Love Sickness (Sellswords & Spellweavers series Book 5) by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-20T05:00:00+00:00

We found our bearings a short time later, compliments of a broad tree with sturdy branches. It had grown three-quarters of the way up the hill, and scrambling up its stout limbs, I could see well over the top of the hill, and the tops of hills for kilometers around.

Behind us and slightly to the east lay the tunnel we’d exited. The aperture itself, I could not see, but the destruction that had followed us I could. A long, winding swath of hill country had simply collapsed, like a risen lump of dough deflates when roughly handled before going in the oven.

The green grass, the shrubs, the occasional trees – they’d all folded back into the earth. Stone and dirt and greenery mixed in a long, concave space. And through it all ran a river, following not the underground course that King Gunvald had picked for it, nor the restored course that Annbjørg had opened up.

Now it flowed through the rubble and destruction, winding and weaving along the surface until it reached the far end of the destruction. And here it pooled, growing wider and deeper as I watched.

Dead goblins floated in the new depths, alongside broken tree limbs and bewildered animals, scrambling to find a way out.

The whole thing, I thought, would fill. It would bury all evidence of the caves, and create a massive lake. Not all at once. That would take days or weeks even.

But then the lake would brim over, and a new river would emerge, following some hitherto uncharted path. A new set of homes and fields would be flooded.

It was a disaster, any way I looked at it – not the least of all because, from my vantage, I could see the skulking forms of goblins in every direction, sheltering under scrub growth and in patches of brambles, waiting for the sun to set.

And as far as I could tell, it all got to Annbjørg. She had destroyed the sarcophagus to ensure her own escape with the key, which had not only left an opening for the shrouded man to steal it, but had also brought the whole damned place down around us.

Now we’d lost the key and were in the middle of the wilderness with goblins everywhere, and maybe six hours of light remaining. Maybe.

I scuttled down and reported my findings, keeping my opinions to myself. There’d be time enough to make them known, but no sense angering the only person who knew where to find the last piece of the puzzle.

Aage listened with a grim expression. Even Annbjørg seemed moderately perturbed. Her perpetual smirk vanished, and her tone lost some of the flippancy as she said, “Well, we’d better head out then. The place we’re looking for will be…”

She threw a glance around, toward the mountains in the distance, and back at the destruction behind us. Then she nodded and pointed west and north. “That way. We’re looking for a grove.”

“Oh, well, that should be easy,” I said. “There’s only forest all over the place.

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