Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

air current, but because of Valeria’s trembling. She quivered while we drew higher, drew nearer to release. When I brushed her hand, she jolted as though she had seen another monster like the shivering cube. Valeria looked at me then, her delicate features an intermingling of fear and excitement. As I held the Materna’s hand I felt Branwen’s blue eye on us, and I hoped she knew I would have done the same for her had she needed me to.

At last, once we had clambered up the sharp edge of another cliff, the misshapen for whom such things were much less taxing watched us help each other to our feet.

“This is where I leave you,” said our guide, once again speaking primarily to Branwen. “I am not welcome on the surface. The end of this tunnel opens to a mountainside cave in Cascadia. If you descend, you should easily enough find the highway, or so I am told…you can follow that to a small village, Soot. Although, which way one might go to find it, I am not sure.”

I nodded, knowing he would not accept the shake of my hand and leaving it at a slight bow of my waist. “Thank you for assisting us, Adonisius, even after all we’ve done against you.”

“You’ve done plenty for me, as well as against me.” After tapping the helmet Valeria traded him in exchange for guiding us to the garden of the mysterious Nightlands shape-changer, he admitted, “I’m not so sure I will be able to return to that home and sleep again, but I may be able to make use of the property in some way.”

He turned to leave, but Weltyr urged me onward. I reached out and touched his arm, pained to think of the perception this good and quiet man should have of me after what I had done to his kin. He winced, deepening the sorrow I felt, but as our eyes met he clearly saw there was no malice for him in me.

“Whenever you offer Hamsunt libations or gold or whatever other gifts you devote to him,” I bade the Nightlands guide, “pray for my forgiveness, please, Adonisius. Even if you are unable to forgive me, pray that your god will.”

Though somewhat taken aback, the misshapen turned this over in his mind. As I released him, he nodded earnestly. “I will. I will do that, Rorke Burningsoul, Paladin of Weltyr. I’ll pray for all of you—for your wellness, and safe travels. Be careful…I’ve heard it said that there are stranger and more terrible things on the surface than any I have met in the Nightlands.”

And, with one more brief genuflection of his spider legs, Adonisius scaled back down the tunnel system through which he had guided us.

“Onward,” I said, my hand resting upon Strife’s pommel while I led the way to the surface.

The final passage of our journey was a long and dark one. Now I could definitely tell we were close to the surface just by the smell of the air. To describe the Nightlands as foul or even stuffy would be perhaps inaccurate—surely these effects were psychological. I am a tall man and broad-shouldered, and confined spaces have always left me somewhat ill-at-ease. To have a cavernous roof over my head rather than sky therefore produced in me a certain psychological tension; an oppressive dreariness that came on so steadily I had not even noticed its insidious arrival until, with proximity to the surface, it lifted. Free of this shroud, my step hastened just slightly, and my heart sped with anticipation to breathe the fresh air of Urde.

My companions, meanwhile, seemed to experience similar invigorating effects. The journey had been tedious and, with grim Adonisius leading the way, sometimes uncomfortable. We had not been able to discuss much more than harmless matters of small-talk—the flora and fauna of the Nightlands, the food of El’ryh, and the prior adventures of Indra and Odile were our main matters of discourse until our guide left us. Now, in a straightforward exit of the tunnel system with little in the way of danger, my elfin companions chattered away in delight and relief.

“I’ve never been to the surface, Odile!” Indra in particular burst with excitement, her words bubbling out of her with girlish glee. “What will it be like?”

“Bright, mostly…but beautiful.”

I glanced back at that. “What did the people of your colony do to protect their eyes when traveling on the surface during the day, Odile?”

“They didn’t. Mostly we went about our business in the nighttime, and a few sympathetic humans or other surface-dwelling people helped us with what we needed during the day. There was a man in my village, a musician, who managed to spend more time on the surface than any of the rest of us. He used colored glasses to protect his eyes from the light…but not even those were sufficient, and after quite a few years of doing this, he ended up almost blind.”

With a grimace of sympathetic pain, I said, “Perhaps we’ll travel at night until we come up with a solution, then…lucky us, it seems like it must be nighttime now.”

It was, indeed—perhaps even later than I had anticipated, the lack of sunlight being disorienting as it was to my sense of time. In fact, the night was already so black that I did not realize I was looking at the end of the tunnel until Valeria’s breath seized in her lungs. In a move so sudden and therefore uncharacteristic it almost startled me, she bolted past me. She somehow even found the energy to sprint down the tunnel. I called after her, as did Indra; after glancing back over my shoulder at the other ladies, I took off at a jog to catch up to her. Branwen, Indra and Odile ran after me, each wondering in her heart what it was Valeria could have seen. At long last, we broke free of the tunnel and skidded to a halt in open air.

Indra and