13. Subalpine Ecology #2
I wasn’t used to seeing Skalterra in the daylight, and as we hurried over heather and moss along the lakeside, I wondered if it always looked so muted or if that was just the subalpine landscape.
After staring at two moons in the sky every night for the last several months, it seemed odd there would only be one sun.
It peaked out at us in intervals, passing between clouds.
Orla kept twisting around to watch the mountain. There were enough large stones jutting from the ground to make it difficult to track us from afar, but the looming mountain behind us presented a constant threat.
Still, by the time the sun was sinking over the lake, there had been no sign of Ferrin’s soldiers following us.
“Wait!” Orla finally called out. She hurried ahead of me to hoist herself onto a boulder and better survey the surrounding area. “It’s that way.”
“How much farther?” Ciarán asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been.” Orla gave the mountain another glance. “Maybe by dawn tomorrow if we’re fast.”
“Show me.” Ciarán slipped off Una’s back to clamber up Orla’s boulder. I followed, half out of a need to make sure Ciarán got up okay and half out of curiosity.
The moorland stretched ahead, but a second lake glinted red in the light of the dying sun far in the distance. Orla pointed towards it.
“A lake?” Ciarán said. “You said it was protected.”
“You can’t see it from here, but there’s a canyon that runs towards the water. The place we’re headed, it’s a sort of dam holding the water back and hidden almost completely underground.”
“And you’re sure there’s Skal?”
“Yes.”
“We need rest,” Iseult protested. She’d already dropped the pack she’d been carrying and was leaned up against a large rock eating dried meat. “We’ve been walking all day. If they were going to follow us, we’d know by now.”
“No, not with night falling soon.” Ciarán shook his head. “We have to keep going.”
“Sure, let’s keep going. You stay on that dog while the rest of us keep walking, some of us with less legs than the others, mind you,” Iseult snarled.
Ciarán slipped off the boulder and staggered as he landed on the ground.
“If Una allows it, you may take a turn.” He caught my eye, then turned away scowling. “Show us the way, Lady Quill.”
Orla stumbled down the boulder and led the way into a rock field.
“So we can’t take a break?” Fana whimpered.
Iseult raised an eyebrow at Ciarán. The muscle in his cowl-covered jaw jumped, but he gestured to the rocky ground.
“Fine. A short one. And then we keep moving.”
However, Fana had only just pulled dried fruit out of her pack for everyone when a haunting howl grated against the falling night. We all froze as we listened to the rotsbane cry.
“He’s making more,” I whispered when the sound subsided.
“I’m sorry, Lady Fireld.” Ciarán helped Fana up. “I know you’re tired. If it makes traveling easier, I can carry Jonquil.”
Fana released Jonquil to Ciarán. The Persian cat was looking bushier than usual with the fur standing on end after the rotsbane’s howl, and I reached to take her.
“That cat likes you better,” I admitted, “but you’re injured.”
“You’re injured too,” Ciarán reminded me, but he relinquished Jonquil into my arms.
“She’s sorry,” I said to him through our mental bond as we followed the others.
“The cat has done nothing wrong. She has nothing to be sorry about.”
“You know I meant Orla.”
“I’ll consider accepting an apology if this shelter of hers is worth it.”
“It will be.”
“It’s going to have to be one hell of a hideout, Blue, to make me forget a rotsbane’s claws in my side.”
The lake disappeared behind us as we wandered farther into the rock field. Moonlight, as well as the light from Iseult’s magick leg, guided our path, casting the rocks and crags in shades of silver as we navigated the rough terrain.
My sides ached. I couldn’t imagine what Ciarán’s might feel like.
I thought about reaching through our bond to test if I could still feel his injuries as if they were my own, but I held back, afraid of aggravating my own fractured bones.
I dug my fingers into Jonquil’s fur for comfort, and she meowed pitifully back at me.
Ciarán’s thoughts, meanwhile, continued to vibrate at the back of my head. I wondered if my thoughts sounded the same to him, or if everyone thought this much and this hard. Maybe it was just Ciarán, thinking a thousand thoughts a second just to annoy me in the comfort of my own head.
“This way.” Orla assured us over and over as we walked through the night. I’d long since lost feeling in my legs. I wasn’t sure she knew the way to wherever we were going, but if we kept moving, maybe we’d find civilization at some point and I could rest regardless.
Rocky crags rose up, occluding the night sky until it was a ribbon of dull moonlight high above us. The narrow passage forced us to walk single-file for the first one hundred yards, but it gradually widened into a cavern as the strip of stars above got farther and farther.
The light of our few remaining bottles of Skal cast our shadows up the high, uneven walls. Even as the strip of sky above lightened with the dawning day, it stayed dark here at the bottom of the ravine.
The passage narrowed, forcing us to march through the puddles that ran through sections of the canyon.
When it widened, the air turned warm and muggy, and lichen clung to the walls, illuminated by the glowing streams of liquid that ran down the crags from which they grew.
The steady drip-drip-drip of water and Skal echoed with our footsteps.
The lichen grew heavier as we went until it hung in curtains off the walls, settling between tiny pools of water and Skal that collected among the nooks and crags.
Thick plumes of steam puffed from vents in the ground, carrying a glow and metallic scent that hinted at Skal.
Stone underfoot gave way to a patchwork of plush moss.
I craned my head back, but we were so far underground now that the sky was only a blue thread against the distant ceiling.
“We’re almost there, I think,” Orla whispered. She ignored the mosaic of Skal and moss that decorated the walls. Her brow furrowed as she chewed on her lower lip, and nervous purple sparks played at her fingertips.
“Orla?” I prodded. “Do we need to be worried?”
“It’s nothing,” she hissed. I grabbed her by the arm, glancing at the others but they were too distracted by the natural beauty of the canyon to notice us.
At least, most of them were. The buzzing of Ciarán’s thoughts subsided, and I had the sudden impression that he was listening in on our conversation through my ears.
“This hideout you’re taking us to,” I asked, “it’s safe, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then why are you so jittery?”
To my horror, Orla’s eyes welled with tears. I released her arm, suddenly uncomfortable.
“Ferrin won’t look for us here,” she promised through a tight throat. “He knows I’d never come here."
We came to a final bend in the canyon, and the walls widened into an expansive cavern. My breath caught at the sight of the moss-laden pillars and stone walls ahead of us. This was less of a hideout and more of a castle-like fortress that reached as high as the cavern’s faraway roof.
The face of the edifice had been carved out of the cavern wall.
Moss climbed the stone pillars and hung from walkways.
An ornately carved set of steps led the way up to the main entry, which was protected by a familiar stone figure on either side.
I recognized the original Quill from his statue in the Second Sentinel, though these copies of him were much smaller in stature.
This fortress may not have been as large as the city nestled inside the Second Sentinel’s peak, but it was just as breathtaking.
“Welcome to the Keep of Realta Fiel,” Orla croaked. “Don’t worry, no one’s been inside in several years. Not since Ferrin murdered my parents here.”