I searched them, looking for some place we could take shelter in. Surely, there would be somewhere.
The closest one I could find to the Dawn Gate was a mountain with an X at the base. The notation read, “Shelter, Food, 3 days maximum and a way out for those who dare.” It wasn’t much of a note. Most of the other places had more written along with dates he had last been there. This had no date, either. Was it only a place he’d heard of and not a place he’d been?
I showed it to Heron.
“This looks close. Do you think we could reach it?”
Both of us turned to stare at the nearby mountain as Olfijum sank in the air.
“He can get there. Hold on, buddy!” Heron said. His palms were pressed to Olfijum’s neck.
I nearly screamed when Nasataa dove off his back, but the little dragon spread his wings, sailing beside Olfijum. Smart dragon! Maybe that little bit of extra weight removed would be enough to get him inside the – well, whatever it was.
I gritted my teeth and looked behind me. The Manticores were still behind us. I didn’t know if that was because they were following us or because we were headed in the direction of Raolcan or the key or both and they knew that, but I did know one thing: if Atura saw us fall from the sky she would swoop in to kill us all and suck out our souls faster than breathing.
We didn’t dare show weakness near her.
Olfijum dropped lower clearly wearing out of strength, but we were getting close to the mountain now.
“Is that it?” I asked Heron, pointing at a dark spot on the side of the rock.
He shook his head. “Just a dead tree.”
A creek flowed past the mountain and we dropped beside it, Olfijum and Nasataa sticking their heads into the water while Heron leapt off to fill the waterskins.
“We don’t have time for drinking,” I protested despite my dry throat.
“We’ll die if we don’t drink,” he said shortly, his mind focused on the task.
I pulled out the map and studied the mountain. Whatever this place was had to be close. By the look of the map, we should be almost right on it. I squinted at the rock, trying to see a cave or a hole or something. Anything.
But I couldn’t see a thing. Frustrated, I tried to think, letting my eyes go out of focus as I turned my thoughts inward. If I had a secret place to hide, where would I put it? Near water, obviously. Heron was right about the drinking thing. People and dragons needed to drink.
I frowned but as my eyes stayed unfocused, suddenly a pattern jumped out at me. Wait.
Was that a door?
“Heron!” I called excitedly. “Look!”
I didn’t want to look away from it in case it disappeared again.
“I don’t see it.”
I leapt from Olfijum’s back, striding through the rocks and trees, keeping my eyes on the outline of the door. I didn’t dare check to see if they were following me. I didn’t want to lose sight of the edge of the door. It blended in with the rocks perfectly, moss and lichen growing on the side of it and across the edges in a way that suggested it hadn’t been opened in a few seasons.
If it really was a door ... if we really had a chance ...
I barely dared to hope.
The rock face was further away than I had guessed and by the time I reached it, I was out of breath.
Here it was. I felt for the crack on the edge of the door and there it was. My fingers followed the uniform cut in the rock – perfectly straight and only as wide as the tip of my finger.
So, how did you open a door like this?
“I don’t see a handle,” Heron said from behind me. “And it’s huge. Too big to push or pull open.”
“What’s the point of a door that doesn’t push or pull open?” I asked feeling a small thrill as he came up behind me and stood so close I could feel his warmth.
“Maybe it pivots. Take your finger out of that crack.”
Once I’d obeyed, he leaned his shoulder against the rock. Nothing happened.
“It was a nice try,” I said encouragingly.
But he wasn’t done yet. He looked over his shoulder sharply. “Olfijum?”
His dragon shuffled through the trees to join him as Nasataa’s snout found my hand.
“Hungry?” I asked. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you.”
And that would be a problem, because at the rate Nasataa was growing, he could use more to eat! He was already tearing berries from bushes and eating leaves when Olfijum leaned his shoulder against the rock. With the sound of stone on stone, the wall shifted, sending little pebbles, pieces of shale, and chunks of rock raining down on us.
I gasped.
The wall pivoted on a central point, spinning from the middle to open, as the door turned in the center of the doorway. Without hesitating, Heron stepped inside. There was the sound of flint and steel and some blowing and then a dragon laugh from Olfijum.
He spat flame and a torch flared to life as he disappeared into the doorway.
“I guess we’re next,” I said, looking at Nasataa, but the little dragon was already rushing forward, fearless in the face of the unknown.
“You wanted adventure, Seleska,” I told myself as I tried to block out images of the rock wall crumbling and falling on me or of the darkness being filled with bats. “Now you have it!”
Chapter Eighteen
Olfijum collapsed almost as soon as he passed the doorway, his eyes closing in exhaustion. I felt tense as I stepped around his body. The last dragon I’d seen lying like that was Kyrowat. We were fighting a losing battle when all our allies were spent or dying.
Fear was a new thing for me. I’d been trying all my life to be positive and hopeful and to embrace adventure and fun. But in the last two days, all my happy visions of what the world could be had seemed to shatter one by one. Though I’d known Hubric and Kyrowat for only a couple of days, their deaths shattered something in me, leaving me edgy and broken.
And now here we were, hiding in a cave.
Heron handed me a torch as Nasataa curled up against Olfijum’s flank and promptly went to sleep. They were both worn past exhaustion.
The room in front of the door was carved out of rock, with a wide shelf around the edge and a stairway carved into the rock leading further back into the cave.
“There’s something here,” Heron said, studying a pedestal beside the stairs. “Ah ha!”
He pressed down on a wide carving and the door spun, once again grinding stone on stone before it shut.
I had the awful sensation of being locked in my own tomb.
“I don’t like the dark,” I said aloud, feeling silly even as I said it, but hadn’t I just fled Manticores and a soul-sucking band of Bubblers in the dark? Hadn’t Atura stolen Hubric’s soul in the dark? It wasn’t that crazy to hate the dark.
“Let’s find out what we’re dealing with here,” Heron said. “The dragons will be fine for now.”
“Unless the Manticores find this place and Atura opens the door.”
Heron took my free hand. “Don’t get so grim on me, now, sweet honey. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Maybe Atura swallowed that, too,” I muttered as we found the first rooms – a small sleeping quarters with three bunks, a small room with a hole in the center of it – for waste, obviously – a small storeroom with a few meager supplies. Hubric’s notes had been right. Enough room for three. Enough for a few days.
“Look,” Heron said as he pulled back a curtain at the back of the cave. A dark cavern led further into the mountain.
“A way out if you’re brave enough for it,” I breathed. “Do you think Hubric was ever here?”
“No.”
“You sound awful certain,” I said as he leaned back against a wall, pulling me to him and leaning his forehead against mine.
“The food was rotten. Did you see that? No one has been here in years. If he was here before, it hasn’t been for a really long time. Maybe lichen and moss grow differently her
e. Maybe. But I’d guess no one has been here in a decade.”
“Is that supposed to cheer me up?”
He kissed my forehead. “No.”
His lips trailed down to kiss my cheek and I felt little thrills run down my spine.
“What are you doing?”
“Distracting you.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t realize that we’re going to have to go into that cavern. And because I can now. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to kiss you like this?”
I didn’t like the sound of going into that cavern at all – though the rest of that sounded good. “Maybe they won’t find us here.”
“We can wedge the door and that will hold for a while. Long enough to get a head start, maybe. But Seleska, I think we have to go into that cavern. And I know that you’re trying to be brave, but you’re actually scared. I know that you have someone you want to protect more than your own life. I just want to give you one moment to forget about it all before you have to call on your courage and pick up that burden again.”
I liked the sound of that and as his lips trailed down to mine, I let myself melt into the warmth of his kiss, leaning against him as if he was a wall holding my world up.
The extra weight of me leaning against him must have triggered it. That was the only conclusion I could come to later on.
There was a shifting sound and then another door pivoted open and we tumbled through it to the other side.
I gasped at what I saw. Faint light trickled in from a narrow crack in the rock high up. But the torchlight was more than enough to show that this wasn’t just any room.
Hundreds of keys hung on hooks on the wall. Maybe even thousands. There were iron keys and gold, silver and bronze. Keys big as the bone in my upper leg and small as my pinky finger. Some glowed with an inner magic. Some looked as common as the locks I’d seen in Abergande on shop doors.
“Well, you were looking for a key,” Heron said with a strangled laugh at the same moment that I heard a scraping sound from the room outside. “They’ve found us!”
He leapt up, rushing back the way we’d come, but my eyes were glued on the keys in front of me.
I had the most terrible sensation that one of these keys had to be the one. But without having talked to Raolcan, I didn’t know which one it was. And I couldn’t take all of them. We couldn’t carry even a tenth of them with us. Not even if Olfijum wasn’t exhausted and worn.
Who hides keys in an old cave where just anyone can find them? What crazy person thinks this is a good way to protect something valuable.
Maybe they weren’t valuable at all. Maybe they were just decoration. In a cave hidden by a secret door. Where no one had been in ten years.
My theory sounded flat even to me.
I stared at the wall, swallowing. Atura could carry all these keys with those Manticores of hers. If I didn’t pick one and she got here, she could just take them all and choose later.
I could only choose one. And I needed to do it now.
There was a yell from outside the room.
“Seleska! Is there anything in there that can help wedge the door? I’m running out of wood!”
“No!” I called back, distracted.
There was a scurry of feet and then Nasataa stood beside me. He made a whining sound in the back of his throat as he looked at all the keys.
“Yeah, little buddy. You and me both.”
I propped the torch in a holder and opened the book, flipping through the pages, trying to find the word ‘key.’
Key. Key. Key.
Was there anything?
A pounding sound from outside didn’t sound very good.
“It won’t hold for long!” Heron called. “Come on, Olfijum. Let’s see if you fit in the caverns.”
There! The word key!
“The light brightens and grows
Crown to toes
But fragile lies
Our key to the skies
And only the arrow
Shot from the bow
Can steel us for
Coming war. “
Steel. Arrow. Was there a key like that? I held the torch high, tucking the book back into my belt pouch as I looked. Arrow. Arrow. Arrow. I only looked at steel keys.
“Seleska!” Heron called. “Come on!”
My fingers closed around a steel key with an arrow carved into the top of it. This had to be it, right? It didn’t glow. It didn’t seem special. It was only as long as my finger. Simple. Plain.
How could this be right?
There was a crash from outside in the main room and Heron grabbed me from behind, dragging me away from the keys.
“Hurry!” he whispered to me as he ran, dragging me along with him and slamming the secret door shut behind us. Nasataa’s tail wrapped around my feet and I stumbled, catching myself at the last moment.
The key was still in my hand. I shoved it into my belt pouch as the sounds of cracking and snarls of Manticores filled the air behind us.
READ MORE OF SELESKA’S story in Dragon Tide: Episodes 6-10
Behind the Scenes:
USA Today bestselling author, Sarah K. L. Wilson loves spinning a yarn and if it paints a magical new world, twists something old into something reborn, or makes your heart pound with excitement ... all the better! Sarah hails from the rocky Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario -
learning patience and tenacity from the long months of icy cold - where she lives with her husband and two small boys. You might find her building fires in her woodstove and wishing she had a dragon handy to light them for her
Sarah would like to thank Harold Trammel and Eugenia Kollia for their incredible work in beta reading and proofreading this book. Without their big hearts and passion for stories, this book would not be the same.
www.sarahklwilson.com
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