The enemy is going to bring the whole roof down on us if they keep that up!
They arrived at the edge of the fields and found themselves overlooking a deep crevice filled with huge, colorful mushroom caps. Kara didn’t spare a moment to admire the view, as she caught sight of people fleeing the hamlet she’d just left.
Her heart lurched when she saw what had made the people flee. A group of dark figures had entered the hamlet and were attacking anyone not swift enough to get out of their way.
Kara grabbed Aemon by the arm and half dragged him down a winding path that led to the bottom of the crevice. When they were out of sight of the hamlet, she let him go but didn’t slow her pace. “Kahan was back there.”
Aemon glanced up the hill. “Did he see us?”
“I don’t think so.”
She touched the hilts of the two knives hidden in her cloak to reassure herself they were still there. Little good they’d be if Kahan found her.
As they continued down the path, the light became dimmer. Aemon relit the torch and held it over his shoulder, the flame spluttering as he ran.
Reaching the bottom of the crevice, the two raced under the canopy of brown mushroom caps twenty feet above their heads. The din of battle was muted, though the occasional thud of a projectile hitting something in the distance filtered down to them.
The forest floor was covered in roots, uneven rock—where the roots had broken through—and dirt that smelled of rot. Their progress slowed, but they pressed on without rest.
Peering up at the underside of the living fungal roof as she waited for Aemon to climb over a root, Kara shook her head in wonder. She’d never dreamed mushrooms could be so large. They were nearly as tall as the trees that grew under the powerful sacred lights in the Priest King’s garden. Like the trees, the stems of the mushrooms were so thick she wouldn’t have been able to encircle one with her arms.
From what Berda had once told her, the stems of the larger mushrooms were used to make torches or were cut into firewood. The stems could also be used in the construction of wealthy homes or important public buildings.
“At least we are alone down here,” Aemon puffed, sweat dripping from his face. “Maybe we can stop a moment to catch our breath.”
Kara leaned against one of the stems, weary and afraid but feeling somewhat comforted by the cloistered feel of the crevice. “This mushroom flesh feels like stone. How do they make them grow like this? The ones we eat are tiny and squishy.”
He collapsed to the ground beside her. When he spoke, it was between breaths. “I read a book by a brother of Ibilirith that claimed the ancients created them with something called genetics. I do not know what genetics is and the author did not either.”
“Maybe it’s magic.”
Aemon studied her, the corners of his mouth twisting upward. Then he giggled. “Sorry, I tried not to laugh, but how can you believe in magic? I stopped believing in that years ago.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe in magic? Lots of stories speak of it and there’s even an old woman in the Great Markets who sells magical scrolls and potions.”
“That woman sounds like she is profiting from other people’s...” He swallowed more laughter. “Sorry to say, but stupidity.”
Kara put her hands on her hips. “How do you know it’s not real? You can’t possibly know everything.”
“Have you seen any?”
“The artifact might be magical. That could explain why it made me sick when I tried to leave it behind.”
He stopped looking so amused. “No one has ever been able to conclusively prove magic exists, so I am certain there is another explanation for what the artifact does to you. We should not dismiss—”
Kara dove to the ground. Grabbing Aemon, she pulled him onto his belly. “Quiet,” she whispered. “I saw something.” She tried to swallow her fear but failed. Her voice quivered. “It looked like one of the things attacking the city!”
He covered the torch in dirt to extinguish it. They peered ahead, trying to catch a glimpse of movement but couldn’t see much in the low light.
Then something thudded onto the mushroom cap above their heads. Freezing, Kara held her breath, not daring to move. An unnerving silence fell upon them, and seconds seemed to become hours. Then a burst of sound—like a cat hissing—filled the air. It went on for several seconds, then fell silent.
Kara felt an almost overwhelming urge to get up and run. Somehow, she managed to resist and keep still. Aemon’s mouth opened and closed, but he seemed to be able to keep a lid on his fear.
Then they saw it.
The metal creature leapt through the air and latched onto a mushroom stem fifty feet in front of them. It had four long, spindly arms that ended in hooks, which were buried in the flesh of the fungus. A strange conical head with two large, circular red eyes swiveled from side to side, as if searching for something.
Its gaze passed over where Kara and Aemon were hidden and then moved on. Evidently, not finding what it was searching for, the beast leapt to the next stem and then the next until it disappeared into the distance.
Maybe it hadn’t seen them, or perhaps it hadn’t cared that they were there. Either way, it was gone. Kara dug her fingers into the moist, pungent dirt. What if it comes back?
They waited a long time before they were brave enough to move again. “I do not know what that was,” Aemon said, never taking his eyes off where the creature had gone. “It certainly was not human, nor like any animal I recall ever seeing.”
Kara felt a chill creep down her spine. “Let’s get out of here in case it returns.”
It took close to an hour to make their way through the forest and emerge out the other side. They were close to the cavern wall, in a wide valley spreading along the edge of the cavern. The battle still raged in the distance, the odd boom or crack echoing around them.
They continued their journey to the pillar and passed a group of houses built around a small lake, lit only by the bacterial colonies growing on the cavern roof. Behind the houses were a dozen small boats moored to a wharf, and a drying rack with several fish hanging from it.
Then Kara saw the bodies.
The people who’d made their home here were dead, along with their animals. Around the bodies, blood had pooled into rivulets on the rocky ground. Limbs, torn from their sockets, had been tossed around carelessly, some landing on the roofs of the houses. The back of one man’s head had been splattered against the side of a house, spraying blood and brain all over it.
Had the metal beast they’d seen in the mushroom crevice killed these people? Or had it been Kahan? What purpose did butchering innocent people serve?
Kara felt sick and almost brought up what little she had left in her stomach. She’d seen a lot of death lately. Did it ever get any easier?
Aemon paled, and refused to look at the bodies. She felt a pang of sorrow for him. He had also seen too much death since meeting her.
They avoided the homes and made their way through the paddocks, hurrying toward the distant granite pillar. Only when Kara was safe would she let herself take a moment to come to grips with what they’d seen.
An hour later, they neared the pillar. Heading toward the entrance to Radashan Crevice, they found hundreds of refugees gathering on the road in front of a guardhouse built into the formidable ten-foot-high stone wall. Part of the wall was overshadowed by thick electrical cables that ran from the city to the edge of the cavern.
“This road leads into the sacred crevice.” Aemon pointed at the iron portcullis blocking their way. “But unless that gate opens, we are stuck here.”
Kara ran her eyes over the barrier in front of them. Did they come all this way to be blocked by a gate?
She’d climb the wall if she had to.
Beyond the wall, the entrance to the crevice loomed. It was brightly lit by dozens of small sacred lights, their glow making the entrance glitter like gold. Huge tapestries depicting the sigils of each Divine hung on wires above
it.
Lydan’s silver shield, Ibilirith’s light bulb, Roryur’s healing herbs and the last, Dwaycar’s—the Divine spoken of only in hushed whispers. His sigil was the mark of a betrayer, a knife sticking out of the back of a heart.
Hundreds of refugees were still gathering at the guardhouse. Others were strewn out along the road all the way back to the city. It seemed everyone now planned to escape the battle through Radashan Crevice.
Kara and Aemon joined the people gathering at the guardhouse, the air hazy with smoke. A heated argument was taking place.
“You’ve got to let us through,” an old woman was saying. “The tunnel to the capital is under attack and there’s no other way for us to escape the fighting.”
A female officer flanked by four spear-men stood in front of the metal door leading into the guardhouse. She addressed the growing crowd, but the chorus of frightened voices almost drowned her out. “I order you to leave. You were told to flee via the Limestone Caves.”
“To the dark with ya, woman,” a sour-faced man yelled back. “We just told ya, the Limestone Caves is being attacked. Are ya deaf or somefen?”
“I don’t care. Radashan Crevice is sacred to the divines and must not be desecrated by those of lowly—”
Her proclamation was cut off by jeers and insults.
Another man shouted, “We’re not thieves, but simple god-fearing folk who will respect the holy shrines of the divines. For blessed Roryur’s sake, let us pass.”
A woman held up a baby. “I don’t want my daughter to die.”
Loud booms erupted from back at the city. The crowd waited for the sound to die down, then the argument renewed with more urgency.
“There’s no other way out,” another woman cried, her voice sharp with panic.
People in the front ranks of the crowd edged closer to the soldiers. The female officer put a hand on her sword hilt. “Stay back, all of you. Our orders—”
“To the Great Dark with ya orders,” a barrel-chested man said. “Let us pass or we’ll bloody fight our way through.”
Kara and Aemon exchanged glances. Things could turn violent fast.
As more refugees arrived, some of the more desperate people hefted makeshift weapons of cooking pots and farming implements. The female officer drew her sword, while her companions leveled their spears and formed a shield wall in front of her. Rocks and worse began to pelt them as the soldiers backed toward the guardhouse door.
A loud rumble in the distance made everyone stop and turn back toward the city. Kara put a hand over her mouth and froze. The precipice on which stood the great stone castle of Deep Cave was breaking apart, sending thousands of tons of rock and metal cascading down onto the city.
The roar of falling stone and crumbling buildings boomed so loud that Kara covered her ears, gritting her teeth in pain. The stone walls surrounding the city started breaking apart as they withered under another sustained barrage of fire. Hundreds of soldiers ran along the defenses to escape, but disappeared as the wall fell apart under their feet.
The metal beasts destroyed the whole city! How could they do such a thing? The evil...
Long after the last tower had fallen into ruin, the sound of the dying city echoed off the cavern walls as if the ancient stone itself mourned its passing.
The sacred lights throughout the cavern began to go out. The power cables running over Kara’s head strained as they were wrenched toward the city, the mushroom-stem poles they were hanging from tilting sideways as the cables threatened to rip them from the ground.
Aemon pulled Kara away just as the cables snapped. An eruption of sparks exploded from the ends of the broken wire, showering those unfortunate enough to not get out of the way in time.
People screamed as they fled the sparks, slapping at their clothes as they caught fire. The sacred lights strung up around the guardhouse flickered, but remained lit. Light still flooded from the entrance to Radashan Crevice.
But for how long?
A billowing cloud of dust and smoke rapidly spread beyond the destroyed city, extinguishing the dimming light still visible from the bacterial colonies on the cavern roof.
“By the divines, they’ve destroyed everything,” someone cried.
The refugees turned back to the soldiers at the keep door. Deep Cave was destroyed, along with the army defending it. Now nothing stood between them and the mysterious enemy. If that didn’t make the officer let them pass, nothing would.
The officer slowly lowered her sword as she stared into the darkness where the city once stood. She looked defeated. Ash and dust began to blanket them, choking the air with the pulverized remnants of the dead city.
It didn’t take long for the officer to come to a decision. She called out to someone inside the guardhouse. A moment later, the portcullis began to rise.
As the crowd flooded toward Radashan Crevice, Kara and Aemon were swept along with it. Before they got to the entrance, Kara grabbed Aemon’s hand to make sure she didn’t lose him.
He was all she had.
Chapter 8
AEMON
The crowd took them into the thirty-foot-wide Radashan Crevice. Aemon held tightly onto Kara’s hand as the press of bodies grew. All he could do was hold her and try to prevent one of them from falling. The few who had fallen were quickly trampled underfoot, their wails of anguish lost to the sound of stomping feet.
He glanced back at the billowing dust cloud smothering the entrance to the crevice. Deep Cave was gone. A city that had stood for years beyond count, reduced to rubble in hours.
Unbelievable.
Someone elbowed him in the ribs. It was a young woman clutching a baby, her face covered in dirt and streaked with tears. She seemed to be in shock, her eyes glazed and her hands shaking. Deep Cave had been her home and now it was gone. Maybe her loved ones were gone too.
The young woman’s look reminded Aemon of his late grandfather Rodnie, a veteran of the Second War of the Abyss. He had that same look sometimes, the look of someone who had seen things that would forever torment him.
Aemon took out a silver coin and tried to give it to the woman, but she ignored him. Not giving up, he slipped it into the baby’s blanket so she would find it later.
He wanted to blame someone for her loss, the enemy—whatever they were—foremost. But the young woman would have known conflict long before the enemy had come along to finish off the destruction of the city. The true blame fell on the shoulders of the noble houses of Deep Cave. Why had they not gotten everyone out days ago, back when the first group of refugees had fled through the Limestone Caves?
Each house had likely been too busy working out if they could somehow use the enemy against the other noble house, and neither had come to their senses until it was too late.
What fools the lords and ladies of House Teradith and Dworebyn had been. For hundreds of years the two families had fought, taking the throne of Deep Cave from one another countless times. What did their conflict amount to in the end? All of them were probably dead now—buried under the rubble of their precious city.
Their tomb.
Kara had not noticed him slip the coin to the other woman. Such wealth would mean much to Kara, but to Aemon, a silver meant little. He had always thought his life had been hard. But to the common people of Deep Cave around him now, his life would seem one of unimaginable luxury and ease.
Still holding hands, he and Kara began to pass shrines built along the edge of the path. Some were carved from stone, and others forged from precious metals like gold, platinum and, favored of Lydan, silver.
Pilgrims passed through the crevice and left offerings around the shrines on their journey to the sacred places of Stelemia. Aemon wrinkled his nose. Some of the offerings were food, much of it in various stages of decay. Only the thick incense wafting from braziers filled with boiling, perfumed water spared his senses from the worst of the stench.
There were other offerings too. Slivers of metals, smatterings of coins and car
ved stone zhuk symbols lay scattered around the shrines.
Despite the unpleasant odor, Aemon breathed the air reverently. His feet treaded the very path the divines had taken on their journey to reclaim heaven. Religious dogma and mythology often brought out Aemon’s cynical streak; yet here, in the most holy of places, it had become easy to set skepticism aside and believe. If not for their current predicament, he would have left an offering and asked for divine blessing for their journey.
On his way past one shrine, Aemon decided to use his sight-counting skill to get a rough tally of the value of the offerings left before it. He widened his eyes. These offerings were worth at least one hundred silver. No wonder the officer at the gate had not wanted the peasantry entering the crevice. With such wealth lying around, how long before someone tried to steal some?
AEMON HEARD THE RIVER of the Gods before he saw it. The river that ran at the heart of the Stelemian faith. It started as a distant roar and grew louder with every step. Then the crevice grew colder, the air thick with moisture.
Further along the path, Aemon caught a fleeting glimpse of the swiftly flowing river through a gap in the crowd. Unable to contain his excitement, he let out a giggle. He had been waiting for this moment his entire life. No longer would the river be a place he knew only from books. Now he would see it with his own eyes!
But curse it all. His short stature made it difficult to see over the heads of the people in front. He tried to walk on his toes but it slowed his pace and the person behind him shoved him forward, cursing.
Kara squeezed his hand. “Aemon, what are you doing?”
“I want to see the river.”
Kara did not have the same problem he did. She stood six feet tall, half a head higher than the man in front of her. “I’ve never seen such beauty in my life,” she gasped. “It almost makes me forget the trouble I’m in.”
Her happiness eased his disappointment. If it allowed her to forget the danger they were in, even if for a moment, then he was content.
The Lost Sun Series Box Set 1: Books 1 and 2 (Lost Sun Box Set) Page 12
