Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
We couldn’t cross the threshold and escape the way we had come.
Lava bubbled up from the ground, the heat so intense I fell back and Na? panted.
The walls shook, enormous chunks of stone came crashing down, and deeper in the mine, I could hear the screams of dwarves as they began tunneling their way out.
I remembered all the homes that we had seen in Mountain Thrown City and thought of all the dwarves who were going to be desperately climbing down the mountain paths, hoping to outrun the fury of a fire dragon.
One of the walls of the cavern fell, exposing tunnels beneath us.
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that there was no physical feat I could not perform.
Feeling pain with every movement, I tugged on Tallu’s hand, gesturing for Irad?o to follow us as we limped over and slid down into the tunnels beneath us.
“How does this help?” Irad?o asked. She was sweating, massive beads of it flowing down her face.
In her arms, Na? whimpered with exhaustion, eyes screwed tight. She was barely more than an infant, even if she had all the memories of her foremothers. The heat would be painful to her, just as ice had been an annoyance to the fire dragon.
“There are miners down here who live on this mountain and know its every stone,” I panted. “They’re going to be looking for a way out just like us. If we can follow along behind them, we can get out.”
“The lava is a liquid,” Tallu said. “It will follow the tunnels first.”
The blood monks tried to help, tried to call out dead ends, but the mountain shifted too quickly and they returned, traveling closer to us so they wouldn’t get left behind. None of them spoke, trying to keep us undistracted, but Lerolian’s worry was etched in the creases of his forehead.
I could hear voices in the walls, the rumble of murmured panic. It didn’t sound exactly like people, but that was what it had to be.
“Listen for the miners!” I shouted over the crash of falling stone, jerking on Tallu’s hand for him to follow me. “I think there’s some over there. We just need to follow them.”
“Those aren’t miners. Those are badgers. You need to speak with them,” Irad?o said. “You know how bad I am with anything that isn’t a bird.”
We stumbled over a pile of rock, the sharp edges scraping my palms. The other side was nearly sheared off, and we slid down. I caught myself at the last moment, just barely avoiding breaking my ankles.
I turned, catching Na? when Irad?o tossed her to me before sliding down herself.
“My ability to animal speak isn’t reliable.
I can’t always do it,” I shouted over my shoulder.
Na? was heavy, but running from a volcano had given me a new burst of energy.
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, but I couldn’t let it matter.
If we didn’t get out of the caves, we were going to die here.
Irad?o took Na? back from me as Tallu and I desperately pushed at loose gravel, making a hole large enough for us to crawl through. “I thought you were just pretending so the imperials wouldn’t kill you.”
“No!” The caves were so hot that the water on the wall had turned to steam. Had I gotten turned around? Or was the lava everywhere now? “I can’t animal speak. Why don’t you speak to the badgers?”
“If I try, we might never get out of these tunnels. Most don’t like my attitude,” Irad?o said. “I tried talking to my horse when I was following you, and the thing bucked me off. I spent half a day tracking it down, and then it tried to bite me.”
“Well, I can’t!” The raw pain of it echoed in my chest. I might have acquired ice magic, I might even understand how to do fire magic, but the fact that I couldn’t speak to animals—an ability that had once tied me to the Northern Kingdom, something that had made me who I was in more ways than one—was like taking a knife to the gut each time I thought about it.
“I can’t,” I said again, softer.
Irad?o made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and grabbed hold of my hand with her free one. In her other arm, Na? scrabbled against her shoulder, desperately trying to get relief from the heat.
“You’ve learned ice magic—something no one else has ever done before—and now you think you can’t animal speak?” Her nails dug into my hand, and she searched my face. “So you forgot for a moment. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost it. Animals are speaking because they have something they want to say.”
It was the most basic instruction given to a young animal speaker.
Usually, a parent or an older sibling would set the child down in front of a familiar animal.
My father had sat me in front of Spoiled Brat and told me that the animal had something to say.
I had listened desperately, wanting to know what great wisdom it would offer.
It turned out that the wolf had wanted an extra serving of food.
But in my gratitude, I had nearly given it the entire dinner Mother’s sixth wife had been cooking.
Tallu took a few steps down to the end of the tunnel we were in, and he looked in both directions.
When he turned back, his expression was grim. “Both ends are blocked off.”
His face was slick with sweat, and it was clear that the heat would kill us before we ran out of air. I could still hear murmurs in the walls, and I collapsed down against one of them, pressing my ear to the stone.
There were badgers in the walls. What did they want to say?
Despite what the rumors said, animal speak was not a northern warrior commanding an army of wolves to attack his enemy. Animal speak was communication. And the first step wasn’t what I wanted to say. The first step was listening to find out what they wanted to say.
“The dragon is angry.”
“His anger brings heat. His anger brings destruction.”
“Get the younglings. The kits will die in this heat.”
“And go where? This is our home.”
“We can find a new home. We will find a new home. Come, we will have to dig our way out quickly.”
“They’re trying to escape the volcano,” I said. Wetting my lips, I reached for something. Animal speak had always come so easily to me. Talking had always come so easily to me.
“It is not something you can lose.” Irad?o crouched in front of me. “The kindness to understand that they have something of value to say is what makes us Northerners. And you may have taken the name of House Atobe, but your first breath was cold, and ice runs in your blood.”
I closed my eyes to shield myself from her blue-green gaze and the certainty it held.
I felt something bump my shoulder, and my eyes opened again.
Tallu was sitting next to me, pressed against me from shoulder to elbow.
In the dim light of the rocks, I could see the pain on his face, the blood that wouldn’t dry because of his sweat.
“I wish I could have shown you the beauty of the Imperium. There is some,” he murmured against my ear.
“There’s a cabin in Dragon’s Rest Mountains waiting for us.” I tried for a smile and raised my hand to his face, resting my fingertips at his temple and trailing them down until I reached his mouth.
A voice passed directly behind me, talking of digging westward. “Once we are free of the tunnels, we can take the path that the dwarves have built down to the plains. Eventually, the dragon will burn himself out and spend all of his fury.”
Irad?o winced, and I knew she heard it, too, but just as she opened her mouth, I interrupted.
“Help, please.” My words were childish. They might as well have been a toddler’s attempt to speak to the house cat, they felt that clumsy in my mouth.
“Is that a youngling?” a voice asked, echoing in the stone. “Youngling, did your parents abandon you?”
“No. Not youngling.” I struggled, breathing deeply. “Full-grown.”
“Full-grown?” The badger’s voice was closer now, and I could feel the rumble as earth moved, unsure whether that was from the dragon’s destruction or the badger digging its way closer to me. “You do not sound full-grown.”
“Learning to speak again.” I clenched my jaw. “We can give you a home. Safe from the dragon.”
There was silence, and I wished I had let Irad?o speak. Sure, she had a tendency to make most mammals annoyed, if not outright homicidal, but at least she had her full abilities and did not rely on unreasonable hope as I was.
The wall shook, and a massive head pushed its way through. The badger turned to me.
“What dwarf has learned the language of badger kind?”
“No dwarf,” I answered. “I am from the north, where the people speak with animals.”
“I have no desire for a home in the north,” the badger said. “But you have a youngling with you. Come.”
She retreated, and I looked between Irad?o and Tallu before turning and crawling into the hole she had made in the wall.
It was almost too dark to see, but we crawled behind as three badgers dug their way through the mountain.
They had four younglings with them, and I took to coaxing the kits into motion when the adult badgers were too busy digging.
Eventually, the kits collapsed, too tired from the heat and the travel to move further.
I needed my hands to crawl, so I grabbed two of the kits and stuck them in my shirt, passing another to Tallu and helping him make a cradle of his shirt for it.
The last mewled helplessly, and Tallu carefully picked it up, putting it next to the other.
Then we continued on, the badgers in front, me behind them, Tallu just far enough behind me that I could reach for him in the dark, and Irad?o trailing him.
The blood monks were silent shadows behind us, their worry palpable.
I kept checking that Tallu was with me. He always was.