I laughed, scratching her under the chin. "I'm pretty sure this is a rite of passage for all heroes and champions, at least according to every legend and myth I've ever read," I said as she purred beneath my ministrations. "The hero might have help from friends for part of the journey, but the final battle is something they must face alone."
"But you won't be alone," Lessie said. "No matter how far away you are, I will always be with you."
Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I hugged her tighter, then stepped away. "I love you."
"I know. Now go show that death god what for."
Rhia and I said our goodbyes. I adjusted the straps of my pack around my shoulders, then took my first step into the skeletal forest. The moment I did, the green haze seemed to close around me, cutting me off from my friends. My heart pounded loudly in my ears, the only sound I could hear anymore. The ebony branches reached toward me like ghostly hands, scraping against my skin and clothes. The sound the branches made as they snapped back into place echoed far too loudly in the dense quiet.
Relax, Zara, I told myself, taking deep, slow breaths as I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other. They're just trees. They can't hurt you.
Following Caor's instructions, I kept to the path, a thin strip of earth that glittered white, like crushed diamonds. It wound through the trees in a twisting path, and I was forced to take things slow since I could only see about ten feet in front of me. Murky voices whispered through the trees, unintelligible sounds belonging to disembodied voices. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the cadence, and more than once my feet tried to stray from the diamond path of their own accord.
"Zara." A shadowy form flickered to my left, and I whipped around just as it vanished. "Zara, help me..."
"Rhia?" I called back, my palms growing sweaty as I tightened my grip around the handle of my dragon blade. Oh gods, had my friends decided to follow me into the forest after all? "Rhia, you have to turn back!"
"I... can't..." Rhia choked out, her words dissolving into hacking coughs. I caught another flicker of shadow, this time to my left. "Please, Zara, help..."
"Don't listen." Lessie's voice was a soothing balm in my head, calming my frayed nerves. "Rhia is right here with me. What you're seeing and hearing are shadows and echoes, tricks of light and sound to make you stray from the path."
"Right." I took another steadying breath and straightened my shoulders. Of course Rhia wasn't really here. She wouldn't have been able to make it this far, not when the green miasma was ten times thicker than it had been at the bay. "Thanks, Lessie."
"See?" I could hear the smile in her voice. "I told you you're not alone."
Those words, more than anything, warmed my heart and gave me courage. I pushed on, moving faster now, my steps sure now that I knew what to expect. Every time I heard a voice, saw a shadow, Lessie was there to remind me that none of it was real, that all that mattered was to stick to the path until I reached the base of the mountain.
I was doing so well until I rounded the bend and found myself standing in a very different place.
"You say none of this is real?" a woman asked as she knelt on the ground next to the body of a dead man. A waterfall of red curls hid her face as she rocked back and forth on her knees, clutching the man's lifeless hand in hers. "How can you say that, when I gave my life for yours?"
"Wh-who are you?" I stammered, an awful feeling curling in the pit of my stomach. The green haze in the air gave way to a different atmosphere, and suddenly I was standing in a narrow alley, the diamond path transformed to cobblestones. The scent of rotting garbage and urine assailed my nostrils, and beneath that was the thick, pervasive scent of fresh blood.
The woman lifted her head, sad green eyes meeting mine. "You know who I am, Zara."
I stumbled backward, a scream trapped in my throat at the sight of her neck, which had been slashed open. Blood poured out of the wound, covering the front of the simple blue dress she wore, but the woman smiled, opening her arms to me. "Won't you give me a hug, daughter? I've waited so long for you."
"She's not real, Zara. She's not real!"
But the voice screaming in my head was faint, coming from another place, another lifetime. Too stricken by shock to move, I sank to my knees until we were eye level. "What happened to you?" I choked out, trying not to stare at her neck. But gods, that wound... "Who did this to you?"
"I can't answer that," she said in that achingly sad voice. Her arms were still outstretched, and I stared at the simple band of silver around her ring finger. "I didn't know the men who killed us, and I haven't seen them in the afterlife since. But it doesn't matter anymore." A smile bloomed on her face, so like mine and yet not, chasing away the grief and the darkness. "You're here with us now. And you can stay with us forever."
Forever. The child in me ached for the promise in that word, in those open arms, and I inched forward, slowly. "But what about Father?" I asked, my gaze unwillingly switching to the man lying on the ground. He would have been handsome in death if his face wasn't frozen in a picture of horror. Wide gray eyes stared unseeingly at the sky, and his mouth was still open in a silent scream. "How can we be a family without Father?"
My mother smiled. "That's just a shadow," she said, and he disappeared with a wave of her hand. "Your father is waiting for us, inside the mountain. Come to me, Zara, and we can go see him. Together."
"Not...real..."
I closed the distance between us, wrapping my arms around my mother's slim frame. Closing my eyes, I buried my face in her hair, inhaling her sweet, floral perfume. Blood soaked the front of my shirt as she hugged me back, and for a minute I pretended that this was normal, that she was still alive and that this was a happy reunion.
And then I yanked a dagger from my belt and stabbed her in the heart.
"I'm sorry," I said as I pulled away, tears running down my face. The arms clutching at me were bone, long stripped of flesh, and the face looking back at me was desiccated, paper-thin skin stretched across a bony skull with empty sockets for eyes. "I wish I could follow you, but Caor warned me that if I followed any of the dead, they would lead me down the wrong path, and I would never come out of the Underworld again."
That desiccated face stretched into a smile that was terrifying and gentle all at once. "I'm so glad," she whispered in a voice like death as her body started to crumble away. "So glad that you've passed this first test. Keep going, daughter. I will be waiting for you at the end."
I knelt on the ground until her body turned to ash, until the ash was swept away by the miasma, until the cobblestones had transformed into the diamond path once more. And then I got to my feet, wiped the tears from my cheeks, and continued into the darkness.
21
By the time I made it to the base of the mountain, night had fallen. Exhausted but triumphant, I sat down heavily on a large block of volcanic stone, then took a swig from my canteen. The water was laced with an herb that promoted alertness and gave me a little boost of energy, something I would need as I was about to embark on the ascent.
"Are you sure you don't want to sleep for a bit?" Lessie asked. Her voice was calm, but I could feel the buzz of anxiety through the bond. She'd been out of her mind with worry during that encounter with the spirit that might or might not have been my mother—I still hadn't reconciled it in my head—and I couldn't blame her. If not for her faint warnings, for the hum of instinct in my head, I might have fallen for the spell that had been so expertly woven around me.
"There's no point," I said as I bit into one of the biscuits I'd packed. The food was dry and flavorless, but I choked it down anyway. "The moment I shut my eyes, the dragon god is just going to haunt me in my sleep. Better not to give him the satisfaction."
"True," Lessie said. She was silent for a minute, then added, "The pirates have managed to fix one of the masts. I think the ship will be ready to go by the time you come back."
I stee
led myself for an argument. "If something happens with the volcano before I come back, Rhia and Halldor need to get on board and leave without me."
Silence. Then, "They're not happy about that idea."
"And I'm not happy about them dying because the pirates decided to leave them behind," I snapped back. I had no idea what was going to happen once I entered the forge, if the death god would vent his anger out on the island should I do something to displease him. "Now tell them to promise, or I'm not going into the mountain."
The silence that followed was longer this time, and my heart pounded as I wondered if I would actually have to follow through on the threat. I'd come too far to give up now...but I didn't know how I'd be able to live with myself if Rhia and Halldor died on this island with me. The two of them could be good together if they were just given a chance, and the rest of the colony on Polyba needed their skills and experience. I'd be damned if I'd take them down with me just because they had some misguided sense of loyalty.
"They promised," Lessie finally said, "but they say it's unnecessary, because you're going to come back. They also said that if you're not going to sleep to stop sitting around and start climbing."
I laughed, picturing the cross look on Rhia's face. "Gee, thanks. Tell them I appreciate the encouragement."
I finished my biscuit and sat on the stone for a few minutes longer, letting the food settle. I was sitting high enough on the side of the mountain to see above the trees, but the miasma here was thicker than ever, especially now that night had fallen. If not for the amulet blazing on my chest, I doubted I'd be able to see anything at all, but the white light cut a path through the darkness, illuminating the rough terrain around me.
"All right," I said to myself as I got to my feet. I turned to confront the obsidian volcano and grasped the first handhold. "Time to climb."
It took three hours to reach the glowing cavern Lessie and I had spotted from the air, and by the time I hauled myself onto the ledge my body was shaking with exhaustion.
"Damn rocks," I grumbled as I fumbled a tin of salve from my pack. The rocky face of the mountain was sharp and jagged, and I'd been cut numerous times when my hands closed around a handhold that was just a little too sharp to be usable. Using precious water, I cleaned a large gash on my left palm, then smeared salve on it as well as on a few of the smaller cuts.
I sighed heavily at my shredded trousers. There were cuts on my legs too, and a particularly nasty one on the side of my thigh from when I'd lost my footing and had slid a good twenty feet down the side of the mountain. The curses I'd spewed as I'd been forced to climb that section again had been foul enough that even Drakis would have blushed if he'd been within earshot.
After I finished patching myself as best I could, I forced myself to my feet to get a better look at my surroundings. The cave was much wider and deeper than it had appeared from the outside, and the floor sloped down, leading somewhere deep within the mountain. The space held no torches but was illuminated by a red glow from somewhere beyond the slope. The light caught the glittering diamonds in the center of the floor that twisted and swirled, forming a large, circular symbol of an anvil and a scythe.
The reaper and the smith. Caor had told me this symbol would be waiting. This was definitely the right place.
Heat waves shimmered around me as I moved farther into the cave. I drew in shallow breaths, afraid the air would scorch my lungs. I knew it would be hot in here—this place was, after all, an active volcano—but this heat was beyond anything I'd ever experienced. Caor had assured me that as long as I wore the amulet, I would be able to survive it. My skin wasn't blackening to a crisp, but it still felt like I was roasting.
I walked on for twenty minutes, the air growing gradually hotter until I finally reached a chasm. I swallowed hard and peered over the edge, staring into the vast sea of lava waiting beneath me.
"Derynnis?" I shouted, my voice echoing in the vast space. "Please, I need to speak with you!"
When there was no answer, I called out for Lessie instead, who had been conspicuously silent since I'd entered the cave. She couldn't help me, but I felt shaky and needed some comfort, a mental hug so I could gather my wits and figure out what to do next.
But Lessie didn't answer, and when I reached through the bond, nothing was there.
"Lessie?" I called again, frantic now as the nightmare resurfaced. Had the dragon god gotten to her somehow, turning her against me and cutting off our bond? But no, how could he? He wasn't strong enough yet. I still had the pieces of the dragon heart... didn't I?
"Your dragon can't reach you here," a man said, scaring the daylights out of me as he appeared out of nowhere. I gaped at the shadowy figure as he hovered over the chasm, cloaked in a black robe and a hood that hid his face. "You've crossed into the realm of the dead now."
"Wonderful." I laid on the sarcasm thick, partially to hide my shaking insides. "Can you take me to Derynnis? I need to speak with him."
The figure was silent for a long moment. "This realm is not meant for the living," he said. "If you continue to remain here, you may not be able to leave again."
"If that's the price, then so be it." Opening one of the pouches, I grabbed the piece of heart I'd recovered in Barkheim and thrust it in the figure's direction. "I came here because I was told that this could only be destroyed in the Underworld."
I half-expected the figure to recoil, as Caor had once done when I'd tried to give him the piece of heart. But he merely floated there, unmoving, as he considered my words.
"That is a piece of the dragon god's heart," he finally said. "Where did you get such a foul thing?"
Tired, I sat cross-legged on the floor and told him the whole story. The figure listened silently, patiently, as I told him about the pieces of heart and that the other gods had named me their champion.
"Derynnis is expecting me. He showed me a... vision, or something, of my mother when I walked through the forest. He must know who I am and why I'm here."
"It is customary for a deity to search the soul of any person intruding on their domain," the figure said. There was no inflection in his voice whatsoever, and I couldn't tell if he was annoyed or amused. Who was this guy, anyway? Was he the death god, or just a messenger?
"Yes, well, can you tell me if he's judged me or not already?" I asked, growing impatient. Just how long could the amulet protect me from this unbearable heat? "Or at least tell me what I need to do. What if I throw this into the chasm?" I peered over the edge at the bubbling lava. "Is the heat from the lava enough to destroy it?"
"No," the figure said. "Only a god has the power to destroy such a powerful object." He paused. "Your cause is worthy enough, but you still need to prove that you are. You will need to prove yourself to Derynnis if you wish to gain his help."
"Of course I do." Was nothing ever easy? "I guess that first test in the woods doesn't count?"
"That was child's play," the figure said. "These next ones are the true challenges that will prove your mettle. If you can survive them, Derynnis will help you. But I would suggest you turn back while you still have your life. Humans are weak and fragile, and these tests were not designed for mere mortals."
"Yeah, well, I'm not a mere mortal," I said as I hauled myself to my feet. "I'm the champion of the gods, so that has to count for something. Now let’s get on with it."
"Very well." The figure raised his arms, and a black, swirling mist surrounded me, blocking out all sight and sound. I barely had time to panic before the mist vanished, and I stood in the middle of a maze. At least I assumed it was a maze, judging by the high, narrow corridors with no ceiling that zigzagged in confusing directions. The walls were smooth and bare, with no footholds to climb up so I could get my bearings. Unlike in the skeletal forest, the floors were obsidian, with no crushed diamond path to lead the way.
"What the hell am I wearing?" I muttered as I walked, keeping one hand on the right wall. I wasn't sure that trick would work in this place, but it was the on
ly one I knew, so I stuck with it. The death god had completely stripped me of my weapons and supplies, but he'd also stuck me in some old-fashioned gray tunic and sandals. The clothes were comfortable enough, but they were so light it almost felt like I wore nothing, and the sensation was a little disconcerting.
At least it wasn’t sweltering in here, wherever this was. The air was neither hot nor cold—and was as smooth and silent as the stone walls rising up around me.
I walked for what felt like a mile before I came to a dead end. I would have turned back if not for the inscription carved into the wall.
"Of course it's not in any modern language," I grumbled as I squinted at the runes. The torches set into the walls provided some light, thankfully, but it was still fairly dark in the maze. "Five men's strength...five men's length...yet a little boy can carry it easily. What am I?"
The runes glowed softly in response. I caught my breath, then let it out in a huff when nothing happened.
"I get it. A riddle." I tapped my foot as I thought about it. Something as long as five men and as strong...but a little boy could carry it...
"A rope," I said decisively. "It's a rope."
A rope unfurled from the top of the wall out of nowhere, and I grasped it with both hands. Okay, I thought as I hauled myself up and over the side. Maybe this won’t be so hard. The rope didn't disappear when I reached the top of the wall, so I yanked it from whatever was anchoring it, looped it around my waist, hopped down, and continued on.
The rest of the riddles were similar, but yielded other rewards: a knife, a bow, a quiver of arrows, a sturdy shield, a longsword. On and on, until I was fully outfitted for battle. The only thing I was missing, I noted ruefully, was armor. I still wore the flimsy tunic and sandals, the straps of which chafed terribly against my skin.
Test of the Dragon Page 18
