Chris Pierson - Spirit of the Wind

He fell to one knee, wheezing. “Water…“ he croaked, his voice tight and strained. Sweat ran down his face in rivers.

Quickly, she pulled her waterskin from her belt, unstopped it, and held it to his lips. He took a gulp of water, sputtered it out when another spasm seized him, then tried again. He swallowed several mouthfuls, and the paroxysm passed. Relaxing, he sat down heavily and took several long, deep breaths of the foul air. “Give me… a moment,” he puffed. “I’ll be fine…”

Brightdawn nodded, then started to close her waterskin again. She stopped, though, when she saw that its neck was flecked with blood. She looked at Riverwind in alarm. His lips gleamed red; seeing her stare, he quickly wiped his mouth.

“Father?” Brightdawn asked quietly.

“I said I’m fine!” the old Plainsman snapped. Glowering, he heaved himself to his feet and started to stumble down the passage again. “Come on,” he said. “We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

Brightdawn and Kronn exchanged worried glances, then followed.

The tunnel grew steadily worse, becoming more deformed. The air became smokier and closer, the heat like an oven. After several more leagues, the tremors began.

The first was little more than a dull rumble, shaking dust from the ceiling. They looked around, worried, but the stones around them soon stopped trembling, so they carried on. Only a few minutes later, though, a loud crack resounded through the tunnel. The floor seemed to fall away beneath their feet as the whole passage shook, and they fought to keep their balance, groping at the shuddering walls. Pieces of stone-some of them several inches across-clattered down around them. The quake lasted nearly a minute before it subsided, leaving them lying, gasping and wide-eyed, on the ground.

“Trapspringer’s boots,” Kronn muttered, standing shakily. “I didn’t like that very much.”

Riverwind looked up and down the passage as he rose. “I have a feeling things will only get worse, the closer we get to Blood Watch.”

Brightdawn lay sprawled on her back, looking up above them. “Father…” she murmured. “Look at the ceiling!”

They looked up. Above them, the shoring timbers that lined the ceiling had buckled and splintered. The wood continued to crackle as the rocks above them bulged slowly downward.

“Run!” Riverwind shouted. Grabbing his daughter’s arm and dragging her after him, he turned and dashed down the tunnel back the way they’d come. Kronn sprinted at their heels, his short legs pumping.

The ceiling groaned loudly. Then there was a terrible, snapping sound as the timbers gave way. Behind them, where they had been standing, the ceiling caved in, filling the tunnel with thundering stones. A blast of dust surged past them, caking their skin and clothes. Then, echoing dully, the crash faded to silence.

They slowed, then came to a halt and looked back, breathing heavily. Through the settling dust they saw that the tunnel was gone, choked with jagged rubble.

Kronn was the first to find his voice. “I guess that’s that,” he declared.

“What do we do now?” Brightdawn panted.

The kender pulled out his map and studied it for a moment. “Unless I’m wrong, we passed a way up to the surface about half a mile back.” Nodding firmly, he folded the parchment up again, stuffed it in a pocket, and began to walk. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here before the rest of it comes down.”

Lifesbreath, the kender had called the hills south of Blood Watch, and not without reason. Wedged between the thornbush-dotted Somber Coast and the grey, barren Hollowlands, it had been a green, vibrant place. The Heartsblood River had burbled noisily through its midst, flowing among drooping cottonwood trees. Clover and wildflowers had dotted the verdant slopes. Butterflies had danced on the breeze.

No more. The cottonwoods and butterflies were gone, the Heartsblood dried up and forgotten. The wildflowers would never bloom again. Lifesbreath had yielded to the Desolation.

Kronn stared around him, his eyes wide as he surveyed the dry, blasted wastelands. The ground, which had once rolled smoothly north to the sea, was riven with jagged cracks that hissed ash and steam. Mud and tar bubbled in wide, unclean pools. The wind was scorching, merciless. To the north, jagged, rust-colored peaks jutted skyward like serpent’s teeth. And beyond, at the rim of the angry ocean, a tall spire rose toward the black, hazy sky. The top of that mountain burned brightly, like a candle atop some unholy altar. All three travelers knew, with a gnawing in their guts, that they looked upon Blood Watch.

“This is what she’s doing to the Kenderwood,” Kronn said numbly.

“Kronn,” Riverwind said softly. He was ashen with horror at what he beheld, but he fought to keep his voice from trembling. “We need to keep moving. We’re running out of time.”

The kender hesitated a moment longer, crouching down and scooping up a handful of dry, gravelly soil. He held it up and let it sift through his fingers. Then, a harsh look in his eyes, he rose and started walking north, toward the smoldering volcano. Riverwind and Brightdawn followed at a distance, leaving the kender to his thoughts.

The journey across the mountains was slow and grueling, but not impossible. There were many passes among the peaks, and though he had no map to guide him, Kronn moved surely, always keeping the looming shape of Blood Watch before him. Riverwind and Brightdawn watched the slopes around them as they walked, wary of rockslides or worse, unnamable dangers. Once, they had to use Kronn’s chapak as a grappling hook to climb over a house-sized boulder that had fallen in their path, but most of the journey was mercifully without event.

Finally, two days after leaving Lifesbreath, as Mark Year Day faded into night, they crested a low, jagged ridge and stopped.

They stood at the edge of a broad, bleak valley. On the far side, directly across them, loomed Blood Watch. It towered impossibly high on the edge of the red sea, dwarfing the craggy peaks that surrounded it. In the darkness that had settled over the Desolation, the fires that burned on the mountaintop outshone even the full, pale moon, lighting the land all around. Glowing red lava snaked down the sides of the spire, and a cloud of black smoke roiled above it. Ash fell like snow from the sky, swathing the land in a blanket of gray. The air stank of sulfur and soot.

“Mishakal have mercy,” Brightdawn whispered, trembling at the sight of the volcano. “How do we get in there?”

Shading his eyes, Riverwind peered across the valley. After a moment, his gaze fixed on something. “There,” he said and pointed.

The others followed the gesture and saw what he had spotted. A low cavern mouth nestled at the foot of the mountain. Even from nearly a league away, they could see the hulking shapes of several ogres standing before the cave.

“Six of them,” Kronn said grimly. “Two each.”

A shower of pebbles slid down the rocky hillside as they scrambled down into the valley. They stopped at the bottom, watching to see if the ogres had heard, but the creatures didn’t move. Blood pounded in their ears, echoing the rumbling of the ground below their feet, as they glanced warily at the fiery mountaintop.

“I don’t mind telling you,” Kronn said unhappily, “I’m starting to feel a little bit of that fear everybody’s been talking about.”

The Plainsfolk regarded him a moment. Then Riverwind rested a sympathetic hand on the kender’s arm. “So am I,” he said.

Stealthily, they snuck across the valley floor, moving from shadow to shadow in the gathering twilight. As they went, they got a better view of the ogres. Two of them were crouched down on their haunches, apparently asleep, and the others stared into space or absently scuffed the stony ground with the toes of their boots. With nothing to guard against, they were anything but watchful. Riverwind and Kronn exchanged satisfied looks as they crept closer.