First Comes The One Who Wanders (76 page)

Dropping to his knees when he reached the unconscious crafter, he quickly assessed the damage. Her left leg was broken, as well as ribs and her right wrist. Garabaldi reached her moments later. He ran his hands over her, humming and leaned back on his knees with a sigh. "She has quite a bit of internal damage, as well. It's good she is a crafter or she would be dead. We need to find a place to hide while she heals. This cliff won't afford much protection."

"Can’t you heal her?" asked Kai, dropping to the ground behind them.

"I could heal her leg and arm," said Garabaldi. "There's only so much I can do for a light crafter. She will heal on her own quickly enough. All we need to do is keep her safe."

Kai nodded, her face grim, and looked around to get her bearings. "There's an old fortress not far from here. It has been abandoned for many years. Although we haven't checked on it since the war began."

"It's not straight up, is it?" asked Garabaldi. "I don’t know about Erion, but I’m not up to scaling cliffs with someone on my back."

"We can follow this fault and get to it," replied Kai, indicating the small outcrop they were occupying.

"Work on her arm and leg so she isn’t in so much pain the entire trip," said Erion. "What do you need to help you after healing?"

"Lichen, fungus, mushrooms. Whatever you can find," replied Garabaldi, turning his attention to the unconscious crafter. He bent over her and began to chant. Unlike Leilas’ healing song, his was harsh and the words abrupt. Leaving him to do what he could, Erion went to look for the food Garabaldi would need when he was finished. The gnome worked for a very long time, patiently mending the breaks in the bones in her leg, arm and ribs. The healing was imperfect. There was nothing he could do to make it better. Dark crafters were never meant to heal light crafters. He hoped he'd not done more damage than good.

Erion handed him some mushrooms and moss he'd found. While Garabaldi ate, Kai and Erion fashioned a hammock from cloaks and branches. By the time Garabaldi had finished the small meal they had Leilas on the conveyance and were ready to start for the fortress.

The fortress was old. It was said, it was the home of Solein before he made his home in Neothera, before the cataclysm. No one had dared brave the magic that surrounded it to try and occupy it. The magic had never affected the elves, but they preferred Nereid to the castle on the mountain. There were no seals, no dolphins, and no sea dragons on the mountain of Seal Haven. Though they respected and honored Solein, the sea elves were loyal to the Sea crafter.

The fortress was made of the dark stone of the mountain. If Kai hadn’t known it was there, it would have been almost impossible to find. Erion could feel the magic emanating from the structure long before he could see it. The hammock swung between Kai and Erion, but Leilas lay silent as they moved. Garabaldi moved slower and slower the nearer they came to the castle.

"I can’t go to that place," he said finally, coming to a stop.

"You have no choice," said Erion, "that's where we're going."

"I'll wait here," said Garabaldi, with finality.

"I can’t allow that," said Erion, warning in his voice. "You've been a good companion and helpful to us, but I can’t allow you to warn the dark masters of our location."

"I could have done that already with Leilas being unconscious and unable to stop me," replied Garabaldi, "had I wished. I won't betray this mission. But I won't go to Solaero with you."

"No dark creature has been able to enter Solaero," remarked Kai. "There is something about the magic that drives them away."

Erion wasn’t happy with the choice, but he left Garabaldi and continued on with Kai, Leilas between them. He had to wonder how Leilas would do in Solaero if no dark creature had ever entered this place. She was half-dark, half-light. That was what made her who she was.

The walls surrounding the castle came into view as they neared. They'd begun to crumble and some of the big, cut blocks had tumbled to the ground. Erion and Kai moved through the gate opening. The wooden gates had long ago crumbled to dust. Leilas groaned softly when they passed the gate and then fell silent again.

Kai led them to the front door of the square, multi-storied building. There were many windows opened to the courtyard. Birds had made their nests in the windows and turrets. Kai spoke a word quietly. The door swung open and they moved inside. They placed Leilas on the floor near the staircase and then Erion straightened and looked around. The interior of the castle was in as much disrepair as the outside, though clearly this once had been a magnificent home.

"I wonder why he left no one to take care of this place when he left?" asked Erion, walking from one room to the next, viewing the ruined majesty.

"It's said he intended Trion and Ariel to live here, but they were felled by the poison of Rengailai," replied Kai.

"It's a safe haven on this mountain," said Erion, settling down next to Leilas to wait.

"Let’s hope that's still true," replied Kai, coming to sit next to him.

"How much farther is the temple and is there another way to get to it rather than the cliffs?" asked Erion, pulling his pipe from his pocket and beginning to pack tobacco into it for the long wait he was expecting.

"We could wind around the mountain on the main trail, and then cut back to the temple. It would be more dangerous. There are many dark creatures that make their homes on this mountain."

"I think we'd better risk the enemies. Our Chidra won’t be up to the climb, I think."

Kai nodded and fell silent. Erion smoked his pipe and they waited. "You didn’t fail in your task because she fell," added Erion, after a long pause, "in case you've been accusing yourself of that."

Kai nodded again silently, but the pained look on her face began to ease. Erion had to admit to himself that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and one who did all she could to help. Even though she didn’t believe she was the one who should be burdened with this task, she took it and bore it graciously. If they survived this ordeal, he would offer his heart to her, since it was already hers.

~~~

Leilas moaned and tried to move, but it was too painful. She desperately needed food and water. Gritting her teeth, she struggled to a sitting position. She found herself alone in a large, stone room, with a lofty roof, near a staircase. Her pack and canteen were near to hand and she crawled to where they were sitting and dug through the supplies until she found some venison. Then sitting back against the stair, exhausted, she began to eat and look around this strangely alluring room.

She could feel the magic. It was light. It was pure. It was old. Still, it felt familiar. She tried to place where she had felt this magic before as she started on her second piece of meat. She had no idea where she was or how she'd gotten here. The last thing she remembered was falling. Kai and Erion must have brought her to this place, though she couldn’t imagine Garabaldi coming here. But where were they now? She was in no condition to go looking for them. Instead, she contented herself with the bottle of beer she found in the pack and studying the room she was occupying. Checking to see that her weapons were still handy, she checked on the pieces of the staff as well. They were still wrapped around her waist and none the worse for her fall. If someone did come to attack her, she wasn’t sure her weapons would do her any good. She was fairly certain she couldn’t lift either one.

It was rather a boring room, she decided. One where people were greeted then shuttled off to more welcoming rooms. The light of the day played on the walls and she let her mind drift with the patterns for a while. The venison and beer were having an effect and as the afternoon passed, she managed to gain her feet, with the help of her axe to steady her. In her mind, she knew she should stay where she was and wait for Erion and Kai. But her curiosity got the better of her and she made her way slowly and painfully into the adjoining room.

This room must have been an amazing place, once. The fireplace filled the entire east wall. Couches and chairs surrounded the hearth, a harp stood near a large window that looked out onto the sky. It would be a beautiful sight when the stars were shining in the clear sky. Tapestries covered the stone walls and kept the room warm. Wood planks made up the floor and once richly-colored rugs covered the floor. The tapestries and rugs were covered in dust as were the couches and chairs. Everything seemed to have been abandoned abruptly and left to decay.

Leilas was beginning to worry about Erion and Kai. It wasn’t like the elf to go off for an extended period without leaving some kind of message. Going back to her place by the stairs, she opened another packet of food and ate, hoping Erion would return. When she finished, she packed up the belongings by the stairs, left a note written in magic for the elf then went up the stairs in search of her friends.

The stairs wound up the entire height of the building, with landings at every floor. The dust that covered them was undisturbed, but that didn’t mean elves hadn’t been this way. Looking back, she could see her footprints in the dust. She was leaving a trail, even if Erion and Kai hadn’t.

Following the stairs all the way to the top landing, she looked around cautiously as she stopped to catch her breath. The fall she'd taken had been serious, she decided, feeling the weakness in her body and her magic. She wondered how many days she'd been lying unconscious in this place.

Once she could breathe again, she began to open doors that ran along the landing hallway. Each opened into a once-beautiful bedroom, which was now standing empty. There was no sign Erion, Kai or Garabaldi had been this way. Finding her way back to the stairs, she descended to the next landing. She checked every floor until she returned to the entryway. There was still no sign of her friends. She was certain now that they'd encountered some kind of trouble. Did she risk being discovered using magic to find them?

Deciding it was taking too much of a chance in her present condition, she turned in the opposite direction of the sitting room and continued her search of the ground floor. She wouldn’t leave here without her friends, she said fiercely to herself. Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. At some point, if she didn’t find them, she would have to make that decision. But that time hadn’t come yet.

She went from one beautifully decorated room to the next, leaving each, no closer to her goal. Eventually, she found herself in the kitchen. Three steps led down to the stone floor. Tables stood in the middle of the room. Counters and cupboards lined the walls. Near the back of the room, a door stood slightly ajar. Taking her long knife from her belt, Leilas moved toward the door cautiously. It could have stood open like this for centuries, for all she knew. There had been no sign anyone had been here recently. Still, she gripped her knife as she moved to the door and pushed it open further. Stairs descended from the doorway down into the darkness.

Summoning a small ball of light, Leilas descended the stairs. The room below was a root cellar. There was a strong smell of damp earth and wood. If there had been food down here, it had rotted away long ago. A covered well stood in the middle of the room. Leilas lowered the bucket, which hung from a rusty chain. She heard it hit water and raised it again. Filling her water skin and taking a long drink, she continued her search.

When she reached the back wall, she found a small door that had been recently opened. Extinguishing her light, she opened the door as quietly as she could and crawled through. She found herself in another room, almost identical to the first. However, this room didn’t have racks for vegetables or a well. What it did have was recently made footprints. Leilas found it difficult to believe dark creatures would venture into this place, with such strong light magic, but the effects of the magic were less down here, deeper in the earth. Perhaps if they'd tunneled toward the castle, they could withstand the magic for a few minutes at a time.

The pattern of the footprints showed a struggle then two more were leaving than had arrived. She had to believe she now had the reason Erion hadn’t returned. The footprints looked as if they belonged to goblins, not darklings. Perhaps these were just some of the dark creatures that lurked in this mountain that Kai had warned her about and not the darklings Dredrac and Rengailai had sent to stop her.

Forgoing a light, she started through the third room, following the footprints. The goblins had made no effort to hide their tracks. They probably didn’t realize there had been another intruder still in the castle. As she suspected, there was no door in this room. Instead, there was an opening into a roughly hewn tunnel. Leilas plunged on, ignoring the slime on the walls as she used them to guide her. There was a light in the tunnel up ahead, which shed some light for her to traverse the hallway. The light grew brighter and she slowed, shrinking against the walls for cover.

She slowly entered a cavern that had been carved into the tunnel. There were several openings in the wall, each bearing a wooden door with barred windows. A cooking pot stood in the center of the room and bones were scattered across the floor. There was no noise from the barred doors and no goblins in sight. Although this clearly was a holding cell, they hadn't stopped here or had already moved on toward their destination.

Checking the rooms behind the barred doors just to be certain, Leilas continued through the tunnel. She had no idea how much of a head start her quarry had on her. It could be hours or days. She'd wasted precious time exploring the upper floors. They had the advantage here. She was handicapped by the dark and her weakened condition.