move more carefully, uncertain about what they were approaching.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “It appears to be nothing more than the glowing innards of the mountain,” Urik said.

  That didn’t feel quite right. He wasn’t entirely certain what they were coming across, only that he had never seen anything quite like it before.

  Urik moved forward, though with less certainty than he had previously. He crept slowly and frowned as he did. Endric could practically see the wheels in his mind churning as he tried to figure out what they were seeing. The confidence that he had displayed before was gone, disappearing with each step that he took.

  Finally, Urik stopped.

  Endric glanced over. “I thought you wanted to find out what this was?”

  “There is nothing wrong with a little caution.”

  “No. There’s nothing wrong with a little caution, but you are being overly cautious.”

  Urik sniffed. “I think that you would call most people overly cautious, Endric.”

  “I doubt that I have ever considered you that way before. Especially since you betrayed the Denraen.”

  Urik fixed him with a hard stare and Endric wondered what he might say, but the other man said nothing.

  “Fine. I will see what is up there,” Endric said.

  He continued forward, now moving with a desire to prove to Urik that he would discover the answer to what they saw. With each step, the light became brighter and the heat around him intensified. It reminded him of the teralin glowing in the walls, but this was unlike that, as well. This was a dry heat, and the walls did not radiate it quite the same way as they did in the teralin mines.

  He kept expecting that he would come across an answer as to what was glowing in the distance, but the answer seemed to come slowly. He trailed his hand along the stone and noticed the cavern opening up in the distance.

  Endric paused. From here, the path in front of him became clearer. The rock sloped up, and as he took a few steps along it, the glowing became even brighter. So did the heat.

  His breath caught. How long would he be able to push forward like this? There might come a point where the heat was overwhelming. The path continued to slope upward. It was a steep climb that reminded him of climbing along the outer slope of the mountain.

  It leveled off suddenly.

  He crawled the remaining distance carefully, not wanting to move too quickly into the open if that was where it would take him. There was a bright glowing light, even brighter than what he had been seeing, visible above what appeared to be a shelf of rock. When he poked his head above it, what he saw took his breath away.

  Spread out before him was an opening in the mountain. The glowing that he had seen appeared to be a fountain of fire spilling from someplace high overhead and running down into the depths.

  “Most volcanoes erupt upward.”

  Endric jerked around and saw Urik next to him. “I thought you were too afraid to follow me here.”

  “When have I ever allowed fear to prevent me from doing what I needed to do?”

  Endric shrugged. “I honestly don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

  Urik cocked his head to the side. “No. You do not.”

  “It’s beautiful in a deadly sort of way.”

  “And unusual. As I said, most volcanoes explode upward. This is almost as if the lava is pouring from some channel high above and draining down the inside of the mountain.”

  “Then what’s spewing out into the sky?”

  “Other than ash and flames?” Urik shrugged. “I don’t have an answer. Someone thought an awful lot of this fountain to dig a tunnel into it.”

  Endric crawled forward, keeping his belly to the ground. The stone was warmer here, though still not as warm as teralin could be. He had the same thought as Urik about the tunnel. Someone had thought that they would find answers here, and must have felt that there was value in reaching it, though why? What would they have hoped to find here? Was it simply about finding this fountain of fire?

  The path reached a ledge and dropped off into the fiery depths below. It wound along the inside of the opening and reached high over his head, disappearing into the mountain above.

  “It’s something out of a nightmare,” Endric whispered as Urik approached.

  “And yet, it’s places like this that allow you to feel close to the gods.”

  “I think there are better ways to feel close to the gods than this. I would much rather visit Thealon and see the Tower or even go to Vasha and visit with the Magi to know the gods.”

  “But this allows you to see their primal power. There is nothing quite like this anywhere else. I imagine you never even saw anything like this in the Antrilii lands.” He looked over at Endric, a playful smile spreading across his face. “Though I suspect that if you did, you wouldn’t share those secrets with me any more than you would share your secret to taming those creatures that came from the north.”

  Endric grunted. “There is no taming when it comes to the merahl. They will either follow you or they will not.”

  “And is there a reason that they followed you when they don’t follow others?”

  “Probably the same reason that they follow some of the Antrilii,” Endric said.

  “And I presume you have no interest in telling me what that is?”

  “It’s not so much that I don’t have any interest in telling you, it’s that I don’t know that anything I share with you would help you understand what you want to know. I don’t know what I did that convinced the merahl to follow me.”

  That wasn’t quite right. Endric had fought groeliin willingly. He had risked himself to do so, and he had helped free the merahl meeting grounds, keeping them from the groeliin. That was worthwhile, and that likely had earned him the respect of the merahl.

  Endric continued to crawl forward, moving beyond the opening to the cave and making his way along the path leading off to the left side. Heat blasted him, enough that he kept toward the wall, not wanting to be too close to the source of the heat, but he couldn’t get away from it.

  Urik reached him and tapped Endric on the leg. “Where are you going? This is it.”

  “I doubt that this is it. There’s too much for this to be the only reason this is here.”

  “What else do you think that is?” Urik asked.

  “You’re the historian—or were—so why don’t you tell me what else you think there might be.”

  Urik stared at him for a while before shaking his head. “There may be nothing else. This might be it.”

  “If this is it, then why would there be a ledge here?”

  Endric continued along it. It wound downward, circling around the fountain of flames. The fountain was in the middle of the opening, and he made his way around it, thankfully never getting any closer. After going that way for a while, Endric got to his feet and hurried along the path.

  The longer he went, the more convinced he was that there was something else here. There had to be for this to even be here. All of this was intentionally made, so Endric knew that there was a purpose for it.

  What if they had come in through the intended exit?

  If that were the case, then what was down below? What would they find when they reached the bottom of wherever this was?

  “This might be the temple,” Urik whispered.

  “What temple?”

  “The ancient people of Salvat had a temple to the gods. Most scholars thought that the temple was on the outskirts of the mountain, but others have spec
ulated that it was buried within the mountain itself.”

  “And no one ever went looking for?”

  “We’ve gone looking, but you’ve seen how difficult it is to reach.”

  “You reached it.”

  “Because I had no choice.”

  “Why is that? Why did you have no choice?”

  Urik stared at Endric and finally sighed. “I was told that if I didn’t do this, there would be no way of helping Tresten.”

  “It’s not about Tresten for you.”

  Urik shook his head. “I’ve made no attempt to disguise my desire to reach the Conclave.”

  “And that’s all it is for you? All you want is to reach the Conclave, so you’re willing to do this?”

  “If it’s some sort of initiation, then I am.”

  Endric studied him. Could it be some sort of initiation? That seemed strange, almost cruel, but at the same time, maybe there were secrets that the Conclave kept that they wanted to ensure those who gained access were deserving.

  “Isn’t that what you’re after?” Urik asked. “After everything that you’ve seen, don’t you want only to reach the Conclave?”

  Endric looked back at him. “I wanted only to help Tresten.”

  “Wanted? As in you don’t anymore?”

  “I’m not sure there is any helping Tresten. But now I want only to help Senda.”

  20

  Endric expected something more when the path ended. It sloped to a flattened section that continued to circle around the fountain, which had not changed in intensity during the time that Endric had been here and continued to pour deeper into the ground. He didn’t know how deep into the mountain he had gone, but figured it was far enough that he was somewhat close to the base. The spiraling path had gone down a sharp incline, nearly as sharp an incline as what he remembered from the outside of the mountain. It was a tighter spiral, which allowed him to move more quickly.

  “Is this it?” Urik asked.

  Endric glanced back at him, smiling. “You were the historian. Why are you asking me whether there’s anything else here?”

  “It seems as if there should have been more to it,” Urik said. “After all of this walking, it seems as if there should be…”