I handed him the pack. “Fill her up then.”
He chuckled softly and did so. Once he’d shown me how to insert the detonator and set the timer on the blocks, and how to use the cap primers, I threw the pack on and then clipped the two gut busters and several ammo clips onto my utilities belt. I would have loved more, but I had to be able to move with a decent amount of silence and speed. I signed for everything, thanked the soldier, and then headed out. As Kiro had promised, the speeder had been brought up from the underground level and was waiting in the middle of the outer bailey. Captain July was standing beside it.
“Haven’t been told what your assignment is, March,” he said, his raspy tones filled with the concern I could see in his expression, “but take care. I hate losing good soldiers.”
“Thanks, Cap.”
He nodded and stepped back. I climbed into the speeder, stowed the pack, then claimed the driver seat and hit the start button. As the Captain ordered the gate opened, I closed the door and strapped in.
But as I waited for the huge gates to open, fear stirred anew.
I might be Nightwatch; I might have been trained from a very early age to follow orders and fight, no matter what the odds or the cost, but right now I was also as scared as hell.
But my sister and my mother had left me with no other option; I had to do this alone. I just had to hope that Saska was right, that because we were twins and our DNA was similar, the Irkallan wouldn’t be alarmed if they sensed my presence in their tunnels.
But I also had to hope I could find the strength to do what had to be done when it came to those children.
Anything else beyond that was a bonus, and that included finding the queen and bringing the mountain down on top of the apiary itself. Survival would be a miracle, and something I was realistically not even hoping for.
As the gates opened wide enough for the speeder to pass through, I pressed the accelerator and headed out into the darkness of the Tenterra dustbowl.
12
The flags of dawn were beginning to taint the sky by the time I reached the foot of the Blacksaw Mountains. They loomed above the small craft like some felled, misbegotten giant, and were as dark and as barren as they’d looked from a distance. There didn’t seem to be any easy way for the speeder to get up its craggy side without receiving major damage, so I halted underneath some overhanging boulders and shut it down. The darkness closed in, thick and eerie—the latter sensation not easing as my eyes adjusted to the surrounding ink.
I opened the door, grabbed the pack, and climbed out. The air was crisp, but it was nowhere near as cold here as it had been in Winterborne. No doubt the sheer distance from the sea and the arctic winds that blew off it had something to do with that.
Somewhere high above me was Drakkon’s Head, the main entrance into the Irkallan’s apiary, but I couldn’t see it from where I stood. In fact, there was nothing but rock and a few scrubby, ill-looking plants for as far as the eye could see.
I slung the pack over my shoulders and then said, “What are the chances of getting a lift up there?”
The wind immediately whipped around me and, in very little time, had encased me in a bubble of gossamer air and shunted me up the dark mountainside. About halfway, the scrubby vegetation completely gave up any attempt at survival, and the landscape became little more than a wonderland of rocks of all shapes and sizes.
The speed of my ascent finally eased and, as the gossamer started evaporating, the maw-like entrance into the mountains became visible. It was easy to see why this area had been named Drakkon’s Head—it very much looked like one of those mythical beasts had found its end here, with the tunnel’s entrance its open mouth, complete with jagged, glinting black teeth.
The air dropped me gently onto the ground. Dust stirred around my feet, smelling and looking like ash. The fierce, rocky outcrop that was the drakkon’s head towered above me, its eyes ebony pits that seemed to be aware and watching even though I logically knew they were probably nothing more than smaller caves.
I couldn’t see or hear any life in the immediate area, but the stench coming out of the drakkon’s mouth reminded me of the smell that had radiated from the three children who’d assaulted Blacklake, only a thousand times worse. It made my stomach heave and, for several seconds, I battled the urge to vomit. If I was to have any hope of getting deep into the apiary, I was going to need fresh air.
That we can provide, the wind said, just as we did before. But you should not linger here. A patrol draws close.
I swore softly, drew my knife and one of the gut busters, and walked forward. The wind chased along behind me, stirring the ash and erasing any sign of my presence.
The closer I got to the drakkon’s mouth, the more my fear of it rose. I knew it was ridiculous, knew the drakkon was merely a creation of rock and erosion, but there was a heaviness and anticipation riding the wind’s coattails that made it seem as if the whole mountain was about to come alive and consume me.
Which really wasn’t so far off the mark, given what I was walking into.
I edged along one side of the drakkon’s maw, every sense I had alert for any hint of movement deeper within the cave. The wind was urging me to hurry, warning that the patrol was little more than minutes away, but I couldn’t afford to rush. One misstep might spell the end of everything before it had even started.
As the darkness of the quickly fading night gave way to the deeper ink of the cave, my knife began to give off a soft, blue-white glow. It was a light that picked out a similar luminance within the walls and, after a moment, I realized there were long seams of glimmer stone within the black rock. Perhaps this was where the Adlin had gotten the stone for their beacons.
I shoved the knife away. I couldn’t risk the Irkallan patrol noticing the glinting stone, nor could I risk whatever guards there might be beyond this large antechamber seeing the knife’s soft glow.
I waited for the gleam in the walls to fade and my eyes to once again adjust before moving on. There were two tunnels at the far end of the chamber, one peeling off to the left and one going straight down.
As I hesitated, studying them both, the wind said, left.
I obeyed. The tunnel walls immediately closed in and the air became thick with that stomach-churning stench. The wind stirred in response, brushing away the worst of it, allowing me to move on without the threat of my stomach’s contents decorating my boots.
There wasn’t much to see. The tunnel’s walls were surprisingly smooth but held no beat of life. Not even the memory of it lingered. If this mountain had once contained earth magic, then it had been gone for centuries, if not a millennium.
The Irkallan might not have caused it, but I couldn’t help wondering who or what had—and whether it would eventually spread beyond these mountains.
No, the wind whispered.
How can you be sure? The earth has no voice in this place.
Not here, but there is life elsewhere, and she shares her secrets. Miners lived and worked in these mountains long before the Irkallan arrived. They robbed these mountains of both its minerals and its life, and then moved on to find new lands to mine and destroy.
Which perhaps explained why there was no mention of them in any history books—it had simply happened too long ago.
The deeper I moved into the tunnel, the warmer it became. Sweat trickled down my spine, and I had to keep swapping the gut buster from one hand to the other so I could swipe the moisture from my palms.