***
Janir snapped awake to find Kalbo nipping at her nose. She swatted him away, but he whickered and stomped uneasily, scraping one hoof against the ground.
It was just light enough she could make out Karile lying in the fetal position. In his grungy robe, he blended in well with the moist earth and dead bracken. He wasn’t snoring, an anomaly that was a little unsettling in and of itself.
She was still cold and her gut twisted with sharp pangs, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since the day before yesterday. Kalbo nosed her again, flicking his tail insistently.
Low whispers came from the side. Janir straightened, alarm raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Pushing aside the branches of the thicket, she peered out, hardly daring to breathe.
Farther down the slope of the hill, she spotted the lumpy outlines of horses and their riders. A few of the humans were on the ground, crouching and examining the earth.
Trackers, Janir realized with terror.
The Argetallams must have followed them through the night. Her first instinct was to stay still, keep them from noticing her, but if they had been followed for all these leagues, she had no doubts the Argetallams could track them the last few hundred paces.
Janir meant to reach over and shake Karile, but she found herself slapping him madly. “Get up!” she hissed. “Get up!”
“Wha—”
She clamped a hand over his mouth. “Shh! We need to move. Right now.”
Understanding dawned on Karile and he was suddenly very much awake. There was something about the prospect of gruesome torture and death that got the blood flowing.
The Argetallams still couldn’t see the pair, but they had to hurry if they didn’t want to be heard. Janir backed slowly out of the thicket, hoping it was still dark enough none of their hunters would notice the rustling of the shrubs. Karile crawled after her, for once doing as he was told.
Where was Saoven? Janir wanted him here to tell her how to survive this, what she should do to escape.
That thought reminded her of Armandius and she was struck with the acute sense of missing them both. She could only hope they were alright and she would manage to find a way out of this on her own.
She couldn’t let the Argetallams catch her. It would destroy Armandius if she disappeared and he never knew what had happened. He would probably blame himself for sending her away, even though it had been his only option.
The saddlebags were lying in a pile and Janir slung them over her shoulder. She couldn’t carry the saddle and they didn’t have time to put it on Kalbo, so she had to leave it. Once they got far enough away, Janir would mount Kalbo and see if it was possible to ride double without a saddle and with Karile.
She hastily untethered her stallion and led him in the opposite direction of the Argetallams, certain they were leaving a trail. Branches and twigs snapped beneath her feet and Kalbo’s hooves and the early morning dew made the ground malleable. They might as well have left markers. Voices rose from behind them.
Terror shivered the length of her spine as she forced herself to stop. She hastily gathered Kalbo’s reins and swung onto his back. Fortunately, she had ridden saddleless often enough that she had practice. Now she was glad for all those times she had forgone propriety in spite of Dame Selila’s protests.
“Up!” she hissed to Karile.
“If there weren’t Argetallams after us—”
“Now!” Janir thrust down a hand for Karile. As tempting as the idea was, she had too much of a conscience to abandon him.
The enchanter grabbed her hand and tried to haul himself into the saddle. He nearly yanked her to the ground and Janir had to seize a fistful of Kalbo’s mane to keep herself on board. Between the two of them, they hauled Karile up behind her.
“Hold this!” Janir shouted, shoving the saddlebags at Karile and kicking Kalbo as hard as she could.
The enchanter let off a yelp of surprise and clung tightly to her waist. He was just light enough that she was able to counterbalance his weight. Though, if he was even a pound heavier, Janir was fairly certain she would be lying in the dirt by now.
There were shouts behind them, the Argetallams were giving chase. Janir squeezed Kalbo’s sides with her knees, clinging to his back for dear life. The stallion seemed to know that they were being pursued. Even with an extra rider and all those days of past travel, Kalbo’s massive strides ate up the ground beneath them with fierce speed. His ears laid flat against his skull and he stretched out his neck, thundering into the dark of the trees without hesitation.
Janir let him have his head and choose their path. She could barely see and yet the horse found his way. The pounding of his hooves and the roar of the cold wind filled her ears, but even that couldn’t block out the sounds of the pursuing Argetallams.
These warriors were determined to capture her and the enchanter and she shivered to think why. They would have had no way of knowing who she was, would they? Even though logic told her it was probably because she and Karile could alert the Brevians to the Argetallam presence, she couldn’t shake the sense that they were somehow coming to reclaim her, to drag her off to whatever wretched fate awaited one of their infidel kin.
The enchanter was nearly suffocating her now, but at least it meant she didn’t have to concern herself with whether or not he was going to fall off. She knotted her fingers into Kalbo’s mane and kicked him on faster.
“Go that way!” Karile shouted in her ear, pointing to the side.
“What?”
“That way!”
Janir was too frightened and too caught up in the moment to argue. It might have been habit or some need for a confident voice, but she swerved Kalbo sharply to the left as Karile indicated. The Argetallams shouted in surprise and swerved to follow. Twisting around to get a better view, she espied at least a half dozen horses and riders, maybe more. It felt like more.
“Come on,” Janir urged her horse. Kalbo had never once let her down in the four years she had owned him. She didn’t believe he would fail her now.
With a snort, Kalbo loped on just a little bit faster, heaving in time with his strides. He chose his path through the woods carefully, but still managed to stay ahead of their hunters.
Janir realized they were ascending a slope again. The ground rose and rose. Kalbo stumbled and nearly threw his riders off, but they managed to cling on until he regained his footing.
Someone shouted and two of the horsemen broke off to swing around the outside. Janir’s heart pattered in terror and she was struck with a profound sympathy for the stags nobles liked to hunt with dogs.
They bolted through the forests ahead of the warriors, but it never seemed to be fast enough. Kalbo kept an impressive pace, but no matter how far they went, the Argetallams never fell any farther behind.
“Janir, I don’t mean to be critical, but—”
“Shut up!” She nearly screamed.
“Over there!” Karile hollered, pointing to a pile of crumbling rocks off to the side. “There should be a cleft over there!”
She was a little suspicious of the sudden exact directions, but the enchanter’s instructions hadn’t been harmful before. Janir steered Kalbo in that direction. As they bore down on the rocks, she saw that they were indeed before a narrow cleft that would keep the Argetallams from chasing after them as a group.
The lead rider shouted again and that steeled Janir’s resolve. She couldn’t tell where the cleft led, but there appeared to be light showing through the other side. Something about the threat of imminent capture gave her the strength to be brash.
Kalbo charged the narrow fault, barely wide enough for a single horse. He was breathing heavy, tiring. They needed to find their escape and soon.
“Come on, boy,” Janir whispered, patting his neck. “You can do it, I know you can.” You have to, she thought to herself. Please.
Just a few hundred more paces. Pines and junipers flashed by, a few of the lower branches
slapping at Janir’s face and arms.
Karile said something loud and panicked.
The three of them barreled relentlessly onwards, but the Argetallams were just as relentless. There were shouts and cries and the leader was ordering his warriors to keep their prey away from the cleft. Arrows whizzed past ineffectively. Argetallams were supposed to be infallible in all things martial, yet she supposed it was lucky for her and Karile that the stories were wrong.
Just as they reached the cleft in the rocks, Kalbo slammed to a stop. Unprepared and without a saddle, Janir found herself tumbling over his neck and rolling into the gravel. Karile and the saddlebags tangled up behind her and for a moment she couldn’t tell which way was up.
The terror of the chase lent her such resilience that for a moment she didn’t even feel the blood soaking her skinned knees through the tear in her leggings. The next moment, she was scrambling to her feet.
“No!” She made to grab for Kalbo, but he snorted in fear and reeled back, shying from the cleft.
The Argetallam horses were almost on top of them, so close. Janir could see their rider’s faces now and everything was happening so fast and she didn’t know what to do—
The Argetallam horses jerked back on their haunches and threw their heads into the air, snorting and pawing and squealing in protest. Their riders tried to urge them on, but the animals were having none of it. Kalbo whickered and paced from side to side, staring at Janir anxiously.
Before Janir could question what was happening, the Argetallams began dismounting their steeds. Fear clutched at Janir’s heart when she realized they were still coming.
“Janir!” Karile grabbed her sleeve and jerked her into the cleft. “We have to hurry!”
With the saddlebags in one hand and Janir’s wrist in the other, Karile began pelting in the opposite direction. Though she was loathe to leave Kalbo behind, she was even more loathe to the thought of being captured. She snatched the saddlebags from Karile and took off running down the cleft.
“Not very far!” Karile cried.
“What do you mean?” Janir shot a glance over her shoulder to see the Argetallams coming after them at a breakneck run. They were fast and advancing so quickly—Janir didn’t know how much longer she and the enchanter could keep ahead of them.
Karile skidded to a stop and spun around.
“What are you doing?” Janir screamed, grabbing his arm and trying to drag him on. “They’ll catch us!”
Karile ripped his arm free and took several steps toward their hunters. “Don’t touch me!”
“What are you—?”
The small enchanter raised his hands up as if in prayer and shouted something indistinct. Without reason or warning, the rocks before them fell in a tumbling cascade. The deafening crash of stones filled the narrow cleft.
Janir clamped her hands over her ears and dropped to the ground as the air swirled with pebbles and dust. The Argetallams were cut off, blocked by the cave-in.
Rising hesitantly to her feet, Janir could hardly believe it. She held on tight to the saddlebags, too shocked to feel anything at the moment.
“Are they…dead?” Janir hesitantly asked, not sure what she wanted the answer to be.
“I doubt it.” Karile straightened his robe and wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow. He was a little out of breath and unsteady when he asked, “Shall we go on?”
Janir swallowed, then realized that the light she had seen up ahead was slowly fading, shifting away. It was a reflection of sunlight off crystals farther down the corridor. They were in a cave and they were trapped.
For a moment, fresh panic set in. “Karile…this is a cave.”
“Yes.”
He seemed to be taking the situation rather well. They were trapped underground with nothing but their saddlebags, but he didn’t seem to care. Their world went dark as the last of the small avalanche settled into place, entombing them within the mountain.
Fear swelled in Janir’s chest. The temporary relief of outpacing the Argetallams was replaced with the realization that they were buried and in the dark. Janir’s mouth opened and closed in speechless fear, but whether she wanted to speak or scream she didn’t know.
Karile muttered something that sounded like gibberish and clapped his hands. Lights glowed along both sides of the cave straightaway. Torches, left behind by someone or something, flared into being.
“What is this?” Janir demanded, finding her voice.
Karile shrugged. “Welcome to the final resting place of the Key of Amatahns.”
“It’s here?”
“Somewhere.” Karile made a vague gesture into the darkness.
“How…” Janir whipped her gaze around the rugged rock cavern. As far as she could tell, this was a tunnel delving onwards and deeper into the mountains. Whatever it was, this place was not natural. “Who…what!”
“I know you must have a lot of questions—”
“What is happening?!” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch. “What are you talking about?”
Karile took a deep breath. He was looking serious again, which was in itself unsettling. “I might have bent the facts a bit when I talked about the Key last.”
Janir felt she should be accusing him of something, but there were so many options she was having trouble picking the order.
“Truth is, I’ve known the general region for a few months, but there’s a catch to getting inside.”
Shaking her head, Janir tried to gather her wits. She wasn’t sure what game Karile was playing, but she wanted none of it. She was going to find a way out of this mountain and away from the Argetallams. Then she would find Saoven, make sure he was alright, and warn him that what they were up against was so, so much worse than mere Stlavish soldiers.
“I need an Argetallam to retrieve the Key—something about ‘an Invulnerable alone may conquer the trials within’—so I came looking for you.”
For a moment, Janir thought she must have heard wrong. He couldn’t know. They had met only three days after the incident, he couldn’t possibly know.
His face was perfectly serious. “My father is part of Lord Kecim’s inner circle. He received a carrier bird about it the next morning, that Lord Caersynn had an Argetallam foster daughter and he’d sent her into the mountains.” The enchanter shrugged. “So I came out looking for you and eventually our paths crossed. Just be glad it was me and Goblin that found you. I hear there’s entire battalions out there.”
Janir took a step back. “Who are you?”
“Karile Kerwyn. I told you.”
“No, no, no.” Janir shook her head in terror. “No, you can’t know. No one knows!”
“Janir.” Karile’s voice dropped and he tried to sound reassuring. “I understand that this is a very emotional time for you, but we need to get that Key, alright? Once we have it, we can turn tail and run and—”
“No!” Janir took a step back. “Find it on your own! I want out of here, I want away from here, I want…!” She broke off, shaking her head and choking back tears of frustration. “This isn’t happening.” She was so confused, so muddled, so tangled up in dozens of thoughts at once.
There were at least a half dozen Argetallams on the other side of the rocks at her back. She was trapped in some sort of spelled cavern with a mad enchanter and no chance of rescue from the outside. Exiled, cast out, clinging to any shred of hope she could find…
And now Karile was telling her she had to help him recover an arcane relic and he had tricked her here in the first place.
Karile waited a moment while she hyperventilated and tried to keep from crying. “Well, no matter what, there’s only one way to go.” He pointed ahead down the rugged tunnel. “Forwards. So why don’t we head that way and talk some more about this in a little bit, alright?”
Janir wanted to hit him or throw a rock at him or maybe both. At the moment, it seemed like he was the root of all her troubles.
Nonetheless, she found herself grabbin
g one of the torches from the wall and marching into the darkness, the saddlebags slung over her shoulder and Karile trotting behind.