Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (16 page)

Chapter 31

I think I woke up just moments after I struck the stones.  I knew I was beneath the earth, but it felt foggy and slow, as if I were still in some sleepy dream.

Finally I managed to form something resembling thoughts in my head.  We were all bent and stirring, two groups of us, facing every direction.  The castle was basically just
a  giant ring of rubble, open to the graying morning sky.  The dragon was gone.

In the center of all that bloody, smoldering stone and wood debris, the whole went deeper still.

“Down here, my lad!” cried Big Frobhur, who was apparently still very much alive, roared up to me. 

I looked back at what I thought were stirring bodies.  It was strange to be so mistaken, for all that I could discern now was the corpses of a dozen maids—apparently their outward position had been their demise.  I peered down into the hole again
, and I was utterly taken back at the sight of my uncle , who was missing a part of his left hand and had a deep gouge running down the length of his face, but was still very much in the high spirits of battle.

“
Fie, old boy!”
said Delthal.

“
You live, little brother!” said Halvgar.  “And it seems you’re none the worse for wear!”

My uncle Jickie spat. 
“Now see here!  Enough with all this catching up!   Get ye’self down here and help us kill this thing, ‘fore I blow my own fire and boil the bones out ye’ damned hide!”

Of the cutters, it seemed that aside from Jickie’s wounds, I had bore the worst of the brunt of the fall
.  Every one of us that had survived the initial onslaught was still among us:  Frobhur, Delthal, Halvgar, Jickie, and a trio warmaids.  Bik and Andi were two of them.  The third was bald as the arse of a baby bird, and she was completely unknown to me.

“
Dinga,” my uncle called to the third, “help that lazy nephew of mine down here, won’t you lass!”

I smiled, then looked down, and could not keep a frown from the corners of my mouth as I waved Dinga off, giving her a look to let her and my uncle know that, by damn, I’d not be needing help this day!

“It went down
there?!”

“
Aye,” Frobhur said.  “It slithered down like an oiled-up eel!”

“
Cowardly snake!” I called, picking my way down through the rubble.  For a moment, I thought to tell them that we need to slow down and collect ourselves, to find our gear and our weapons.  But the lads were too eager to stop, and to rest now might melt away the courage that was propelling them after the fearsome creature.  I paused only to gather more wood for torches.

“
Here we go,” Dinga said, ignoring my look and helping me down anyway.  She handed me a long bow, a quiver of two arrows, and the broken sword of a maid. 

“
Now we’ll we have ourselves some sport!” I said, flipping the ridiculous weapon in my hand.

Bald Dinga looked at me, as if sizing me up.

“We’ll make a warmaid out of you yet!” she announced, at which the others, bloodied, grimy and depleted, gave an exhausted smile.

Light and dust still streamed from the opening behind us as we formed a chevron of swords, axes, and flaming wooden posts.

We began stepping down further into the earth through winding pits and crevices.  Soon we were under the high ceiling of the caves.  It was plain to see where the beast had been.  Blood pooled here and there in the low spots, and the entire cave smelled like sulfur and musk. 

I gripped the broken post that was my torch, my fist quaking.  We picked our way together across a rock bridge.  The pits to either side of us were seemingly bottomless.  And we traveled this way for hours upon hours through darkened splendor as horrifying as it was beautiful.  At places, we had to swim and much as we walked, and at other places, the cave floor was as smooth as a hand-hewn tunnel.  There were long stretches of broken stalactites or bits of stone on which hunks of the beast’s flesh still clung

In time, our primitive torches became short, and we had to cautiously wait, holding more wood over them, praying that the next torches caught fire before the first one went out.  To lose light at these depths was a death sentence.

We had gone miles, it seemed, though it was hard to say how much time had passed without the sun or stars to guide us.  There were spots where we peered over the edge of the stones down at a tremendous river that no doubt spilled into the sea, wondering if the beast was small enough to fit into the many smaller caverns that branched off away from us.  But then we would find more blood, or a broken claw.

As we went along, shoulder to shoulder, I was sometimes surprised at the emptiness, at the great enormity of the silence, and at the steam that rose in tremendous, low clouds from certain pits.  At a particularly wide stretch of the cave, there was a great wall, covered in a brilliant orange substance that I suspected was mold of some sort, but it was hard as stone.

The arm of the cave we traveled seemed to stretch on forever at one point.  And it was so wide and dark that we all paused, fearing an ambush from the dragon.  But the only leviathan we encountered was a column of stone that rose from the floor of the cave, spilling steaming water from its top like a massive fountain. 

It was probably only six or seven hours, but it felt like a full day had passed under the earth until finally, the blood trail yet stretching before us, we saw the thin and grayish light of an exit ahead of us. 

We heard the sound of the waves breaking in the distance, and we emerged at the foot of the black mountain, Heir’s Sea Peak, which rested atop a series of the smaller, rock -strewn hillocks so common in the seaside south.  They rolled distantly and softly across the sweeps of stone that rolled away back to the north.

I came out slowly and kept to the edge of cliff that rimmed a good part of the mountain, staying as concealed in shadow as I could possibly remain while the others emerged, squinting
.  All of our narrowing eyes upward at the mountain, at the enormous spires and craggy caves that stretched a half a mile into the sky.  Like the cave, it was as beautiful as it was foreboding, and it was stunning in a very literal sense.  It hushed the soul into stunned silence. 

The mountain, too, was quiet, emptied of all seabirds and their nest that one might normally expect.  There was only the white noise of wind and surf.  At a seaward bend of crags, succumbing to more and more smaller, jagged spires, the stones congested around the largest entrance, the very one we had first seen the beast emerge from
.  It was three fourths of the way up, and just above that it was capped by thin clouds that rolled thinly and lightly across the top.

Nearer, along the rock-strewn beach that surrounded the southern face of the mountain, was a small gap that promised us a way up—but it was a thin promise. 

Chapter 32

. 

There was no sign of the beast, no clue which of the many ways into the mountain he had entered.  There was just the silence, interrupted in dull waves as the pewter-colored sea broke on the cliffs. 

For a long moment, the eight of us just stared up at the entrance, which was easily a quarter mile up.  We were breathing heavily.  All of us were damp, cold, and silent. 

Then distant splashes resounded from the water. 

We turned

Suddenly, the great dragon whisked from the water in a sort of leap, but it never hit the water again  Instead it soared, circling out over the sea before it came, low and predatory, straight at us from over the water. 

Then a roar resounded, and the beast began groaning out such a terrible squall that we each crouched, watching it approach.  We were completely exposed, and leaping back into the cave would be suicide.

We could only draw our weapons and wait.

But the sure death of its fire never came.  Instead, it wings turned up and the beast launched higher, rising.  As its shadow passed over us, the beast turned in a circle, rising higher over us
again only to turn this .  It landed on the edge of its stony roost, its tail whipping out over some seventy feet over the edge a moment before it curled around and disappeared into the mountain. 

T
he distant cries of its victims within the cave wailed out from above.  For just the briefest flash of a moment, I thought I heard Shiri’s cry.

Halvgar strode out away from us, peering up.  He seemed senseless and focused at the same time, and there was something beyond fear on his face.  It was not terror or hate, or even hope.

It was a curious fearsomeness. 

My stomach lurched as I watched him, half out of his head, scampering along the wall for a place to start. 

At the mere thought of climbing, the way up seemed almost infinite; one would have to be a spider or a bird to even think it was possible.  My head was swimming.  Death could come so easily, at the mere cramp of a finger or a leg on such a climb, but I knew there was no stopping him as he hefted himself without words onto the first ledge. 

I shook my head, and told the others to stay where they were, but already the rest of the party was slipping on the iron-slick stones, and just as I joined them, a wind came like the howl of some ancient force.  Strafes of spray from the
sea bit into my face.  My torn cape was beating wildly.  Sweat-soaked hair snaked across my chest-plate as I raised one raw hand after another
.

“
Frobhur!  Uncle Jickie! 
Won’t you stay here and search for another way in?”

“
Pah!”  Frobhur thundered, clasping my uncle’s shoulder.  “Why, sir, you never told me your nephew was such a glutton for all the glory and danger!”

“
Of course he is, sir!  He’s a Warbuck now, don’t you know!  And no Warbuck ever learned how to share glory but by it being stolen from him!”

“
Then after you, sir!” Frobhur said to him.

I could only spit, and wish them well.

Out toward the sea a bit, Halvgar’s graven face showed no expression.  Even as stones slipped from his footing, jarring into the sea, he only looked up.  His hand stayed white as he climbed, sweat rolling from his nose.  It seemed he saw only his wife and little lad.

We were some thirty feet up when a small goat path appeared.

I almost dropped, having to grab a wet stone with both hands to get up onto it

Then I heard screaming, collapsing stones, and as I launched myself up onto the trail, I saw Andi hurling downward head first.  I went numb.  The stones reddened as she landed, ferociously quick.  The noise was like a cruel and disgusting pop, and it was audible even as my hood was beaten like a banner in the fierce wind.

Then I saw what had felled her.  It was a small shaft from which steam shot out and rose in great, hot plumes on the wind, only to dissipate against the rocks. 

I looked down again at the warmaid.  Pieces of her skull were spreading with the pool of blood around her lifeless head.

She was smiling, dead as the rocks on which she rested.

With a nod from Bik, her companion, I launched myself upward again.  Then it started raining, and the fats drops came in on us sideways as we ascended.  The very warmth of my blood seemed to steal away, and yet with gruesome roars of pain and exertion, we each flopped sideways, onto higher and higher trails. 

When I saw Frobhur and Jickie, alongside Delthal and Bald Dinga, it seemed their old red faces would explode. 

“
Hoooold on, Master Frobhur
,” my uncle roared, helping the large fellow up over a slick ledge.  My uncle’s voice was as strong as a bull, and even at his impressive age, there was an imposing amount of power left in his arms.  “We’ll be food for the gulls and crabs if we don’t mind our steps, sir!”

Now massive sheets of wind swooped, and the rain thinned and began stinging like tiny missiles.  The monstrosity of the climbs was only just underway, and already my arms felt frail, and my own body felt like a wagon of freight.

Yet Halvgar was swift, driven by something I could only call madness.  He was already forty feet higher than everyone else, ascending in swoops and darts like a barn swallow.

“
Ho!  Keep a hold on ye’ arse and mind your footing, lads!” Frobhur wailed, and I echoed his cry, but no sooner than I did, the big fellow went screaming with laughter over the edge, Delthal reaching after him.  But Delthal’s leg snapped, and Frobhur, still laughing his thunderous laugh, fell.,

My uncle froze, looking down. 

Frobhur had died laughing, busting his back and cracking his helmet on the rocks below.

Uncle Jickie grunted.  He took a deep breath, wiping his face.  Then he spewed vomit over the side, roaring out his anguish in a strangely silent way at the sight of his friend’s broken body.  He was both laughing and fighting tears.  But in the end, he just shook his head and spat.  His lips were pursed, and he refused me even a glance as Delthal waved us on, and we began once again up the side of the mountain.

Halvgar had fallen a bit, but was picking his way back up to where he was gripping and thrusting in ever-upward undulations and kicks. 

I looked down once more at Delthal, noting that his leg was angled gruesomely. 

Again, he waved us up.

“
Go, Fie!  Mind your fellow Halvgar!”

I nodded once more, and charged up the mountainside with all that I had in me.  But I had not gone twenty more feet up when my hand ripped open on a sharp leave of stone, and I almost plummeted to the rocks below before I caught myself on Bik’s sweaty forehead, which I kissed twice.

I helped her swing upward ahead of me, cupping her heels as she scampered above me onto another smallish trails.  But her strength was leaving her, too; she swung up awkwardly, and slipped, and the force of her heel on my face again almost sent us crashing downward to our deaths.

And there were more vertical stretches above.

Many, many more.

But somehow, straining and grunting, sweating and cursing, we made it up.