Once done, I heft myself out of the water and don my fresh set of clothing. I pull my hair out of my face, wrapping it into a braid. Then I let Soren know it’s safe to look, but he stays where he is, keeping guard while I’m still vulnerable without my armor.
I grab my dirty clothes and plunge them into the water. I only have the one extra set with me for this climb, so I’d better clean these now.
As I scrub and scrub with the bar of soap, one spot won’t come out. Blood from the cut on my arm, I think. I need something rougher to take to it.
About an arm’s length away, I find a good-sized rock with a rough surface. I reach for it. The top shimmers in the sunlight, a bright metal vein glinting along it. I take the rock to my garment and scrub roughly. It does the trick, the spot coming right out. With the water running downhill, the soap doesn’t build up; it washes downstream with everything else, so my clothes are free of soap in no time.
I climb from the pool, wring out my clothes, and find a nearby tree branch to drape them across to dry.
When that’s done, I take the rock I found with me. Soren will want it for his clothes, I’m sure.
I start for the tree where I deposited my pack and armor, the rock in hand, when a force bats it from my palm.
I look up, but Soren still has his back to me a ways off. My head spins in a circle, looking for some intruder. I find nothing.
“Did you see anything?” I shout.
“Rasmira, I promise I kept my back to you while you were bathing. I didn’t see anything.”
My cheeks blush. “No, I mean, did you see someone or something?”
“No, why?” He turns toward me.
I look down at the ground, thinking perhaps someone threw something at my hand, but there’s nothing but more rocks.
“I’m not sure yet,” I say. I have to take a step backward to retrieve the rock. Gripping it more firmly, I head for my pack once more.
But I can’t.
At first, I think it’s the god’s power that Soren and I keep running into along the mountain, but how could it be? I just walked this way fully clad in my armor. I would have felt it before.
Is there something different about this rock in my hand? Why can’t I take it with me? Is it important to Peruxolo? Does he want it to stay near the stream? And if so, why?
Maybe all I need is a running start.
I take a few steps back, dig in my heels, and bound toward the tree. There’s pressure against my hands—I almost lose the rock, but then something gives. I hear a crash in front of me, my head snapping up to see my armor no longer propped against the tree but on the ground.
“How did you do that?” Soren asks.
I take another step forward. Though there’s extra pressure, the rock moves with me. And my armor—
The sheets skid away from me, never letting me grow closer to them.
All I can do for some time is look back and forth between the rock in my hands and my armor. I step all the way up to my pack, my armor now ten feet away to the side.
“Do you recognize this metal?” I ask, holding up the rock for Soren to see.
“It’s brighter than iron,” he says.
“And it clearly has a negative reaction with iron.”
“Like a lodestone?” Soren asks.
“Yes, exactly like a lodestone, but different than the ones found in my village. This one is so much stronger.”
“It’s an interesting discovery, but why do you—” He cuts himself off, as he clearly comes to the same realization I’ve already had.
“This is why we haven’t been able to take certain paths up the mountain,” I say. “It’s coated in whatever makes up this new lodestone, and it won’t let our armor come anywhere near it. And Peruxolo’s lair? I’ll bet this metal rims the whole thing. It’s why I wasn’t able to enter. I could throw a rock inside because it must have not contained any iron within it. And Peruxolo’s armor? It must be made out of this lodestone, too. That’s why he was able to fling me around and why my ax couldn’t touch him. He’s bigger than me and must be wearing even more of the metal than the amount of iron I wear.
“He doesn’t have power over metal,” I say. “He’s only using a lodestone against our iron.”
CHAPTER
21
When Soren and I are less than a hundred feet from the mountain’s base, we have to duck behind the nearest tree.
Peruxolo is outside of his lair.
“Where is he headed?” Soren whispers.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him walk around the mountain’s base. Maybe hunting?”
We are as still as the tree trunk at our backs, waiting for the god to move on.
Soren is the first to move once Peruxolo is out of sight, gauging the distance to the ground. “We’d better take a different route home.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Peruxolo is away from his lair.”
“So?”
“I’m going in.” I practically race the last several paces to the ground, before heading for the seam in the mountain.
Soren hits the ground a few seconds after me. “Rasmira! You can’t! What happened to waiting for Iric’s armor?”
“It’s different now. I know it’s not a godly power that’s keeping me out, but a natural one! And we know Peruxolo isn’t home. We’re already here. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
Soren fidgets with one of the straps on his pack. “What can I do to help?”
“Keep watch. Give me a warning if Peruxolo comes back?”
“You got it. I’ll hide over in the tree line. But, Rasmira—” He grabs the arm I’d been using to remove my armor. “Be careful. No risks. You’re there to look. Don’t touch anything. Just because the god is using a natural substance as a barrier, it doesn’t mean there aren’t magical defenses also in place.”
I hand Soren my ax and armor for safekeeping. “I’ll be careful. Now stop worrying.”
I turn away from Soren and head for that dark gap in the mountain. My pace is a quick walk. The sensation of being flung around by an unknown power is not one I can easily forget. It makes me cautious, even if I now know the source of that power. I try to remember exactly where the barrier would halt me outside the seam in the mountain. Was it here? Or maybe a few steps forward?
But when my feet stop right outside the entrance, a proximity I know I never managed before, I know the truth for certain.
Peruxolo has been taking advantage of our isolated villages. No one else has access to this new lodestone, and he has been using it against us for centuries.
I stare down that dark crevice, wondering what I will find in the god’s home.
And I enter.
I cannot see a thing for the first few steps. I stop and blink, willing my eyes to adjust. Eventually, I can make out the walls, made entirely from the new metal that reacts negatively with my armor and ax.
I put one hand to the wall and traverse deeper. The farther I go, the less I can see. Just when I worry the darkness will envelop me completely, my foot bumps against something on the ground.
Bending down, I reach for the item.
A torch, and next to it—
Flint and pyrite.
So the god cannot see in the dark.
I light one of the torches, holding it high in my left hand. If anything or anyone else is in here, I’m doomed, for the torch will give me away immediately.
There’s nothing to be done for it now. I’m committed. Whatever secrets this opening holds, I will learn them.
After perhaps twenty more steps, I come to a gate. It’s a metal contraption pounded into the rock on either side. It can’t be to keep mortals out, for that is the lodestone’s job. Perhaps it is to keep the dangerous ziken away?
I find where the gate connects in the center. A length of rope ties the two halves together. I take careful note of the knot, so I can replicate it before I leave, before undoing it and forcing the gate outward.
It opens to a cavern full of comforts.