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

temple. Any way I thought of it, the task was impossible. But who would be using a path in and out of the Nightlands enough to tamp it down—and perhaps even deliberately maintain it—to such a degree as this?

Soon enough, I had my answer.

To my surprise, I found a juncture. It gave me pause and I considered using this marker to call up to the women, who were quite far away by now but surely still within calling distance thanks to their sensitive elf ears. Then, however, I found myself alerted by a curious sound: a yelp like that of an animal. Unfamiliar with what beasts might be found on the mountainside aside from rams, I thought perhaps we could have a meal to restore some energy to our weary bones. Making my way along the right path, the path of the juncture winding around in the direction of that noise, I drew Strife and journeyed on.

And around a tight corner, I was surprised by a meeting with my first gimlet.

The little lizard man let out a yelp identical to the first I’d heard and backpedaled a few steps. All the time it looked rapidly at me and then, with more surprise, at my torch. I was quite surprised, myself. Despite Branwen’s imagery, I had not expected a kind of small bipedal dragon. Nor one so—well, oddly charming. It did, somehow, bear some resemblance to a dog, and not just in voice. I could not put my finger on it—perhaps its muzzle’s general shape, or the little tuft of tawny fur between its horns—before the whelp sprang up and, quite unexpectedly, snatched the torch out of my unready hand.

“Hey,” I called, dashing after the thief who literally turned tail and ran. “Get back here!”

The gimlet giggled maniacally at that, knowing I had no leverage to make it turn around. It was quick, darting at an angle just when I managed to find myself in grabbing distance. The hyperventilation of its tiny lungs was clear, and I almost thought that I might outrun it based on sheer endurance. Then, to my frustration, it darted off the path entirely and scaled down the rocks

It was not my best decision, but I needed that torch: without it, I was going to be stranded on the mountainside until my party found me, or until the coming of the dawn. Therefore, I hurried to keep up with the gimlet, trying to gauge its path before the light disappeared. This quickly proved treacherous, with smaller stones slipping out from beneath my feet and larger ones seeming as though to spring from the dark. Even when the terrain leveled out, I was amazed to discover just how rocky the area was—and how ornamented.

When I realized the gimlet had come to a stop, I also skidded to a halt. Cautious, Strife still raised, I made my slow way toward the little beast. The plateau where it had led me was very strange, indeed. A pit lay in its center, and around this pit had been arranged all manner of precious objects. Dead flowers and fruits stood vigil with little statues carved of bones and even small piles of golden objects. There was a nearly limitless selection of items arranged around the mouth of the pit beside which the gimlet stood, and it seemed the fellow intended to add the torch to this assortment. He barked, pushing the base of the torch into the gravelly terrain and propping it upright with a nearby golden bowl of fruit that had been frozen by the altitude.

“Now, I know a sacred site when I see one…” Slowly, carefully, I lowered Strife, my grip on the blade nonetheless tight after seeing the surprising strength that had allowed the gimlet to wrench my torch from my hand. “I don’t wish to disturb anything here, friend…but I need that light if I’m to leave you alone, eh?”

The gimlet barked, its scaled tail lashing back and forth. I took a step closer and did not hear the rocks beneath my feet groaning in protest.

“Now,” I was too busy saying, “let’s have the torch…”

Strong enough for a gimlet’s small size, the rocks making up the hallow plateau were not strong enough for a human man. With a cataclysmic, certainly panicking rumble, the rocks gave way beneath my feet. I cursed, attempting to catch myself on the edge of the stone before me and instead simply knocking it out of place. The gimlet gasped, then laughed madly to see my dilemma. Even as the stars rang in my head and my body rattled with the pain of the landing, the little cretin leaned over the edge of the hole to enjoy the sight of my suffering.

“Weltyr’s beard, you little rat—come down here and see how long you laugh.”

Uncomprehending or uncaring, the gimlet’s giggling head disappeared and its light footfalls knocked away enough rocks to let me know it was on its way back to the path.

Groaning, head aching, I wondered to myself if the fall would have been worse or better with armor on. I was going to have to figure out how to get my hands on a new set when we were in Soot…once I had gotten out of that pit.

And once I had done something about the exquisite woman I found unconscious within it.

ROUSING THE MOUNTAIN WITCH

SHE WAS THE first thing I noticed when I sat up: the only thing there was to notice, aside from the dessicated skeletons of a few unfortunate gimlets.

I had fallen into some kind of sepulcher. An apparently fresh body had been lain upon a bed of stone, and I was quite amazed to see it in one piece. It were as if this woman had died that very day, yet such thing was impossible. The offerings circling the tomb’s rotunda had been so vast in number that I was certain they’d gathered for years. All the same, she for whom the offerings were apparently meant