Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (5 page)

He wrapped her in an embrace, glad that she’d always been willing to ignore his dirty hands and rough edges.

“It will be all right,” Eric said soothingly. “I’ll set new perimeter defenses and make sure we have enough supplies on hand to last us a few months. The goblins and trolls that wander through here always pass on after a few weeks of fruitless searching. I think I’ve even found a way to enhance the water filters to compensate for the ash. It may even work this time, the Lord willing.”

Natalie laughed softly and cupped one of her hands inside of his. She brought her other hand up to wrap around his chin and right cheek, lifting his head so he could look into her eyes.

“Eric,” she said, hesitantly. “I . . . I have something I need to tell you.”

Eric frowned. Usually when Natalie beat around the bush with things it was because she had something to tell him that he wasn’t going to like.

“Ok.”

“I um—well we—” She paused and brushed a strand of her auburn hair away from her freckled face. Her eyes were very green today. “We’re going to have a baby,” she said all in a rush.

“That’s all right, my dear.” Eric said out of reflex, then stopped, blinking rapidly. “Wait, what did you say?”

Natalie gave his face a playful little shake. “I’m pregnant, Eric. You’re going to be a father.”

“Pregnant?!” Eric stood up in rush, lifting Natalie off her feet and swinging her around in the air.

“Yes.” Natalie laughed.

Eric laughed along with her, though there was a small note of trepidation and fear bouncing around in the back of his mind. Though he presented a brave face for everyone else and he honestly
did
believe they were relatively safe here, he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to bring a baby into
this
world.

“Have you told anyone besides me?” Eric asked instead of voicing his concerns.

“Put me down, you great ogre.” Natalie laughed.

Eric returned her to the floor.

“Only you. You’re going to be the father, after all. I figured you should be the first to know.”

“I appreciate that. We should tell everyone else. It will lift their spirits and boost hope after losing Kevin.”

“We will. Just not now, I don’t think,” Natalie said, a note of her earlier trepidation returning. “Not right now. I want to wait a while and see how things go.”

Maybe Eric wasn’t the only one with misgivings. He found himself grinning foolishly anyway.

Caleb’s lungs burned with pain by the time the dvergers came to a halt. His legs were barely able to support his weight. They wobbled and shook with each plodding step.

His vision was blurred with exhaustion, but he noticed that he and the dvergers were in a small, sheltered valley. There was something odd about it that Caleb couldn’t place. He blinked a few times and had to shake his head to clear it before he realized what it was.

The valley was completely devoid of ash. A few haggard, wilting plants clotted the valley floor.

There was something else about the valley. Something alien. Even through his exhaustion he could sense it. As they walked toward a small cave almost hidden behind a large boulder, Caleb felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“We should bind the human,” someone said from behind him, “and blindfold him. He should not be allowed to see the sacred valley halls.”

Several other dvergers grumbled their agreement. They were not as winded as he, despite their heavy armor and the leaden weapons they carried.

“No,” Sigvid said, “I speak for him.”

“He do be a spy, Sigvid,” the other dverger said.

Blinking tiredly, Caleb recognized the voice as belonging to the axe-wielder from the bunker. He steeled himself for the coming confrontation, shrugging aside his exhaustion.

“Do you know this, Bothvar? When did you become a cleric, able to see into the future by Atelho’s will? We could surely use one who can see with the All-Father’s Eye.” Sigvid’s response carried the weight of command. Thomas had spoken with that same tone.

“I don’t need to be a cleric to be knowing that he’s a dragon’s pet. Look at him! This murdering animal led that wyrm straight to us!”

Bothvar clutched his axe with white-knuckled hands and shot Caleb a look of such venom and loathing that he recoiled despite himself. The dverger stood with his feet wide, ready for a fight.

Caleb’s brain refused to work correctly, but the hunter within him, the survivor, guided his hand toward the hilt of his long knife and ordered his body to sink into a ready position. He surreptitiously scanned the valley for a means of escape, though the dvergers had closed into a broken circle around him. The majority of the group clumped close to Bothvar, their faces grim and eyes hard. Only a few remained standing beside Sigvid and Caleb. The tension in the air was palpable.

“Wyrms find us as they always do. This human killed it and saved us all. I would think you would be thanking him instead of insulting his honor by carrying on like an old fishwife.” Sigvid’s voice was cold. “Now unless you want to declare Holmganga here and now, which you can’t do under Enclave Law, get your stupid, fat face inside.” He pushed past Bothvar and the other dvergers and entered the cave.

Caleb stumbled after him, his mind screaming at him to turn and run out into the night.

The entrance was small and shallow. Caleb didn’t know how they were all going to fit inside. Sigvid ran his hands down one of the walls until he found a particular depression in the rock. With a little shove, a cleverly hidden door opened inward. A faint greenish glow streamed into the cave. Sigvid pushed Caleb forward and scowled at the dvergers that crowded into the cavern behind him.

The glow that illuminated the passage emanated from several round glass orbs that were suspended from the ceiling. It was not a natural tunnel. Caleb was alert enough to realize that. It had been cut out of the rock by well-practiced hands. The walls were perfectly smooth, without a single chisel mark to mar the perfection of the craftsmanship.

“Move along, human,” Sigvid shouted from behind him.

He hurried forward, but the dvergers still pushed passed him toward an iron-clad door that was recessed in the wall a few feet away. They opened it and shoved Caleb inside.

Caleb allowed himself to be pushed. A little abuse was nothing. If the dvergers were going to kill him, they would have done so already.

A pile of blankets lay in a hammock that was clamped into the wall with iron hooks. Another of the strange glass orbs hung from the ceiling on a strand of wire. A roughly hewn wooden table and a couple of chairs were recessed in the far corner.

“Stay here,” Sigvid ordered from the doorway. “Sleep if you must. There are some things that I must attend to before they cave in on me! By Úndin’s eternal beard, what am I to do with you? I will be back later with some food and drink.” He shut the door.

Caleb heard the scrape of the key in the lock. He was too tired to care. He flopped down onto the hammock, pulled a blanket over himself, and was almost instantly asleep.

A voice whispered in the darkness, so faint that it remained indistinguishable from the sound of a mild breeze. Except there was no wind. Not even a breath of it.

He strained to make out words. He stood rooted in place, unable to move a muscle.

The voice called to him. It compelled him to listen, to hear, even as he struggled to breathe and fight against the enveloping darkness. He needed to reach out to that voice, to find the speaker. The voice was freedom. Safety.

The voice whispered near him, just outside his reach. He tensed every muscle against the force that held him bound, exerting all his strength in a heroic effort to reach out to the speaker—to hear the words.

Something gave. The whispered words hit him with the force of a blow.

“Find me, Caleb!”

It was Rachel’s voice.

Caleb sat upright in the blankets. The hammock swayed dangerously, but he didn’t fall. Icy sweat drenched his brow and made his shirt stick to his chest. His heart raced and his chest heaved harder than it had during his earlier flight. The ring bounced against his chest beneath his shirt with each gasping breath. The metal felt as if it too, had frozen.

He had dreamed of Rachel every night for the last two years, usually as he had last seen her, with Benson in her arms, but it had never felt so real before—like he could reach out and touch her, hold her once again.

His arms ached with longing and he realized that he was crying. He didn’t care.

A key scraped in the lock, sending Caleb’s hand flying to the long knife’s hilt. The lock clicked and the door swung inward.

Sigvid stepped into the room. He was devoid of armor and weaponry, clad only in thick woolen leggings, belted at the waist, a tunic, and a black leather vest.

Caleb placed the knife across his lap within easy reach and scrubbed the back of his hand across his face. The move only served to smear the dirt that had gone damp with his tears.

“Not much to look at, are you?” the dverger said without preamble.

Caleb shrugged. He hadn’t given much thought to his appearance in months, nor was the opportunity to find a mirror or clear water to view his reflection something that occurred frequently.

“You’ve been in here awhile; you must be hungry. I know I promised you food, but I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me to get it.” Sigvid turned his back on him and walked back out through the door. “You can keep the langsaxe.”

Caleb hesitated. Sigvid had left the door open. The way was clear. There were only a few dozen feet between him and freedom. Caleb was sure that he could make it to the concealed cavern before the dverger even realized what was going on. He could be gone in minutes, and with an army of golgent, trulgo, and their ilk close by, he could return to the hunt.

He was at the door in moments, the long knife tucked into his belt and his heart already pumping with anticipatory adrenaline, ready for the mad dash to freedom. Something stopped him at the door though. Some unknown, unconscious feeling pressed in on him and Caleb found himself turning right, toward the dverger and deeper into the maze of tunnels. Sigvid was waiting for him only a few steps further down the hall, arm crossed across his broad chest and a short wooden pipe dangling from the corner of his lip.

“You’re not as stupid as you look either, human,” the dverger said, pulling the pipe free and using the stem to point down the hall. “If you’d tried going that way you’d have been dead before you took the second step.”

Caleb didn’t give the dverger the satisfaction of looking over his shoulder. He should have known, should have suspected that there would be more tests to see what he would do when given an obvious opportunity to escape. He silently berated himself, though he had managed to avoid the trap. Perhaps it was the last vestiges of sleep from which he had abruptly awoken, but his mind was processing information more slowly, lost in the haunting echoes of Rachel’s voice.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Only Úndin can answer that one for you. I’d be scuppered if I know why I went through all that effort to keep you alive.” The dverger used his pipe to scratch under his bushy, auburn beard before he stowed it away in a pocket.

Caleb waited for the dverger to explain further. When no answer was forthcoming, he tried a different question.

“Why are you here? The golgent and trulgo, as you call them, they’ve been here from the beginning, but you’re the first—dverger, is it?—I’ve seen. How’d you get here?”

“‘Twas the Breaking, boy. It brought us all together. You must’ve been living in a cave if you haven’t figured that one out yet. Maybe that wyrm did more damage than I thought.”

“Breaking?”

“You are daft, then,” Sigvid said. When Caleb’s expression didn’t change the dverger gave an exasperated sigh and continued. “Ack, I’ll need food and mead in my belly before I delve too deeply into this tale.”

Sigvid, without waiting for any kind of a reply, strode purposefully away, quickening his pace so that Caleb, despite his long legs, had to jog to catch up to him.

Despite the pace, Caleb didn’t pay much attention to where they were going. The dream kept replaying itself in his mind, dwelling on the overwhelming darkness and the clarion call of his wife’s sweet voice. It still echoed with his thoughts and sang in his heart. He absently rubbed the spot on his chest where the ring touched his skin, feeling its reassuring presence beneath his fingertips. It calmed him and allowed him to clear his mind, though it was with a touch of regret that he banished both the dream and the voice to the recesses of his consciousness.

He pulled his full attention back to where they were walking just in time to stop himself from colliding with Sigvid’s stout form. They stood before a pair of large iron-bound oak doors that closed off the meandering passageway they had been following. Sigvid turned to Caleb and gave him an appraising look.

Caleb returned the scrutiny.

“You should know, boy, that none within this room are your friends, though only a few are your enemies.” Sigvid finished with a humorless grin and turned back to the doors. He wrenched them open with a momentous tug that slammed both doors into the tunnel walls and caused an echo reverberating so loud that Caleb winced.

“No sense hiding the fact that you’re coming, boy,” Sigvid called over the echoes and marched into the room.

Caleb stared incredulously after him, but followed.

The room they entered was well lit, sunlight streaming into the room from narrow slits recessed in the ceiling. An intricate array of mirrors were placed around the room, refracting the light into the remotest corners. A roaring fire crackled within a stonework pit along one wall, over which roasted a large slab of meat being turned on a spit by a sweaty-faced, apron-clad dverger.

Roughly a score of dvergers sat among the dozen long, oak tables in the midst of a meal, though none of them were currently eating. All of them stared at Caleb, stony faced and silent, plates and mugs forgotten on the tables in front of them. Caleb returned the looks, staring each of the dvergers in the eyes in turn. He recognized Bothvar seated at a far table, surrounded by a small knot of companions. He was not surprised to see hatred burning in the dverger’s eyes.

Caleb held the stare for a long moment, unafraid.

Bothvar blinked. He growled something to the dvergers around him and got to his feet. The dvergers with him got up as well and marched from the room through several smaller doors on the other side of the fire. The doors banged shut and, as if this were some sort of prearranged signal, the remaining dvergers in the room resumed eating. A low rumble of voices and the sounds of utensils hitting plates soon joined the crackle of the roaring fire.

“Either daft or reckless,” Sigvid said, echoing his prior sentiment. He pushed a platter piled high with meat, cheese, and bread into Caleb’s hands. “Let’s find a seat and get the messy bits out of the way.”

Caleb didn’t know what Sigvid meant by “the messy bits,” but he didn’t honestly care. The smell of the hot meat had his mouth watering with the sudden realization of just how famished he really was.

He took a seat at an empty table next to Sigvid and shoved some of the meat into his mouth with a handful of bread and cheese. He ate so quickly that he didn’t really taste anything until after his fourth mouthful. The bread was hearty and the cheese sharp and tangy. The meat had a spicy, gamey taste, and Caleb wasn’t sure what it was, nor was he sure he wanted to know.

Sigvid chuckled from across the table and pushed a tankard of mead toward him. A few other dvergers wandered over while Caleb was eating and spoke softly with Sigvid. They joined the two of them at the table, but did not speak.