Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
LYRA
Despite Sorsha’s wish to remain in Klod?sch to help the villagers, we agreed that it was too dangerous for us to stay. The last thing the beleaguered fae needed was a visit from Semphrys’s demons.
Still, they’d seen how we’d driven Alfrigg’s soldiers out of the village and insisted on stuffing our saddlebags full of supplies for the journey.
Adriel had insisted on paying for the horses Kaden had rescued from the burning barn, but they’d gifted me a handsome fur-lined cloak and hadn’t accepted any silver for the boots I’d found to replace my flimsy borrowed ones.
We decided to take the mountainous route through the ice caves of Drafar to reach the Forest House. Though it would add a full day to our journey, Kaden was less likely to know where we were going.
It was late morning before we stopped to water the horses. Snow had fallen during the night, capping all the fir trees in a fluffy white powder. Sunlight glistened off the snowbanks, and my freshly healed wound twinged as I dismounted my chestnut mare.
An awkward silence hung over our group. I didn’t think Sorsha had spoken a word to Adriel since their argument. Kaden had been uncharacteristically silent as well, and I knew his loss of control during the battle still bothered him.
Leading my mare to a partially frozen brook that cut along the side of the mountain, I knelt down in the snow to refill my water skin. Despite the heavy fur-lined gloves a grateful villager had insisted on gifting me, my fingers were stiff from the long ride through the woods.
A branch snapped nearby, and I whipped around with a start. A lone doe tugged at a stubborn sapling behind me, but I was startled to realize I’d lost sight of the others. Their horses ambled along the frigid stream, but there was no sign of Adriel, Sorsha, or Kaden.
Feeling uneasy, I rose to my feet, listening intently for the crunch of their footsteps. But it was eerily quiet in the snow-dusted clearing. The only sounds besides the feasting doe were the gurgle of the water and the steady drip of icicles melting along the side of the brook.
Taking a slow breath to calm myself, I tethered my mare to a sturdy-looking tree and followed my friends’ tracks. The low hiss of whispers quickly reached my ears, and I found Sorsha and Kaden bickering beneath an enormous fir.
Adriel stood a few paces ahead, his shoulders tense as he approached a tall rock outcropping.
I stared, expecting to find some beast the royal guard had cornered, but there were just rocks and a few scraggly pines growing between the cracks.
I blinked, looked again, and the scene began to waver. My eyes widened as the illusion melted away to reveal a behemoth evergreen tree and what was unmistakably a village tucked in the shelter of its roots and branches.
Huts fashioned from twigs were erected among the lumps of snow-covered moss, and tiny treehouses were built in sprawling stories along its trunk like clusters of mushrooms.
Adriel took a cautious step forward, and I heard half a dozen high-pitched shrieks as the little doors slammed.
No fewer than twenty bearded warriors surged from the huts, clad in armor fashioned from tortoise shells and scraps of leather. They brandished tiny daggers, clubs, and scythes that looked to be made from the fangs of some great beast.
Adriel stomped around them with purpose, snatching up a small figure in a drooping woolen hat who seemed to have passed out drunk in front of a ramshackle hut.
A miniature warrior roared, slashing at Adriel’s shins with his scythe and causing the royal guard to raise his knees and half hop, half skip out of their path.
I stood frozen, watching the melee as Sorsha and Kaden snickered. They didn’t seem at all surprised by what lay beyond the illusion — or by the knee-high warriors.
High-pitched shouts and what sounded like insults rose from the diminutive mob, and Adriel winced as a palm-sized battle axe struck him hard in the shin. The royal guard growled in pain, nearly dropping the comatose male in his grasp. “Enough!”
He drew his own sword and held it to the throat of the tiny drunkard. The warriors ceased their attack.
“I’ve come to make a trade,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his fighting leathers and withdrawing a small bundle wrapped in beeswax. “Four trams of the finest Ouwelgolsch mushrooms, and I only need to borrow this smelly lout.”
A sudden hush fell over the crowd, and I caught a glimpse of tiny faces peering through the gaps in doorways and windows.
“You come to our hollow and attempt to take one of our own hostage?” piped a warrior, his small voice thick with an unfamiliar accent.
“We need to barter passage through the ice caves,” Adriel explained.
Anxious titters rose from the crowd.
“To take a gnome to Eckoghari is a promise of a gruesome and painful death,” the warrior snarled. “You may keep your mushrooms.”
Gnomes. So that was what the tiny warriors were.
“I’ll keep the mushrooms and take the brute if it comes to that,” the royal guard snapped.
“Four trams, and I personally guarantee he will be returned to you unharmed. Unless he manages to drink himself to death along the way.”
A wave of mutters swept over the village, the warriors glowering up at Adriel as the gnomes hiding in their huts peered out curiously.
After a moment, the spokesgnome took a bold step forward, glaring at Adriel as though he weren’t large enough to crush him with a single well-placed stomp. “We have an accord,” he said, nodding at the unconscious male still dangling from in his grasp.
“Many thanks,” Adriel rumbled, tossing the bundle into the snow and stalking back toward where we’d left the horses as if the encounter hadn’t happened.
The royal guard moved with a slight limp from where the battle axe had struck him in the kneecap, and Sorsha was making little effort to stifle her laugher at his expense.
“What was that?” I asked Kaden, watching in horror as Adriel attempted to stuff the gnome into one of his saddlebags.
“Eckoghari favors gnomes.” He shrugged. “Taking the little drunkard may allow us to gain entry to the ice caves, though I don’t know how he plans for the tiny bastard to live.”
A fresh jolt of horror hit me, and I winced as Adriel made another attempt to fit the unconscious gnome into his overflowing saddlebag along with our supplies. I didn’t have the nerve to ask who or what Eckoghari was.
“Stop that!” I snapped, moving toward the royal guard as Sorsha mounted her horse. “You’ll hurt him.”
“Unlikely,” Adriel grumbled. “Gnomes have notoriously thick skulls.”
“He’s still a living thing,” I protested, snatching the creature out of Adriel’s grip and approaching my own mare. As I did, an unbearably foul odor wafted up to greet me, and I nearly gagged. “Ugh, what is that?”
Sorsha snorted and glanced at Kaden, who was barely restraining a smirk.
“That, little huntress, is a forest gnome’s natural perfume,” he said with a chuckle, pulling himself onto his steed.
I frowned at him, though my heart lightened a bit at the sound. Kaden was laughing — something I hadn’t heard since he’d been captured.
“Now you know why I was trying to stuff him into the saddlebag,” Adriel muttered.
Eyes watering, I held the gnome at arm’s length, dangling him by his ankle as Adriel had. His stench was absolutely putrid — a combination of rotten vegetables, animal feces, and some kind of rancid mud. Underlying all of that was the sting of whatever alcohol the creature had imbibed.
Trying very hard not to be sick, I pulled myself and the gnome astride my mare and settled him on the saddle in front of me. His head dipped forward, almost smashing into the saddle horn, and my mare let out an aggrieved snuffle as if she too were offended by his odor.
Kaden’s eyes twinkled as he watched me struggle to keep the little creature from sliding off, but when I met his gaze, he turned his head and nudged his horse with his heels.
We returned to the snow-packed trail through the trees that wound along the face of the mountain, and despite my smelly companion, I couldn’t help but stare in awe at the breathtaking mountain range that sprawled around us.
Jagged snow-dusted peaks seemed to stretch forever, haloed by great swaths of mist that blurred the outline of tall firs. Tiny creatures skittered out of our path, disappearing into the rocks, and the woods grew silent as fresh snow began to fall.
My riding companion awoke with an abrupt sneeze, swearing and blinking as he swayed in front of me.
He grumbled something in a language I didn’t understand, and when he turned in the saddle to look at me, a bitter grin twisted his lips. “What have I done to deserve such treatment, oh mortal wench?”
I didn’t bother to correct the gnome, though an unpleasant feeling crawled down my spine.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Kaden groused at him from where he rode behind me. “You’re to be bait for Eckoghari.”
The little male blanched and swayed in the saddle, and I shot Kaden a dirty look. The last thing I needed was the tiny bastard trying to make a run for it and spooking my horse.
The wind howled, turning the snowflakes into projectiles that cut across my face with surprising ferocity. Yanking up the hood of my new fur-lined cloak, I gritted my teeth against the gale and imagined the roaring hearth at the Forest House.
“Treacherous mortal filth,” the gnome muttered. “Steal a male while he’s sleeping? There’s no honor in it, I tell you. No honor in it at all. Not that I’d expect anything different from you bleeding scum.”
“Shut it, or I won’t make you the bait,” Adriel snapped. “I’ll just make you the fare for safe passage.”
“You folk are all the same. Think all others are beneath you. But my kin will come for me. They’ll hunt you to the edge of this realm, split you from nose to cock, and tie you to a tree by your own entrails.”
“Your kin traded your pathetic carcass for a few trams of mushrooms,” the royal guard spat.