Path of Shadows

by Ben Wolf

  Kent’s fire continued to carve through the ice and snow, but the ice and snow continued to push inside just as quickly. Worse yet, much of it had melted and trailed deeper into the cave in tiny rivers of frigid water, some of them toward Kallie and the embers.

  If it reached her, the melted snow would stanch what little heat remained in the dying fire. The sight of it, along with that accompanying realization, urged Mehta into action again.

  He hurried around the cave, picking up stray rocks where he could find them and carrying them back toward the dwindling fire. He lined them up as best as he could, trying to form a barrier between the flowing water and the fire’s edge, then he packed the spaces between them with whatever dirt and muck he could scrape off the cave floor.

  As the water approached, it hit the makeshift dam, pooled, moved along the rocks, and trickled past the fire. Mehta’s haphazard creation was working.

  Mehta caught a glimpse of Kallie atop the embers, curled into a fetal position, and his joy at saving the fire bottomed out, again replaced by embarrassment. He looked away again and tried to calm his breathing. It was so bad, he almost preferred to duel his insatiable thirst instead.

  At the thought, his thirst squirmed in his belly and in his mind, willing to oblige, but he shoved it back into the mental box where it belonged and wrapped it in imaginary chains once more.

  “It’s not working,” Aeron muttered. He called to Kent, “It’s still too cold. She’s not responding.”

  Mehta turned back, careful not to look down at Kallie.

  “We need more heat,” Aeron called. “Kent?”

  “Stand clear,” Kent responded, still focused on the wall of snow he was battling. He glanced back, pointed his burning right hand at Kallie, and loosed a stream of fire at her.

  Fatigue had etched itself into Kent’s face—that much was perfectly clear. How much longer Kent could keep this up, Mehta didn’t know.

  The fire he sent toward Kallie engulfed her, and it flared so hot that Mehta took an involuntary step away from the flames, as did Aeron and Garrick. But then the stream faltered, and Kent exhaled a sharp breath.

  He turned back to the encroaching snow and pushed fire toward it from both of his hands. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his jawline from his sideburns. The snow and ice continued to yield, but Kent was faltering. He wouldn’t be able to keep up the blasts for much longer.

  Meanwhile, Kallie stirred amid the flames. Mehta had resigned himself to look, despite his embarrassment. He’d never seen someone survive being enveloped with fire, though Falna and Kent came close whenever they wielded fire magic.

  While the flames covered her, Kallie was not only alive and not burning—she was thriving. Before Mehta’s eyes, she began to move again, as if the fire had thawed her out, but as Kent’s stream of fire ceased, so did she.

  As the flames around Kallie dwindled to nothing, Aeron rushed forward and draped a blanket over her, careful not to let it touch the embers which now darkened even faster than they had before.

  The sound of a raging inferno ceased, and Mehta turned back once again. Kent sank to his knees amid the melted snow and ice that trickled toward the fire, heaving labored breaths.

  “Kent, you alright?” Garrick started over to him.

  “I need…” Kent exhaled a shaky breath and waved his flaming hand to no one in particular. “I need a moment’s rest.”

  As the steam from Kent’s blasts dissipated, the snow and ice continued to push its way into the cave. Before long, it would overtake the progress Kent had made.

  The avalanche must’ve been massive; would they ever get out of there?

  “She’s warmer, but it won’t last,” Aeron said. “It’s still too cold in here.”

  Kent rose to his feet again. When they’d fought the water golem back in the dungeon under the Crimson Flame temple, Kent had needed a moment to rest after expending so much of his magic.

  Mehta guessed it paralleled physical fatigue, but without any magic of his own, he didn’t know for sure.

  Absent the heat from the fire, the cave had grown even colder than before. As Mehta drew his next breath, he noticed his lungs having to pull harder. Between the fire and the blockage at the entrance, they were already running out of air.

  Kent wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve and nodded toward the snow and ice, which continued to push its way into the cave. “I can warm her up more, but it will come at a cost.”

  As Kent headed over to Kallie, Aeron, and Garrick, Mehta heard a scraping sound—something not coming from within the cave. It was faint. Distant. But also furious and repetitive.

  He faced the entrance. It was coming from outside.

  “I think someone—or something—is trying to get in,” Mehta called.

  “Well, let it,” Garrick said, drawing a long, tense breath. He still wore Lord Valdis’s weapons on his hips. “If it gets in…” Another slow breath. “…we get out.”

  Given Garrick’s size, he needed the most air. It also meant he was consuming more than anyone else—except for Kent and his fire.

  “Keep trying,” Aeron told Kent. “I’ll do what I can to keep her warm.”

  “Yes…” Garrick said. “Do it.”

  “The fire is taking too much of the air out of the cave,” Kent said, his breaths also slowing down. “We may not make it at all if I continue trying to burn a way out.”

  “We got… no other… choice,” Garrick wheezed. He wobbled as he said it, and he calmly lowered to one knee and tried to gulp in air that was increasingly not there.

  The scraping outside got louder.

  A burning sensation now accompanied each of Mehta’s breaths, small and controlled as they were. It felt like pulling in air through a narrow tube, and it took a lot longer to draw a full breath.

  If Kent resumed his attempts to clear the opening with the fire, it might kill them all. But staying here and doing nothing was just as bad.

  Kent stared at Mehta now, as if he were to cast the deciding vote.

  If they did nothing, they would die. Even if they were too weak to fight off whatever might be coming in, if they failed to act now, they would die anyway.

  So instead of speaking, Mehta conserved his breath and nodded at Kent.

  Aeron could hardly breathe anymore by the time Kent started blasting the opening with fire again, and that meant it had gotten bad—really bad.

  As a wyvern knight, he was used to high altitudes where the air was thinner. His lungs had long since adapted to the fluctuations in the availability and quality of the air around him, but he’d never dared fly so high that there was no air left.

  By now, he knew it was too late. He thought of Wafer, flying around somewhere in the general area, unaware of Aeron’s current plight. Though Aeron could still sense him in the distance, he was much too far away to signal Wafer to come help, too far to realize what was happening.

  But if he blew the Wafer whistle now, would Wafer be able to find them and try to help? Would he even hear it under all this rock and snow?

  Aeron doubted it, but he tried it anyway. He might never know if it worked, but he had to try.

  He continued to hold Kallie, still wrapped in the blanket, close. The embers had totally died now, whether from a lack of air or a lack of fuel or both, and whatever warmth Kallie had snagged from Kent’s last blast was fading rapidly.

  Aeron regretted having stripped her down—at this point, her clothes would’ve been warmer than the blanket alone, but he couldn’t do much with the lack of air now. His limbs felt tired and heavy, and he struggled to keep his eyes open.

  Garrick had sunk from his knees onto his side, and he lay there, his eyes barely cracked open, his greenish face taking on a faintly blue pallor in the light from Kent’s fire.

  Then the fire went out. Kent’s arms slumped to his sides, and he too toppled over. Small flames flickered and died at his fingertips, plunging the entire cave into utter darkness.

  A
fter all they’d endured, they would die here, now, of suffocation? All because of a freak accident? A random avalanche? Was this where it would all end?

  Aeron sat there, in the dark, clutching his sister’s cold body close, slipping into a permanent sleep along with everyone else. But as he closed his eyes, the scratching and scraping persisted, somehow closer than ever yet still distant and hollow in Aeron’s ears.

  Aeron drew his final, ragged breath in that cave, and succumbed to his fate. In that last moment, he hoped Wafer would be alright without him.

  Then white light hit Aeron’s face. He cracked his eyes open, only able to see a brilliant blur washing out his vision. Had he made his way to the afterlife already? Had he found the path to the Underworld? Or was this something else?

  His lungs strained to inhale another breath. Surprisingly, they found more air, though not by much, and they still ached. As Aeron breathed, the light widened and expanded, and the scraping sound intensified.

  His vision crystallized, and the silhouette of a reptilian head on a serpentine neck blocked out some of the light. It was a distinct shape, one Aeron had seen countless times before.

  A wyvern head. Were there wyverns in the afterlife?

  Or had Wafer found him and come to save them?

  Aeron drew another breath, this one far easier than the previous one, and cold air filled his greedy lungs. The light wasn’t coming from some ethereal presence—it was coming from the opening to the cave.

  He closed his eyes in a long blink, and when his eyes finally opened, the wyvern’s head was gone. In its place, before Aeron, stood a squad of armored soldiers, each of them clad in thick cloaks and wielding spears, long swords, and poleaxes.

  They were mostly silhouettes against the brightness behind them, but Aeron could make out the telltale forest green color on their armored arms and legs. Then the soldiers parted in the center, and another familiar shape approached.

  Aeron blinked again and recognized the silver wyvern wing stamped onto the shoulder of the man’s gray armor. Long, black hair draped over his shoulders.

  The man bent down close to Aeron, sneering at him. “Hello, Aeron.”

  It was Commander Larcas Brove of the Govalian Army.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kent awoke on a pile of hay feeling drained and groggy. He remembered trying to burn through the encroaching snow and ice, and then his magic gave out, and then… nothing.

  Metal clinked as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. As his cognition returned, he expected to see the interior of the cave.

  But instead of jagged rock walls, uneven floors, and a lofted cavern ceiling, Kent found himself locked in a prison cell with metal bars, walls made of uniform gray stones, and a floor tiled with comparable gray stones but covered with old, dry hay.

  Kent’s sword no longer hung from his belt, but whoever had put him in there had let him keep his cloak, at least. Good thing, too, because the cell was nearly as cold as the outside, thanks to a barred window set into the back wall of his cell.

  Each breath he exhaled came out as vapor, but at least he was breathing. He’d expected to die in that cave, forever trapped there, probably never to be discovered again.

  Daylight streamed through that window and those in each of the other eleven cells in the space, but it was gray rather than golden, thanks to the considerable cloud cover overhead.

  Based on the sky, the temperature, and the amount of time he’d been out—which couldn’t have been long—he surmised they were still in northern Etrijan. But they’d been taken to a fort of some sort… perhaps something controlled by the Etrijani Army?

  If it were the Etrijani Army who’d found them, how had they done it? And why lock them up?

  Then again, as mediocre as the Etrijani Army was, perhaps it explained some of their choices—if they were involved at all.

  Metal clinked again. Kent looked down and realized that a pair of shackles, connected with a chain, clamped his wrists together. They were made of that infernal blue metal that inhibited magic.

  The Inothians had put him in a similar pair about a year earlier. While wearing them, Kent couldn’t use his magic. They subdued his power completely.

  The shackles also suggested that the Etrijani Army hadn’t taken him captive. They didn’t know he was a mage. After all, why would a mage carry a sword? Kent was unusual in that way, and the presence of a sword helped to conceal his mage abilities.

  In four of the other cells lay Aeron, Mehta, Garrick, and Kallie, all of them unconscious. Someone had dressed Kallie again, and the others still wore their cloaks over their usual attire. None of them had their weapons, as far as Kent could tell.

  That told Kent that Falna and Lord Valdis’s men hadn’t captured them. After turning on her back in Mehta’s village, Kent and the others likely wouldn’t have survived a battle with her in their weakened condition, nor would she have allowed them to live.

  Who, then, had found them?

  A loud CLANK sounded from a door at the end of the cellblock, and it swung open. Four soldiers clad in green armor marched into the cellblock, followed by a man with long black hair.

  He wore gray armor that, aside from its color, fit him better than the other soldiers’ armor—probably custom-forged. He carried himself like a leader, and Kent recognized Aeron’s spear in the man’s hand. A silver wyvern wing adorned his shoulder.

  Govalians. The Govalian Wyvern Knight Corps, to be precise.

  How did they find us in Etrijan?

  At the sound of the cellblock door opening and the subsequent clanking of armored marching, the others began to stir in their cells, except for Kallie, who lay on the floor, still and quiet, but breathing. At least she was alive.

  The lead wyvern knight stopped in front of Aeron’s cell and stared down at him as Aeron woke up.

  “You’ve slept long enough, traitor.” The man’s words carried an Urthian accent.

  “You’d know. You’re the expert on sleeping at the wrong moments,” Aeron quipped back.

  The man’s eyes narrowed.

  At first, Kent didn’t understand Aeron’s comment, but he soon realized the man was Commander Brove, the officer who’d thrown Aeron out of the Govalian Army on falsified treason charges.

  Aeron had once explained to Kent how he’d infiltrated the fortress, got caught, but still managed to put Commander Brove and several other wyvern knights to sleep with the aid of a certain magic mushroom. Then he’d stolen Wafer back and fled Govalia.

  “Your attempts to belittle me will continue to fall on deaf ears, as they always have,” Commander Brove said. “At long last, I have you in my possession again, and now you and your friends will pay for your crimes against Govalia, its citizens, and the emperor.”

  To his credit, Aeron didn’t convey any indication of worry, not even about Kallie. He glanced at her, pushed himself to his feet, clutched his back in the process, and faced Commander Brove.

  It must’ve grated on him to see his sister locked up and not near any considerable heat source, but Aeron didn’t let on. The less Commander Brove knew, the better, and Kent hoped Aeron would apply that reasoning to the entirety of this situation. It might give them an edge later on if things got rough.

  Aeron stood just barely taller than Commander Brove, and they looked about the same size across the chest, arms, and legs.

  Having encountered several wyvern knights aside from Aeron, Kent had noticed they all shared comparable lean-but-strong physiques. He supposed they had to be of a certain build so their mounts could fly properly and still fight effectively.

  Kent glanced at Mehta. He’d receded into one of the shadows in his cell, though Kent could still see him fairly well thanks to the ample light streaming through the barred windows in each cell.

  Commander Brove’s lips curled into a sneer. “No retort to that? No glib comeback?”

  “You’re a jackass. Always were. I’ll find a way out of this, same as I did when I got Wafer back,”
Aeron replied. “Did you really come here just to gloat?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have something to say that you might find interesting.” Commander Brove set the butt of Aeron’s spear on the floor, and its tri-tipped blade nearly reached the cellblock ceiling. “I bet you’re wondering how we found you.”

  “You followed us since we left Govalia,” Aeron said. “Not that hard to figure out.”

  Kent would’ve stayed quiet, but that wasn’t Aeron’s style. Even so, he wanted to know just as much as Aeron did, so he didn’t mind Aeron’s direct answer.

  “Wrong.” Commander Brove’s sneer widened into a wicked smile. “I brought a large squad of the finest wyvern knights up here based on information I received from an informant.

  “We followed that information north to Xenthan and then pursued you over the Thornback Mountains until we caught up to you here. One of our scouts saw your ilk enter the cave from a distance, and we had planned to ambush you once you emerged.

  “Then the avalanche buried you inside,” Commander Brove continued. “I had considered leaving you and your friends to your fate, but I couldn’t be sure you’d actually succumb to it. After all, there might’ve been another way out.”

  Good thing he made that assumption, Kent mused. Or we would still be entombed in there.

  “It took awhile to dig you out, even with more than a dozen wyverns clawing at the snow and ice. Apparently, we broke through at precisely the right moment.” Commander Brove’s smile returned full-force. “We found the lot of you unconscious and blue, and we brought you here to hold you until we’re ready to move on.”

  “You expect us to thank you?” Garrick grumbled from his cell. He’d taken hold of the bars and started pulling on them, but they refused to budge.

  Evidently, even if their military strength was miserable, the Etrijani Army knew how to make jails—if, in fact, they were in an Etrijani Army fortress to begin with. For all Kent knew, it could be some warlord’s old place, or it might’ve belonged to an Etrijani noble.

  Commander Brove turned toward Garrick. “All this time, I figured you’d be mute.”