Chapter 1 #2
Despite whatever other dread I might feel, hearing my official title still brought a smile to my face.
I saluted him. “Yes, Sir!”
I blinked back to the present, still scanning the dark little clearing, and frowned.
Here I was, on time, and without revealing the meeting even to Donavyn. But where were my instructions? Ronen had been tight lipped about who would be waiting for me.
A shadow flickered on the edge of my vision and I snapped to a defensive stance, inhaling sharply. Then froze.
A man with the build and posture of a Furyknight, armed with a blade at each hip, and swathed in a half-cloak with a hood so deep I could only see his chin, turned away from me. The cloak whirled, then he disappeared into the deep shadows of the forest behind him.
For a split second, I gaped, waiting for the attack—then it hit me. These were my orders.
Panicking that I might have already lost him, I sprinted after him, into the dark, only to be forced to pause again and let my eyes adjust to the midnight shadows under the trees, until I caught movement just ahead.
For the next forty minutes, I ran, then paused, ran, then stopped, each time my heart banging in my chest from nerves, afraid I’d lost sight of my silent guide.
I knew better than to call out, or demand answers.
If I’d been told to receive orders in secret, then I would receive them in silence as well.
This was either a test, or some kind of training. Either way, I couldn’t give up.
Keeping my eyes peeled for the shifting shadow of the man’s movement, I ran as fast as I could.
Finally, we entered another small clearing, every blade of grass and hanging leaf silvered in moonlight.
My guide had paused on the clearing’s other side, waiting for me.
Yet, the moment I entered the moonlight, he darted behind an ancient tree, so large its trunk was wide enough to obscure him completely.
Hissing a curse, I ran to the tree and around its great trunk, then hesitated again, scanning the forest, heart pounding in my ears.
But, shit.
For the first time, there was nothing. No quick flicker of movement. No deepening shadow, or silhouette of a man.
Nothing.
I made myself breathe deep and concentrate. He’d likely stopped moving. Now I needed to find him and approach.
But after slowly scanning the forest twice, even circling the tree… nothing.
Shit!
Had I failed? Was I supposed to have done or said something? Or was he intentionally obscuring his position? Was this some fucked up game of hide and seek?
Figure shit out.
Ronen’s voice echoed in my head, from months of training, and studying to become a Furyknight.
No matter how prepared you are, no matter how well-equipped, every mission will bring unanticipated obstacles. When you reach a wall that you can’t climb, it’s time to burrow under. Fly. Whatever.
Figure. Shit. Out.
I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart and refocus.
My guide was a big guy—undoubtedly a Furyknight, though along with the cloak, he wore the thick, fur-lined leathers that obscured a body’s form, so I couldn’t recognize him.
No matter how skilled he was, a man that size couldn’t just lay on the ground and remain undetected. He must have gone somewhere. Was there a hollow in the earth nearby?
Had he somehow hauled himself up the tree?
I looked up, but the lowest branches were several feet up the trunk, and seemed too thin to have supported his weight. I spent some time staring between the branches, just in case, and even into the branches of trees nearby, but there were no crouching forms or suspicious shadows.
Just to be certain, I leaped up, stretching to grab the lowest limb on the thick tree and pull myself up—marveling at the strength I’d found in my months of training. I could never have done this when I arrived.
Yet, not only was no one hiding there, but I could feel the branch creaking under my weight.
A man that size would have cracked it straight off the trunk.
Besides, I didn’t think I’d been far enough behind him that he could have climbed without me hearing his boots on this rough bark.
So, he hadn’t climbed.
Reaching down for the branch, I lowered my feet until I was bent over it at the waist, then dropped to the ground a second later, landing as lightly as I could, frowning when the earth under my feet gave a hollow ring.
Curious, I lightly stomped one foot. Sure enough, the earth thudded like a drum.
I turned on the spot, scanning the nearby forest floor this time—was there a trap door or obscured hollow leading to a cave that I hadn’t noticed?
But, no. Long minutes of careful stomping and peering between undergrowth revealed nothing except that the hollow sounds under the earth stopped just a few feet from the tree.
I returned to that thick trunk, my mind whirling.
He’d definitely disappeared from this spot. The tree had a small, short bush between its roots on the opposite side which I’d used to orient my position before I moved away from it.
He’d been on this side when—
There was a sudden and distinct sensation of vibration under my feet. There, then gone.
I whirled to face the tree. That feeling had definitely come from under the earth and behind me. Within the tree? Or underneath it?
Squinting through the dark, I placed my hands on the bark to examine it for markings or signs of disturbance, cursing when I didn’t find anything immediately, and expanding my examination across the face of the tree and down to the roots.
Nothing.
I chewed my lip, Ronen’s voice echoing in my head again.
If you reach a wall you can’t climb, it’s time to burrow under. Or Fly. Whatever.
Figure. Shit. Out.
Feeling only a little silly, I reached for the twig of a branch that protruded from one knot on the tree’s face, but it just snapped off in my hand. I kept searching, pressing, leaning. Curling my fingers to see if my nails hooked anything.
Then I reached for what I thought was the stump of a broken branch that had healed over years to become a nubby, gnarled knot in the tree’s surface.
Only, that knot twisted in my grip and the bark of the tree gave way against my arm. Or so I thought.
A moment later, I gaped at an irregularly shaped, but man-sized doorway in the side of the massive tree. I had turned a locking mechanism molded to look like an old, healing branch stump. It hinged down to release a catch within the tree’s body.
Moonlight revealed dirt-and-twig-strewn stone stairs dropping into pitch black inside the hollow trunk. A narrow, curving stairway barely wide enough for me to walk comfortably. I didn’t know how the man had managed to squeeze down it, but there was now no doubt where he’d gone.
Shadows. Darkness. No light. Insects. And who knew what else?
My skin crawled, but I threw a hurried prayer skyward and I darted into those black depths, levered the door closed until it gave a soft click, and all that remained was a tiny thread of barely-gray light in the shape of the doorway.
Then I turned and started down the stone stairs, feeling my way as I inched, step by curving step, deeper into the dark… and closer to a faint, but unmistakable rumble I could now hear rising from far below.