THE D'JED MOUNTAINS

FROM BROKEN DREAMS

CHAPTER V

“...a prison she cannot defeat

where shadows lost and daemons meet...”

Gwnri Dahlynwe Rovikya XVII

1:3:3:7/5, III:IX

Laboring to survive the shadows of Haisrir’s abandoned shed, Larin huddled beneath a steel cage, naked on the stone floor and caked in dried blood. Over the past three days of solitude, she’d grown a stunted tree from a pear left for her in a dish of melting snow. The tree bore fruit with less effort than seed, and it helped her weave a cloak of leaves, the silvery hairs interlocked to block the wind outside. Short limbs straining against the bars overhead, the tree lifted one edge of the cage, and Larin could run her little finger along the rim’s underside.

On the verge of collapse, she poured her energy into the tree and awakened hours later, working past exhaustion. The dim light of day faded and she toiled through the night, each effort draining more magic than the last. As the first traces of predawn gray infiltrated the darkness, Larin slipped her leafy cloak through the bars and squirmed free, gouging her backside and scraping her chest across the stone.

Her garment refastened around her shoulders, she tried the door but found it locked. A crushed wail passed her cracked lips, and she stuffed a pear seed into the keyhole, sprouting a new shoot through the tumblers until fatigue overwhelmed her. In the filtered light of mid-morning, Larin resumed her work, stars invading her vision within seconds. She eased down to rest, but the door at her back rattled, shattering four days of silence.

Unsteady on her hands and knees, Larin crawled to the wall by the door’s hinges, bits of green pulp spattering the floor when the bolt slid into place. She quailed in the blinding sunlight, but the opening door shielded her from view. Large and low to the ground, something warm passed through the doorway and sniffed at her vacated cage. She was here recently, Lithon confirmed to his companions outside.

“Larin!” Jorn’s voice fractured her disbelief and she strangled a fragile sob, her terror giving way to delirium. She’d thought him dead for sure! But his strong hands pulled her into a hug, and heat seared across her icy skin. “Mother, what did he do to you?”

“I don’t–” she choked through her hysteria. Doing his best to calm her, Jorn hefted her emaciated form, and Lithon trotted ahead to shield them from the wind. Outside, Rikal warbled from where she stood watch, two sets of laden saddlebags across her broad haunches.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” Jorn soothed, situating her astride Lithon’s shoulders and climbing up behind her. “We’re getting out of here, leaving Kholl and going far away.” With two blankets from Rikal’s packs, he wrapped Larin against his chest and guided them southeast through the mountains, bound for Port Donnel and beyond.

“...to boldly tread the rocky path

deferring to diverted wrath...”

Varyik Seloh Rovikya XVI

1:3:3:6/5, III:IX

By the time rosy light brushed the sky behind the peaks of the D’jed, Kingard could sense the ancient trade routes worn into the distant range. With a tremendous crash, the elf punched through the softened ether of the Halls of Thunder and dragged his companions into the mountains, jumping them to a sheltered cave after taking his bearings. Wretched from the consecutive transports, his queasy charges refused dinner and curled up on the hard ground to rest. From the next valley, the resounding crack of mage thunder echoed through the D’jed, its constant rumble perforated with sudden bouts of silence.

He woke them around noon and advised them against breakfast, but he allowed the insistent faerie to share a meal with the child. A chain of six transports later, Vithril sank to her knees, ears ringing while Darek emptied his stomach onto the snow. “I warned you not to eat yet,” chided Kingard over the clamor of traveling mages.

“Why don’t they feel sick?” Vithril griped, chomping on a clump of snow to settle her stomach.

“They break the ether, so they anticipate the movement. You don’t,” shrugged the elf, offering his flask to the faerie. “Be grateful we’re resting here. If I’d taken us to Sierlyn, you’d be worse off tenfold.”

Downing a quick sip and handing the flask to Darek, Vithril staggered to her feet. “You said the mountains would make this easier, elf.”

“Easier for me,” he corrected, gesturing down the length of the range. “Mages have worn a scar into the ether along this route. I can pull you further through the Halls of Thunder, and our transports are harder to track here.”

“Yeah well, how long to Sierlyn?” Nestled at the base of the D’jed, the imperial capital took weeks to reach on foot.

“We’re about halfway there,” replied the mage, kicking snow over Darek’s spilled meal, “but we’ll rest more frequently from now on.” Choking down a gulp of copper spirits, the boy returned Kingard’s flask and scooped up some clean snow, scrubbing his face into his palms as the flakes melted. “Ready to get going?” The elf clapped a hand on each of their shoulders and transported south in a less-ambitious chain of three.

After Vithril lost her lunch on their third rest, Kingard brought them bursting into a dark tunnel off one of Sierlyn’s open-air thoroughfares. Carved from the mountain rock, the city’s terraces housed expansive villas and wide avenues, with the imperial palace sprawled across the three highest tiers. Stairwells and winding passageways burrowed through the mountain, which overlooked the mighty Lake Kiatan, headwaters of the River Ka. Nearly all the snowmelt of the D’jed funneled through its basin, churning through a massive wrought-iron gate to crash onto the plains of the Rishi hundreds of feet below.

Uncomfortable in Vithril’s warm cloak, Darek flapped the hood over his face to cool himself. “When can I take this off?”

“Once we’re on the boat.” Abandoning the bustling world of sunlit boulevards, Kingard led them into the bowels of the mountain. “But while we’re in the capital, I don’t want any imperials to recognize you.” When they rounded the corner into near-perfect blackness, he conjured a small orb to mirror the afternoon sun. “Stick close. If you get lost in these tunnels, you might come upon dwarf lands. I doubt they’d give you a warm welcome these days.”

“Dwarves are real?” Nervous without her cloak, Vithril hopped closer to Kingard, straining her eyes to peer into the dark. “I thought they were just folktales.”

“As real as faeries,” answered the elf. “They carved this whole city during the occupation.”

“What occupation?”

Sagging under the weight of his years, Kingard prompted, “The Colkh’rak occupation? It... happened a long time ago.” They moved through the endless sloping tunnels and picked their way down slick stairwells, the truncated steps attesting to Sierlyn’s dwarf creators. At long last, light beckoned at the end of a passageway and Kingard snuffed out his orb, emerging from the mountain and into the city beneath the falls. “Welcome to Lowtown.”

Darek cupped a hand over his nose. “It smells here.”

“Yes,” agreed the elf without ceremony. “It does.” Razed by the invading Colkh’rak and forgone during reconstruction for the new fortress carved above, Old Sierlyn had fallen to the destitute and the despicable. “Look sharp, faerie. If anyone’s to come at you, it will be here.”

Wings flickering, she surveyed the motley crowd littering the city’s gutters. Of the faeries that caught her eye, not one bore the blueish tones of a Kalreini’s skin. “Why are we even here? We could book passage somewhere way less dangerous!”

“We need to board in secret. Imperials try to inspect all ships making berth in Sierlyn, so a certain ingenuity is required. Besides, I’d like to pick up a few things.” He guided them down rutted roads toward an ancient mansion, once home to Kingard’s loyal followers, now sagging derelict and gloomy over the hovels at its base.

“You’re picking up a few things here?”

Unfazed, the elf stepped into the shadows and called, “Hello? I’ve come for Grishem! Is anyone home?”

With Darek’s hand tight in her own, Vithril hesitated outside the broken threshold. “We should go,” she urged when silence answered him. “He’s obviously not here.”

But Kingard swung his palm at a faint movement in the corner. “You there, come out! I mean you no harm–” A flitting sound met his ears, and he twisted his shoulder into the knife bound for his throat. Cursing, he cast a quick shield over his companions and dodged a second blade hurtling toward his chest.

“Impressive,” mused a voice in the darkness. “Not many hear our knives coming and live to tell about it.”

With another orb, Kingard exposed three mountain elves squinting in the sudden light. “I’ve come to see Grishem,” he spat, yanking the blade from his shoulder and flinging it tip-first into the floor. “Now fetch him before I burn this place down around your tiny ears.”

“He ain’t here,” growled the elf in the corner, drawing a long dirk as he sidled into the foyer. Chiseled into his cheek, a faerie rune claimed the bounty for his missing left ear. “Hand over the bug, and we might let you go search elsewhere.”

Rotating his injured shoulder, the mage snapped, “You’re not touching the faerie. Now tell me where I can find Grishem.”

“Who the Nine do you think you are, old man?” Kingard shook back his hood to glower at the three elves, who spluttered in sudden panic. “You?!”

Unmoved, he conceded, “Aye.”

(continued...)