Chapter 60 Into the Cave
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Into the Cave
The sky over the Cinereal Sea was a blotchy winter gray, snow falling softly and silently as ash.
Wind thrashed against the crags, whipping the slate-colored water into foamy meringue peaks, buffeting the four cloaked figures standing on the cliff’s edge.
Today it smelled not of the floral nightpoppy of the east, but the briny salt and tundral cold of the north.
Saffron thought of the dragons biding their time in the Haeldrekys Peaks just across the body of water—the mountaintops likely within eyeshot on a day with better visibility—and wondered whether her much-coveted weaverwick wand might be closer than she thought.
One thing at a time.
Since the sea was in such a frenzy, abseiling down into the cave was a better option than going by boat.
Levan had pilfered a sturdy length of rope from a nearby port, which he tied around the base of the nearest tree.
The four mages—all but Relar, who was foraging in the woods with Rasso—lowered themselves into the cave below.
Though the cliff was slick with salt water and ice, Miret cast a kind of sandpaper charm on the soles of their boots, which gave them a decent amount of grip.
Still, by the time Saffron’s feet found the mouth of the cave, her hands were rubbed raw from the rope.
Every muscle in her body trembled from the exertion and the worry of falling into the thrashing, shark-filled sea.
When they passed over the threshold of the cave, no wards offered any resistance.
Saffron’s tight lungs eased somewhat, but the relief was followed by a barbed whip of self-hatred. Three innocent mages had died for those few footsteps.
Inside, the cave was smaller than anticipated; a crescent of rocky land surrounding an ink-dark rock pool. Tucked inside the pool was a little colony of slowcrabs, their shells a pearlescent white.
“Is it in the water, do you think?” Saffron mused aloud. “Are the slowcrabs there to guard it?”
Harrow snorted. “I don’t think the Fifth Prophecy would have survived for a millennium with just three wardholders and a family of crustaceans standing sentinel.”
Levan and Miret murmured among themselves, then the older mage set off around the cave, running his palms over the floor and walls, searching for magical frequencies.
He paused on a stretch of wall that looked like all the others, to the back of the cave and quite far away from the utterly ambivalent slowcrabs.
“Et lustran.” As Miret’s wand tip illuminated, it washed a white-gold glow over the craggy wall.
Carved into the rock were five words in an unfamiliar language:
Sani de praegeni, darae voli.
Beside her, Levan jolted slightly, and Saffron realized he could read it.
Ancient Sarthi. One of the kingpin’s favored obscure languages, and the tongue likely used on the continent around the time Sarcane lived and breathed.
“What does it say?” she asked, but it was not Levan who answered.
Miret breathed, “Blood of a Foreseer, given willingly.”
“Wonderful,” muttered Harrow. “I’m quite possessive over my blood, believe it or not.”
Yet Saffron could barely hear him over the ringing in her ears. She stared at Levan, though he did not return it, instead locking his own gaze on the carved instructions. “You knew we were going to need that. How?”
He swallowed, shrugged. “Gut instinct, I suppose. I’ve read a lot of quest novels. There’s always mandated bloodshed.”
“I suppose I’ll have to maim myself, shall I?” Harrow sighed exaggeratedly, more concerned over his imminent wound than Levan’s strange prescience. “Anyone have a knife?”
Levan handed him the dagger he’d used to kill the wardholders. “I’ll heal you straight afterward.”
“What a gentlemage.” Harrow pressed the blade to his palm, then hesitated.
“I will confess that I don’t love pain. And the sight of blood makes me quite faint.
I saw a little Foreseer cart back in Flarence—a shawled old woman, probably a fraud, but she might have some genuine prophetic ability in her. Perhaps we could go and capture—”
“Harrow,” Levan said bluntly. “We’re about to uncover a prophecy pertaining to the fate of the world, and you’re not willing to slice a small patch of your Highcloak skin for it?”
Harrow gulped, then handed Levan both the knife and his trembling hand. “Do it for me, will you? I can’t watch.”
Levan cut into Harrow’s hand without a beat of hesitation, and Harrow screamed like a dying gull.
Levan grabbed Harrow’s forearm and pressed the welling blood to the cave wall, where the Ancient Sarthi words immediately began to glow scarlet, as though drinking the dark liquid directly from the King’s Prophet’s heart.
Yelping once more, Harrow pulled his hand away and cradled it to his chest. Levan cast a healing spell over the cut, and the skin instantly knitted back together as though it had never been parted. Saffron caught the small smile of satisfaction on Levan’s face as he watched the wound mend.
With an immense grinding noise, the engraved cave wall folded in on itself, revealing a secret entrance to another chamber. As an arch appeared in the rock, cold, stale air wafted out from the next cave—cold, stale air that had likely been trapped for a thousand years.
Saffron shivered uncontrollably as the air washed over her, and with it came a sense of wrongness, of dread and foreboding and the violent urge to run.
All the worst moments of her life flooded her body as though a dam holding them back had finally burst. Her parents’ deaths, the burnt honey stink of it.
An eyeball carved out by her own hand. Captain Aspar bleeding from the mouth, the chest. The look of pity and hate on Auria’s face as Saffron pleaded for her understanding.
The long, cold, barren months in Duncarzus, hungry and afraid and so very alone.
She wanted to collapse to the ground, to keen and moan and cry, to give up, give up, give up, because none of this was worth it.
All her worldly suffering paled in comparison with what was to come.
She would never know peace again if she stepped into that second cave, never feel sun on her skin or the feeling of laughter, never—
“Oh hells, no.” Harrow took a tremulous step back, face pale as the moon and glowing faintly red from the illuminated writing. “Whatever lies beyond that arch is evil.”
Miret staggered, almost falling beneath the crushing weight of the despair. He muttered something in Eqoran, withdrawing his velvet pouch of Saint stones and tipping them into his palm for strength.
Saffron forced deep breaths into her lungs, trying to channel the sense of doom into action, as she always had before, but it was hard.
Saints, it was hard, all her bones turned to lead, her heart petrified like lightning-struck soil.
Better not run; in fact, better just to curl up in a ball and perish, because there was no way she could go on with life knowing a sorrow this powerful existed, no way she could see the light beyond it.
Levan was the only one who seemed unrattled by it, and with a horrible lurch, Saffron realized it was because he was used to this depth of turmoil. He lived with it every day.
“Shall we?” the kingpin said blandly, stepping through the arch into the dark cave beyond.