Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (63 page)

“Are you sure?”

“If you listen, you can hear it.”

All three of them stopped moving, Finn’s armor settling in around him until the only sound they heard was distant drops of falling water. Lorelei closed her eyes, not that it mattered much in the darkness, but as she turned her head downward she swore a series of whispers swept beside her tilted ear.

“I don’t hear any—”

“Shh!”

She jerked her elbow into his stomach so quickly, she felt bad about it afterward. He hunched forward, stifling his flabbergasted chokes of dismay in the padded, leather shoulder of his armor.

It seemed like a lifetime passed before the silence resumed, the hush of whispers curling and sweeping around them until the build-up made her feel like she would explode. And then it was gone. As quickly as it arrived to inspect them, it retreated, scuttling back to wherever it came from and filling the silence with fear and uncertainty again.

“Was that…”

“Yes,” Bren swallowed hard. “It was sizing us up, seeing what we are, what our purpose here is and no doubt it is already devising the many ways in which it will tear us apart long before we come face to face with it.”

Her whole body trembled involuntarily, knees weakening to a point near buckling, but she caught herself before she collapsed. Shaking the whirling terror from her mind, she stared ahead into the darkness, following the path their tiny light carved as far as it would go, all the while avoiding Brendolowyn’s expectant, violet eyes.

“We need to move on,” she declared, though the hitch in her voice suggested she would like nothing better than to back her way out of that cavern and never look back.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Forward.”

She lost all concept of time, winding through tight tunnels she couldn’t fret over because she could barely see her own hand in front of her face. The ball of light guiding them on their way began to wane, barely illuminating more than a single step ahead of them. The abruptness of their stopping caused Finn to stumble into her back and shove her into Brendolowyn, nearly pinning him to the wall.

Backing up to give them space to recover themselves, Finn coughed and attempted to the curb his cockiness rather poorly as he asked, “So, dead end, I take it?”

Straightening his robes, Brendolowyn attempted to empower the wisp with more energy, but it fizzled and buzzed like a bee that’d flown its last before winking out. The sound of his disgruntled breath echoed through the cavern.

“I don’t think so,” the mage said. “I didn’t get a chance to look at it, but I believe it is a last line of defense, in case the passage was discovered by someone who was not meant to find it.”

“Someone like, say, oh… I don’t know, us?”

Panic began to rise in her chest, the feeling of being trapped rising to overwhelm her. Her heartbeat sped up to accommodate her fear, but Finn reached out to her on instinct and lowered a hand onto her shoulder to calm her.

“I don’t think we are trapped. Just let me try to summon my light again and we can have a look around.”

She heard Brendolowyn shuffling in the dark, a quick mutter of breathy words followed and moments later the wisp nearly blinded them with its renewed brilliance. Flashes of green spots bled across her eyes as she squinted and looked away, waiting for them to readjust. Brendolowyn turned back toward the wall to survey it with careful scrutiny.

“Perhaps there is a hidden button in the stone, or some lever we missed on the wall.”

“If you think I’m going all the way back to the entrance to look for a lever on the wall…”

“It should be nearby,” the mage cut him off. “Here,” he cast a second ball of light, further illuminating the darkness as it whizzed through the air to hover over Finn’s left shoulder in the air. “Look around for something that seems out of place.”

“We seem out of place,” he mumbled, begrudging as he turned around and began scanning the walls for whatever it was they were meant to be looking for.

Lorelei lingered close to Finn, borrowing from his light as she felt her hands along the cold, damp stone to no avail. Finn muttered under his breath, a string of obscenities mixed with grumbling about it being the last time he embarked on anything with anyone unless they were fully prepared, with maps and everything, but Lorelei didn’t acknowledge his complaint.

In truth, she felt the same way. They weren’t prepared for what they were about to face in any way, shape or form; no one who believed they were supposed to take that journey seemed to think they needed preparations. Were they all mad? Relying on the fact that they had clearly done all this before, and so the outcome must be the same regardless of how well prepared they were?

And if they truly had done it all before, why wasn’t there some ingrained memory of how badly it all turned out urging them to better prepare?

Frustrations growing, she took a step back, knocking into Finn, who lingered too closely behind her. Hands shooting out to catch himself, she had no idea if he’d hit some hidden switch or if Brendolowyn was responsible. She only knew the cavern began to rumble, stone vibrating beneath her feet and a shower of tiny pebbles and dust raining down on them from above.

“What did you do?” Brendolowyn’s voice echoed through the cramped corridor.

“Blast if I know!”

“Well, whatever it was, it worked. The passage is open.”

Lorelei hurried back toward the end of the hall, arriving beside Brendolowyn several seconds before Finn and gasping in amazement as the dull light of Bren’s magic ate away at the darkness.

“Torches.” Finn edged between them, crossing first into the ancient Dvergr hall and wrenching a torch from a rusted wall mount with groaning effort. “Been a long time since these were used, I’d say.” Cobweb stuck to his hand, drawing in a long, dusty line between his palms as he transferred the wooden handle to the other hand.

“Hundreds of years. Here,” Brendolowyn offered, summoning a flicker of flame to the tips of his fingers. Finn held the torch out and the dusted oil caught quickly, pluming dirty orange smoke that blocked the spread of light until it finally stopped sputtering.

The chasm yawned into a great hall with vaulted ceilings so high it took forever for the light to reach them. Even after Bren lit a second torch from Finn’s and passed it to her before lighting another for himself, the growing light nibbled away at a darkness that hadn’t seen light in so long, it nearly didn’t recognize it. Stretching her head back as she walked slowly forward, she could barely make out the carvings etched into the stone ceiling.

Every footstep, each whisper of breath echoed back to her, and when Finn whistled it startled her and she nearly tripped clumsily over her own feet.

High columns featuring delicately carved stories stretched toward those endless ceiling, arching across stone tiles with similar designs etched into each corner as they crawled across the dusty floors. In the center of each peaked vault, great round lanterns dangled from old chains, unlit for centuries and draped in curtains of yellowed and dusty cobweb.

For a moment she tried to imagine that place in all its glory, but there were no words.

“That’s…” Finn started, shaking his head. “Wow.”

“And to think,” Brendolowyn began, “we are probably the first eyes to see this hall in ages.”

She shivered again, holding her torch toward the retreating darkness and lifting her head once more toward the never ending ceiling. She wondered silently if the ghosts of Dvergen’s children walked those halls, lingering in spirit, moaning at the memory of glories long forgotten by the rest of the world. She really hoped not. She wasn’t afraid of ghosts and spirits, but she didn’t exactly want to come face to face with any in a place she couldn’t escape them.

Row after row of tables lined the hall, stone chairs pushed close to the lip, as if simply waiting to be drawn out for a meal. Platters, turned over pitchers, plates with what she could only assume contained the rotted dust and remnants of uneaten food littered the tabletops, adding to the illusion that the Dvergr might walk into the hall any moment to take a meal together.

“How many do you think lived here?” Finn wondered aloud.

“Thousands,” Bren said. “Enough to work the mines and the forges, to keep this place running.”

“All of them just… gone,” Lorelei murmured, lament rippling through her in a series of chills she had a feeling she’d never be able to shake.

“They had no choice but to abandon their home.”

“It makes me sad. I don’t think I ever really thought about it much before, but they were people just like us, and now all that remains of them are these places so few will ever see.”

“At least they had these places.” There was a hard seriousness in Finn’s tone she’d never heard before. “When the U’lfer are gone from this world, there won’t be anything to remember us at all.”

Reaching over, she gripped his forearm in her hand and squeezed the muscle. “Don’t say that, Finn. We won’t let that happen.”

The look in his eyes told her he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t say anything else for a long time after that.

They lingered in the hall, walking past those tables, inspecting the remains of a life forgotten and shaking their heads at the tragedy of it all. She studied some of the relief sculptures carved into the stone pillars stretching toward impossibly high ceilings, but with little more than a torch to shed light on them, it was hard to make out the details.

“Do you think our fathers made it this far?” she finally asked.

“I doubt it,” Finn said. “I think if they had, we wouldn’t even be here now. I doubt they made it into the mountain.”

“Things would have been different if they had, I guess.”

“Very different…”

They were not alone in the great hall. Brendolowyn wandered ahead, his torchlight carving into the pitch around him and allowing her to keep track of his movement. From time to time, she swore she saw dark things moving all around them, the glint of hollow, ghastly eyes staring out from the darkness. The whispers, not unlike those that came to probe them in the passageway, were subtler, tentative—as if they knew the intruders were onto them and didn’t want to make themselves known.

Part of her wanted to call out a challenge, let the master of those whispers know they’d come to kill it, but her lips clamped tightly shut and her throat was so dry she knew no words would come if she dared.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Finn wondered aloud, “Do you think it’s watching us?”

“Not watching,” Bren called back. “Listening. Delving into the depths of our minds and determining how best to destroy us.”

Lorelei swallowed against the aching dryness in her throat, a loud gulp that echoed through the cavernous vacancy of the hall.

“We shouldn’t make it wait,” Finn decided. “We came here for a fight. I say we find this thing and kill it before it kills us. I don’t like things messing around in my head.”

“I don’t imagine there’s much in there to mess around with,” Lorelei countered.

Without missing a beat, he shot back, “Mostly mental conjurations of you naked, but I’m not sharing those with anyone.”

“Conjurations,” she tittered, attempting to hide her embarrassment behind humor. It was the strangest time in the world for her to be thinking about him picturing her naked, but it somehow managed to ease the tension just a little. “That’s an awfully big word, Finn.”

“I have a few of those in my vocabulary,” he shrugged. “Not many, but I hang onto them for special occasions. To try and impress the ladies, you know.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“I don’t know, are you impressed yet?”

Snorting laughter, she shook her head and returned her attention to Brendolowyn up ahead. He’d withdrawn his wisps, relying on torchlight alone to guide him, but their eyes were starting to adjust to that heavy and unnatural darkness. She could see looming doors in the distance, broad and tall and black, and she didn’t know how she knew, but those doors would lead them to the drakoren.

Heading in that direction, she reached beside her instinctively and found Finn’s hand waiting to grasp hers. Tangling their fingers together, she squeezed. She needed that reassurance, as the closer they grew to that door, the darker her thoughts began to grow. She couldn’t grab onto them and pin them down, but felt them needling at her unconscious thoughts and growing her apprehension with every step.

“Scared, Princess?” Finn asked softly, disentangling his hand from hers and lowering his arm across her back to draw her near.

“A little,” she confessed.

“Me too,” he admitted.

Knowing he was scared should not have comforted her, but it did, and she snuggled in close to his chest as they walked and wished they could just turn back and run away. They could hide together somewhere, and let the world fall apart all around them.

No.

Even though she resented having that weight lowered onto her shoulders, that was not something she could ever do.

She owed it to her people, her father’s people and her mother’s, to all the people of Vennakrand, to see it through to the end. Even the gods were counting on her. She didn’t know why, or what made her so special, if she really had the light of a god inside her, but in the end none of that mattered. It fell to her to make things right, and she was going to do it.

Brendolowyn reached those ominous doors long before they did. He stood studying them, head tilted back as he read the inscription chiseled into the stone. When they finally approached, he gestured for Finn to come forward and help him budge them from their ancient, rusted hinges. Lorelei crossed her arms and watched them grunt and strain to wrest them. From time to time she glanced back over her shoulder and into the darkness. She swore she still saw ghosts, bodies with hollow eyes lurking on the edge of the faint light. She shuddered and returned her attention to the groaning doors, watching as dust and stone rained down over the men. Pebbles plinked off the floor and several small spiders scattered away from the disturbance and into the gloom to hide.

Finn did a jerky dance, running frantic fingers through his hair and down his arms to rid himself of invisible invaders of the eight-legged variety, and she stepped in to help brush him off. Tilting her head around his jittery body, she was instantly drawn to the eerie, metallic smell of centuries of stale air crawling outward to choke them. Finn, still dancing, buried a cough into his shoulder, and Brendolowyn sneezed several times before finally stepping back and turning his head away from the gaping black chasm that would lead them into the belly of Great Sorrow.