FORTY-THREE—Of Swords and Sorcery

Something crunched beneath Sorela as she stepped onto the ground. Her hands burned from the climb down the course rope. A draft gusted into the cavern from the clearing above, making her shiver. Water rivulets had soaked her cowl. As cold as the air currents were, she welcomed them as they dispersed the putrid smell of decayed death that hung in the air. An opening in the rainclouds above revealed bright stars flecking the sky.

They gave Sorela solace.

Lantern held high, Serin made his way down the large mound. The torch he dropped earlier had guttered out, so she bent to get a look at what she was standing on as Leisa crunched down beside her. “Are they bones?” the younger woman asked uncertainly.

“What!” Jasen exclaimed still climbing down above them.

Sorela glared at the boy. Does the fool want to get us killed?

Bones indeed, as many as Sorela had ever seen in one place. Was the island mound made of them? She did not doubt that many years of hunting would one day amount to such a large pile. Not if the predators were winged fellbeasts.

Leisa and Jasen whispered incredulously between themselves as they inspected the mound. “We should never have come here,” the stable boy say.

Sorela lifted her sodden hood with one hand as she held her lantern high. She made her way toward Serin.

Gorkis grunted as he inspected the bones beneath his feet. “Many of these are human.”

There were also many other skeletons belonging to different creatures as well. Many, maybe one in five, were Hansa. Others belonged to those wretches. Some were animal bones. Still others seemed to be the bones of other sentient creatures she could not identify. They looked ancient, covered in cobwebs and thick layers of dust. Some of the skeletons had strange armor, or gripped weapons of design she had never seen before.

How long did fellbeasts live?

They cannot be ancient, she told herself. The Blackwood was two hundred and fifty years old. How the bones of soldiers from a race she had never known existed find their way here? There would be much to talk about with the council of elders when she got back. If she got back.

Luckily the cavern seemed to be temporarily deserted, but it was impossible to say for those other passages.

“The cavern splits off two ways,” Serin breathed. “If Lord Jalen is here, we need to split up.”

Sorela nodded. “I agree. Master Gorkis with me. Leisa, Jasen... follow Serin and do as he says.”

Liesa gave her a look. She wasn’t sure what that was. It almost seemed to Sorela like one of abandonment, or perhaps, simply surprise mingled with curiosity.

But I cannot be at your side at all times, Child—and so you will go with Serin. Her insticts told her that here in this place would be her ultimate test—perhaps for all of them. Gods forbid it was the time of their doom.

She did not say the thought aloud, and with one last look at Leisa, Sorela began to make her way down the mound, bones cracking beneath her feet with every step.

The corridor before her and Gorkis was dark and cold and the mage sensed a forboding air. Had she known young lord Jalen was not in this place, she would have immediately ordered they all climb back up the rope and out of this fell cave.

She shivered again, not from the cold.

“Are you all right, lady mage?” Gorkis asked. He practically towered over here.

Looking up at him, the lights of their lanterns casting harsh shadows over his features, she nodded.

Looking down the cold corridor, she thought, Gods give us strength, Give me strength.

The mage and the barbarian began making their way forward. “I sense the hour of swords and sorcery may be upon us, my friend.”

“Aye, my lady,” Gorkis murmured. “I as well.”