Angst (Book 4) (31 page)

13

As they approached the bend in the mountain, Angus became
more and more anxious to get past it so he could see the plateau. Smoke was
already rolling over the mountain they were on, and there was a soft hint of it
in the air around them. The sun looked fuzzy as it touched the distant mountain
peaks to the west. Something was burning, and the fire was a large one, but
what? If it were a volcano, wouldn’t it have made a lot of noise? That was what
his research had suggested, but this was like the quiet little outbursts from
the volcanoes next to Hellsbreath. All they did was spew a little lava now and
then. When they did that, their caldera filled up and it seeped over the top or
through one of the holes in its side. It sizzled and bubbled down the slope
until it hardened, but it rarely went very far. They were slow, steady flows,
not the violent explosions he read about in the chronicles of the Dwarf Wars.
The first blast was so fierce that it could be heard from as far away as Virag
and the shores of The Western Kingdoms. The smoke he was seeing wasn’t coming
from an eruption like that, and he needed to see for himself what was
happening.

Angus urged Gretchen toward the edge of the road where it dropped
off the steep slope of the mountain. It wasn’t as sharp of a drop-off as the
cliffs where the fletchings nested, but he would tumble and slide a long way if
he slipped over the edge. The outcropping was only about a mile ahead of them,
but he couldn’t hold back any longer. As he rode past Hobart and the others, he
kneed Gretchen and snapped the reins until she was at a full gallop. He didn’t
look back to see if the others followed him; they weren’t important. He
needed
to see the plateau.

He eased up on the reins just before the road curved around
the outcropping, and by the time he could see the edge of the plateau, Gretchen
had slowed to a fast jog. He let her settle into a walk as the rest of the
plateau came into view, and then pulled on the reins to stop her. She settled
into a comfortable stance, and he shielded his eyes against the glare of the
setting sun. What he saw confirmed what he had already known: the plateau was
on fire.
All
of the plateau, and the fire was creeping up to the tree
line on the mountain north of the plateau. It was probably climbing up the southern
mountains, too, but he couldn’t see them yet. What troubled him, though, were
the mountains on the far side of the plateau. He wasn’t sure—the sun was
setting behind them, and the wildfire on the plateau was making it difficult to
tell—but they seemed to have rivers of lava flowing out of them. It was as if
the valley holding the Angst temple had filled up and was overflowing, like the
inkwells of new apprentices who didn’t know how to manage the amount of ink
they needed in their quills. The excess dribbled down the neck and dried in
caked-on layers.

He settled back in the saddle. He was too late. The Tiger’s
Eye was gone. He had known it would be, but
seeing
the volcano purging
itself had burned away his last shred of hope and left an empty hole in its
wake. He shuddered and clenched his teeth. If—
when
—he found The Tiger’s
Eye, he had to take it back to the heart of that volcano to seal the nexus. How
could he do that?

First things first
, he thought.
I have to find The
Tiger’s Eye.

He kneed Gretchen to a walk and continued around the last
bit of the outcropping, the part that was blocking his view of the ledge they
needed to cross to reach the plateau.
Why am I going to the plateau?
he
wondered.
It’s on fire.
Then he shook his head.
As long as I don’t touch
the flames, I’ll be fine. My robe will protect me.
He frowned.
Yes, and
when I become Lava Man, I can walk through lava unscathed.
His frown
deepened as Gretchen sauntered forward, and he squinted at the mountains at the
other end of the plateau.
I never would have found the Angst temple without
that map Voltari gave me. It could have remained hidden for centuries—like it
had been since the end of the Dwarf Wars.
He turned away from the sun and
blinked until its afterimage went away.
Voltari planned this,
he thought
with calm certainty.
He wanted me to find the nexus. He even told me as much,
didn’t he?
In his mind, Angus heard again the disdain in Voltari’s voice as
he had said,
“I know of only one other major nexus, and that is deep within
the mountains; it fuels the magic of the dwarves and keeps their forges
burning. But they are incompetent fools who barely know how to tap into its
energy.”
He scowled at the back of Gretchen’s head because there was
nothing else to scowl at.
Voltari knows about The Tiger’s Eye. He gave me
the map with the Angst symbol on it so I would find it. He had trained me in
flame and earth magic so I would understand it. He taught me the spells I would
need—

Angus’s eyes widened.
The scrolls Voltari kept! He
challenged me to make them because he wanted to use them himself. Shield of
Flame deflects away other flame, and if I had that spell, I could walk through
the burning trees of the plateau without even getting singed. So can Voltari.
And Lava Flow! What better spell to have when walking into a volcano than one
that can bend its lava to one’s own will?

Everything he did,
Angus realized,
has prepared me
for this situation. Voltari wanted
me
to take The Tiger’s Eye for him,
didn’t he?
His face became quite still as he answered himself.
Yes. But
why? What does Voltari want with the nexus? The Tiger’s Eye?
His eyebrows
scrunched together as a final thought occurred to him.
Why didn’t Voltari
take it himself?

“Angus?” Hobart said as he came up beside him.

Angus mechanically turned toward him but said nothing. He
didn’t even really see him. His mind was running through possible answers to
his questions, and at each turn it became more and more evident that Voltari
had been manipulating him from the first day he had arrived at Blackhaven
Tower. He wasn’t surprised by this sudden realization; he wasn’t even troubled
by it. Voltari was a selfish bastard who always did what he wanted, and it made
perfect sense that he would only take on an apprentice to serve
his
needs. What bothered him, what left a sickening sensation in the pit of his
stomach, what nauseated him to the point where he tasted bile in the back of
his throat and had to fight back the urge to vomit, was the simple fact that he
hadn’t realized it sooner. He
knew
Voltari. He
understood
Voltari. And yet, he had failed to realize Voltari’s agenda. He should have
known it from the start, when Voltari had given him the map. But Voltari had
seen to that, too, hadn’t he? He had buried Angus deep within himself and left
behind a naïve, pliable amnesiac. He—

“Angus!” Hobart snapped. “What’s with you? You know better
than to ride off on your own like that.”

Angus shrugged. Hobart didn’t matter. He couldn’t understand
what was happening the way Angus did. Voltari wanted The Tiger’s Eye to be
taken, and he would think that Angus had done it. He would be coming for
him—for The Tiger’s Eye—and there was nothing Angus could do to stop him. The
power Voltari held….

Angus shook his head and tried to set aside his speculations—his
insights
—so he could respond to Hobart. What had he asked? “I needed to
see the plateau,” he said, his voice distant as he looked past Hobart and at
the flames. “I needed to be sure.” He was sure, now, but did it matter?
Voltari…

“And?”

“It is as I feared,” Angus said, his voice sounding to him
like it was coming from far away. “The Tiger’s Eye has been taken.” They were
far enough past the outcropping that he could see the ledge. There were riders
on it. They were about a third of the way across, and the tiny splotches of
color told him who it was. “The patrol,” he muttered. “They might have it. If
they do….” It would about two take days to meet up with them on horseback, but
if he flew across the valley…

“Is Embril with them?” Hobart asked as he shielded his eyes
and stared. “I don’t see the sky blue of her robe.” He turned to Ortis and
asked, “Do you?”

Angus brought the magic into focus and was astonished to see
a bubbling trail of flame magic following the patrol.
The nexus moves with
The Tiger’s Eye
, Master Renard had said. That meant it was with the
patrol—but who had taken it? Embril? He frowned. If it was Embril, then it
wouldn’t be her fault, would it? Voltari had set this tragedy into motion, and
she was just an unwitting pawn in his plans. It was Voltari’s fault. He had
manipulated Angus into finding The Tiger’s Eye and that had led Angus to tell
Embril about it. But she wasn’t with the patrol, was she? No hint of blue, no
hint of her long, wavy, red hair. He absentmindedly reached for a strand of sky
magic with his left hand and began tying the knots for the flying spell.

“I do not,” Ortis said after a few moments of concentration.
“But it is too far to see any details. She may not be wearing her robe.”

Angus didn’t think about what his left hand was doing; his
thoughts were on Embril and how The Tiger’s Eye was consuming her, how it may
have already consumed her. Perhaps she was unable to ride? Perhaps that was why
they weren’t seeing her? Perhaps there was still time to save her. He frowned.
She was in danger because he had put her in danger. He had put her in danger
because he had wanted to protect the nexus and The Tiger’s Eye. He had to help
her if he could. He had to fix what Voltari had made him do. He couldn’t do
that here. He needed to reach the patrol. Angus let go of the reins and tweaked
the strand of sky magic to lift himself from the saddle. Once he was clear of
it, he adjusted his orientation until he was like a spear’s tip diving into the
wind and then he aimed himself over the valley.

“Angus!” Hobart called, reaching out for him and grabbing
the air that he had just left behind. “Wait!” Hobart shouted—but it was too
late. “Taro’s visions—”

Whatever else Hobart said was lost in the rush of the wind
around him as Angus gathered speed. It didn’t matter, anyway. The only thing
that mattered was saving Embril, and he needed to know where she was to be able
to do that. Who was Taro, anyway? He had never heard of him. Before he had gone
a hundred feet, he had completely dismissed them from his mind. Thoughts of
Voltari lingered….

14

“We must be careful,” Sludge Hammerhead said as he held up
his hand and slowed to a walk. “The road was made during the Dwarf Wars. There
are many false steps.”

Embril gratefully slowed down. The Swiftness spell had
ended, and she had been breathing heavily from the brisk jog. Walking would
give her a chance to catch her breath. She would have cast the spell again, but
Sludge had told her they were not far from the exit. She had decided to wait
until she knew what spells she might need to reach Giorge. Besides, she had
been lucky the spell hadn’t gone wrong yet; her memory wasn’t perfect, and
there were a few complicated knots in the spell that she wasn’t sure about. So
far it had worked, but there was no need to risk it again until she knew if she
would need it.

“My grandfather helped build this road,” Sludge said. “He
taught me where to step. See? We must walk along the wall. The rock is weak in
the middle. We would fall through.” He pointed at the center of the tunnel
floor, which looked no different than anywhere else on the floor, and moved to
the edge. He hugged the wall as if the tunnel were only a foot wide instead of
wide enough for two dozen men to stand abreast, and then moved back to the
center of the tunnel.

“Don’t touch that wall,” he said, pointing ahead of them.
“The stone is loose and will cave in upon us.” Again, it looked no different
from the wall around it, and she wondered if Sludge was lying about it so that
she wouldn’t come back through it on her own. Then they rounded a sharp corner
and he said, “Hindered,” and pointed at a rubble pile stretching from the left
wall and spanning nearly the full width of the road. “We must be careful here.
The wall on the other side is loose.” He slowed as they went through the narrow
opening, and then quickly moved back to the center of the tunnel. After a few
more warnings of this sort, the walls of the tunnel grew moist and he said, “We
are near the end, now. Step carefully. The road will be slippery.”

He was right. Her boots skidded on the moist, smooth stone,
and she struggled to keep her footing. Sludge plodded along as if his feet had
melted into the stone with each step he took.

They rounded a turn in the tunnel, and the dull humming
Embril thought she was imagining suddenly grew to a muffled crashing roar. She
had heard something like that before, when she had bathed in the waterfall to
wash the mud out of her hair. Her eyes widened—could they be near that
waterfall? Was
that
Hammerhead’s secret entrance?

“The water runs heavy,” Sludge half-shouted. “There will be
much of it.”

Embril nodded, wondering how soon it would be before the
road slanted upward. As far as she could tell, it had been nearly level the
whole way, and the few times she noticed a tilt, it was always downward. Were
they
under
the plateau? But that didn’t make any sense, did it? The
dwarves had fled the plateau because the mountain was bleeding, but there had
been no sign of lava in this tunnel. Even the flame magic seemed almost normal.
Then the tunnel suddenly dropped down at a sharp, slick angle for several dozen
paces before opening out into a large cavern.

“Follow me,” Sludge shouted over the crashing roar of the
waterfall. He walked around the edge of the tunnel until he reached a series of
large stone doors reinforced with huge horizontal iron beams. “Do not touch
them,” he shouted up at her. “They hold back the water. If your kind had found
this road and made it this far during the war, they would have been drowned
here.”

Embril nodded and followed him across the cavern and into a
smaller, quieter cavern. He crossed it and entered a small spiraling stairwell
that went up for some time before they rose into another large cavern. This time,
there was only one huge door in the middle of the wall to their right. He
walked up to it and stopped.

“What is it?” she asked him.

Sludge looked at her and shook his head. “You must not see
the way to open it,” he said. “It is secret.”

Embril looked at the huge door, shrugged, and turned around.
“Will this do?” she asked.

In answer, she heard Sludge moving about, metal jingling
together like keys, and then the grinding squawk of a rusty gear being forced
to move for the first time in centuries. A few seconds later, a chill, wet wind
fluttered her robes and the harsh roaring of the waterfall nearly deafened her.
Then she felt a strong hand with stubby, wide fingers on her wrist. She turned
toward it.

The door was ajar, but there was enough room for her to walk
through it, and Sludge pointed at it. “Go!” he shouted, but she couldn’t hear
him. The meaning was clear from the way his mouth moved, the fierceness with
which he glared at her, and the firmness of the little shove he gave her. She
stepped forward and squeezed into the narrow opening. The doors were thick
slabs of stone, and it took a few steps to reach the other end. They started to
close before she was even halfway through, and she had to turn sideways to
avoid being crushed by them.

Once outside, she found herself on a wide ledge in front of
a large pool of water. The waterfall raged in front and above her, completely
blocking her view, and its spray mingled with the rush of wind that sent her
robes aflutter and whipped her long hair around behind her. To her left, the
ledge ended abruptly and dropped down a few dozen feet to the valley floor. To
her right, the ledge ran along the mountain and disappeared under the splash of
the waterfall. That was the route that was intended, but she didn’t take it.
She didn’t need to climb down to the valley; she could fly across it.

She
almost
cast the spell and leapt from the ledge,
but something held her back. Giorge didn’t know where she was, and she could
use that to her advantage—and she might need that advantage. She didn’t
think
she did, but she had already been wrong about too many things to risk it. She
needed to see where the patrol was first, and if she could sneak into it, then
maybe she could catch Giorge unprepared. She turned to the right and followed
the ledge behind the waterfall. It was slick—dangerously so—and she kept her
hand on the cliff face to help keep her balance. There was no sign of the door,
no hint of its seal—it was as if the cliff and the door were one and the same
thing. If she didn’t know it was there, she would think the mountain was solid.

It took nearly an hour to get far enough past the
waterfall’s spray to be able to see past it, and by then, the late afternoon
shadow was stretching across the valley. It would be dark, soon, and that
darkness could benefit her greatly—
if
she knew where the patrol was
camping for the night.

The ledge she was standing on tapered downward and flattened
out near the valley floor, next to the roiling pool of water at the base of the
waterfall. She was drenched by the time she reached the bottom and looked up at
the twilight sky—at least, that was what she thought it was until she saw the
shadow line halfway up the mountain across from her and realized the late
afternoon air was heavy with smoke. There was no hint of it where she was, but
the wind above her was carrying the smoke east. The plateau was on fire. She
couldn’t wait for nightfall before she looked for Giorge. If—
when
—he saw
her, what would he do? Maybe if she plastered mud on her blue robe?

No. That would take too long, and by the time she finished
it wouldn’t matter. She had to go now and risk Giorge seeing her. She took a
deep, slow, calming breath. She would fly out over the valley until she was in
the middle, and then she would rise upward in a circular motion until she saw
the patrol, and by the time she reached them, she would be dry again.

She reached for a strand of air and—

Her eyes widened and she gasped. There was a black
silhouette streaking through the smoke, just above the shadow line, and
she
recognized it
.

“Angus,” she whispered as her knees buckled and she sagged
heavily to the soft, muddy shore of the pool. “He’s alive,” she whimpered as
the magic slipped from her fingertips. Tears gathered in her eyes and dripped
down to her cheeks, mingling with the moisture still clinging to them. She
stared through them, following Angus’s graceful movements as he flew north,
toward the ledge, toward—

“Giorge!” she hissed. A sudden, intense burst of anger
pounded its way through the tears, through the relief of seeing Angus alive,
through the sudden, intense joy in her heart. “Angus doesn’t know!”

She brought the magic into focus and reached for a strand of
air with shaking fingers….