Chapter Eighteen
The sound of the commotion traveled through our little town, but it was only when I saw three of the King’s Hands fly past on their white horses that I readied myself to leave.
Then the door to the inn burst open, and more soldiers poured out and clambered onto their horses. They didn’t even throw a look in our direction. Instead, their undivided attention was on the chaos Alden had created far away from us.
I spotted Nuro among them, and he was already barking orders about who was to locate the distress and who was to control the perimeter.
Once the jackass commander had disappeared down the street, I lashed at Ethel’s reins and turned her around in the center of town. Then the Shire horse sprinted down the cobbled streets of Gladewood toward the entrance we’d entered through previously.
The vine walls peeled back slower than before, and I figured that must be because the shard wasn’t close anymore. As we barreled toward the exit, they were still moving at a snail’s pace and withering like crops dried out in the sun.
“Are we going to make that?” Ellyn asked as she gripped my arm tightly.
Ethel was still powering on, even as the vine walls unfurled sluggishly. Daylight was breaking through the small hole already formed, but we’d end up tearing straight through it.
But as we drew closer, I felt that familiar tug in my chest that I had missed. I gasped at the sensation and leaned forward in my seat, just as the vine walls parted before our inevitable collision.
Ellyn squeaked and shrank against my side as we passed through the hole, but rather than be shucked like a piece of corn, we made it through unscathed.
“Hell’s taint, Noah!” Tirii cried out as she and the others bobbed up and down in the back of the wagon. “That was close!”
“I felt the shard!” I called over my shoulder. “It helped open the wall. I think it’s trying to connect to me.”
“Is it close?” Karrida asked as she leaned over the box so I could hear her.
“I don’t know,” I admitted as I steered Ethel up the hill on the trail to the Mist Woods. “The feeling is gone now.”
“Maybe I can sense something,” Karrida offered as rested a hand over my chest. “I’ve done it before, right?”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said as I let her feel my beating heart rattling against my ribcage. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing,” the ginger-haired half-dwarf said. “You’re still connected to the shard, even if it’s not with you right now. Just sit there and look handsome.”
I snorted despite the tenseness of our current predicament.
“Sure, that I can do.”
Ethel charged up the hill and into the dense thicket, and it was only after we were out of sight from any prying eyes remaining in town that I tugged on her reins to slow her down.
I turned her onto one of the trails not completely smothered in dying leaves and moss, and I kept her at a steady pace so I could make sure we didn’t veer into a spot the wagon wouldn’t fit.
Karrida kept her hand pressed to my chest, and every so often, she would tell me to turn more to one direction.
“So, you don’t actually know where the shard is?” Rennick asked after a couple of minutes. “You’re just… following your gut?”
“Following a pull,” Karrida corrected him. “It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t understand it.”
“It’s like we’re being tugged on a string connected to the shard,” I tried to help him. “We might not know where it is, but we can follow the direction the string is going in.”
“I see,” Rennick mumbled to himself as he shifted his weight in the back of the wagon. “I’m still not used to magic.”
“Honestly? Neither am I,” I chuckled. “I don’t think any of us ever will be in our lifetimes.”
Our journey continued in a somewhat peaceful silence. Karrida guided us by using me as a conduit for the shard’s location, and as we got deeper into the forest, I felt a few more weak tugs on my chest.
“Noah… doesn’t this route look familiar to you?” Karrida broke the silence.
“What do you mean?” I frowned as I glanced at our surroundings.
There were just trees, trees, and more trees.
“Noah, we walked this way the other day,” Karrida reminded me. “When we found the cave.”
I felt my blood run cold at the realization.
The cave had been sitting in my mind like a void, and I hadn’t been able to understand its importance other than the rare yuriel harbored inside of it.
Now, the shard was pulling us toward it. I still didn’t know if this was of its own volition, or if something more sinister had happened to it.
But I knew one thing for certain. I was going to find it, come what may.
“I’m sorry, what’s this about a cave?” Tirii asked.
“Karrida and I found some of Shaar’s men digging into a cave the other day,” I informed the hunter. “We dispatched them, and I’d hoped it would be the end of it, but Shaar must have picked up where they left off.”
“And what was in this cave that was of so much interest to him?” the brunette asked.
There was no point in hiding the gold mine we’d stumbled across from the men Alden had sent with us. If we really were being led to the cave, they were going to see it firsthand, and I just had to hope they didn’t decide to try and take it for themselves.
“Yuriel,” I said bluntly. “There’s yuriel inside there.”
Vilrun and Kri’osh let out choked sounds, but the others were left in the dark, just like I had been.
“It’s one of the strongest and rarest metals,” Karrida informed them. “And the yuriel inside the cave is even more powerful and rare thanks to it being shard-touched.”
“Stones bless us,” Vilrun muttered under his breath. “No wonder the bastard wants it.”
I lashed at Ethel’s reins again now that I knew the path we were taking, and I sent the Shire horse cantering through the clearest path toward the cave.
We rode for another ten minutes before I could see the open maw of the cave in the distance.
The sun was beginning to set, and it didn’t help that the Mist Woods smothered any semblance of light thanks to its thick canopy.
Even though some of the leaves had begun to fall, there was still a sense of suffocation in the darkening forest that I didn’t think would ever be quelled.
I pulled Ethel to a stop a good distance away to keep her from harm’s way and not alert anyone who might be lingering inside. Then our small party continued on foot and crept closer to the cave entrance.
The opening was nothing more than a dark chasm now. The small dent Shaar’s men had made the other day paled in comparison to what greeted us.
It seemed to go on forever, and the chipped tunnel funneled deep into the ground before wrapping around a corner. Some of the yuriel still stuck out of the dark gray walls like bulbs of amethyst.
The fact they were still there made me wonder if the yuriel was the reason Shaar had been digging here after all, but those were questions that could wait for later.
As we stepped closer, I felt another tug on my chest. This time, it was more harsh and insistent, and my feet actually stumbled forward from the force of it.
Raeth grabbed my arm and helped me steady myself, and I gave her a small nod to silently communicate that I was okay.
“This is it,” Karrida whispered as we all stood at the lip of the cave. “This is where it was leading us.”
My chest ached like someone had scooped out my insides and left a hollow crater behind. The darkness beckoned me, but only because I knew the shard was in there somewhere.
“What’s the plan, Noah?” Rennick asked as his fingers wrapped around the hilts of his blades.
“We go in slowly,” I said. “I have no idea what we’re going to find in there, so we need to be ready for anything.”
“I can’t see any fresh tracks leading inside,” Tirii said as she studied the ground. “That means whoever or whatever is in there has been for a while.”
“Joy,” I muttered. “Be prepared. Shaar is a slippery bastard, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s got something hidden up his sleeves.”
I was the first to step foot over the threshold, where dark gray grass met the crunch of stone. I slowly walked forward until we were surrounded by the cave walls, and after making sure everyone was still right behind me, I continued.
The encroaching walls smothered the ambient noises of the Mist Woods, and soon the chirps and tweets of crickets and birds gave way to the sound of something dripping above our heads.
There was no natural light in the cave. The only thing lighting our way were the pieces of yuriel ore sticking out of the walls, and they burned a luminescent purple as all natural light was bled dry.
Our feet crunched against loose stones and grit. No matter how quiet we tried to be, there was no way for us to be completely silent in the carved-out tunnel.
I led us further into the darkness until the walls began to narrow slightly. My hand ran along the bumpy surface, and I used that as a guide to take us even further in. Every time my fingers brushed against a lump of yuriel, my entire arm shuddered with the intensity of its power.
The deeper we ventured, the tighter my chest became until my breaths were labored and heavy. It felt like someone was squeezing my lungs, and no matter how much air I tried to suck in, I never felt them fully inflate.
“Noah, are you alright?” my wife asked, and she placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Fine,” I grunted as I gripped the wall a little tighter. “Just… I can feel how much it needs me.”
“We must be close to it now,” Ellyn reassured me with a gentle squeeze. “Keep your head up.”
I took another ragged breath of cold, stale air before I crept forward some more.
The tunnel began to snake and twist in random directions.
I could see more and more yuriel embedded in the walls, but even with the purple glow thrumming around our heads and feet, there wasn’t enough light for us to see where we were walking to.