“I'm fine,” Makarria assured her. In fact, her hands and face were quite cold, but because of the honey wine she felt flushed and hot now that she was inside the comparatively warm cabin.
“No, you'll be sleeping with me in my bunk tonight. It's freezing in here, and we'll keep each other warm.”
Makarria nodded. She was still a little angry with the princess, but the thought of sleeping on the bed instead of the floor was enticing. Besides, Taera looked to be more distraught than Makarria was. Her face was pale and drawn and she exhibited none of the confidence or excitement she displayed back on
Pyrthin's Flame
. Makarria felt a pang of guilt for blaming her for their predicament, but no harm had been doneâshe'd not voiced her anger.
“I suppose we're done with your training for the day, Princess,” Roanna said.
Taera said nothing.
Makarria ached with curiosity to know what sort of training Roanna was giving Taera, but she didn't dare ask with Roanna there in the room. It would just have to wait along with everything else.
Don't think about Grampy, Mother, Taera, or anyone else,
Makarria told herself.
And whatever you do, don't dream.
And so the three of them said little. They ate a meager dinner of dried bread and cheese, then laid down to sleep. Drunk as she was on honey wine and warm on the bunk alongside Taera, Makarria fell fast asleep, completely forgetting her worries that she might dream.
Makarria woke fresh with energy the next morning and went out onto the main deck to join Siegbjorn at first light. The sight before her nearly took her breath away. Towering above them to either side were jagged mountains, in some places covered with ice and snow, and in other places nothing but sheer faces of granite too steep for snow or ice to stick. Larger precipices loomed before them, and though the sky above the airship was clear, clouds hung on the highest of the mountain peaks. Siegbjorn had chosen a route through the lowest of the mountain passes from the Esterian Ocean, but even still, they were far higher up than they had been at any point prior. They were approaching the realm of Norgland, and this far north in the hemisphere the tree line was lower than it was in the southern reaches of the Barrier Mountains. Below them in the valley there was a deep forest of pines and firs, but the mountains themselves were barren and frozen: glimmering white ice and impenetrable gray rock.
“The air is thin and hard to breathe when this high in the mountains,” Siegbjorn remarked, seeing that Makarria had joined him. “The winds can be dangerous, too. They come blowing from the mountaintops in many directions, but the weather is quiet and warm today.
Svell Módir
has smiled upon us.”
Makarria shivered and wrapped her fur tighter around her neck and shoulders. “If this is warm for the mountains, I don't want to be here when it gets cold.”
Siegbjorn smiled and his breath came out a white plume of steam. He gave Makarria a nip of his honey wine, then put her to work. They picked their route slowly between the mountains, sticking to the low valleys and passes between the peaks, sometimes dropping as low as the tree line, but more often than not high above it, and on occasion so high up over a saddle between two peeks that Makarria found herself becoming dizzy. Though the sun rode low in the sky to their port side, it reflected blindingly from the south faces of the mountains on their starboard side, and combined with the thin, cold air, it made Makarria's head ache. She stubbornly ignored the pain though, and stayed at Siegbjorn's side.
Noon passed and the sun raced away in front of them. “Winter is coming and the days have become short here in Norgland,” Siegbjorn said. “It will be dark no more than six hours past noon.”
“We won't be stuck in the mountains in the dark, will we?” Makarria asked, disconcerted. As stunning as the mountains were, she decided she liked the sea much better.
“No,” Siegbjorn replied. “Indeed, we are almost there. Grab the fore-ballast line and give us more heat.”
Makarria did as she was told, and Siegbjorn steered the ship up over one last saddle. At the apex of the ridge, a huge valley opened up before them, and sitting in the middle of the valley was a vast lake, glimmering like a sapphire jewel. Makarria breathed in sharply at its beauty. The mountains were not to her liking, but a lake in the mountains was another matter.
“Is that where we're going?”
“We travel not to the lake itself,” Siegbjorn replied, “but to the caves you will find at the south end. Grab the aft ballast line and let us down slowly.”
Again Makarria followed orders, and Siegbjorn steered the airship down in a wide spiraling path to a meadow nestled between the mountainside and the southern end of the lake. When they got low enough, Makarria saw there were men standing there in the meadow, dressed much like Siegbjorn. When they reached shouting distance, Siegbjorn gave out a cry in a language Makarria did not understand, and Siegbjorn's comrades greeted him in return.
“Drop our tether lines,” Siegbjorn told Makarria.
Makarria tossed the lines to the men waiting below, and in a few brief minutes they were anchored safely on the ground. Siegbjorn poked his head into the cabin to tell Roanna they had arrived, then hopped overboard to greet his companions. They spoke in gruff tones in their foreign tongue but wore smiles on their faces.
The talking and smiling ceased the moment Roanna stepped foot out onto deck. She snapped for Siegbjorn to lower the gangplank, then led Taera off the airship and across the meadow without a word. Makarria shot Siegbjorn a glance, but he kept his eyes averted, and she was forced to scurry after Roanna and Taera on her own. They followed a well-worn path up an incline from the meadow some hundred yards to where an ice-filled crag cleaving the granite face of the mountain before them opened into a tunnel. The tunnel opening was smoothâclearly widened by human hands from the natural cleftâand large enough for five men to walk in abreast. In the opening stood a tall, slender man with dark skin and oily black hair slicked back over his head. He had a long, straight nose and pointed sideburns that made his face look bird-like, and draping back from his shoulders was a deep burgundy robe.
Roanna stopped and kicked Taera in the back of the legs to send her to her knees. Makarria quickly knelt down behind them as Roanna shot her a dark look.
“Bow down before Kadar,” Roanna said. “He is your master now.”
Kadar smiled, revealing a narrow mouth filled with jet-black teeth. “Many years I have been waiting for you, Princess. Welcome to your new home: the Caverns of Issborg. You have done well, Roanna, but who is the little one?”
“She is my servant,” Taera said.
Roanna struck Taera across the face. “Silence! You will speak only when spoken to.” Taera bit back tears, and Roanna turned apologetically to Kadar. “I am sorry, Master. I've had little time to prepare her. I will have the men kill the young one if you want. The Princess needn't have any distractions, so it is probably for the best.”
Fear welled up inside Makarria, but Kadar paid her no attention. His attention was on Taera. “No,” he finally said. “She is a princessâlet her have a servant, her little friend. She will need it.”
Sweat poured from Taera's forehead. She focused on the ball of energy she had envisioned in the core of her chest and tried to move it to her fingertips, but still nothing happened. No flames, no sparks, nothing.
“Stop,” Roanna said, irritated. “You're trying too hard.”
Taera relaxed her body with a sigh and opened her eyes wearily. She sat cross-legged on a wooden pallet facing Roanna in a small chamber deep inside the mountains. The chamber was smallâno more than fifteen feet from one cold stone wall to the otherâand dimly lit. Only a lantern in the corner behind Roanna provided any light; there were no windows, of course, only a metal-banded door of rough-hewn softwood planks. On a metal tray between Taera and Roanna was a small pile of pellets: the same peat pellets used to fuel the airship.
“All you need is the tiniest of sparks to start,” Roanna explained again. “From there, you project it toward the peat and let that be the fuel for the flames. You are merely providing the trigger. If you keep trying to hurl your entire body energy through your fingertips, you're going to exhaust yourself, or worse, die.”
Taera said nothing. She was already beyond exhausted and convinced she could do nothing Roanna asked of her. On the day they arrived at the caverns, Kadar had met with Taera privatelyâasking her questions, making her perform small tests of mind and body, and physically examining her in a way that made her skin crawl. When it had all been done, Kadar looked disappointed and sent her away without a word. For the three days since that meeting, Taera had been awoken early to work with Roanna on an assortment of exercises: everything from forced trances to trying to start flames at her fingertips, to predicting the future of an assortment of fur clad northmen Roanna paraded before her. Taera had failed at every task. Even her ability as a seer failed her. Still, Taera's biggest worry was keeping everyone's attention on her and away from Makarria. Taera had no idea what Roanna and Kadar were capable of, but she knew if they learned of Makarria's abilitiesâand what she were truly capable ofâthey would take her away and subject her to something worse than what Taera was going through.
“Watch me again,” Roanna said. “And not just with your eyes. Open up the rest of your senses and feel what I'm doing.”
Roanna held her arms out in front of her, palms up. “Sense how I force the heat of my body from my core to my fingers.” Slowly, energy accumulated at her fingertips until light crackled from them like tiny sparks of static electricity. “And then the projection, the release.” She lowered her hands slightly, and the pellets on the tray took flame. “It is quite simple.”
Taera shook her head. “I'm sorry. I see the fire at your fingers and then the pellets burning, but I sense nothing else.”
“We're done for the day then,” Roanna said, lurching to her feet. “You may go back to your quarters.” Roanna went to the door and held it open for Taera to leave.
Taera stood and moved sullenly from the chamber into the main cavern. The main cavern was vast, stretching for unknown miles at the base of the icy crag in the mountain they had seen from outside. Along one wall of the crag, a series of chambers were carved into the rock face, including the one Taera had just exited. Along the opposite wall of the crag was the very glacier which had cleft the mountain and created the crag. It was a curious glacier, a great slab of ice like a blade between the living rock, hanging down into the cavern with a series of dripping stalactites to feed an underground stream that flowed into the lake outside. Its most curious feature, however, was that the glacier stretched unimpeded from the cavern to the very surface of the mountainside, thereby providing a pathway for the daylight to illuminate the cavern. It was by no means bright, and the hue of the light was a dreary blue-gray, but it was still far better than a cavern illuminated only by sputtering torches, and it provided a gauge for the passing of time along with the rise and fall of the sun each day.
Taera had at first been awestruck by the cavernâit far surpassed the visions of it she had seen back in Kal Pyrthinâbut now she gave it not a second glance. Rather, she shuffled her way deeper into the cavern to where one of the large northmen stood guard at the door to her private chamber. He opened it wordlessly for her, and she entered to see Makarria doing a handstand along the back wall of their sparsely furnished room.
“Keeping yourself entertained, I see,” Taera remarked as she stepped inside, and the guard closed the door behind her.
“Taera! You're back. What happened? What did you do today?” Makarria rushed to Taera's side and hopped up and down like an excited child.
“Not now,” Taera said, pushing her away and slumping down onto a wooden bunk. “I'm exhausted.”
Makarria knelt in front of her and looked her over. “You are. You look horrible. Can I get you some water? Some food? Anything?”
Taera merely waved her away and said nothing. Already her eyes were closed, and she was drifting off to sleep. Makarria turned away with a huff. She knew she shouldn't be angry with Taera, but she couldn't help it. She had been cooped up in their chamber for three days straight with nothing to do but eat two meager meals a day and entertain herself. She had grown bored of doing handstands, cartwheels, and somersaults, but she'd found nothing better yet to pass the hours.
When a guard came a short time later bringing their supper, Makarria woke Taera and they ate in silence for as long as Makarria could bear.
“I know you're tired, but could you maybe tell me what it is they're teaching you?” Makarria asked.
“Nothing I can do,” Taera said with a shake of her head.
“Is Roanna getting cross with you? Maybe I can help.”
“No!” Taera snapped. “You are to do nothing of the sort.”
Makarria felt tears welling up in her eyes and stood quickly to hide it from Taera.
“Makarria, no, I'm sorry,” Taera said with another sigh. “It's just, I don't want you to get hurt. If they find out⦔ She left the rest of her thought unsaid out of fear that Roanna or Kadar might somehow be able to overhear what she said.
“But it's so horrible in here,” Makarria said, unable to hold the tears back any longer. “At least you get to leave our room everyday. What am I supposed to do?”
Taera stood and hugged Makarria. “I don't know. I'm sorry. There's nothing for it. I know we are meant to be here, but I don't know what we're supposed to do. My visions have left me. I've seen nothing since we arrived here. We are just going to have to bide our time and see what happens. Roanna and Kadar are unkind, but I don't think they mean us harm. We just have to wait.”