Age of Myth (The Legends of the First Empire #1)

The fall nearly killed Persephone. The impact was only water, no jagged rocks or partially submerged trees. And she was able to get back to the surface easily enough after pushing off the bottom, but the fall itself, that blind drop through total darkness, had almost scared her to death.

She had spent twenty years carrying official news to the other dahls and was one of the few people who’d visited Alon Rhist. The tales of her travels had impressed everyone. But the sum total of two decades paled in comparison with what she’d been through in the last few hours. Persephone had conquered her fear of the forest, survived a murder attempt, received a cryptic message from an ancient tree, battled wolves with nothing more than a wooden shield, and leapt blindly from the top of a waterfall. In one day, her life had gone off its own cliff, and she suspected the bottom hadn’t yet been reached.

Once everyone broke the surface, Suri shouted for them to swim behind the curtain of falling water, where a massive hollow of bare rock suggested that the little stream had once been much bigger. Snow wasn’t such a distant memory, and the pool was bitterly cold. Still, Persephone barely noticed. Her pounding heart generated its own heat. After swimming to retrieve his floating shield, Raithe was the last one out.

“Whoa!” Suri shouted, shaking the water from her hair. The wolf did the same, but without the exclamation. “We showed ole Char, didn’t we?” she said to Minna. “Gave him a mark he’ll remember. Now his name really suits him. Ha!” The girl was grinning, beaming with enthusiasm. Throwing her arms around the wolf, she praised her. “And you were great, Minna. Slammed him good, you did. Sure showed him this time. You’re my hero, Minna!”

“You’ve fought them before?” Raithe asked. The big man’s hair was flattened, slick and sticking to his forehead. His beard rained on the stone.

“All the time. Char is a rude neighbor. He and Minna don’t get along. He’s jealous because Minna loves me more.”

The falls drowned out most of the night’s sounds, but Persephone heard howling. “Can they reach us?”

Suri nodded. “They’ll be here shortly,” she added with a bright smile. “Always takes them a while to run back around the ridge. I keep waiting for them to try jumping, but they haven’t yet. Char isn’t very bright.”

Persephone worriedly looked at Suri’s soaked torches. “What are we going to do?”

“Disappear,” Suri said with a wink.

“What?”

The girl laughed. The sound was high and childlike, not the sort to provide reassurance when facing a ravenous pack of wolves while trapped behind a waterfall. Persephone looked to Raithe but found little comfort in his eyes. The Dureyan warrior looked back with a tense expression.

“This way,” the mystic said, and stepped into a crack in the rock. Persephone discovered it was more than just a crack, a cleft wide but low. Everyone except Minna had to duck as they moved through. Behind them, the howls grew louder.

“Where are we going?” Persephone asked as they shuffled between walls of stone.

No longer muffled by the hills and trees, the crisp yips of the pack carried clearly. Then she heard a splash. They’re here!

“Over here,” Suri said, and an eerie, green glow pierced the darkness as a door opened in the rock. The mystic waved for them to follow, and once more she led by example, stepping inside.

With the sounds of splashing right behind, no one hesitated. Heedless of what new horror she might find, Persephone rushed through the stone wall into the new world of green light. Suri shut the door.

All four of them, plus Minna, stood in a chamber not much larger than a roundhouse. Hewn from solid rock, the room was grander than Dahl Rhen’s Great Hall. Thick pillars carved from natural stone formed sturdy supports. Austere blocks formed a fortified hall of strength, precision, and uniformity. The clever use of space and tapering angles of square columns and ribbed archways possessed a grace and beauty that awed Persephone. Running in a line around the ceiling, down the edge of walls, and along the borders of the floor were chiseled markings—strange patterns forming an unbroken chain. Stylized pictures were carved on every surface, short people fighting taller ones. Embedded in the center of the floor, where a roundhouse’s fire would have been, a large green stone glowed with a steady light. Although not bright, it shone enough to fill the room with an eerie radiance.

“What world have we stumbled into?” Raithe asked. His head turned left and then right while he gripped his sword.

“An old one,” Malcolm replied.

“Is this your home?” Persephone asked Suri.

The girl’s face reflected the absurdity of the question. “Nooo.” She dragged the word out. “Stone walls are almost as bad as wooden ones. I live in Hawthorn Glen, one of the loveliest little places you’ll ever see.”

“Is this one of those crimbal doors you spoke about? The ones that lead to Nog?”

Again the mystic shook her head.

Sounds of growling and the scrape of claws on stone startled everyone except Suri and Minna. Raithe pulled his sword and slipped on his shield.

Suri chuckled. “They can’t get in.”

Raithe moved forward and touched the stone’s decorative border that marked the place where they had entered. Except for the carving, no discernible evidence of an opening remained—not even a crack.

“How did you open it?” Raithe asked, returning the weapon to his belt. “And how is it sealed?”

“The door will open if you press the diamond shape in the design at the top. On the outside there’s no design, just a little rock sticking out a bit. You have to feel around to find it, and it’s too high for the pack to reach.”

Persephone looked around and saw no other exit. “We’re trapped, then.”

Suri pulled off her cape and draped it over a horizontal pole mounted in the wall, which seemed put there for that exact purpose. Minna sniffed around the chamber. Neither appeared concerned. “The pack will eventually get frustrated and leave. We have a while before they do. Char is stubborn. We’ll spend the night to be sure.”

The scratching and barking continued at the door, but it became clear the pack wasn’t getting in. Persephone relaxed and allowed her shoulders to droop. Now she noticed the cold. She removed Raithe’s leigh mor and wrung water from it and her hair. Snapping the blanket-sized cloth, she wrapped herself again.

“What made you come back for us?” Persephone asked, moving closer to the glowing stone and hoping it would be warm like a fire. It wasn’t.

Suri untied her deer-tooth belt. “Got your message.”

This caused them all to glance over.

“We didn’t send any message,” Raithe said, shaking the water from his hair and stroking more from his beard.

Suri stripped off her vest and skirt, hanging both alongside her cape, leaving her naked. Persephone glanced toward Malcolm and Raithe. They had discreetly turned their attention to the marks lining the room. Persephone appreciated the gesture even if Suri didn’t seem to care.

The mystic’s tattoos weren’t confined to her face. Similar designs graced her whole body. A pair of twisted tendrils ran along Suri’s collarbone, and another line ran straight down the center of her chest before curling around her back. Thick swirling bands like a tree’s roots encircled her arms from elbows to shoulders.

“If you didn’t send a message, then Wogan must have been in a generous mood,” Suri said. “I wasn’t even to the pines when I saw a squirrel drop his acorn and run back down the tree to get it. So Minna and I raced back as fast as we could.”

The girl wasn’t as thin as Persephone had expected. Suri’s hip bones did stand out and ribs were easily counted, but the weight the girl did have was all muscle.

“Took me a while to find you,” Suri went on. “Where were you headed to, anyway? I thought you were going back to the dahl.”

“We were,” Persephone said. “But we missed a turn.”

“I’ll say. You were going exactly the wrong way. Being touched as you are from living where you do, I figured you were hunting Grin. I followed your trail, and you were heading straight for her cave.”