Theus put his hand to shield his eyes from the snow and wind that were flying at his left side. He put his head down, thrush his walking stick out in front of himself, then began to slowly plow forward.
His hands felt heavy and non-responsive. He’d only been exposed to the cold temperatures for a few minutes, but his body was suffering quickly from the terrible conditions. He needed to find the cave quickly.
“How much farther to the cave?” he called out to the Voice.
“It’s right over here, my lord. Come this way,” a voice called him. It wasn’t the voice of the Voice. It was a different kind of voice. But Theus didn’t care who it was, as long as they called him to a place of shelter out of the storm.
Theus turned to his right, and stumbled into a large, irregular pillar of stone that pressed out from the mountainside. He placed his hands on it to stay balanced as a gust of wind deflected off the stone and blew into him.
“Back here – come to the cave,” his new guide called.
Theus stumbled further to his right, and suddenly the stone came to an end. He circled around it, and found that he was sheltered from the wind and the snow. It was a life-preserving relief. He pressed one of his frozen hands to his face and wiped away the ice that had caked on his cheeks and eyelashes.
He could see once again. He could see that darkness loomed ahead. He had reached the entrance to the cave.
Chapter 14
Theus stumbled forward into the darkness. Within a few feet, he found that the cave turned sharply to the right, and bore directly towards the center of the mountain. Every step inward reduced his exposure to the blizzard outside. The sounds of the blowing wind and the temperature from the freezing high altitude air diminished, as did the bright white light of the cloudy mountainside.
Theus sat on the floor of the cave. He was exhausted. He had barely recovered from the energy-draining magical step that had brought him to the northern blizzard, and then he’d been subjected to the brutal treatment by the weather itself. He laid his head on his pack, and he quickly fell asleep.
When he awoke, there was a glimmering of light to indicate the direction of the entrance to the cave; he’d slept through the night. Theus sat up, and pondered what to do next. He’d have to go back outside, but he didn’t relish the thought of trying to trudge through deep snow on a cold mountainside.
“Voice, how much further to Limber?” he spoke out loud.
“We can take you there in less than a day,” a voice answered. Once again, Theus realized that it was not the all-knowing Voice that he relied on.
“Who are you?” he asked, rising rapidly to his feet and grabbing his staff.
He looked around in the dark, but could see little. Feeling refreshed from his sleep, he raised one hand and let it glow brightly with the white magic power.
“He is a magician!” the voice spoke brightly. “This is such good news! The prophecy lives!”
“Where are you? Show yourself,” Theus demanded, looking around and seeing nothing except stones and shadows in the cave.
“Here I am, right here,” Theus caught a movement out of his eye, and looked to his left. There were stones there.
“Where?” he asked.
“Right here!” one of the stones lifted slightly, then moved towards him; it was a squat shape, a bit taller than his knee height, and bigger around – in a squarish way – than Theus himself. “I expected the prophecy to deliver someone who would have figured the world out a little better by now,” the stone muttered.
It had a vaguely face-like structure to it. Theus was astonished and horrified by the prospect of being attacked by a living rock. He swiveled and raised his staff defensively. “Don’t come any closer!” he barked.
“What? This is how you speak to your rescuer? I’m hurt,” the stone stopped its advance. “And after I called you to come into the cave.”
“Thank you for helping me,” Theus said cautiously. “Who are you? What are you?”
“I am a granitine,” the stone answered.
“A what?” Theus had never heard the term before, and had never heard of a talking rock before, either.
“A granitine, a child of Limber,” the stone said.
“I didn’t know there were people in the city, or live stones,” Theus replied. “I thought the city was lost. I’m on a mission to find it.”
“Not a child of Limber the city; I’m a child of Limber, the god,” the granitine replied. “After the two gods were separated,” he began.
“What two gods were separated? How?” Theus asked.
“The two gods who once shared a body – Limber, the god of the mountains and Trinte, the god of stones,” the granitine answered shortly.
“After their separation, Limber was lonely, and so he created us as his children to entertain him and serve him,” the stone explained.
“Is the blizzard over, do you think?” Theus interrupted to ask.
“Yes, it is. Why do you ask?” the stone asked him.
“I have to get to Limber. That’s Limber the city,” Theus replied.
“I can take you there,” the stone told him. “There’s an easy way, through the caves.”
Theus looked into the darkness, where the cave ran beyond the reach of his illumination.
“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully.
“This way is direct, it is easy, it is warmer than the world outside, and there is no rain or snow,” his rescuer pointed out.
Theus thought about it. It sounded unsafe.
“You are a magic wielder; if there is any problem, you can escape. But there will be no problem,” the granitine told him. “This is a simple way.”
He didn’t want to trudge through snow, Theus knew. The way through the caves sounded possible, and he could always use his abilities to escape. He had the means to light the way, he reflected.
“Okay, I’ll follow you, and you’ll lead the way to the lost city of Limber. How long will it take?” Theus asked.
“If you travel at my speed, we’ll be there before sunset,” the stone estimated.
“If your speed is reasonable, let’s try it then,” Theus agreed. He stepped aside, and watched warily as the stone’s face gave an approximation of a smile, then the being began moving across the floor of the cave, with no visible signs of legs or other mechanism to propel it forward. It began to move at a fast pace, equal to a fast pace that Theus would set for himself if walking someplace in a hurry.
He quickly began moving to keep up with the Granitine, and they chugged along through the wide cavern for some time without speaking. Theus was breathing heavily as he followed the creature, and he began to yearn for a break, or a reason to stop and rest.
“We have to drop down here,” the creature said a minute later as it came to a stop. Theus looked and saw that they were at the top of a cliff, and the cave dropped a considerable distance downward before continuing.
“Can you jump down?” his guide asked.
“Not in one jump,” Theus replied, as he breathed heavily and examined the side of the cliff, looking for shelves he could step upon to work his way down. “It looks difficult. How will you get down?” he asked.
“I’m a granitine,” the creature answered, as if that explained it all. “I am of the stone. I simple move with the stone and upon the stone and through the stone.”
The answer didn’t mean anything to Theus, but he decided it didn’t matter.
“Are there shelves or ledges I can use?” he asked.
“Do you mean protuberances?” the granitine asked him in return.
“What’s a protuberance?” Theus asked.
“It’s stone that sticks out,” the creature sighed.
“Yes, I need protuberances,” Theus agreed. “Nice big ones.”
“We can arrange that,” his guide decided. There was suddenly a very low-pitched grinding noise, one that lasted for several seconds and undulated.
The noise ceased.
“What wa
s that?” Theus asked with real concern. He prepared to switch his use of white magic so that he could escape from the cave before a collapse buried him.
“Why do you call?” a voice spoke from behind him.
“What is the need?” another voice asked from his side.
“I offer my help,” a third voice further surprised him.
“Granitine, what is all of this?” Theus demanded. He swiveled around, looking at the stone beings that suddenly populated the top of the cliff.
“You said you needed protuberances, so I have called my fellows to assist,” his original guide explained.
“Who is this human?” one of the new granitines asked the first one.
“This is a white magic wielder, the first to walk the earth since the old city fell. He has been called to the City to carry out a mission. I was told by the Father,” the original granitine explained. “And he cannot descend this cliff face without help.”
“If he wields white magic, why cannot he help himself down?” another block of stone questioned.
“Why can you not attend to this?” the guide asked Theus.
“I, I don’t know a lot of magic,” he stuttered, caught off-guard by the question. “I only know a few things.
“Many things are blocked,” he hadn’t thought about what he couldn’t do. It hadn’t mattered – he had done quite a bit with the abilities he did possess, abilities he had never dreamed of having.
“Why doesn’t he know his magic? Is he really a white magician?” one of the granitines asked.
“Well yes, he’s a magician. Look at his glowing hand,” Theus’s guide pointed out defensively.
“And it doesn’t matter. I was told by the Father to come and fetch him to Limber. Do you want to help carry out the Father’s orders or not?” the stone grew testy.
“We’ll help. What do you want us to do?” the granitine on the right asked.
And so, just minutes later, Theus was stepping down a cascading series of granitines that attached themselves to the cliff’s face in a stair step manner. As Theus left one to drop down to the one below, the granitine he had just left would slide lower and take a spot at the bottom of the ever-moving pathway they provided for him.
Minutes later, Theus was at the bottom of the long drop.
“Thank you all for your help,” his guide told the others.
“What is this magician’s name?” one of the assistants asked.
“My name is Theus,” he introduced himself. He wondered if the stone creatures had names of their own, and so he asked. “Do you have names?”
“I’m Crystal,” responded his guide first.
“I’m Gem,” another said.
“I’m Sandy,” added the third.
“My name is Rocky,” finished the last.
Theus laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Gem asked.
“It’s your names; they’re so perfect,” he answered with a smile.
“Thank you. We like them. What kind of a name is Theus though?” Sandy spoke.
“Um, it’s a nickname. My parents named me Prometheus, but everyone just calls me Theus,” he replied hesitantly.
“Well Theus, are you ready to get moving? We still have a long journey left,” Crystal spoke up.
“I’m ready,” he replied, and they started in motion, following the lower level continuation of their journey in a cave chamber that was much smaller than the first chamber had been. The pace continued as briskly as before. With four granitines now smoothly galloping along, Theus felt determined to not ask for a rest break; he didn’t want to appear weak in front of the full gang of creatures.
They traveled for hours, it seemed to Theus, and he felt his energy starting to grow diminished as he both traveled rapidly and continued to illuminate the path in front. He first cut back on the amount of light he produced, then reduced it again in an effort to conserve his power.
The path in the cave began to tilt upward, and Theus began to pant loudly as he labored onward. When the granitines came to an abrupt stop, he stopped immediately and flopped to the ground, gasping loudly.
“I’m so tired!” he exclaimed. “Why are we stopping?
“It doesn’t matter,” he immediately spoke to his own question. “I need the break.”
We must go up a chimney,” Crystal answered.
“A chimney? You have a fireplace here?” Theus asked in confusion.
“Look up,” Gem answered.
“There’s a big crack in the ceiling,” Theus observed.
“That’s where we have to go,” Crystal explained.
“How?” Theus was at a loss. “Are there steps?”
Together, he and the granitines decided on a way for Theus to climb, and the creatures proceeded to assist him as they formed a base for him to stand on, then became steps on the walls of the chimney, letting him slowly climb to the next chamber.
“Now, you will have to stay low,” Crystal explained the obvious when they reached the top of the chimney, and Theus found that the next chamber was only three feet tall.
“You will have to go much slower,” he panted. “I can’t crawl as fast as I run.”
“And you don’t run fast to start with,” Sandy pointed out.
“Thank you,” Theus said grumpily.
The group set in motion, and within five minutes Theus had informed them all three times that they needed to slow down.
After that, they held a steady pace. Theus grew sore, but the plane of their cave began to slope steadily downward, so that he labored slightly less.
But he grew exhausted nonetheless.
“I need to stop,” he told the granitines. “Is there any water nearby?”
“We’ll find water in the next chamber,” Crystal replied.
“And there’s only one more chamber after that,” Rocky added.
They moved on after Theus gave the okay to resume traveling, and they reached the water chamber within minutes.
It was a large, underground lake, in a chamber that was high-ceilinged.
Theus drank the cool water in large gulps.
“That’s good,” he exclaimed.
“It’s good you like it,” Crystal said. “This is the water that the whole city of Limber drinks. It forms a stream that runs through the city.”
“I’ll drink it again when we get there,” Theus said as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
The granitines proceeded to move to the left, circling around the lake on a narrow ledge of stone that was barely above the level of the water, until it wasn’t. Theus found himself walking in the water. As he walked, he noticed that the level slowly rose, while the guides began to become submerged as they progressed.
“We have to stop!” Theus shouted, when he saw that the granitines were about to go completely beneath the water.
“I can’t breathe water; can you?” he asked.
“We can live beneath the water. You do not know white magician tricks to breathe the water?” one of them asked, their voice masked by the lake.
“We will not take you to a place where the water is so deep you cannot reach the air in this chamber. And in the next chamber,” a different one of the guides spoke, then stopped.
“Hmm, yes, the last chamber may be a challenge,” agreed another one.
“We aren’t going to go any further if we can’t get through – if I can’t get through,” Theus spoke. “This water is freezing; I’m cold and tired. I can just go back to the shore and rest, then use white magic to leave the cave.”
“If you don’t control the white magic any better than it appears, how do you know you can use it to leave the cave? What if you just travel to another cave, or what if you put yourself in the solid middle of one of the other mountains, hm?” a granitine asked.
“Just come with us; we’ll take care of you,” a voice insisted. “We promise you’ll be fine. If the Father wants you, we’ll deliver you safely to the city.”
After the brief c
onversation, they moved on. Theus was growing too cold to stand still in the water.
“Voice, is this going to be okay?” he asked as they began moving.
“Trust your guides; you are almost home,” the Voice sounded pleased.
“Stop,” he called a few minutes later, when he could no longer see the guides in the dark water. “Where are you? It’s too dark to see you,” he explained, speaking loudly.
There were suddenly four glowing balls of light in the water in front of him.
“Can you see us now?” one of them asked, the words so garbled by the water that Theus could barely understand.
“I see you. If you can glow, why didn’t you glow all along, instead of making me use my own energy to light up the way?” he asked.
“He is a weak magician, isn’t he?” Theus understood one of the granitines to ask.
He puffed his cheeks out in frustration, then extinguished his light and followed the glowing guides for several more minutes, until the cold water crept noticeably higher up his body.
Theus took off his back pack, and attached it to his staff, to keep his supplies dry, then carried the load with arms raised above his head. Keeping the pack dry reminded him that he carried supplies given to him by the kitchen in Currense’s temple, which caused him to dwell on the fact that he had gone hours without eating.
Just as he was about to say something to the granitines about the need to eat, he felt a current begin to tug him forward. The glowing guides stopped, then one of them suddenly crept up the side wall and rose out of the water.
“What’s happening?” Theus asked.
“This is the end of this chamber. We’re about to take you to the exit,” Crystal spoke. The granitine made another of its low-pitched messages to the others of its race, and two of them moved forward, then partially up an unseen stone wall.
“Follow them and step up on the ones on the wall. When you reach the top of the ledge, sit down quickly, and let the current carry you through the chamber,” Crystal instructed.
“I don’t understand,” Theus answered.
“You will. Now do as I tell you,” the granitine said no more, but instead slid across the wall and back into the water to join the others.
Unpredictable Fortunes (The Memory Stone Series Book 3) Page 14
