Midnight Quest (48 page)

Sometimes being an adult was no fun at all. With a sigh, Jewel forced herself to behave and reached out her hand, situating it firmly against the bottom of the crystal. “On three!” Jewel called to Chantel. “One, two,
three
!”

The crystal made a harsh grating sound as it inched its way up. Jewel was abruptly grateful that Rialt had refused to let her go down alone. It took concentration on his part to slowly climb back up, even with people on top helping him to do so. She couldn’t afford to split her concentration as the crystal would slip if she tried. She’d never been forced into such an awkward position while trying to move a crystal before and until this moment, didn’t appreciate how difficult it would be.

Their pace could only be described as a
crawl
as they inched their way upward. Since she had always been the one manipulating the crystal before, using her own limbs, she had always been the one to set the pace. This slow, trudging speed tasked her mental concentration and her arm started to ache from being thrust out at such a straight angle. To her, the crystal’s weight registered as something that she could easily carry. But any weight at all on top of her arm would eventually take its toll.

“Your arm be shaking,” Rialt observed in concern.

“I’ll make it,” she assured him through gritted teeth.

“Be it so heavy, then?”

“Awkward would be a better word. How far are we from the top?” It seemed like they’d been at this for hours although she couldn’t imagine that was true.

“Four or five strides.”

So, ten or so feet? Jewel sucked in a breath and pushed it out again harshly between clenched teeth. She could make ten feet. Maybe.

“Take your mind off it,” Rialt suggested. “Think of something else instead.”

“Can’t,” she refuted. “The crystal will slip if I do. Chantel! How are you doing?”

“Arm is shaking!” Chantel called back. “But we’re close to the top!”

A grinding, almost ear-piercing sound came from behind Jewel, sounding as if it came from the opposite end of the ravine. She identified the sound without a problem, her heart giving a leap of victory.

The top of the crystal had been dragged free.

While this was a good thing in and of itself, it also meant that the balance of the crystal’s weight shifted. Jewel felt her hand sliding abruptly downwards as the crystal tried to slide, becoming abruptly top heavy. She let out an inarticulate sound of distress and thrust her arm completely under the crystal, trying to regain her grip on it. If this heavy thing went to the river’s bottom, she couldn’t imagine how they’d get it out again.

“What?” Rialt demanded, half-alarmed.

“The crystal’s weight has shifted,” she managed to explain between pants. “I’m losing my grip on it.”

“Cherchez’s beard, that be no what we need right now.” Rialt took in a huge breath before belting out, “Chizeld! Take our weight and drag us up! The crystal be slipping and I need to help Jewel with it!”

“Will do!” Chizeld called back.

Rialt slipped an arm under hers and flattened his palm around her hand. She appreciated the support beyond words. Trying to hold up her arm
and
wrestle with the crystal had about sapped her strength. Even though his added strength didn’t do a thing to help with the crystal, it did support her failing arm, which made all the difference. Furrowing her brows, she redoubled her efforts on the crystal. In an effort to get a more steadying grip on it, she twisted her torso as much as she could to get her other hand under it. This only semi-worked, as the harness interfered with her efforts. Still, the second hand offered the leverage that she needed to steady its weight.

“Better?” Rialt asked against her ear.

“Yes.” She couldn’t spare anything more than that one word, as she felt the crystal’s balance tip again, this time going forward.

“The base is starting to clear the top!” Sarvell informed them. “You’re almost there!”

All the gods be praised.

She didn’t need anyone to tell her when the majority of the crystal’s base had finally cleared the top, as the crystal abruptly started tipping forward. The sound of the wind changed, too, becoming more of a sporadic rush that she associated with being near the edge. They had to be mere feet from the top, then.

“Almost there, Jewel,” Rialt whispered in encouragement. “Almost there.”

Her mind took up the mantra. Almost…there…

All at once the cold stone against her skin pulled away, and the tremendous weight of the crystal rocked forward. A loud impact vibrated the ground and air as it slammed into place. With a groan and a sigh, the crystal came to a complete stop.

For a moment, silence reigned among the group and then someone let out a victorious shout and the rest echoed him. Someone pulled them up the rest of the way and Rialt took a large step from the edge before kneeling down. She put her head on his shoulder and just breathed for a moment, not caring that she was still strapped in place.

They’d done it. The crystal was back up. All that they needed to do now was drag it a few dozen feet to the right resting spot and then her first task would be complete. The crystals would all be in their proper places again.

She had done the impossible.

“Wifey, be you crying?” The question was redundant as he raised a hand and gently wiped the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

She felt like her heart would burst. Catching his hand, she pressed her cheek into his palm and assured him softly, “Tears of joy.”

Chapter Thirty-four

They left Rounsefell early the next morning. Chantel protested this, saying that it wouldn’t hurt anything to rest for a day, but a gnawing sense of foreboding in the pit of Jewel’s stomach wouldn’t allow her to rest. Very soon something would go terribly wrong. She knew it with absolute certainty even though she had no proof.

Chantel, well able to sense the condition that the barrier was in, didn’t argue with her too much. She understood Jewel’s worries all too well. Even if Jewel left this very minute, it would take her a solid two weeks of traveling to reach Denzbane. And even after she arrived, it would take another day to re-dedicate the crystal and even
more
time after that to recharge the crystal. It would be an uphill battle to get every crystal fully charged and the barrier back to full strength. In fact, it might well take a year’s worth of consistent work to reach that point.

So Chantel hugged her hard, made sure the party had enough supplies, and wished them a safe journey with only a token protest.

They travelled northeast for several days on the main highway, heading directly for Zarraga. The trade city sat on the crossway of the Honorvar and the Hatton River and reaching it would be the hardest part of the journey—not because of any geographical challenges, but simply because of the amount of traffic. This was trade season and every merchant worth his salt would be on the highway with a caravan at this point. Zarraga was
the
hub for trade, so everything went there eventually. Their pace slowed to a crawl just because of the amount of traffic. Still, if they went any other route it would add days of travel. Frustrating as it was, this route was the most direct.

Being sensible people, they didn’t even try to find an inn in Zarraga. In fact, aside from lingering for a few hours to buy some supplies, they didn’t really stay in the city at all. Sarvell led them to a small village outside of the city’s limits that hosted a decent inn. (And the inn keeper greeted him by name, which Jewel didn’t find surprising at all.)

The inn’s beds were
far
too comfortable for her. Especially with Rialt wrapped comfortably around her back, and Bortonor sleeping at the foot of the bed, she remained nice and warm throughout the night. Jewel found it a trial just to bring her mind to a semi-conscious state. Perhaps the weeks of travel were finally catching up with her. Before leaving Belthain, she had had no experience with travel, after all. It wasn’t just riding a horse—the constant source of new stimuli that she had to process and interact with also sapped her strength. Jewel couldn’t
wait
until she was home in Denzbane again.

Stretching slightly, she tried to roll out of bed, only to be caught short by Rialt’s encompassing arm. “Rialt…let me up.”

“Lovenanty, wife,” he grumbled in a voice thick with sleep, “even the
birds
be no properly awake at this hour.”

“Eh?” she paused in her efforts to free herself. “Is it really that early?”

“Eh, it be,” he answered with a long sigh. “So be a good wife and stay in bed.”

She snorted. “Do you mean be a good wife, or be a good pillow?”

“That be what I said.”

Well, as long as her role in this relationship had been properly established… Shaking her head, she rolled back into her previous position. But still, if it truly
was
early, then why had she woken up? The room had no noise in it, aside from Rialt and Bortonor’s breathing. There weren’t any sounds from outside or next door. The fire in the room had burned down at some point to mere embers, as she could barely detect any outside heat in the air, but Rialt and Bortonor kept her warm enough that she shouldn’t have awakened due to the chill of morning.

After all of these weeks of traveling, she should still be sound asleep…so why had her brain so rudely jerked her into the waking world? Even now, she had absolutely no temptation to go back to sleep.

“Jewel,” Rialt had a note of forced patience in his voice, “why be you no sleeping?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted in frank puzzlement. “I’m just
awake
. I can’t think of anything that’s wrong…” In a split second it hit her. It wasn’t what she could hear or sense that had awoken her.

But the
absence
of something she had always felt.

Jewel jerked upright in the bed, throwing back the covers and fighting to get out of the bed. “Rialt, we have to move!”

His soldier’s reflexes had him scrambling out of the bed after her even as he demanded, “What? What be wrong?!”

“The barrier,” she responded quickly, words almost tripping over each other as she rushed to get out the explanation. “The barrier is gone!”

“WHAT?!”

Jewel dove for the saddlebags that she had laid over a chair the night before, yanking out the first clothes that came to hand and changing as quickly as she could manage. “Get the other two awake!”

Rialt had the door open before she could get the order out. She tracked his movements absently as she dressed, listening through the wall as he banged on the door and then snapped out commands to the two sleeping next door.

She had three more buttons on her blouse to do by the time he returned, and he imitated her by going straight to his saddlebag and quickly getting dressed. Bortonor, alert to the sudden movement of his people, jumped to the floor and kept pressing anxiously against her. He didn’t understand what was wrong, only felt that his people were upset.

Jewel spared him a quick pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears before asking Rialt, “Take him outside for a minute. I’ll pack everything.”

“Back in a moment,” he promised before whistling for the dog.

Bortonor obediently followed him out of the room. Someone—Chizeld, actually—stepped inside almost immediately after they had left and demanded, “Sure? The barrier is gone?”

“Gone,” Jewel confirmed, clenching her hands in front of her stomach. She felt like she might either throw up or start shaking soon. Never before had Evard been completely defenseless. The Daath would certainly move on this as soon as they could. How much time did they have? Weeks? How long would it take to amass an army? “Chizeld, the horses.”

“Sarvell is saddling now,” he assured her. “Pack. Need to leave quick and ride hard.”

She took in a deep breath to calm her nerves—which didn’t have any noticeable effect—before she whirled around and started packing again at a frantic pace. Chizeld pitched in by putting Rialt’s things back into the bags. This task didn’t take more than a few seconds, as they hadn’t really unpacked anything the night before.

Rialt’s heavy footsteps bounded back up the stairs, followed by Bortonor’s lighter tread. “Jewel, ready?”

“Ready,” she confirmed, snatching up her saddlebags.

“Meet down there,” Chizeld said to them both as he darted out of the room, no doubt getting his own bags.

She followed Rialt down the stairs as fast her legs would carry her, following him through the inn and to the back, where the stable yard lay. Without any words being exchanged, they mounted and road out at a quick lope, heading for the main highway.

As soon as they were on the highway, Jewel gathered enough courage to ask, “Rialt, if the Daath noticed right this minute that the barrier was down, how fast could they act?”

“Three weeks, on the outside. But they would send in scouts and the like by tomorrow.”

Three weeks…it would take another week just to reach Denzbane. Could she and her sister-priestesses put enough energy into the crystals fast enough to put the barrier back up before then?

Since the barrier had been given to Evard, it had never once failed or been taken down. This situation had simply never happened before and because of that, Jewel had no way of even guessing. She couldn’t even be sure why the crystal had not sustained the barrier another three months, as she guessed it would.

Why
had it failed?

Rialt put an arm around her waist and hugged her tight for a moment. “We will make it, Jewel. We will make it.”

She prayed to the gods that he was right.

~*~*~*~

They rode hard and fast, switching horses as they needed to, but even then it took two days to reach Belthain. Every muscle in Jewel’s body seemed to ache and she would literally beg to be given a chance to have a hot bath and a proper meal. They had expanded a great deal of energy in order to reach the city this quickly, but Jewel still was tempted to stop just for a few moments and coordinate with Tamarra before continuing on to Ramath. Those few moments of working out a schedule of how to charge the crystals might save them valuable time later.