Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (17 page)

He took a small step forward.

“I said hold, boy!” Sigvid barked, his voice emanating from Caleb’s left. “Don’t put that foot down unless you’re wanting to greet the other side today.”

Caleb halted, his outstretched foot hovering inches above the stony ground. He breathed heavily and his pulse raced at the sudden shout, though the tension was mixed with a dusting of relief.

The door that had creaked open earlier closed with a squeal of maltreated iron and wood. Wood scraped against stone and metal clunked against metal until a small metallic click sounded in the darkness. A key turning in a lock, Caleb realized.

A hand closed over his arm. Caleb spun, pulling free and instinctively drawing the bow until thin metal fletchings brushed the corner of his lips.

“Don’t stick me with that, boy,” Sigvid said in a normal voice.

There was a faint sound of something breaking with a sharp little pop, and a sudden light filled the room, illuminating the furthest reached with a soft, greenish hue. Sigvid held up one of the strange orb-like lamps in one hand, a large knapsack in the other. Caleb squinted against the sudden light as his eyes adjusted. This close, he could clearly make out the thick, liquid oozing around inside it.

Sigvid thrust the knapsack at Caleb, which forced him to lower the bow and snatch the sack out of the air before it hit the ground. The arrow he had notched slipped free and clattered against the stone floor with a metallic ping. The bag was heavier than it looked. Propping the bow against the side of the dead-end passages wall, Caleb slung the bag over one shoulder, returned the fallen arrow to his quiver and then picked the bow back up.

As he did so, he took a moment to study his surroundings now that there was light by which to see. The passageway ended in a blank wall, only broken up by a single, innocent-looking, wooden door. Outside of that single exit, there didn’t seem to be anywhere else they could go except back out the way they had come. Sigvid shuffled toward one of the side walls, treading with purposeful, calculated steps. The dverger held the glowing orb aloft, squinting at the stone of the wall. A pack similar to Caleb’s rested on his back.

“What are you looking for?” Caleb asked, though he didn’t follow the shorter figure.

“The way out of here,” Sigvid said absently, running his fingers over the stone in an intricate pattern as if searching for irregularities in the grain.

The dverger passed over each section of the stone wall quickly, working his way in the direction of the door. The closer he got to where the two walls met at a perfect corner, the closer the orb got to the stone.

Then he found what he was looking for. One moment Sigvid was muttering under his breath and the next he cried out triumphantly and pressed his thumb into a slight depression in the roughly hewn rock. A click sounded and a small section of the bottom half of the wall swung outward. A faint band of muted sunlight streamed in through the crawl-space opening. Though dim, the sunlight stung Caleb’s eyes. At the same time, it banished the last clinging vestiges of anxiety from the corners of his mind.

“How many hidden doors do you dvergers have?” Caleb asked, blinking away tears.

“As many as we can fit,” Sigvid answered with a terse grin. He stowed the orb lantern in an outside pocket of his pack. “Now get over here. Hug the wall, unless you want to die a very painful death.”

Stepping carefully, Caleb hurried to join Sigvid by the narrow opening, turning his feet sideways and shuffling along the wall, bow held in front of him. Sigvid nodded toward the opening with an expression that made it clear he wanted Caleb to go through first. Caleb shrugged and squatted down to study the passage’s mouth. The opening was so small he had to push both the pack and the bow ahead of him and shimmy through on his hands and knees. The muted sunlight glinted off the bow’s polished arms.

After only a few feet, Caleb’s back began to ache from the strange position and his arms burned from pushing the bow and heavy knapsack in front of him. Couldn’t the passage have been made just a foot wider? Thankfully, the passage was short.

A dozen feet into the rock, the narrow tunnel opened up into a spacious natural cave covered in loose, white sand. Water dripped from stalactites, ran down the knobbled, bumpy lengths of the stalagmites, and formed into narrow rivulets that ran down the sandy cave bottom to form little pools swathed in shadows. As he righted himself, Caleb noticed a slab of stone that rested to the side of the small tunnel’s mouth as if suspended on hinges. Another hidden door, linked to the first.

Sigvid appeared in the tunnel behind him and slid out onto the sand. The dverger pulled on the stone slab gently until it swung shut with a soft thud, merging with and disappearing into the surrounding rock.

“Where are we?” Caleb asked.

Sigvid didn’t answer immediately. Caleb turned toward him and was surprised to see a look of profound sorrow clouding his bearded features. The dverger gazed around the cavern with a faraway expression on his face, taking in the dripping stalactites and stalagmites without really seeming to see them.

“We’re the only ones,” Sigvid said.

“Were you expecting others?”

“All the escape tunnels lead here. This cave was to be our rallying point.” Sigvid gestured to the cave, taking in its emptiness.

“Maybe they’re still coming,” Caleb said.

Sigvid shot him a look, his eyes simmering pools of frustration and pain above his mask of whiskers.

“My rooms were the most secluded part of the Enclave and the furthest from here. If the golgent were already upon us then, by Úndin’s gray beard, you can bet there wasn’t a dverger left standing behind us. We dvergers do not abandon our own!”

The words stung, but Caleb didn’t let his anger show. He remember the dvergers who had sacrificed themselves that night he’d been captured. Sigvid’s tough dverger exterior forced his pain into bleak gruffness and hostility.

With a scowl, the dverger turned his back on Caleb and sat down onto the sandy floor. Sigvid fished around in his pack for a few moments and pulled out a small wooden cask and wrenched off the top, placing the cask in the sand in front of him. He pulled out a chunk of dried meat and tore a chunk off of it with his teeth. His other hand dove into a pocket and came up holding his pipe. It was clear that he wanted to be alone, so Caleb moved off a few paces to think, leaving Sigvid sucking on his pipe and chewing.

His blood still pounded from the emotional high and the tension of their run through the darkened tunnels. He suppressed a shudder at the memory of the creeping shadows and omnipresent stone. But, surprisingly, his mind was clearer than it had been for a long time. He had managed to avoid giving in to the hunter when he’d been confronted by the very creatures upon whose hands lay Rachel and Benson’s blood. He hadn’t given in to the hate and rage that burned away reason and forced him to kill the demons that had stolen his life away. Facing them, he had been able to think clearly, purposefully, and with focused intent. It was not that the thirst for justice had been slaked. No, far from it. Anger had still swelled within him when the yellow-eyed monsters appeared through the splintered door and he’d been forced, once again, to flee from a place of safety. But the fires—the all-consuming, thought-stealing inferno—had ebbed.

It was like waking up from an incessant nightmare and suddenly finding that the dream was real. That was the heart of it. The monsters of his childhood imagination became less horrifying once he accepted their reality. They could be seen, could be touched.

Could be killed.

True healing would come with time but, he realized with a soft note of surprise, he was taking a small step in the right direction.

His fingers twinged and he realized he had been turning the metal bow Sigvid had given him over and over in his hands. Holding it still, he let his fingers trace out the ring of stars etched into the metal arcs. Silently, he began turning the bow around again, admiring the way that the light played off the polished metal surface. As it turned, he noticed the scars and cuts that covered his hands. A red welt ran down his left hand to his thumb, the remnants of a burn. He’d fought more battles than he could remember; killed more golgent and trulgo than he could count, but he didn’t remember receiving the wounds.

The satisfaction he felt as he’d watched the golgent die, though, was a poignant, powerful memory. There was regret there as well, and sorrow—sorrow that he had not found a greater challenge and been killed in the process. The greater part of him, the angry, vengeance-seeking hunter within him, fought against hoping that one day he would face a challenge against which he would not win. That part of him wanted to die fighting and finally rejoin his wife and son on the other side. The sudden realization left him ashamed.

The smaller part, the broken, fragile part that was all that remained of his former self, still remembered the promise from his wife’s dying lips. The promise had been kept, but not without its own costs. Rachel’s voice from the dream wafted through his mind, but he pushed it aside with a wet sniff. He scrubbed his nose with the back of his hand and shook his head against the swell of emotions and self-realizations. It would not do to dwell on dreams.

He returned his attention to the bow. The weapon was a work of refined and masterful skill. The recurved arms swept backward gracefully in long metal arcs etched with patterns that swirled together to heighten the bow’s grace. There was a ring of nine stars engraved on both of the long, curved arms. The stars were an exact replica of the ones on his ring, echoes of the promises he had made to his wife then. They would help him to remember, as the ring had. They would keep him alive.

There was a word engraved just above the thick leather grip on the back face of the upper arm Faeranir. As he read the word, the bow grew icy cold in his grip and he almost dropped it, but his fingers seized up with white-knuckled strength. The chill passed almost instantly, but his left hand still tingled for several long seconds afterward.

“So it is yours then.”

Caleb jumped and actually dropped the bow. He had not heard Sigvid come up behind him until the dverger had spoken. Hastily, he picked it back up again. It felt good in his hands, familiar almost.

“You made this for me,” Caleb said, turning to face the dverger.

The dverger’s eyes were red-rimmed when he looked up at Caleb, but otherwise his expression had resumed its normal stony visage. His pipe rested in his left hand, trailing gray-blue smoke.

“Aye, I made it for you, though I can’t really recall the crafting. Most of last night is a giant hole in my memory, as if it has been cut free. Still, I forged that bow. It’s an Elithalma, the mark of a Ferreiro.” Sigvid extended a hand as if to touch the bow, but hesitated a few inches away from the metal arm. “I have done what no other smith has done before. I have forged two Elithalma within my lifetime.” His hand dropped back to his side. “Hopefully this one will not have the same flaws as the first.” His voice dropped off to almost a whisper at the last.

“What do you mean?”

Sigvid’s brows furrowed and his lips became a thin line that disappeared in his voluminous beard. Caleb couldn’t tell if it was anger or resignation that crossed the dverger’s face. The beard made judging dverger emotions challenging.

“More than a decade ago, I lost my wife to a trulgo raid. I couldn’t save her. When she died, a part of me did too. I became bestial and single minded. I didn’t want to be around other dvergers and I couldn’t stay here. I wandered the hills and mountain passes, searching for my revenge. Blind berserker rage drove me to kill. I came back this way often, claiming starvation or chance, but it was really to visit my wife among the honored dead. I couldn’t ever really leave her. When I was here I would drink to get away from the memories—not just of my wife, but of what I had become. I was guilty and ashamed, angry and full of hate. There wasn’t much good left in me—not unlike you when I first met you, my friend.”

Sigvid paused a moment to puff on his pipe. The embers within it had dimmed until only a tiny spot of red remained. It flared back to life with the first puff of the dverger’s breath, wafting smoke into the air.

“That’s why I was angry with you earlier. To convince the Elders to spare your life, I had to offer the one thing I valued most, this Enclave and my wife’s grave here among the honored dead.”

Caleb waited patiently, the seed understanding beginning to take root. Leaving the stem clamped in the corner of his mouth, Sigvid continued.

“One night when I was listening to the stories of Tealcenrir, I drunk myself into a daze. Somehow I made it to my old forge and started up the ashen furnace. Maybe I was looking for something familiar, maybe Atelho was guiding me that night, I don’t know. All I remember is a fragment of a song and the sparks of hammer striking metal. When I awoke the next morning there was a beautiful war hammer resting on the anvil, Elithalma empowered as in days when ore ran thick and Atelho still walked among us. Valundnir, thunder of the gods.” At this Sigvid smiled and took the pipe from his mouth, putting out the embers with a thick, calloused thumb.

“I left,” he continued. “The hammer had no real interest for me. I fight with the axe. I learned later that the other dvergers found Valundnir and declared me a Ferreiro. They found the dverger for whom the weapon was made. A mighty warrior, a Guerreiro, who fought with the power of Atelho and the strength of a dozen dvergers. It wasn’t until he showed signs of becoming a berserker that the others realized what terrible fury dwelt within the weapon. When I came back to myself after the Breaking, I heard about Valundnir and realized what had happened.