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Nomar’s eyes narrowed. “As long as we breathe and are able to use our weapons ... all our weapons, we are not trapped!”
“This thing ... this baar comes. We have ahead of us a chasm too wide to jump. Below us are madly rushing waters filled with what type of freesh I know not. Think you your weapons will spirit us across to the other side?” she challenged.
“What else is there? Where else has Yar looked?”
Ailish turned toward the north and pointed. As she did, Yar came into view. “Nothing more. I called him back.”
“Then we go forward, as quickly as possible, and see where and what we can use for our defense.”
Ailish took in the depth of character carved into his face. In the months they had been together, his beard had grown in, but even that did not mask the utter strength reflecting from him—a strength she herself drew in and upon.
“As you say, Nomar, we shall find a way.”
It took them a half hour to reach the divide separating the two parts of the Frozen Mountains. There, they discovered a trail leading west, narrower than what they had been on, and seemingly cut into the mountainside to allow passage.
Without discussion, Ailish started onto the trail, and then stopped to wait for the wagon to follow. She breathed a sigh of relief when it turned onto the trail and fit with perhaps two feet of width to spare.
After maneuvering onto the trail, Nomar stopped the wagon, stepped down, and went to the edge. Below the chasm, the water thundered along while large silver and crimson colored freesh jumped into the air, throwing themselves madly against the current as they fought to swim eastward.
A moment later he looked at Ailish and with a shrug said, “A change from salted meat would be nice.”
“We have more to be concerned with than filling our bellies.”
Nomar smiled. “Perhaps.” Then he looked at the other mountain. “If I were to guess, this was once a large single mountain. Something split it into what it is. But people,” he said, pointing to the way the trail seemed to have been cut, “I think people did this.”
“Ancients?” Ailish asked.
“Or whoever came after. But that matters not. Let’s look further in. There may be something to help us.”
He climbed back onto the wagon and started it forward. “What think you, old man?”
Jalil laughed. “Old man am I, eh? I think this is exactly what you thought. This was made, it is not natural. But the chasm, it was not created by the ancients or whoever followed. No, this is more like a ... Do you know the word earthquake?”
“No.”
“In the books I found, it explained how, when something disturbs the inside of our world, there is a reaction called an earthquake: when it occurs, the ground splits open. Sometimes it is the top of a mountain that explodes, and hot liquid fires flow from it which causes it. Perhaps instead of exploding, it split apart? That is all I can think of.”
“It is enough,” Nomar whispered, thinking of a power that could have caused this.
“Perhaps,” Jalil said, then shook his head. “But I am certain as well, the earthquake that created this, happened because of the weapons used then.”
“Which matters to us not at all today.” His stomach growled, and he shook his head. “What we could use today, is some freesh.”
A quarter mile in, Ailish rode close to the edge and looked down. “I have never seen anything like this. These strange freesh, they seem to jump and fight their way toward the east, ignoring the currents. Why?”
Because it is in their nature. It is what they do in order to survive. Perhaps they go to where they need to breed, as does a crave during its mating season. Whatever it is, it is not something random.
Sensing Ailish and Jalil were communicating, Nomar continued to surveil his surroundings. The top of the mountain on both sides of the chasm rose so high their outlines faded into the dark sky. But as he focused on them, he saw the tops of the mountains appeared to lean in toward each other. The separation between them was closer than he would have thought.
He turned and looked behind. The way the two mountains were separated reminded him of a tunnel. “It is like being inside the mountain itself.”
“Yes, I feel it too ... But like it, I do not. The baar, we have so little room to fight.”
“We need to get across.”
She laughed. “Fly would you, like a—” Before she could finish, Jalil interrupted her width a piercing thought.
Ahead. There is something ahead. Something ... I sense life.
His words set off her powers, and as the heat rose within her, she closed her eyes and pushed outward. At the same instant, she sent an asking to Yar to scout ahead.
“What is happening?” Nomar shouted in frustration. “Speak aloud!”
Suddenly, Ailish knew what Jalil had sensed, animal life! She looked back at Nomar. “There are animals ahead.”
He frowned. “Impossible. Nothing can live here.”
“Something does. Move, faster,” she said, pushing her kraal into a lope. A few minutes later, with Yar seeing ahead for her, she drew back on the reins. When she heard the wagon stop behind her she turned. “There is a valley ahead. I don’t understand, but it is there.”
She pressed her heels into the kraal’s sides and set off again. Nomar followed cautiously, keeping the wagon closer to the wall than the edge. It was almost an hour later when Ailish slowed her kraal and waited for Nomar to catch up. When he did, she pointed to the trail.
“This is widening, and we descend.”
“I wondered when you would realize that,” he responded. “If there is life nearby, we need to find it soon. Unless this trail just goes down and into the water.” He paused, smiled, and added. “If it does, we could catch some freesh.”
Ignoring his comment, Ailish said, “This place is different. It is warmer too. You feel it, yes?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I feel it not.”
They started off yet again, but this time Ailish asked Yar to run ahead and find what was there. Within minutes, Yar was there, and Ailish’s breath exploded from her chest. She halted the kraal instantly, closed her eyes, and let Yar show her what was before him.
“Ailish!”
Hearing her name called from a great distance, she drew out of her trance and looked at Nomar, who said, “What is happening?”
“Yar found it.”
“Found what?”
“I ... I ... Wait, please wait until you see.” With that, she started off again leaving Nomar exasperated.
Four minutes later, a loud cry echoed off the mountain’s walls. Nomar stiffened and reached for his sword. Seconds later, a treygone flew past them, banked over them, and dove down into the chasm. It reappeared thirty seconds later, a small freesh in its claws.
As it disappeared eastward, Ailish looked at Nomar. “Life.”
They moved forward; the sounds of the water below grew louder as they descended. They stopped a quarter mile further in, before a notch in the mountainside. The opening seemed to have been carved from the face of the mountain. Eight feet wide and at least ten high, the sides where smooth as glass.
Peering in, Nomar saw it was wide enough for the kraals to enter, but not the wagon. He leaned in and saw the path rose like the circular staircase he’d once seen in a Freemorn castle. But this was no staircase; rather, it was a simple path leading upward, and one he knew could not have been natural. He wondered where it led.
He pointed inside. “Once we have dealt with the baar, we’ll explore this. It rises in the mountain.”
It took another quarter mile before the trail leveled off and they stopped again, this time mesmerized by what lay before them. Within the mountain was a cavern. Not some dark and dank place; rather, for as far as they could see, trees and plants abounded in an impossible scenario that could never be but was.
Is this a vision? she asked Jalil, silently sharing her mind with him so he could see what she did.
Nomar stood in the wagon, awed by the sight before him. “This ... this cannot. This is impossible,” he half shouted as he stared at the valley. No sun shone down, but within the strange cavern, trees and plants created a cacophony of colors: a hundred shades of greens mixed with red and brown plants and trees to create a vision unlike any he had ever seen.
Unable to respond because she was caught in the vision, Ailish looked everywhere. Craves flew from tree to tree; smidges chirruped on the branches of strange trees. There was a rabt hole across from her. The temperature, she suddenly realized, had risen high enough she no longer shivered. She heard water running over rocks in the distance.
Ailish dismounted and, with Yar at her side, knelt and touched the ground. Instead of drawing her hands back, she dug her fingers into the earth, moving her fingers downward between small shards of rock.
Closing her eyes, she released her senses to not only explore this strange place but to see what lay below. Her hands stayed in the earth for several minutes. Then, standing, shook off the dirt, and turned to the warrior. “It is Nevaeh itself giving off the heat we feel. I understand it not.”
Still in the wagon, Jalil said, “Yes, the heat comes beneath us. I have found this before, in the old mountains across the sea. The earth gives up burning liquid which, when it cools, forms rocks. Such is what runs beneath us, and what heats this valley. I believe it gives life to the trees and plants.”
“Without sun, how can they grow and live?” Nomar challenged while rolling back the material covering the wagon so he could see.
When it was done, and Jalil was able to look around, he was silent for several long seconds. “I have no answer based in knowledge. I can but guess. Tell me, at the beginning, how did life begin?”
Ailish stared at him for a moment before shaking her head. “No one knows.”
Jalil nodded slowly. “Exactly.”
“So, we do not question, just accept?” Nomar replied.
Both Ailish and Jalil spoke at the exact same time. “Yes.”
Shrugging, Nomar looked deeper into the valley. “How long until the baar reaches us?”
Jalil grasped the Staff tightly and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, “The baar approaches the edge of the chasm. Another hour, perhaps two at the most.”
“We need to go in there,” Nomar said, pointing deeper into the valley, to where the trees were thicker. “We go where the branches are low, and thickest, so it will make his passage difficult.”
“And?”
“And nothing. The baar will be restricted by the trees and the branches. We will be able to get to it.”
“Do you forget its skin is almost impenetrable?”
“You said almost, Master Jalil.”
Ailish stared at him. “And you? You’ll stand there with your sword drawn, waiting?”
He didn’t smile, he didn’t blink, he said, “Oh, I have my knife too.”
Ailish turned from him, mounted her kraal, and started off. “Are you coming?”
When they were closer to the thicker stands of trees, Ailish dismounted while Nomar stepped down from the wagon and went to the front, where he guided the kraals closer to the trees. Ailish did the same on the other side, and they walked next to the kraals, each touching the boles of the trees as they passed to make sure their scent remained.
Just before they entered the heavier stand of trees, Nomar returned to the wagon, climbed up, and stood on the driver’s seat to looked around. “There.” He pointed to a spot several hundred feet away, where Jalil and the wagon would be safely out of the way. “Be careful not to touch the trees. We don’t want him following the wrong scent.”
“I will send them there, with the kraals. What of Master Jalil?”
“Yes, what of Master Jalil?” Jalil echoed.
He looked at Ailish. “I need you to send Yar to see where the baar is. But make certain he is not seen or scented, and does not get too close.”
“Of course,” she said. A moment later, Yar ran toward where they’d come from. “And Jalil?” she repeated.
“Help me with him, and then we’ll set the trap.” He turned to Jalil. “You said your powers would not affect the baar, are you still so certain?”
“To do so, I would have to break through whatever Fasil and Irret did with it, the ... echo of using my abilities in so powerful a way would alert the Circle to our location.”
Nomar exhaled. “So be it.”
Ten minutes later, with Jalil complaining of how he should somehow be with them, and not propped up in a hidden wagon, Nomar and Ailish went to the spot he’d selected.
“You said we’ll set a trap. Does not a trap need bait to lure the victim?”
“It does”
“What wi—”
“Yar will not be the bait,” he said, cutting her off and easing her fears.
“Then who?”
When Nomar smiled, she went cold. “No. When you first talked about this, I did not think you were serious.”
“It will work.”
“Work? It will kill you. Your blades will mean nothing to it.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not; but, somehow, My Lady, you will not allow me to die ... at least not this way.”
She tilted her head to the side, stared at him for a very long minute, and then said, “You expect much from me.”
He stared into her eyes for several long seconds. “I do, My Lady.”
Her first impulse was to reach out and touch his face. She held herself back. “Then we should begin.”
They stood in the midst of a dozen thick trees, trees of a type neither recognized. Each of the trunks was the width of a fat man, the branches pointed downward toward the ground rather than upward where the sun would be, if they were outside.
But the branches themselves were perfect for what he thought would work. He stepped into the middle of the trees. Behind him were three trees so close together they appeared like a wall of browns and greens. He bowed his head slightly toward them, as if he were paying them respect.
Akin to a fence on both sides of him, and lined in almost perfect rows, were the trees that would contain the baar on his charge at Nomar. Then suddenly aware of Ailish’s eyes on him, he pointed to the three trees. “Up there must you be when the baar attacks. You and your weapon. When the beast charges me, you will kill it.”
“How?” she half whispered; half shouted.
The cry tore at his heart, but he stood firm. “With an arrow.”
“Damn it, do you not listen?”
“Its eye is the path to its brain: an arrow into its eye is the end of the beast. And My Lady, I always listen.”
Ailish’s face drained of blood. The ice they had been through was hot in comparison to the cold rushing through her. “Its eye ...” she whispered.
He looked up at the mass of entwined branches. “It is time, let’s get you up there.”
She started toward him, then stopped, her eyes going blank for a heartbeat as Yar pushed a thought to her. She opened her eyes and looked directly into his. “The baar is here.”
