The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) (22 page)

11

The next morning, Angus sat hunched over Teffles’ spell book
and brought the magic within him into focus. It was the first step for priming
a spell, and he had done it so many times that the patterns within him were a familiar
echo imprinted on his mind and the realignment of them was routine. But this
time was different. The threads of magic within him were vaguely distorted, as
if they had been disrupted and shifted aside a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t
that they were misplaced, exactly—he tested the patterns for the spells he had
already primed, and they reacted normally—just…different. It was almost as if
they had been tweaked out of place and put back again, but the one who did it
was just a little bit off. It was like searching a person’s room and putting
everything back again; no matter how close the objects were to their original
position, they were always just a little bit off.

Was it the healer? Had she cause the disruption when she
mended his bones? He didn’t know; he only knew that something wasn’t quite the
same. He continued to study the arrangement of the strands for a few more
minutes, but he couldn’t find any answers in them. Finally, he turned away from
the magic within him and reached out for the magic around him.

It was a lively location—he had checked it the night
before—and he drew upon it as needed to facilitate the priming of the new
spell, the one that would let him fly. Even though it was a complex spell, he
risked using Teffles’ shorthand to make it simpler to prime. But he wasn’t
comfortable with it; the spell was dominated by sky magic and he was trained in
and attuned to flame magic. It wasn’t that he couldn’t prime for sky magic
spells or cast them—all magic worked the same basic way—but it felt unnatural
to him, sort of like wearing someone else’s boots. It took time to find the
right threads within him and tweak them into the proper position to be
receptive to the spell, and when he was done, he was surprised to find that
there were enough threads remaining for him to prime another simpler, weaker
spell. He chose the first spell in Teffles’ book, the one that had the single
knot. He was curious about what it would do….

By the time Angus finished, the others were ready to leave.
Ortis was lounging near the subdued fire. Hobart was tending to the horses and
redistributing the gear. Giorge was casually throwing a net across their
campsite, trying to capture a reluctant bush. The net, a web of tightly braided
strands with the outer edge lined with small weights, was large enough to
entrap a man. He gripped the middle of the strands, twirled the weights around
his head, and let it go. As it shot forward the weights spread outward in
clumps and the net unwound only partway, the rest remained uselessly tangled
together. When it landed near the bush, the weights bounced and rolled,
tangling the net even further. He reeled it in by the rope attaching the net to
his wrist, and began untangling it. When he saw Angus walking toward them, he
grinned, thought about it for a moment, and lowered its intensity to a
friendly, guarded smile.

“I’ll get it figured out eventually,” he said. “It’s the
weights. I don’t know how to release the net so they spread out in a uniform
fashion.”

“You should have seen him when he started,” Hobart said as
he guided Leslie toward them. “I thought he was skipping stones the way they
bounced along the ground. At least now the net isn’t getting as tangled up as
when he started. Some of it is even spreading out.”

“Give me time,” Giorge said, “and I’ll be catching deer with
Ortis.”

“He may be right,” Ortis suggested. “Deer don’t stand still,
like bushes. One might run into the net by accident.”

Giorge grinned and said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

Hobart chuckled and asked Angus, “Are you ready to go?”

Angus nodded.

“Good,” Ortis said as one of him dowsed the fire with water
and the other two scooped dirt onto it.

“Your horse is saddled,” Hobart said. “We should be able to
make it around this mountain today if the road holds.”

“If it doesn’t?” Angus asked.

Hobart shrugged. “We’ll consider out options. It will depend
a great deal on how steep the mountain is. We might have to backtrack and take
a different route.”

“If there is one,” Ortis said. “There are places in these
mountains that are impassible.

“We could go down into the valley and work our way around,”
Hobart suggested.

“Let’s find out if we need to, first,” Giorge said. “There’s
no sense in taking an unnecessary detour.”

12

The old road continued along the valley floor until midmorning,
and then it sloped up toward the mountain. By midday, the gradual slope had
changed to a sharp but manageable incline as it followed along a ledge. The
ledge, though apparently natural, had been widened considerably, and the
rough-hewn rock face was pitted with erosion. It settled into a fairly level
path not long afterward, and then wound its way around the southwest edge of
the mountain. Then the cobblestones abruptly ended, as if the builders had
simply decided they couldn’t be bothered with continuing to build the road.
They had even left behind cobblestones stacked like cordwood against the
mountainside.

“I wonder why they didn’t take those,” Angus asked. “Wouldn’t
they have been able to use them on the other roads?”

“Who knows?” Hobart said. “They’ve been here a long time,”
he added. “Something must have kept them from doing it.”

“There’s plenty of granite around here,” Giorge suggested.
“It may have been simpler to abandon them here and cut new pieces where they
were needed. They are pretty heavy.”

“I don’t know,” Angus said. “You saw that work crew south of
Wyrmwood, didn’t you? It had taken them days to carve up just half of that
rock. I think it would be cheaper and less time-consuming to transport already
fashioned ones to where they were needed than it would be to carve new ones.”

“That may be,” Hobart agreed. “Does it matter?”

“It might,” Angus suggested. “It could indicate what it was
that led them to abandon the construction project.”

“Whatever it was,” Hobart said. “We must be close to it.”

“Not yet,” Giorge corrected him. “If they had given up here,
they wouldn’t have kept cutting away at the mountain. It’s carved at least as
far as that outcropping up ahead, and probably quite a bit further.”

“That may be,” Hobart said. “But it still won’t be much
further. As I recall, the cobblestones always trailed behind the men building
the roadbed, and the men building the roadbed were behind the ones carving into
the mountain. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got all the way around the
mountain before they stopped carving into it, but the roadbed won’t go that
far. Something stopped them.”

“Whatever it was,” Ortis said from near the neatly stacked
pile of cobblestones, “it was significant enough to compel them to abandon their
materials instead of working around it. There are a few rusted tools over here.
Mallets, picks, chisels—the wood has rotted away, but the metal is still here.”

“They must have left in a hurry then,” Angus agreed. “But
that doesn’t explain why they didn’t come back later to reclaim those stones.
Something has kept them away.”

“I’ve heard tales of dragons,” Giorge offered.

“Bah,” Hobart snorted. “Not this close to Hellsbreath. They
prefer the wilder lands.”

“These are the wilder lands,” Angus muttered, glancing at
the cloudless sky, looking for any small—or large—speck that didn’t belong
there.

“At least we don’t have to worry about loose cobbles
anymore,” Giorge said, grinning and spurring his horse to a light trot on the
level roadbed about a foot below the edge of the last cobblestone. Plants were
growing in small clumps here and there, where dirt had accumulated on top of
the stone.

“We’d better keep pace,” Ortis said. “There’s no telling what
he’ll run into up there.”

“Not much, surely,” Angus said. “There can’t be too many
dangers on the side of a volcano, can there?”

Hobart looked at him, shook his head, and spurred Leslie after
Giorge.

“Falling rock, lava flows,” Ortis began, as he followed
after them. “Mountain giants, spiders, snakes, wyverns—” The second Ortis
continued as he passed. As his voice trailed off, the third one continued the
list as he approached Angus “—dragons, nymphs, ogres, mountain cats. Those are
only a few of them.” He paused only long enough to add, “We better catch up
with them.”

Angus nodded, clicked his tongue, flicked the reins, and
urged Gretchen into a light trot. Ortis fell in line with him at his side, but
they didn’t have to go very far past the sharp outcropping. It hovered above
them, a high overhang that made Angus feel as if a giant bird’s beak was about
to snap down on him. He hurried through it but slowed his horse when he saw
Giorge and the others stopped in front of a tall black wall. It was about twenty
feet high and propelled out beyond the road dozens of feet, eventually curving
back into itself and dangling over the mountainside.

“We know what stopped them,” Giorge said as Angus and Ortis
joined them.

“It has stopped us, too,” Hobart said, dismounting and
walked up to the bulbous black wall blocking their path. He lightly rapped it
with a mailed fist, sending a shattering of glass-like black shards to the
ground. “It’s recently formed.” he said. “There’s no way we can take our horses
over it. Even if we could somehow climb up to the top, they couldn’t walk on it
without falling through this fragile stuff. There will be too many air pockets
in it.”

“We’ll have to turn back and try the valley,” Giorge said,
nudging his horse to the edge of the mountain. “It does not look promising. If
it would have been easy to go through the valley, they wouldn’t have bothered cutting
up the mountain. See that?” he gestured, bringing the others closer to the
edge. “There’s a bottleneck. The valley ends at that cliff face, and there’s no
way out of it.”

“Let’s look at that map, Angus,” Hobart said. “Before we
head back, we need to know what direction to take, and we’ve got a pretty fair
view of things up here. If there are any other major obstacles, we should be
able to see them.”

“I’m not convinced we need to go back,” Angus said,
dismounting and walking up to the smooth black wall. “I wonder how wide this
flow is?”

Hobart nodded. “It’s one of the volcanic rocks that can form
when the lava cools. It’s brittle, and when it breaks, it forms sharp edges.
I’ve seen people use it for knife blades; that’s how sharp it is. But you can’t
fight with them very well; a blow from the side can snap the blade in two.”

“Well,” Angus said. “Giorge can tell us how thick it is,
can’t he?”

“Me?” Giorge replied. “I’m seeing the same thing you are.”

“You can climb it, can’t you?” he asked.

“Not that stuff,” Giorge said, pointing at the black wall in
front of them. “It will crumble in my hands.”

“The mountain isn’t. You should find much better handholds
and footholds up there,” he pointed at the steep slope of the mountain heading
up toward its summit, “than you had at Fenbrooke’s Inn. Surely you can climb up
there and take a look for us?”

Giorge studied the mountainside for a few seconds before nodding.
“I can climb up there,” he said, “but the horses can’t.”

“They don’t need to,” Angus said. “I need a sense of how
thick this fragile wall is and what’s behind it.”

“A lava flow like this,” Hobart said, “is generally not the
only one. They seep out periodically, and then go dormant again. There will
probably be several layers, with this being the most recent one. They started
rebuilding this road about two hundred years ago, and if they stopped because
of the volcano back then, and if it recently vented again, there’s almost
certainly quite a few eruptions in between.”

“Giorge?” Angus repeated.

Giorge hesitated only long enough to glance at Hobart, who
nodded slightly, and then dismounted and began free-climbing up the slope. It
wasn’t quite vertical, and when he began to slide, he was able to stop himself
by flattening his body against the slope and pawing for handholds.

“All right, Angus,” Hobart began. “You obviously have
something in mind. Care to share it with us?”

“How do you feel about flying?” Angus asked, his eyes still
on Giorge.

“Flying?” Hobart repeated, his voice almost a squawk. “I—”
He looked keenly at Angus, his light brown eyes half closed. “You’re serious,
aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Angus said. “It isn’t the way the spell is normally
done,” he admitted. “But I think I can manipulate it safely enough to fly all
of us and the horses over this if it isn’t very far. I’ll need some time to
think through the alterations, though, and even then, I wouldn’t risk going
very far.”

“It’s dangerous,” Hobart said, reaching up to push his long
blond hair back. “More dangerous than you’re telling us.”

Angus shrugged. “All spells are dangerous,” he said. “It’s
always a question of mitigating those dangers. But, yes, this is more dangerous
than the typical spell.”

“Why not use the wand?” Ortis suggested. “It poked a hole
through Hellsbreath’s wall easily enough, and that was made from granite.”

“It will depend upon what Giorge sees,” Angus hedged. “But I
don’t think the wand has enough range to make it through it.”

“You can find out,” Ortis almost demanded.

The muscles in Angus’s jaws tightened as he remembered the
recoil, being flung backward, hitting the wall.... If he braced himself, could
he handle that recoil here? He
should
be able to; wands were not
supposed to kill the one employing them. It would be useful to know the precise
range….

Giorge reached a point well above the lava flow, steadied
himself on a narrow ledge, shielded his eyes, and studied the landscape. Then
he started back down, feeling for footholds and handholds as he went. He slid
down the last few feet and turned around, brushing the dirt from his tunic.

“Well?” Angus asked.

“It’s too wide,” Giorge said. “There are several older flows
on the other side of this one, but the roadbed continues beyond them.”

Angus frowned and asked, “How far is
this
flow,” he
said, gesturing at the glass-like black surface.

“This new one goes back maybe ten feet, but it rises sharply
from the edge. There’s another, higher one just beyond it, but it must be
several years old; it’s overgrown with wildflowers. There aren’t any trees or
shrubs, though, so it can’t be that old. There are other, older flows beyond
it. It must have been erupting for a long time.”

“That rules out the wand,” Angus said.

“Why?” Ortis asked.

Angus shrugged. “The wand’s range is limited.”

“To how far?” Ortis asked.

“I’m not certain,” Angus admitted. “But it certainly won’t
go through that many layers.”

“Why not test it and find out?” Hobart suggested. “If it can
get us to the older lava flows, we should be able to climb them. Once they
settle and get rained on, they become much more solid, and the roots of the
plants add stability. We can walk our horses single file across them, if we can
get up that high.”

“You know,” Giorge added. “This new one has to be covering
up an older one. They layer that way. The brittle stuff might only be a few
feet thick.”

“Or it could go much further,” Angus said. “There’s no way
to know.”

“Yes there is, Angus,” Ortis said. “We paid a considerable
amount to get you out of Hellsbreath, and we’d like to see what we paid for.
Use the wand.”

Angus frowned. How could he explain how precious the wand
was? How rare? Wasting its power like this…. “Let’s take a look at my map,
first,” he said. “If there’s an alternate route, I’d rather take that.”

Ortis shrugged, waited for him to remove and unroll the map,
and then pointed. “The quickest and easiest route lies beyond this lava flow.
They may not have rebuilt this road the whole way, but it was there, and they
were using it. Even after a thousand years, the remnants of it should be easy
enough to follow, as long as the volcanoes haven’t buried other parts of it
like they have here. Now, as you can see, it goes around this mountain and
turns west, straddling the top of that cliff, and then turns southwest. At that
point, we’ll follow along the valley floor for a considerable distance, and
then come to a mountain with three summits. The temple will be nestled in among
those summits, and the road—if it’s still there—will lead us there.”

“Which mountain is it?” Hobart asked, shielding his eyes and
looking west.

“We can’t see it from here,” Ortis said without looking up.
“The other mountains are in the way.”

“I understand that,” Angus said. “What are the
alternatives?”

“We can’t get there by going through the valley down there,”
Ortis said. “It’s a bottleneck. Even if we could climb out of it, we wouldn’t
be able to take our horses with us.”

“I am not abandoning Leslie,” Hobart said, in a deadpan tone
that suggested an unflinching position. “She has been with me since I started
soldiering.”

“Millie’s too good a steed to leave behind,” Giorge added.

“Now,” Ortis said. “The river near Hellsbreath. You wanted
to go that way, didn’t you? Well, if we had, we would have had to go over those
two mountains.” Ortis pointed at a pair of tall peaks looming above them to the
southwest. “They are too high. There are no known trails or passes through
them, and a lot of dangers.”

“I’ve seen them up close,” Giorge said. “I’m an excellent climber,
and I’d be hard-pressed to get past them. A lot of people have died trying.”

“We can’t come around from the Western Kingdoms, either,”
Ortis continued. The mountains are even higher on that side of the range.
Hellsbreath Pass is the only route west that we—or anyone else, for that
matter—would risk taking, and it runs farther south before it turns west. That
leaves only one other option. We can try to go around the other side of this
mountain.”

“Let’s do that, then,” Angus suggested, eager to hold onto
his wand’s power. “Surely it can be done.”

Ortis shook his head. “Don’t you think they would have done
it if it were possible? They built the road on this side of the mountain for a
reason. Twice. Besides, even if we can make it through the wilderness on that
side of the mountain, our time is too short. The detour will add several days
to our journey there, and several more on the way back. The winter will hit us
before we’re out of these mountains, and I do not relish the idea of getting
caught in an early blizzard. The Tween would claim us as its next victims.”