The Tears of Elios (29 page)

Ranealya responded in the same manner, preparing to pounce. A feral expression distorted her features, and he wondered if she was planning on shape-shifting into a sphinx to battle the guardian the same way she did with the griffin.

His stomach lurched. Unwilling to see her stoop to that level of brutality once again, he ducked between them.

“Get out of the way, Gregor,” she growled.

“No,” he replied, surprised his voice didn’t tremble like the rest of his body threatened to do. “Surely, there is some way to resolve this without violence.”

He turned to the sphinx and waited for his confidence to rise before speaking. “I've always heard that sphinxes were intelligent creatures. You must know some way that we can reach an agreement.”

The sphinx relaxed with a surprised expression on its very human appearing face. Gregor turned and glared at Ranealya until she responded in the same way, rising to a standing position.

“Very well,” the sphinx said. “I will give you a riddle to answer, human. If you are correct, you may take the orb as you desire. If you're incorrect, you and your companion will be my dinner.” It grinned, displaying the sharp fangs in its mouth.

Gregor’s mouth grew dry.

Her eyes narrowed. “Don't take the chance, Gregor. I can take it.”

“No, not this time. I'm going to prove to you that violence is not always the answer.” He faced the sphinx and took a deep breath, expanding his chest as far as he could. “What is your riddle?”

The sphinx reclined back on its haunches and recited:

“From the beginning of eternity,

To the end of time and space,

To the beginning of every end,

And the end of every place.

What am I?”

Gregor had always considered himself clever, but this riddle was far more complicated than he had expected. He cleared his mind and replayed the words.
The beginning of eternity?
He sank to the ground. His forehead rested in his hand as he repeated the riddle over and over again to himself.

“Perhaps you underestimated my intelligence, human.” The sphinx retrieved a small sandglass from his treasure piles and turned it. “You have this long to solve the riddle. I grow impatient for dinner.”

Ranealya waited at the edge of the room and leaned against the cavern walls, her arms crossed. He could almost hear her thoughts as she drummed her long fingernails on her arm.
What kind of mess has Gregor gotten us into now? He should have listened to me
. But as he stared at her, her attention remained fully fixed on the sphinx. When she saw him out of corner of her eye, she offered a grim smile, and he knew she would die fighting before she let the sphinx have his dinner.

Not that he wished for it to come to that.

The sandglass reached half-empty mark in a matter of minutes, and he still had no idea of the answer. His leg began to twitch. He admitted that he had underestimated the sphinx’s capabilities when it came to the riddle. Any creature that could amass this much treasure had to be of more than an average intelligence.

Gregor began scratching the words into the stone floor with a rock, piquing both Ranealya's and the sphinx’s curiosity. “The beginning of every end, and the end of every place.”

He looked up and saw the sands slipping away faster. He had maybe two minutes left. He turned back to the words on the ground, desperate to make sense of them. His vision blurred, and although he wasn’t a religious man, he offered a quick prayer to Mariliel for help. Hopefully, she wouldn’t abandon him when he was this close to the answer.

The letter “e” stood out from his scratches. He grabbed the rock and underlined it in each word. It was at the beginning of the words “eternity” and “end” and at the end of the words “time”, “space”, and “place”.

He looked up and saw the sands were almost empty. The sphinx licked its lips, and he felt Ranealya's hand on his shoulder, ready to pull him away when the sphinx attacked.

“The letter E,” he answered and held his breath.

The sphinx took a step back and frowned. The cavern remained silent except for the pounding of Gregor’s heart in his own ears. Then it nodded. “You are correct, human.” It bowed to him. “You may claim your prize, worthy opponent.”

Ranealya hugged him, her face beaming with pleasure. He had never seen her so happy before. He smiled and hoped his face mirrored her joy instead of the fear that had filled him seconds before.

She took a step forward, but the large paw of the sphinx blocked her. “He answered the riddle, Cursed One, not you. Only he may retrieve the Tear of Elios.”

She looked back at him, worried. “It's another trick. It knows you can't touch it.”

Gregor stood and frowned. She was always keeping him away from the orbs. “Why not?”

“Because it will burn your hands.”

“I doubt it will be as bad as that,” he said as he walked past her, searching for the orb. “After all, Travodus was a human.”

She winced at the mention of the mage’s name but said no more. Every time she tried to peek around the sphinx, it hindered her view, like a cat toying with a mouse. He needed to get her out of here before she lost her temper.

He scanned the room and found the orb waiting at the bottom of a pile of treasure in the back of the cavern. He longed to finally hold it, to see the locations of the other orbs for himself. He reached out and grabbed it, careful not to touch any of the surrounding gold and gems. His hands grew warm, but they didn’t burn like she said they would.

There was a flash of white light, and an image slowly came into focus in the center of the orb. As if he was flying at a speed faster than the wind, he saw the top of the canyon carved out of the Green Mountains disappear. He travelled westward to some stone ruins on the other side of the mountains. Buried deep within the rubble, another orb sparkled in the sunlight. Then the visions disappeared.

He had seen those ruins before, he realized as he carried the orb back to Ranealya. They were the Ruins of Rhodus, where Travodus reportedly cast his ill-fated ritual. He now understood why she didn’t want to find the third orb.

She shoved him into the tunnel. “Let's go.”

“Wait!” He turned and bowed to the sphinx. “I appreciated our meeting, sphinx.”

It narrowed its eyes, and Ranealya pushed harder.

Once they were outside the cave, she snatched the orb and examined his hands. “Why aren’t they burned? You're not of elvan blood.”

He looked down and saw she was right. “I've had enough of your blood on my hands, both with me healing you and you healing me. Perhaps it offered some sort of protection.”

“Maybe.” She ran her finger over his palms.

He met her eyes and saw a momentary glimpse into her mind. She had been worried about him, and his skin grew warm where she touched him. He inched closer to her, wanting to feel the warmth of her touch elsewhere.

Her face suddenly grew stony, and she pulled away. “Let's move before the sphinx goes hunting for his dinner. We may still be on the menu if we linger here too long.”

They weaved their way through the narrow canyon and back to their horses. As before, he cast a shrinking spell on the orb before she stowed it with the other one. Then they mounted up and continued to hug the outline of the mountains.

“I'll take you most of the way to the next orb,” she said when the sun hung low on the horizon.

“To the Ruins of Rhodus?”

Ahead of him, she flinched. She nodded, though, and said nothing more to him as they rode. At the source of the West River, she turned north and began to ride up into the mountains along another trail known only to animals and foot travelers.

Later that evening as they made camp, Gregor asked her why she refused to go with him to find the third orb.

Her face twisted with anger. “Why do you persist in asking me questions you know I don't want to answer?” She crossed the campsite in three steps and crouched in front of him. “Shall I share a memory with you?”

It took him a moment to form a coherent response to her offer. “You’ll let me into your mind?”

“Yes, if it will satisfy your curiosity once and for all.”

He was so eager to learn why she wished to avoid returning to the ruins, he reached forward and placed his hands on her head without thinking about the consequences. He closed his eyes and formed a connection between them. Then he began to pry into her mind.

The first image he saw was a griffin pinning her to the ground as a gray-bearded man looked down upon her. “An elf without the gift?” The man smiled, and a chill rippled through Gregor’s body. “Yes, she’ll do nicely.”

The image faded and was replaced by another. It was dark. Voices chanted around him. He began to sense what she sensed and, oddly enough, felt her emotions. She was sharing her complete memories with him. Her fear grew as she understood what was happening around her, making her heart pound against her chest.

An eerie incantation floated through the air. Blue lights flashed and slowly intensified, and her breath hitched.

Suddenly, a sharp pain filled his body, as if his flesh were simultaneously being ripped and burned from his body. His screams in the present mingled with hers in the memory. He tried to pull away, but she dug her fingers into his hands and pressed them tighter to her head. His eyes burned with tears as the pain finally passed, and the scourge of the three goddesses began.

Lightning flashed from a goddess on the ramparts, and the walls of the fortress crumbled. He watched in horror as two other goddesses reduced Travodus to a pillar of ashes to be scatted by the gale-force winds. Like Ranealya did then, he wanted to do nothing more than to hide from their wrath, but she wouldn’t let him out of her mind.

The fear ebbed as the elvan goddess approached Ranealya and held her chin. “You did not choose this fate, yet it has been given to you,” she said. “But all this has happened for a reason, Nyelle. You are the first of your kind, and you will be the last. Do not squander these gifts.” Elios smiled and returned to the other two goddesses.

She finally released his hands as the goddesses faded away in her memory.

Gregor trembled and stumbled backwards. Even after the Azekborn attacks, he’d never experienced that level of terror, nor had he dreamed he could tolerate that much pain and live to tell about it. Yet she had experienced all that and more. He wiped his tears away from behind his glasses and tried to slow his pounding heart.

Ranealya was shaking, too, watching him with regretful eyes. “I'm sorry.” She sulked away to the other side of the camp and placed the saddle on her horse. “I shouldn't have done that to you. You don't need me anymore. I'll leave you now.”

“But I want you to stay, at least for tonight.” He’d probably need her to protect him from the nightmares he would probably have later. He reached for her, but she kept her distance. “How will I find you after I retrieve the orb?”

She lowered her head. “Now that you know my mind, you can send me a message, and I will send Galen to teleport you to the camp.”

He resisted the urge to cast some spell to stop her from leaving him. He had asked for this, after all. He was the one who wanted to know why she refused to go to Rhodus and why she flinched every time the word “Travodus” was mentioned. “Now I understand why you wish to forget it.”

He wished he could, too.

She looked at him from the corner of her eye and moved away from the horse. “I'll stay tonight. Go to sleep, Gregor, and pray you’ll forget what you just saw.”

He lay down as instructed and watched her sit across the camp from him, keeping guard against anyone that would bring them harm. She seemed so strong on the outside, but he was only beginning to understand how fragile she really was underneath her tough exterior.

His eyes grew heavy. When he opened them the next morning, she was gone.

CHAPTER 21

Kira stared into the bonfire as Arlisle stroked her hair. She’d lost count how many times she’s asked herself why she had come here, but the answer remained the same. She was trying to feel the same way about him that she did for Galen. The faerie’s taunts echoed in her mind.
Humans should stay with humans
. And there was no shortage of male attention here in the Highmounte camp, especially since she returned looking more like a girl.

Arlisle bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. His lips felt nothing like Galen’s. They were wet, sloppy, surrounded by a prickly beard. She responded by burying her face in his shirt, hoping to avoid another assault. Nothing about this felt right, but she was unsure how to proceed with the whole courtship nonsense.

The music stopped, and she looked up. Jaius strode into the camp, paying no attention to the eyes that followed him. “Not another pointy-ear,” she heard rumbling through Arlisle’s chest.

Jaius stopped in front of her. “Kira, Galen needs to see you now.”

“About what?” Arlisle replied.

“That’s between him and her.”

“I think I’ll come along this time.” He moved from under her, but she stayed still. “That is, unless the lass refuses to go.”

Arlisle tensed as another hand touched her shoulder. A strange feeling of calm washed through her. “Please, Kira,” Jaius said, “he would not bother you unless it was important.”

She nodded. Of course it had to be important—that was the only reason he would bother her. She rose with Arlisle close by her side and looked up at Jaius. The corners of the dark-haired elf’s mouth angled downward. “Let’s go,” she mumbled.

The three of them crossed the camp and came to Galen’s tent. The lights inside burned brighter than normal tonight, and she wondered why. Jaius held open the flap and waited for her to enter.

Inside, Galen sat on his trunk, his forehead resting in his hand.

A female elf approached her, and Kira wanted to run away. This stranger was graceful, beautiful—everything she wasn’t. Her dark blue eyes searched Kira’s face. “Is this the apprentice?”

Her pulse quickened.
Is Galen trying to send me to someone else to complete my training?