8. Speleology 101
Ciarán talked in his sleep, not out loud, but broadcast directly into my head. He was so good at keeping his thoughts locked away on his side of the tether during the day, but there was only so much he could do when unconscious.
It was mostly nonsensical ramblings and the occasional name, but I was in and out of sleep myself, aware enough to know his thoughts were there, bumping up against mine, but not awake enough to make sense of any of it.
I was at least warm in his arms, and Ciarán allowed us to sleep longer than he had in the mountainside cave.
When we did wake and continue our trek, we made quick time passing beneath the rest of the glacier field.
The farther we went, the more violent the river churned, the steeper the terrain became, and the louder the water roared, until finally the tunnel ended in a sheet of cascading water that glowed orange in the light of a sunset we couldn’t see.
Mist sprayed off the rocks at the waterfall’s base, and a rocky outcropping jutted overhead some thirty feet up. A dark shadow behind the curtain of water held the promise of the mountain entrance Orla had described.
Fana, small and nimble as she was, clambered up no problem, but I relied on Orla more than I would’ve liked as we made the ascent up the slick cliff face.
I’d spent a good chunk of our walk healing my ribs as we went, but each step of the climb seemed to undo more of my hard work.
When Orla finally hoisted me up and over the final lip, I collapsed on the stone ground, gasping for air.
“Are you okay?” Her face swam in my vision, and I placed a shaking hand against my ribs.
“I’ll be fine.” I forced myself to my feet, but Orla’s frown stayed fixed in place.
“Good.” Ciarán heaved himself up behind us. He wiped sweat and waterfall spray from his forehead and forged ahead. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”
“Don’t mind him.” Orla brushed water droplets off my leather armor. “You and Fana are only going through the mountain. It’s a lot of walking, but you’re done climbing, and you’ll be able to rest while you wait for us to get Iseult.”
When I’d last been under the mountain, I’d entered from the south side.
Now, the north entrance loomed ahead, a dark maw behind the curtain of water.
I stopped at the back of the group to look out over the glacier field.
The gray peaks on the other side hid the distant bay, but I knew Gams was there, holding her storm and waiting.
I let the vista disappear behind the waterfall, and I followed the others to the mouth of the tunnel. Cold, stale air rushed over us from the mountain’s depths, and I pulled the hood of Liam’s blue hoodie over my head.
Our glowing Skal bottles lit the path, casting shadows across rocky formations carved by lava hundreds of years ago. Even in the face of my bleak connection to the volcanoes of Skalterra and what it might mean for Gams, I couldn’t help the thrill of excitement at walking through a pyroduct again.
Ciarán and Fana walked ahead, taking turns carrying Jonquil, but the farther we walked, the more Orla lagged behind.
“Are you alright?” I finally asked, turning around to watch her silhouette glowing in the light of the bottles at her hip.
She shook herself out of her reverie and quickened to step to catch up.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I was just thinking about my uncle. He’ll probably be up there.”
“Shouldn’t he be at the Rift?”
“The Ferrin at the Rift is probably a Nightmare. He’ll keep his real body safe at home.”
I sighed and took her arm in mine. “You won’t see Ferrin. He’s probably asleep.”
“I don’t know what he’s told everyone about me.” Her long neck bobbed as she swallowed hard. “They might all think I’m dead. Or a traitor.”
“By ‘everyone’, you mean Iseult?”
She blushed and turned away. Orla had commented on Iseult’s looks once upon a time and had expressed a casual desire to kiss her, but I wasn’t sure how deep that affection actually ran.
“Well, sure. And my brother.” She chewed on her lip.
“Cade?” I remembered. I’d only met him once.
“I guess I should call him my half brother. I don’t know if Ferrin told them about that either.
” Purple sparks danced in her hand, and she watched the amethyst hues twist against the malformed rock walls.
“But Cade was all I had left. Our father—well, his father—died when we were both very little, and our mother—”
She cut off rather than complete the thought.
“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you probably won’t have time to see him up there.” I wished I had better words to offer Orla, but I was the least qualified person to speak on brothers, seeing as I had none.
“Right.” Orla nodded. “In and out. I wish you were going up with me. It would be better with a friend.”
“I wish I was going too. Staying down here with—”
I froze, and Orla’s arm slipped out of my grip.
“What is it?” Orla asked.
“Ciarán!”
At my cry, Ciarán procured a flame that lengthened into an orange bo staff. He wielded it ahead of him and scanned the pyroduct for danger. I scowled at the weapon and shook my head.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
“Nothing! Calm down.”
“Then why are you yelling?” His brow turned stormy over his cowl.
“I should go up the mountain too.”
His bo staff fizzled into nothingness, and he spun on his heel to continue stalking down the tunnel.
“You barely made it to the mountain,” he snapped with his back to me, “and it remains to be seen if you can make it through. Why would we take you up?”
“Because I’m stronger than all of you.”
He slowed to a stop and lowered his cowl as he turned back around. “You’re injured.”
“This body is injured.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch as he realized what I was suggesting.
In my real body, yes, I was injured, and even at full health, I didn’t have the athleticism to keep up with a fight.
But I had fought Ciarán enough times as a Nightmare for him to know what I was capable of when I was limited only by a nocturmancer’s Skal supply and my own imagination.
“Absolutely not.” Ciarán took Jonquil from Fana and continued down the tunnel at a faster pace than before. “It’s not proper.”
“Proper?” I seethed, ignoring the pain in my side necessary to catch up with him.
“I’m sworn to you and—”
“And my family. Yes. I know. You remind me every chance you get.” I grabbed his arm and swung around to stand in front of him. “But you’re already in my head. We’re tethered, proper or not.”
The muscle in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth, and he refused to look at me. “It’s dangerous.”
“If I die, I’ll wake up in my real body, so it’s only dangerous if Ferrin has a rotsbane up there, which he definitely didn’t a few weeks ago.”
“And if you turn into a rotsbane?”
“That was one time, and you stopped me.”
“What if I can’t stop you if it happens again?” he hissed.
“Then you won’t have to worry about dragging me all the way to Keldori.” I could force him to take me up the mountain, and he would have to obey, but I needed him to see that it was the right move. That I was right.
“What are you trying to prove, Blue?” His lips stayed stationary as he whispered directly into my head.
“It’s a good idea,” I projected back. “I’ve been up there before, and as a Nightmare, I’ll be stronger than any of you. Plus, Iseult knows me.”
And Orla needed me.
I omitted that part. Ciarán wouldn’t understand.
“Galahad didn’t keep bringing me back to Skalterra all summer because he liked my company,” I said out loud. “It’s because a lucid Nightmare is stronger than any Magician, and he knew I was stronger than you.”
Ciarán’s shoulders heaved with a sigh. “Fana.”
Fana caught up and stared up at Ciarán with wide eyes. “Yes?”
“You and Wren will shelter at the south side of the mountain as planned.
“But—” I started, but Ciarán cut me off with a raised hand.
“But I have a special task to ask of you.”
Fana nodded eagerly, and Ciarán handed her Jonquil again.
“You will be in charge of protecting Jonquil as well as Wren, who will be asleep and acting as my Nightmare to help us in the city. Do you understand?”
“Yes!” She clutched Jonquil close to her chest. “I can do that.”
“If anyone threatens you—”
“I’ll blind them!” She grinned.
Ciarán smiled back, then shouldered past me.
He remained sullen as we walked, and his thoughts vibrated louder against my skull.
He’d agreed to my plan but definitely wasn’t happy about it.
I realized I should give him space and fall back to walk with Orla again, but I wanted to prove that even in this body, I could keep up.
He ignored me for a long stretch, and I let him stew in his buzzing thoughts. When we came to a passage where the ceiling dipped but still provided ample room to pass through, Ciarán looked up at the misshapen rock and sighed.
“This is your specialty, isn’t it?” he asked.
“What is? Pissing you off?”
“That, and all this.” He gestured vaguely at the tunnel walls. “Rocks. You made me sit through a very boring speech about them back in Keldori.”
“The talk was on paleomagnetism,” I corrected him. “Magnetic polarity and how it changes over time, and how that pertains to continental shift. That was the lecture. Not rocks.”
“It’s all just rocks to me, Blue.”
Despite the dangerous journey ahead and the burning ache in my sides, Ciarán was right.
I did like rocks, and walking through the pyroducts of a dormant volcano was my exact definition of fun.
Every time the tunnel narrowed or widened, revealing lava pillars of stone, stalagmites, and stalactites, I wished we could stop so I could better examine the formations.
There was no way I’d made it into Von Leer University for the upcoming school year, not after my admissions officer turned out to be Ferrin.
I might not survive long enough to see the upcoming school year at all, but my heart ached thinking about the geophysics program I’d so desperately wanted to get into.