Brienna punched her lover in the chest. “Stop it, Jacob. You’re scaring the boy with your tall tales.”
“I’m not a boy,” Roland exclaimed, frustrated. “I wished you’d quit saying that.”
“So you’ve said already,” laughed Azariah.
The elf sighed. “Fine then. Jacob, tell him where it really is.”
Jacob nodded. “There are those that think the portal resides in the Tinderlands, some at the Black Spire in Ker, and still others believe it exists anywhere Celestia places her feet when she chooses to descend from the heavens. But I know the truth. I discovered it some time ago but kept it secret, not uttering the demons’ names lest they hear me and awaken.”
Roland’s eyes widened. “Where?”
Jacob squinted, reached behind his back.
“Right…below you!” he screamed, tossing something long and moving at him.
Roland’s heart leapt into his throat. He shrieked as a snake landed in his lap, all glimmering black scales and darting pink tongue. He kicked backward, swiping at it with his off hand, but it tumbled inside his blanket, writhing against him. Roland shot to his feet, letting the blanket fall to the ground, and ran around in a circle, slapping at himself to make sure the slithering creature was gone. The thump-thump-thump in his chest raced faster than a hyena chasing after an antelope.
There was laughter all around him. Roland stopped his thrashing and saw Jacob chuckling into his fist, Brienna rolled up in a ball and cackling, and Azariah guffawing at the heavens, his large hands slapping at the ground. In that moment, he felt his neck grow warm as anger worked its way over his shoulders and into his clenched fists.
“You should have seen your face,” Azariah said between fits of laughter.
“It was priceless!” squealed Brienna.
“Very funny,” Roland muttered.
Jacob waved a hand at him. “Oh, Roland, don’t be angry. We were just having fun with you.”
“You call making a fool of me fun?”
“Well, yes. But it also serves a practical purpose.”
Roland was still fuming.
“And what might that be?” he asked.
“Are you frightened any longer?”
“Well…no.”
Azariah grabbed his wineskin from the stump behind him, lifted it.
“Now that is something I can drink to,” he said before bringing the skin to his lips and downing its contents.
Roland walked timidly back to the fire, feeling ashamed and gullible, and sank back town into his previous spot. He wrapped the blanket around him again-making sure it was free of snakes beforehand-and let out a deep sigh.
Jacob’s arm wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him in tight. “Listen, my young steward, I meant no offense. However, it is true that there’s much you don’t know of the world. Despite what I said, Azariah was correct. But you can defeat fear if you force your mind not to dwell on what makes you afraid, and act in spite of your terror. It is a skill you are going to have to learn rather quickly, I’m afraid.”
“Why?” asked Roland.
“Because if what the merchant told me in the delta is true, if the followers of Karak are massing an army in the Tinderlands, then I have a suspicion your world will never be the same again.”
“Oh.”
Jacob slapped him on the back before giving Brienna a kiss on her forehead. He tossed a couple of the logs he’d collected onto the fire, and then he and his elf lover reclined on the nettle-coated ground, tugging their blankets up to their necks. Azariah did the same on the other side of the blaze.
“Now get some sleep,” Jacob said, his voice sounding far away. “We have a lot of riding to do tomorrow, and you’ll need your rest.”
Roland tried to do as he was told, but he did nothing but twist and turn for hours. His fear returned in the silence, and the darkness behind his eyelids showed him three horrific creatures with burning red eyes and lashing tentacles, monsters that defied human definitions. They crept about in the interior of his mind, haunting him, stalking him, taunting him. Whenever he dared open his eyes, he saw the moon high above and imagined it splitting open as if it were a painting torn by a knife, an army of winged monsters in red armor spilling out of the crevasse. Before those things, even the tranquility of Safeway felt powerless.
When he finally did fall into a restless slumber, he was shaking.
CHAPTER 11
The creature loomed before the kingling, saliva dripping from its fangs. A thousand limbs stretched out of the darkness, slimy feelers shimmering in the unnatural dreamlight. Eyes burning red emerged from the black, casting a nightmarish glow on a hideous face in perpetual motion, always shifting, becoming people he knew and people he had never met.
Geris screeched and fled the other way, but he seemed to be running too slowly. His heart pounded so hard in his chest that he began to feel faint. And still the monster grew closer, so close he could feel its hot breath on his back, could smell the putrid stench of decay and sulfur rippling off its flesh.
Finally he reached a tunnel, and he dashed inside. It quickly shrank, and he dropped to his hands and knees to scurry along, handfuls of grime coming up in his palms each time he pulled himself forward. The deeper blackness of the void beyond the tunnel entrance seemed to close in around him, threatening to envelop him in nothingness, and once more Geris cried out. He scooped at the dirt faster, sliding his knees along the slick floor of the tunnel as he hauled himself through the dark.
And still the monster closed in.
The tunnel ended, but that didn’t stop Geris. He dug into the loam, shoving his body into the wall until he was sucked through. With still no escape in sight, panic overtook him. Mud and dirty water flowed into his mouth and down his throat. He screamed silently, suspended in the dirt, hovering in the empty space between life and un-life. The sickening swish of his pursuer’s thousand limbs became muted, far away. He felt his consciousness waning, and for a moment he thought the sensation would last forever.
Be still, child, a calm voice spoke into his mind. The spirit soars, the body sinks. You know the way.
Geris recognized that voice. It was Ahaesarus, his mentor, speaking to him from somewhere very far away. He closed his eyes, cleared his thoughts as his teacher had instructed him, and breathed deeply. This time nothing choked him, and the lingering presence of the nightmare creature withered away. He felt his body turn light as a feather, and a second later he was floating. A hundred unseen hands lifted him up and up until his fingers brushed an obstruction above him. Still breathing deliberately, he slid his fingers through the soft ground. They were greeted by a warm gust of air. He felt his body being pulled through the opening his fingers had created, squeezing from one reality and into another like a birth.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself squatting on the edge of two conjoined rivers in a place he had never been before. He was surrounded by rocky terrain and short, stunted trees. The rivers flowed together, their currents picking up at their joining point and rushing away like a herd of rampaging horses. The water shone blue in the pale moonlight. He gazed north, over the rushing water, and looked on a barren landscape whose cracked and lumpy ground appeared to be a topography of disease and ruin. A chill washed over him. The wind whistled past his ears, seeming to speak to him, and he whirled around.
Behind him was a solitary boulder that looked like the ones he had scaled with Martin and Ben when they were given a respite from their studies. The rock shimmered like topaz beneath the moonlight. There was a drawing carved into its surface, a shining star surrounded by a hundred points of light. Geris traced the edges of the etching, feeling the coolness and unnatural smoothness of the stone beneath his fingertips.