As the tunnel veered deeper into the mountain, a blue, internal light emanated from the obsidian. Some stones shone brightly, others so faintly that they seemed to disappear. It was the ore; it existed in every part of the mountain, from the tiniest pebble to the largest boulder. Manufactured Jantari metal could blind a man if he wasn’t careful; the ore alone merely trapped tiny flecks of light. For this, Elena was grateful.
With her other hand, she felt for the holopod. Its side was badly dented, but when Elena pressed her finger against the sensor, it flickered open.
With shaking fingers, Elena traced the red tunnel. It bore south to a single dot. There lay the Black Scales, or so she hoped.
Suddenly, the mountain quaked, dust and dirt raining down into her eyes.The third mine.The inferno must have spread farther north. Elena grasped the wall, fear bounding through her body as the tunnel quivered. A deep groan echoed through the chamber. The shaking intensified, and the mountain seemed to groan, guttural and deep, as if it had lost some part of itself. And then Elena realized why.Landslides.The third explosion had finally triggered what she had feared.
Stones fell from the ceiling, but the tunnel held. After several minutes, the shaking finally stopped. Elena cautiously pushed herself to her feet.
Impossible.
Except for loose dirt and crumbled rocks, the tunnel was intact. She pressed her hand against the stone, and the wall quivered. She gasped, shrinking back. The blue light from the ore pulsed, but when Elena touched the wall again, it lay still. Nothing crept through the darkness. The tunnel lay as quiet as it had before the rumbling.
Her mind was playing tricks on her.
With one last look at the wall, Elena darted down the path. It snaked deeper and deeper into the bowels of Sayon, and she walked until she could walk no farther, her legs buckling from exhaustion.
She slept where she fell, fitfully, dreaming of people choking beneath the earth. The old merchant. The brenni handler. Yassen. Their eyes were red and leering.
Burning Queen, they sneered.Burning Queen.
She woke to the sound of her own screaming. Her voice echoed through the mountain, but no one answered.
Elena stumbled on in a delirious state. The blood on her elbow crusted over. Her sprained wrist grew stiff. Hunger gnawed her stomach until it became familiar. She walked until she fainted, slept until she woke from nightmares. She had no sense of time but felt like she had been walking for days, weeks. She felt a strange presence throughout the mountain, as if someone were holding a deep breath.
Her throat was so dry it hurt, and her eyes were raw and swollen from tears. She did not know when she had started crying, only that it felt as if she had never stopped.
She had long known the stinging stab of grief. She had first learned it when her mother died; felt it, so excruciatingly deep, when Ferma fell; almost drowned in it when her father burned.
But this, this was something more. This was a creeping wail that threatened to spill out of her throat. A wail that hummed in the deep marrow of her bones. A wail that defied even the strongest of desert winds, the deepest of tunnels.
And finally, she let it out.
It reverberated through the bowels of the mountain and beyond. So keen was her cry, so sharp her anguish that the mountain trembled. It seemed to sense her loss. But the tunnel still stretched on, the same as before. No matter what she endured, no matter how many lives she sacrificed, Elena could not change the path ahead of her.
But she dared not stop.
Faintly, she registered the tunnel was beginning to rise. The path snaked past stalagmites shaped like fingers, reaching upward. Elena raised her hand to push back a lock of hair and saw a jagged line of dried blood from her index finger to her elbow. She touched the wound, and fresh dots of blood oozed out. One grew heavy; she watched as it fell to the floor.
Somewhere deep in the mountain, there came a growl. Elena froze.Am I still dreaming?The sound seemed to have come from far below, from beneath the ground itself. The darkness before her rustled like a fabric being pulled tight. Again, Elena had the odd feeling that something was holding its breath, but now, as the growl came again, louder this time, she realized it wasn’t waiting anymore.
It was coming toward her.
Elena began to run. The tunnel narrowed as it rose higher and higher. The walls closed in on her, and she was forced to crawl on her knees. Her heart pounded in her ears. A sharp chill cut through the air. It knifed down her throat as she dragged her way forward. Suddenly, she felt something touch her ankle, and she almost shrieked. She remembered how she had heard a similar growl when she first entered the tunnels with Yassen. When she had seen a mass of black so dark that even the shadows seemed to fear it. She began to scramble faster, her shoulders scraped raw by the walls. Finally, the tunnel widened. Elena lurched back to her feet and dashed forward, following the curving path.
It led her to a tall chamber full of light. Ore trapped within the rocks glinted, illuminating a staircase chiseled out of the wall that rose to a gate twice as tall as a man.
She sprinted up the stairs as she heard something scraping in the tunnel behind her. It growled again, and the mountain shuddered in response. Elena took the steps two at a time, her breath tearing her chest. Runes were carved along the staircase, and she recognized the symbols of the inward storm and the fire.
Finally, she reached the landing. The mountain moaned. It was a frightening sound, cold and jarring like a metal nail dragging across a tin roof. She slammed her hand against the gate. She could tell at once it was old, fashioned out of pure silver rather than Jantari steel. Several gears and bolts lay across the doors in an intricate pattern. She saw no doorknob, no handle. There was no inscription above the gate, no other runes to give her clues.
The growl came again. Stalactites snapped and shattered on the floor. Elena grasped the gears, running her fingers frantically over them. There had to be a key, there was always a key on this damned mountain.
She dragged her hand down the gears, feeling the sharp grooves.Odd.The gate seemed as old as the mountain, yet the gears had not dulled with time. They snaked and twisted, slowly creating a figure, and then she saw it—the dragon.
Head south until you find the dragon, Yassen had said.The Black Scales will know you’ve arrived even before you do.
Samson.
