CHAPTER 9
My throat was on fire. My calves burned like a furnace had been lit beneath them. And my chest was a hollow, aching beast that threatened to split open and unleash the seven fires of hell upon the world.
We ran all through the night, stopping only to check the direction we were headed in. Pale dawn sluiced through the trees overhead. We had no map to guide us now. It had been with Anama when she was dragged into the river.
I knew her injuries had been too serious for her to survive, whether the creature had pulled her in or not. There had been so much blood. But that didn’t make her loss any less painful.
So I ran, my legs pumping faster and faster, as if I were sprinting away from the trauma, the pain and grief. Away from myself.
Lana slowed to a stop ahead of me. Her hands clutched her kneecaps, her breath wheezing out of her. “I – need – a minute.”
Moric nodded, stopping beside her. He pulled out the compass and double checked our position. “We should be nearing the caves soon. We can stop and rest there for a bit.”
“No,” I said. The word surprised my friends as much as it did me. “We need to finish the challenge. The longer we spend in here, the more we’re at risk. I won’t let anyone else die today.”
I hated the look Lana gave me. Her eyes scanned my face, dipping to my hands, which were covered in dried blood. Anama’s blood. “We need rest, Lirah. We’ll be useless if we keep going at this pace. And being useless puts us at even greater risk.”
I hated how right she was even more. I wanted to be done with this challenge and out of the forest, away from the horror of it all, but my body was truly exhausted.
“I don’t think I can keep going, even to the caves,” Lana puffed. “My legs are vibrating. And I’m so hungry I think my stomach is trying to digest itself.”
“Then we have to take a break,” Moric said firmly.
He looked at our surroundings, which were exactly the same as they had been hours ago.
Just trees upon trees, damp soil and green leaves beneath our feet.
Several bushes and shrubbery grew at the base of the trunks, and what looked to be ripe berries spilled from their branches.
“Are those strawberries?” Lana’s eyes were wide as saucers as she stared at the shrubs.
I crouched down beside one of the plants and viewed the berries. They did indeed look like strawberries, but a faint blue ring tinged the upper portion where the stem grew. “It’s a sloughberry. I recognize it from the photos in the textbook Anama showed us.”
Another pang ripped through my chest.
“Sloughberry is safe for mortal consumption,” Moric said slowly.
“In small quantities, yes. I’m just not sure how small, though.”
Lana groaned. “I’m starving, but the only thing that could make this situation worse than it already is would be diarrhea.”
I didn’t disagree. Maybe one would be fine, but that would not fill us anyway.
“I’ll take my chances with hunger.” Lana plopped down at the base of an oak tree, resting her head against its thick trunk.
“Me too.” Moric shook his head at the sloughberries, taking a seat beside Lana.
I still stood, hands planted on my hips despite the quavering of my thighs. My feet had gone numb in my boots long ago, so at least I didn’t have that pain to contend with. “Are we really just going to sit here and wait for something to come pick us off?” Paranoia scratched at my brain.
“It’s daytime.” Lana yawned. “We’ll rest for an hour max, and then we’ll carry on to the caves. We’ve been heading northeast for a good while now. We’ll reach the caves before nightfall.”
I gnawed on my lower lip.
“Sit, Lirah,” Moric commanded. “Nothing is chasing us. I’ll take first watch. At any sign of trouble, we’ll run.”
Nothing that we knew of was chasing us.
I gave him a hesitant look before finally yielding.
Sitting after nearly twenty-four hours of intermittently walking and running through the forest with zero sleep or food was so blissful I nearly cried out in relief.
I sank against the base of a mossy trunk, my head nestling into a crevice of soft soil and bark, not caring which insects crawled beneath, and closed my eyes.
A sharp crackle jerked me awake. My eyes snapped open, and I blinked furiously as I rose to my elbows. I stared around, wildly searching for danger and finding nothing immediately threatening.
Lana lay fast asleep. Moric – who was supposed to have woken me for my shift – snored softly. I glanced up at the sky, swearing beneath my breath. It was night. We had slept the entire day.
I crouched before Lana and Moric, shaking their shoulders gently.
Moric jolted, so startled he smacked his head against the tree trunk. “Ow!”
Lana woke more gracefully. Her eyes were wide and alert as she looked around.
“It’s okay,” I assured them. “We just overslept.”
“Is it nightfall?” Lana’s eyes shuttered in despair. “We should have listened to you earlier.”
I shook my head. “You were right to rest. I feel slightly better.”
It was an exaggeration. My stomach still ached something fierce and my legs felt stiffer than ever, but at least I no longer felt like I would collapse at any second.
“Moric?” I asked, peering at him. “You’re awfully quiet. What’s wrong?”
Moric’s gaze was fixed on his leg. On the thin gash the arrow-tailed lancer had inflicted on his thigh. It had now turned a sickly shade of green.
“Can you move it?” I asked quietly, my tone not betraying the absolute horror clutching my heart.
Moric tested the limb, drawing back his knee and straightening it. “It twinges a bit, but yeah, I can move it. The color is… alarming.”
“The arrow must contain some form of slow-acting poison.” Because it had definitely not looked like this last night. Just how slow the poison was, I did not know. And I really did not want to sit around waiting to find out.
Lana pushed to her feet and extended a hand to help Moric up. I slid an arm beneath his shoulders, propping him against me as he stood. The brunt of his weight was nearly enough to send me to the ground, but I dug my feet in the soil, my muscles screaming in protest.
He extricated himself from our hold. “I’m okay. I’ll be fine. Let’s keep moving.”
I stared down at the compass. The caves were clustered somewhere in the northeast. The checkpoint for the end of the Trial had appeared to be true east.
“I think we should go straight to the checkpoint,” I said.
Lana nodded. “There’s no need for us to go to the caves now that we’ve rested.”
“Agreed,” Moric said. “I’d very much like to finish this challenge.”
“Okay. Checkpoint it is.” I adjusted our course, and we set off.
The air between us was solemn and exhausted.
I jumped at every single branch that rustled in the breeze and every dry leaf that crunched beneath our boots as we continued east. Once, I thought I saw a pair of yellow eyes peering out at me from the treetops and pulled Moric and Lana into a sprint that nearly had us pitching forward onto our faces.
My knees buckled as we broke through a line of trees, and I caught sight of some large, dark formations jutting from the ground. Lana’s hand linked through mine, and she squeezed tight. Moric gripped my other hand.
Caves. Four of them, all set in a semicircle almost equidistant from each other.
“Something’s not right,” I said. The compass needle pointed directly east. “We should be at the checkpoint, not the caves.”
Moric’s eyes flickered over my head. “Look.”
Lana and I whirled around, our gazes tracking Moric’s. There, on the trunk of a thick oak, a page fluttered in the wind. It had been stabbed through with two daggers to hold it in place. We approached as one unit, cautiously, as if one of the branches might whip down and strike us.
There was lettering on the page, in the mortal language of Grilish.
The curlicue was familiar. I clicked my tongue as I realized where I had seen it: on the letter we had found inside the chest the morning we had woken up on Lortan.
Nothing good had happened since then. My stomach gave a nervous flip, and foreboding tingled beneath my skin.
“‘Welcome, candidates,’” Moric read aloud. “‘To the first challenge.’”
So we were at the checkpoint. I had thought the challenge would end once we made it here. And from the look on Lana’s face, so had she.
I blew out a shaky breath as Moric continued reading.
“‘Set out before you are four caverns. They each lead down to a network of tunnels, created by a monster that slumbers deep beneath. To succeed in this challenge, each of you must choose a cave to enter and collect the set of keys that has been placed within. Once the challenge has been completed, you must make your way back to Valhan House. Should you not return, you will be considered lost to the forest. Good luck.’”
“Well, fuck,” Lana muttered.
“Wait.” I stepped closer to the trunk, peering at the page. In small print beneath the larger instruction, and barely legible, another sentence was written. “‘Hint: The monster cannot see and relies on its ability to collect scents from the air through its tongue.’”
“Like a snake,” Moric murmured.
“If there’s a giant fucking snake down there, I think I’ll puke.
” Lana flattened a hand against her hair, which was plastered to her face and smeared with dirt.
I was sure I looked the same after having spent the night running through and then sleeping on the floor of the forest. But the monster beneath would not care about that.
It would only care how we smelled and tasted.
“There are two daggers,” I said, jerking my head toward the tree. “You two should take them.”
Lana and Moric shook their heads vehemently.
“You can’t go in there weaponless,” Lana objected.
“I won’t be. Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
I did not have a plan.