Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (62 page)

Brendolowyn stood overlooking the foothills below, his shoulders relaxed, but straight, and as though he knew what she was wondering Finn told her, “He’s been at it since before the sun came up. Meditating, or something.”

“That’s probably wise,” she said quietly, filling her mouth with another squishy swallow of porridge. “We will need him at his best once we are inside Great Sorrow.”

“Yeah,” Finn said curtly and followed her wandering eye toward the bridge spanning across the stone. Sensing the increase in her heartbeat just looking in the direction of that hideous construction of old rope and rotting planks of wood, he asked, “You think you’ll be all right on the bridge?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” she shrugged. “We came all this way, it would be a waste of time to turn back now.”

“I don’t think we could turn back, even if you wanted to. It was treacherous enough coming up. I doubt there’s a safe way back down the mountainside from here.”

“You’re probably right,” she sighed.

“I will mark that on the calendar. It’s not likely to happen again anytime soon.”

She didn’t want to go forward, didn’t want to get inside the mountain and fight some monster unlike anything she’d ever imagined in her wildest dreams. Perhaps that was why the ghosts of her parents sent her up the hidden side passage. Because there was no turning back from what she needed to do. Any other path would have been too easy to flee from.

“Did you sleep okay?” Finn asked. The tenderness in his voice was unexpected, not to say she hadn’t come to see a tender side of him he liked to pretend wasn’t there.

“Well enough, I guess.”

“And… how are you feeling today? That whole thing with your parents, learning about your mom…”

She didn’t know how to answer because she honestly didn’t know how she was doing. The entire journey up the side of the mountain the day before hadn’t given her much time to think about anything but the next rock she needed to grab onto, the strain of pulling all her weight upward reach after grab after reach. Some inexplicable strength kept her going, denied her the occasional impulse to look down over her shoulder. Every time the urge rose, she felt a slight warmth at her throat, subtle heat from the amulet she wore around her neck, and though she didn’t want to think too hard about that either, she couldn’t help but wonder if her father had somehow been protecting her from tumbling to her death.

Her hands still hurt from the cut of stone into her palms, the scrapes along her wrists and arms stinging and pulsing in mild reminder if she thought hard enough about that treacherous journey. Glancing toward the bridge again, she would have to find other things to think about to get across it, something to distract her mind from the terror that would surely grip her senses every eking step across the dangerous, swaying monstrosity.

“I haven’t thought much about it.” But it was always there, in the back of her mind, tucked into a place she was starting to keep things she didn’t want to deal with.

She’d left home thinking it wouldn’t matter if she never saw either of her parents again, believing her own mother wouldn’t miss her or ever make the journey to Hofft to see her daughter once she was married. At the time she thought it didn’t bother her. She and her mother were never close, but it all felt so different knowing the woman was dead. The way she’d thought about it at the time felt childish in retrospect. In light of the fact that she’d never see her mother again, her last glimpse of Ygritte in the castle tower meant something different now whenever Lorelei called it to mind.

Her mother knew, perhaps even long before Lorelei was to be sent away, she would never see her daughter again.

She wondered what other things her mother knew. If she was aware of her husband’s deal with the All-Creator… Did she know Lorelei wasn’t normal? Was that why she’d stayed away?

Steering the subject away from things she wasn’t ready to talk about with anyone, not even Finn, she confessed, “I worry about my little sister. You know? I don’t know where she even is, whether she’s safe, or not...”

“Princess, you don’t even know if what you saw was real. It still could have been some trick, we don’t know.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I know, Finn. I can feel it. My mother is dead.”
And there’s nothing I can do to change that.
“My sister, she’s out there somewhere and I might never see her again.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing and she was actually kind of glad. Usually he seemed to have something to say about everything, but for once he knew there were no words.

He lowered his arm across her back, resting it across her shoulders to draw her nearer to his chest. She was grateful for the comfort, for the instinctual way he reached for her, and for a long time they sat in the dull grey light of the early morning sun waiting for Brendolowyn to finish his meditation.

The bridge wasn’t long, but it didn’t have to be a long trek in order to be terrifying. Less than a quarter of the way across the splintered and timeworn planks of wood stretching over a seemingly endless ravine, Lorelei decided she couldn’t walk it. She dropped carefully onto her hands and knees, shuddering as the boards moaned under her weight, and insisted upon crawling to the other side with both eyes squeezed tight so she couldn’t see the ravine below.

It took far longer than it should have, each forward movement followed by a gulp and a whimper as the ropes dangerously swayed in the open air. The wind rocked the bridge. Every step her companions took made her feel as if the world was falling out from underneath her, but all three of them made it to the other side, unscathed and relieved there were other ways out of the mountain if they actually survived. It might take a while to find them, but she would die inside the mountain before she crossed that bridge again.

For several minutes after scrambling onto the flat, stony outcropping, she collapsed upon the cold rock and laughed until she started to sob. Neither Finn nor Brendolowyn seemed to know how to react, and while she curled up on her side, half-choking, half-giggling maniacally, the two of them gave her space and time to compose herself again.

Lorelei rolled onto her back after what felt like an emotional eternity and stared at the cloud-dappled sky until the first cold drops of rain splashed her cheeks and brow. By the time she sat up and looked around the landing a slow drizzle darkened the stone, making it slick and damp beneath the worn tread of her boots.

Finn lingered nearby, arms crossed and staring in the direction Brendolowyn went, but when he heard her rising, he turned around to make sure she was all right. Grinning as he started toward her, he announced, “You made it across. I think you could probably do just about anything now.”

“I don’t know about that, but this journey sure does seem determined to conquer my fear of heights.”

Laughing softly, he extended a hand to rest on her shoulder and squeezed the taut muscles there. “You done good, Princess.”

Tilting her head to grin at him, she asked, “Are you ever going to stop calling me that?”

“Probably not,” he shrugged and withdrew his hand just as Brendolowyn reappeared behind him.

“There is a hidden door up ahead,” he announced. “Marked by the same star rune at the bottom of the mountain. There is ancient runic writing carved around the door. It is so faded I barely found it, but I think it’s an incantation. Ancient Dvergr, it looks like.”

“Oh, please tell me it’s not a riddle,” Finn groaned, dropping his arm at his side. The sword belted there clanged with the movement; the cold sound echoed through the hollow, stone passageway. “Three in a basket and four in the bush, what color is the sky when the wind starts to push?”

Cocking a brow at him, he only shrugged.

“Um, no,” the mage shook his head. “Not a riddle. An incantation, it looks like.”

“Can you read it?” Lorelei asked, momentarily fretting they came all that way, only to be turned away by a door that wouldn’t open unless someone knew how to recite the lost language barring the mountain from the outside world.

Bren did not answer at first, which only served to intensify her anxiety over matters. He gestured for them to follow him. Hitching her heavy pack higher on her back, she fell into step beside Finn. The narrow passage seemed to widen as they walked further, expanding into a full platform wide enough to hold a thousand men, or rather dwarves. She highly doubted the place was been constructed with the intent of holding anyone other than the Dvergr.

“The passage is here.” Bren showed them the wide, flat wall of stone.

It was just as he said. The runes were nearly weathered away from the stone face by time and element, almost completely unrecognizable unless one was looking for them.

“I don’t see anything,” Finn confessed.

“It’s there though,” Lorelei told him, stepping up to the wall of stone. She stretched up onto the tips of her toes, raised her arm above her head and leaned inward to trace the tip of her finger across one of the runes.

“Impossible to read directly from the stone,” Brendolowyn lamented. “I can transcribe the words one by one onto a piece of parchment, fill in the blanks with logic if I have to, but it’s going to take some time.”

The drizzling rain began to pour, as if the gods themselves cued its ferocity to mock them, and she dropped back onto her heels beside Finn with a sigh.

“You won’t be able to transcribe anything with this rain,” she pointed out. “Charcoal and parchment don’t mix with water. It’ll be a mess.”

“I’ll raise a barrier around the wall,” he decided. “Just a small one to keep myself dry while I work.”

Lorelei nodded agreement, took several steps back and found a small slab of stone to make herself as comfortable as possible while the rain soaked her and Finn straight through to the bone. He dropped onto the slab beside her with a groan, leaned his shoulder into her and let loose a long, frustrated breath.

“You’d think something that’s supposed to be… I don’t know… necessary, would be easier.”

“Is anything necessary ever easy?”

Cold pellets pinged off their armor, but she could feel the warmth emanating from him as he rested against her. It gave her chills, a rising, otherworldly realization moving through her in that strange way Finn once told her was the equivalent of someone in the future walking over her grave. She shivered, her wet hair dripping across her cheek as she tilted her head downward to rest on his shoulder while they waited.

It was several hours before Brendolowyn finished transcribing the runes onto parchment. The rain didn’t stop, but it slowed enough he lowered the barrier and started toward them with the strip of parchment clutched in hand and a clever grin teasing at the corner of his mouth.

“I think I’ve got it,” he announced.

“Praise be to the gods!” Finn, who’d gotten so bored while sitting there he’d taken to teasing and annoying her just to pass the time, jumped up in a clatter of excitement.

Relieved by Bren’s good news, she agreed. “Yes, praise be to all the gods.”

As soon as she spoke the words, the rain became a wall again, making it difficult to see her own hand in front of her face even when she held it up.

Brendolowyn turned back toward the mountain, both of his companions crowding in behind him, and as he spoke the incantation of rough words that rolled across his tongue and scraped the back of his throat, Lorelei gasped as she felt the mountain begin to tremble beneath her feet.

The doorway rumbled to life, receding at first into the mountain and then rolling as if some invisible guardian moved it aside. Dust and pebbles trickled, the gaping entryway belching forth ages of stale air tinged with rot and decay. Black as pitch, it seemed little more than a gaping, endless hole until Brendolowyn summoned a small, wispy ball of white-blue light and sent it floating several feet into the cave. It bounced off the walls, casting an eerie glow that barely reached the mouth of the cavern as it beckoned them to follow.

“There will be no hiding from the drakoren now,” the mage lamented, following that ball of light inside the darkness. “Come out of the rain. I can’t promise it will be much better in here, but at least it’ll be dry.”

Hesitant to follow, Finn stood still beneath the wall of rain plunking and splattering across his drenched leather armor. Hair soaked in long black streams against his cheek, he stared into the darkness, dully illuminated by Brendolowyn’s magic and shuddered as he watched dusty cobwebs waver in the wind. Lorelei opened her mouth to ask if he was all right, but before the words came out he shrugged both shoulders and started into that dark, narrow passage.

“You’ll protect me from the spiders, right?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she snorted. “I’ll put the same amount of effort into protecting you from spiders as you did into helping me across the bridge.”

“Hey, I offered to carry you across on my back.”

“Well, when the spiders come, you can hide behind me.”

“That doesn’t comfort me at all,” he shuddered.

They followed where the light led them. The passage was tight, only wide enough for two bodies to move side by side while occasionally bumping and scraping into the walls. They walked in a slow, hesitant line, Bren in front of her and Finn bringing up the rear. She mercilessly teased him as they went, promising he’d be the first to know if she saw any eight-legged, creepy-crawlies.

Brendolowyn was not amused by their banter. He moved with the silent swiftness of a shadow, something Finn couldn’t have done even if he wanted to. His armor and weapons were loud, echoing hollowly ahead of them, as if to announce their arrival, before reverberating back to their ears. Lorelei listened for the stirring sounds of an enemy up ahead, but there was nothing. Only stale, heavy air and the occasional drip of rainwater leaking through cracks in the stone and blooping into puddles.

“It feels… I don’t know, weird in here,” Finn muttered over her shoulder. Lorelei glanced back at him, his face barely illuminated by the thin light of Bren’s wisp. “It’s making me really nervous.”

“I feel it as well,” Bren noted cautiously. “The drakoren may not have known about this passage, but it knows we are here now and it is trying to make sense of us.”