Shade was sniffing the rubble, but she looked up at Chane.
“Turn back?” Wynn said, gasping. “No.”
“The tunnel is impassable. Just as I thought it would be. It will not lead you to the seatt.”
Wynn couldn’t accept what he suggested. It would take another seven days and nights to return, and then what? Start from scratch and head into the mountains?
“We cannot turn back,” Ore-Locks said, coming up behind them. “Our rations are low, and we will need to find more, perhaps by going out of the seatt’s far side.”
His expression was dark, like a storm about to break.
“We have enough,” Chane countered. “It will be difficult, but Shade and I can hunt as soon as we are out. You will survive ... which is more than I can assure if we try to dig through this.”
Wynn couldn’t bear turning back, not now.
Ore-Locks strode back behind the cart to the open tracks.
“If you do not care that we starve, then come feel this.” He placed his hand against the stone floor. “Put your hands on the tracks.”
Wynn frowned in confusion, but both she and Chane joined Ore-Locks. She put her hand down into the wide groove. She felt a faint vibration in the aged steel in the track groove’s bottom, but she wasn’t certain if it was just her own lingering shudders from their close call with the cave-in.
“I felt it through the tunnel’s stone last night,” Ore-Locks said.
Wynn looked up at him, unsure of what he meant.
“They must be a good distance behind us,” he added. “But we are being followed ... and cannot turn back.”
At this, Wynn dismissed Chane’s attempt at a rational argument. But Chane stepped straight toward Ore-Locks.
“You knew this last night and said nothing?”
Wynn moved between them. “Stop it, both of you.”
Ore-Locks’s revelation rattled her as much as it did Chane. They were trapped between a cave-in and ... who? Who else knew where they had gone and how?
Ore-Locks walked past them and grabbed his staff off the cart. “Give me one of your crystals. I will see how far the cave-in reaches.”
Handing him a crystal, Wynn looked at the rubble, densely packed all the way up to the ceiling.
“Can you pass through this?” she asked, for that option hadn’t occurred to her.
Without answering, Ore-Locks stepped to the cave-in and vanished through the debris.
Chane looked down at Wynn and then at the cart. For one horrible moment, she feared he might pick her up, toss her in, and leave Ore-Locks behind. Would Shade even try to stop him, or would she side with him, as she had when they forced her to abandon searching the foothills beyond the dwarven ruins?
Wynn found herself uncomfortably alone with Chane and Shade. This unlikely pair seemed to have joined forces in a mutual goal to turn her back somehow. What a bizarre state of affairs that Wynn now had to look to Ore-Locks as her only support in her purpose.
She backed away from Chane, gathering all the determination she could muster into her voice. “Don’t you even think—”
Ore-Locks lunged out through the rubble. His red hair and orange vestment were coated in dust as if he had rolled in the rubble.
“The cave-in does not reach far,” he announced. “It is much less packed on the other side. Digging from there, we could clear a crawl space in a shorter time.”
While this brought Wynn relief, she didn’t relish the delay if they were being followed.
“Can’t you try to do what Cinder-Shard did back in the underworld?” she asked. “Could you try to take us through stone?”
Ore-Locks shook his head. “Not you or Shade. I cannot take anything living with me.”
As his words sank in, Wynn swallowed hard and looked at Chane.
Chane tried not to grimace as Ore-Locks took hold of his wrist and stepped into—through—the cave-in. He had only an instant to panic before the light from the engine crystal vanished and he found himself in total darkness. He was not afraid, not exactly.
He did not fear enclosed places, but even for an undead, the prospect of passing through stones, through earth, was overwhelming. He felt crushing pressure, the cold, and an odd sense of suffocating all at once. He did not need to breathe, but the lack of air, feeling trapped and immobile, enveloped him. Pressure seemed to build until it felt as if it might crush his bones.
All Ore-Locks needed to do was let go and leave Chane buried in a grave of stone.
Chane tried to shout, but could not open his mouth.
Pressure suddenly released. Chane inhaled stale air out of fear alone and collapsed onto all fours, feeling the edge of one track groove under his left hand.
“It will pass,” Ore-Locks said coldly.
Chane remained on all fours, trembling a few moments longer. Turning his head, he looked back at what he had passed through. This side of the cave-in was looser, sloping further down the tunnel than on the other side. A part of him became determined to dig his way back to Wynn—as he had no intention of passing through stone again with Ore-Locks. Another part was reluctant to do anything that might allow her to continue.
“Get up,” Ore-Locks said.
Chane had never cared for Ore-Locks one way or another, but a flash of true hatred grew as he rose to his feet. What would happen if Ore-Locks simply disappeared? Could Chane convince Wynn that the stonewalker had left them and gone ahead on his own? Without Ore-Locks’s meddling, perhaps Chane could coerce Wynn away from this place ... perhaps.
Ore-Locks met his gaze. Chane saw the reverse possibility, as it had come to him in that moment within stone. He might be the one to simply vanish, leaving Ore-Locks alone with Wynn and Shade.
Ore-Locks might be stronger, but Chane was not easy to kill. The dwarf would learn that the hard way if he tried anything.
A silent, cold moment stretched on, until something lying on the tunnel floor beyond Ore-Locks’s large boots caught Chane’s eye.
“What is that?” he asked before thinking.
Ore-Locks half turned, holding up Wynn’s crystal. “There are more ... many more.”
A skeleton of stout bones lay across the tracks, covered in the decayed and hardened remains of leather armor. Shadows of others stretched on down the tunnel, as if dwarves had tried to escape this way, only to reach the cave-in before death caught them.
Chane stepped wide around Ore-Locks to crouch over the first bones. He touched a calcified forearm and scraped it with his fingernail. Black and brittle coating flaked away, as if this dwarf had died by fire. When he looked up, patches of the walls were dark and marred, as well.
They were much closer to a destination than Chane had realized. With so many remains along the tunnel, they must be very near a settlement ... or a seatt.
“And you want to bring Wynn in here?” he challenged, rising.
As with so many times before, any emotion on Ore-Locks’s face faded, and he became unreadable.
“She will not turn back,” he said quietly. “Nothing you do can force her.”
Yes, and that suited Ore-Locks perfectly.
“What is it you want down there?” Chane asked, fighting the urge to grip his sword’s hilt.
Ore-Locks turned toward the loose rubble. “It will take less time if we both dig. We should start as high up as possible to avoid rubble sliding, but be mindful of another collapse from above.” He paused, and his voice grew even quieter. “I do not know what we will find in that seatt ... but she may well need us both.”
Chane stood stiff. Without Ore-Locks, he could not pass through stone and would be forced to dig his way back to Wynn by himself. Once a path was opened, no matter by whom, Wynn would continue on. Perhaps she would need Ore-Locks down there. Chane hated that thought but could not ignore it. He looked up the sloping cave-in to the tunnel’s high ceiling.