Chapter 36
AVEN YELPED INTO MY EAR and clutched my waist tighter, squeezing the air from my lungs with a death grip. Their forehead pressed so hard between my shoulder blades, I was certain I’d have a bruise.
Dave flew us over the treetops but not much higher, knowing that both of us weren’t used to actually flying like he was.
But he moved quickly, understanding that we were in a time crunch—we needed to make it to the second clue before sunset, provided our hunch about the first clue was correct.
His large golden wings flapped next to us, his scales almost blinding in the sunlight.
“I mean, the timeline makes sense,” I yelled over the rush of the wind. “If William Smith was a teenager when he encountered the Elder Beast, then his account could have been dictated to a castle scribe and housed at the Edge of the World before the castle fell into the sea.”
“But where did the scrap come from?” Aven’s chin dug into my shoulder, their breath warm on the skin of my ear. It made goose bumps erupt down my arms.
“I have no idea. But he obviously knew mages, since he was able to set the magical traps in the cave. It could’ve been created by one of them with or without his permission. He wouldn’t have needed it himself because he had the map.”
“Unless it was another fail-safe.”
“Huh. Good point.”
Hours passed, the day pushing into the afternoon. Dave rose to avoid a tower of a lord’s castle, and Aven squeaked, clutching me tighter. I chuckled, though my knuckles turned white from my own firm grip.
“That was the home of the lord of the northernmost fief,” Aven said as the small castle disappeared behind us.
“We should be at the Edge soon, based on Dave’s speed.
” They’d removed their hands from my waist and now had their arms wrapped completely around my torso, the length of their body pressed against my back in a line of warmth.
“I can’t believe I convinced you to ride a dragon.”
“We didn’t really have a choice,” Aven answered. “There was no way we could follow the clues, find the Elder Beast, and make it back to your home in time riding on Mouse.”
The truth of their statement stole my breath more than Aven’s anxious clutch of my rib cage.
This was it. If we were wrong, then the quest was truly over.
Zig would die because of my lies, and I would…
end up in a dungeon? Be on the run the rest of my life?
Maybe I’d board a ship and sail off to one of the other continent kingdoms and try to make a fortune there.
Well, that was future Ellinore’s problem.
Current Ellinore had to focus on saving her brother.
And not on how comforting Aven’s arms were clasped around her.
The farther north we traveled, the colder the wind blew. Massive white pillars of snowcapped mountains poked through wispy clouds in the far distance. And as the sun lowered in the sky and the dying rays cast an orange sheen on Dave’s scales, the northwestern coast came into view.
I’d seen only the Eastern and Southern Seas—both of which rolled with gray waves against sandy, shell-strewn shores.
The Northern Sea was wholly different. It gleamed a bright green, the tumult of the waves capping the water in white foam as they battered the rocky shoreline, splashing with force on the face of fallen mountains.
Yet, in places, the water was transparent, allowing me to see straight down, where I spied the masts of ships and the shadowed shapes of creatures swimming in the murky depths.
Dave flew low, his tail dipping into the water every so often, sending up a frigid spray that made me hiss between my teeth. It was so mesmerizing watching the deep water pitch and roll beneath us, I almost missed that it was no longer the base of mountains it pounded against, but blocks of stone.
I perked up as I spotted towers and battlements sticking out from the heaving bright green, the last vestiges of a crumbling castle.
“It’s almost completely submerged,” Aven said in awe as Dave lightly landed on a wide path that connected the towers, water lapping at the edges of the crenellations.
“Who thought to build a castle here?” I asked, stretching my arms above my head, my joints creaking in protest from being in one position for too long. A red line from the leather of the strap crossed my palms, and my muscles ached from keeping myself seated on Dave’s back.
“There once was a long spit of land that connected Avoury to the kingdom across the Northern Sea,” Dave said. “It appeared only during low tide.”
“Previous monarchs built castles at each corner of the continent either to foster trade with kingdoms and cities across the seas or as a defense against them,” Aven said, peering over my shoulder toward the mountains in the distance.
“This one just happened… to become unneeded once the spit was destroyed.”
I removed the magical scraps from the pouch close to my chest. “As fascinating as the history of our kingdom is,” I said to Dave and Aven, “do you see any giants?” I craned my neck and looked at the sun. It dipped perilously close to the horizon. “We don’t have much time.”
“Hold on.” Dave pushed off from the castle, the battlement crumbling beneath the strength of his claws. We surged upward, Aven grabbing me again as we slid a few inches down the scales of Dave’s spine.
We climbed higher and higher, touching the freezing clouds, until we were able to see the entire jagged coastline below us—the turbulent sea, the froth and foam, the castle keep beneath the waves, the surrounding abandoned town, the cliffs of the mountains that rose on the northernmost point of the coastline, peaks even higher than where we hovered.
In the distance the submerged isthmus that had once connected our kingdom to another glittered like a golden road beneath the clear green.
“There!” Aven called, pointing so fiercely that they almost slid off Dave entirely. “To the north of the castle. Do you see it?”
Dave didn’t answer, merely swooped down like an arrow, my stomach dropping with him as he glided along the shore, then turned inland to land on a grassy hill.
Aven gulped. “Please don’t do that again,” they said, complexion a vague green as they slid from Dave’s back.
I followed and stood face-to-face with a giant monolith.
It was a carved obelisk of shiny rock, with two smooth faces and two rough-hewn—a forgotten monument of some kind atop a lonely hill, surrounded by flat, barren land.
Other than the mound, white-and-gray rock stretched as far as we could see in all directions—toward the beach and to the mountains.
“ ‘Follow the gaze of the giant at sunset,’ ” I murmured.
The deep pinks and oranges of sunset splashed across the sky.
From where I stood at the base, the monument cast a long shadow that stretched across the rocky plain, disappearing between two mountains in the distance.
“The shadow! Quick! Before the sun sets!”
Aven and I scrambled up onto Dave’s back, and he took off, following the path, his wings beating quickly, eating up the miles, racing the sun as it sank.
Wind whipped my hair, the cold of it stinging my skin, freezing the tears that leaked from the corners of my eyes.
Beneath us the shadow faded slowly, merging into the gloom as the sun disappeared.
“Faster!” I yelled.
Smoke billowed from between Dave’s teeth as he pushed himself, following the shadow until… it was gone.
He eased to a stop, landing gently at the foot of two mountains. I bent forward, my head on his back, my eyes closed. I couldn’t look. What if the shadow didn’t continue in a straight line? What if it bent in some way? What if we’d failed again?
“Ellinore!” Aven shook my shoulder. “Come on,” they said as they dismounted. “Let’s go!”
I tensed and slowly lifted my head.
We were surrounded by rock on three sides, with the monolith far behind us. The mountains towered above us, sheer surfaces that climbed higher than the clouds.
I jumped down from Dave’s back, my bootheels clacking on the stone surface.
“No wonder this corner of the kingdom is uninhabitable,” I murmured, hugging my arms to my body for warmth. “It’s freezing, and nothing can grow in all this rock.”
“Which makes it the perfect place for a primordial to hide.”
“If it is indeed hiding,” Dave said. “The Elder Beast may only be resting. After all, it created the ancients, the folklores, then the ordinaries. Maybe it has a fourth classification up its sleeve.”
“I don’t think the Elder Beast wears a tunic,” I said.
Dave narrowed his eyes.
“Come on.” I belted my sword around my waist. “Soon it will be too dark to see. And we have to find a needle in a… mountain range.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult,” Aven said from where they had wandered ahead.
“What?” I asked. An outcropping cut off my view of where they pointed, so I ran to them, my spirits lifting. I skidded to a stop next to them, grabbing their arm to steady myself, and gasped when I saw what they meant. “The eye of the needle,” I breathed.
In front of us, wedged between two mountains, was a stone oval.
It was tilted, so that the oval listed to one side, but there was no mistaking that it was our eye.
The opening shimmered a slick silver, reflecting our images instead of the mountains beyond, and it was only big enough for a human to step through.
“The eye of the needle,” Aven echoed, positively giddy. They bounced on their heels, their fingers gripping the crook of my elbow. “I can’t believe we found the entrance to the invisible realm.”
My breath caught and my throat went tight. “We’re so close. We’re going to retrieve the horn. We’re going to save Zig.”
“Ellinore,” Dave said. “Do you have a plan for when you face the Elder Beast? Do you think a sword and an arrow will defeat a creature older than time itself? Did you not learn your lesson with the Hydra?”
I tore my gaze from the eye and faced Dave. “I did learn. I know what I need to do.” I swallowed, then corrected myself, reaching out for Aven’s hand. “What we need to do.”
Dave nodded. “I can’t help with this. I’ll wait for you here.”
I swallowed. “Okay. I understand.”
Dave smiled, then pushed his snout into my torso. I lay across it and gave him a hug. “It’s okay, Dave. I got this.” I stood and gave him a reassuring smile. “After all, I’m Ellinore.”