Beyond the Sapphire Gate: Epic Fantasy-Some Magic Should Remain Untouched (The Flow of Power Book 1) (26 page)

QUIET FOOTSTEPS

Jade gazed at the horizon from high on the mountainside. The twilight of first light failed to overrun the brightest eastern stars still clinging stubbornly to the gray sky. Sunlight would eventually win; each star would wink out one-by-stubborn-one. Perhaps one or two of them would be a planet reflecting the sun, in which case they’d hang around longer. Possibly. Astronomy had never been her passion. Only those living on High Realm bothered with it at all.

Turning her back on the eastern sky, she searched for Camoe, marveling how he was able to wrap the terrain around him. Be it dark, or full light, it never seemed to matter; he vanished without a sound, not even a sigh of wind left whispering behind wherever he moved.

The frigid predawn air smelled fresh with the scents of evergreens and ferns that mixed with a dewy, rich soil. They’d made camp at one of the few areas still vibrant with life. Her stiff muscles welcomed the movement, loosening with each step. She felt alert and invigorated after a night spent slumbering on a bed of soft pine needles.

Burl fell in behind her, stepping from the deep shadows of one of the monstrous green trees. His presence failed to surprise her now since the raggedy man never slept. She knew he watched over her while she slept, though she wasn’t sure if the thought comforted her or not. She was positive he wasn’t inherently evil, though the Dark User who had created him in all probability was, Camoe was likely correct about that. So far, the Green Writhe druid had rarely been wrong. The Dark Creation might still be under the control of its creator. How could she know Burl wouldn’t bludgeon her to death in her sleep?

He wouldn’t. What was wrong with her this morning? She’d been over it before in her mind. Running from death, or worse, the past three full days was bringing out her morbid tendencies again. Why not? This whole world was turning out morbid.

She found Camoe by accident. Waiting for brighter light to emerge from behind the Dark Citadel, she paused beside a rock she was thinking about sitting on. The rock decided to stand. Camoe’s quiet, raspy voice broke through the brisk air, leaving a trail of icy vapor behind. “It is good I did not have to wake you. We should be pressing onward. I want to speak with the monks at Brown Recluse before three days have passed.”

Her ears perked at the mention of a destination. “You haven’t spoken much about the place. Why are we going there, again?”

Camoe blew a soft breath. “The monks are knowledgeable in many things. Brown Recluse has nurtured many scholars. Only the Vibrant Vale lore masters have bested them with their knowledge base in written form. Besides, the monks hear things…they may have heard of your sister, but I make no promise of their aid. They can be…temperamental, at times.”

Jade grew excited. As bossy as Crystalyn was, Jade couldn’t wait to see her. Her stomach burned as she thought about her big sister. She missed her so much. And dad, it would be wonderful to see him soon. “Okay, we should get going then. It’s getting light enough. I think I can move faster with less noise now.”

Camoe’s silver head swung toward her. She hated not being able to see his eyes. Were they blue or gray? “As I said, I make no promises. The monks owe me, but that does not mean they will help us. They are a solitary lot and view visitors with disdain and suspicion. Even so, I have strong ties there, enough we can gather information about your sister. Someone surely has heard about her on this world. The monks pride themselves on keeping up with most Users.”

“I don’t know if she is a User. Just like I don’t know if I am, I’ll have to accept your opinion on that, since you keep saying so.”

“Your sister brought you here by reading symbols in a book, did she not?” Camoe asked. Jade didn’t need to see a frown crease his forehead to know it was there. “Those symbols are conduits leading back to a User, they have to be. It takes someone quite strong in accessing the Flow, or something with similar magical properties, to invoke one in the first place.”

Jade hesitated. Could Crystalyn be a User? It hadn’t seemed that way, not even when she touched the gateway Crystalyn had brought to life. Did that fact alone mean her sister was a User? Did her own visions make her a User? No. It didn’t feel right. Crystalyn’s and her powers were different in some profound way. Exactly how, she wasn’t certain. She wasn’t going to disagree, though. The last thing she wanted was to alienate Camoe. He’d saved her several times, like Burl. A chill swept up her spine, leaving a shudder in its wake. Without her two companions, this new world of Astura would’ve ended her life in a matter of hours, or sooner. All she wanted was to find her sister and go home.

Camoe ended their conversation by walking off into the trees. Jade followed. Once again, she concentrated on keeping up and staying quiet. Before going very far, she could tell she was getting better at it. The days spent crashing through one forest or another, stealth was becoming second nature.

Insidious shale rockslides, lichen-covered boulder fields, and fire-starter dried pine needles all lay soundlessly behind them as she slipped through yet another pocket of pines, only to pull up short. Spreading steeply downhill, blackened, splintered trees, many times thicker than her waist, rested on massive boulders, mixed with muddy dirt mounds. Deadfall, varying from sticks to log-sized branches, jutted from the mix or lay crisscrossed like giant, forgotten beaver dams filling a great gully, like the many desolate ones on the Farm. The Farm terra-formers had recreated the dams since the industrious animals that’d once made them were long extinct. She still felt sadness for the woodland creatures.

Sickly willows and thick brown grasses pushed up through the debris field, adding to the chaos. Water burbled somewhere underneath it all. Camoe had led them to the top of a massive avalanche area, recent from the looks of it. Jade studied the slide with dread. Dark holes, large enough to swallow a man, gaped wide. Smaller holes, wide enough to break a leg, dotted the area. Camoe could not possibly want to climb down it, could he? Rappelling down a cliff might be less dangerous. Besides, the sun had nearly sunk down to the western slope.

The druid stood on a small animal trail, looking left and right. The woodland creatures had begun to adapt to the slide by veering to either side, but Camoe looked unhappy with either choice.

“What is it?”

“The path used to step down this ravine. The slope was a gentle, easy climb down, yet thick enough to provide good cover. It was also the last good source of drinking water for a long while. Now I am uncertain of our next course of action.”

“How are we doing with water?”

“Used with care, we should be able to stretch it through two sunsets.”

“Why don’t we go around it then? Surely two will be enough.”

“Two days will not see us at the bottom of the plateau. Worse than that, it would expose us to the Dark Road for much of the passage. I would hate to chance it, yet I see no other way. We cannot take the left path: the Molting River feeding Fetid Fume Swamp lies in our way. Most creatures living beside the river are carnivorous along with a few in the swamps. Almost all creatures and flora in both areas are poisonous to consume; sustenance is scarce. Those ways are not a choice I care to take.”

“Well, what then? We can’t go back.”

“No, there is no going back, but the Dark Road is risky, even with darkness as cover—” He grew quiet, staring into the distance.

Jade followed his gaze, her breath skipping a heartbeat, then two. The mountainside changed drastically not far downhill from where the druid stood. The trees grew sparse and stunted. The blackened trees clung defiantly to a bald, rocky hillside sloping ever steeper, toward a treacherous cliff side. The rocks looked like the same type of black stone as the Dark Citadel’s exterior. Her stomach sank. Even after grueling days of sneaking through an overgrown, dying forest, they still hadn’t cleared the Dark Lands. How far did they have to go to leave this dreadful place? The hillside was steep, without anything resembling a trail. How would they ever make it down intact?

The sharp crack of a branch breaking brought Jade out of her reverie.

“Blast your creature! What is it doing now? We cannot go that way!”

Marching to the debris field’s edge, Burl high-stepped over a large mound of overhanging deadfall and vanished.

“Burl!” Jade screamed. She ran to the edge of the debris mound on the heels of the druid.

Pausing on an overhang long enough to glance down, Camoe dropped over the edge, then reappeared at the far side of a narrow ledge below. He kneeled, looking down from there. “Your creature lives. He is climbing down some rubble.”

Jade slowed, choosing her route to the overhanging edge with care. There was a drop of over twice her height onto the narrow ledge the druid stood on. Beyond it, hundreds of feet of open space awaited. There wasn’t much space on the ledge so she’d have to pick her landing with care. Selecting a spot with fewer branches buried in dirt, she bent her knees, and then stepped from the overhang.

Missing the mark slightly, she landed hard, staggering to maintain her footing. A loose branch snapped under her foot, tearing a slash in her jeans. Something warm trickled down her leg. Choosing to ignore it, she joined her companion looking over the edge.

Facing the mountainside, Burl was sliding down the debris-filled ravine by gripping deadfall, rocks, even digging into the mountainside with one hand to support his dangling legs and slow his descent.

Jade marveled anew at Burl’s strength and his ingenuity in working around his inflexible legs.

Burl reached a small boulder filled ledge after a few minutes. Dropping his arms to the side, he stood immobile, gazing at the hillside.

“I suppose your creature wants us to go down there. Who is leading whom here? I do not like it,” Camoe said, starting to climb down. “This could not have been here long. Something is not right.”

“What do you mean?” Jade asked. She followed Burl’s example, using logs and half-buried branches as a makeshift ladder to work her way down to the next big ledge. After a short while, her arms and legs ached from the effort.

Camoe reached for a handhold below her, climbing down with the same expert skill with which he did nearly everything. “No talking. Concentrate on maintaining a firm grip. If you slip, you’ll take us both. I do not wish to be impaled on some of those sharper branches.”

The druid was right. Much of the jagged deadfall below was sharp enough to puncture flesh or gash a leg.

Sunlight wore into twilight with much the same repetitive action; Jade stuck with three points of contact, though it forced her companions to wait at every landing. She wasn’t about to be the one to cause an impalement. As careful as she was, there were still incidents where a rock failed to hold her weight or a branch wasn’t as strong as it looked. Each time she had to scramble for another hold to keep from falling, each one caused her to expend her dwindling energy, and left her clinging to the mountain like an insect caught in a strong wind.

In the late afternoon, she stretched to full length, reaching for a root. The rock supporting her feet tore away from the mountainside. She dangled for a moment by the root before it too pulled free. She began to slide. Frantically, she looked for something to grab, but there was nothing. Dirt and rock carried her down the slope on her hands and knees, gaining speed. Twisting, she landed on her backside in time to finish the slide with a gentle stop on the widest debris ledge they’d encountered so far. Camoe rested, while Burl stood stoically in the waning sunlight, gazing her direction, his orange eyes revealing nothing.

Camoe’s blue eyes twinkled. “Nice arrival, wish I had thought of it. But it makes a lot of clatter.”

Jade dusted off her bottom, throwing the druid a quick glare, though she’d have rather been immature and stuck her tongue out at him. “Are we near the bottom yet? I’m thirsty and I need to eat something.”

“I should think. Well over two-thirds, I would estimate,” Camoe said, passing her a flask of water. “It has been rough, but I think your friend may have helped us out by taking off this way. The Dark Road is dangerous, doubly so at the fall of darkness.”

“So you said before. What is the Dark Road?” Jade tilted her head back. She squeezed the flask, taking a long drink. Warm and tepid, the water was still refreshing. Camoe motioned for her to open her bag. She removed two meat pies along with two generous slices of the cheeses taken from the Citadel’s kitchen. Well, Burl’s kitchen, as she liked to think of it. Passing Camoe his share, she chewed her pie, waiting for him to continue.

The druid swallowed the last of his food before continuing. “We have been traveling across a plateau the size of a small continent since leaving the Dark Citadel. I doubt you have anything as large on your home world.”

“I don’t know about that. You’ve never seen the Mountain,” Jade said, nibbling on her cheese.
Our greatest failed achievement,
she thought.

Camoe’s eyes flickered at her comment, but he went on as if it was of no consequence. “There is something I do not believe you realize. The plateau
is
the Dark Citadel.”

Jade almost chocked on her pie. She grappled with the enormity of his statement. “So we’re still on the Dark Citadel after all this time? Does that mean there could be an entrance to it nearby?”

“Yes or an exit. For all I know, there is one hidden around here. But there are some things much older and far worse than the citadel nearby, and we have many days of travel left to get through the dark land of Virun after we reach the plateau’s bottom.” Camoe dusted crumbs off his leather tunic. “The Fetid Swamps
and
some of Brown Recluse are part of it.”