Raven, Fire and Ice by Nita Round

Author:Nita Round [Round, Nita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-seven

THE MOMENT THE door closed, the absolute darkness took away her sight. Blinded, the first stirrings of panic took her breath away. Her knees shook, and when she reached out with hands made weak and unsteady with fear, only the ominous darkness met her groping touch. In front of her, behind her, and pressing down on her shoulders, she wore the dark like a mantle made of lead.

Any moment now, something awful would happen. She knew it would. Her heart pounded away like a caged animal throwing itself at her ribs. She could hardly breathe. Her mind raced through all the things that could go wrong. At the very least, the walls would close in. She would be crushed. Or the air would run out and she would suffocate.

“Oh Mother,” she cried out, and her voice echoed around a chamber

Not crushed then.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” she said into the darkness. Her own voice sounded strange and unsure, but it was her voice, not the sound of some demon nor devil. Hers, and she took a measure of comfort from the sound. She stared into the blackness and dared something to stare back. Nothing did. At least, not that she could see.

She scrunched her eyes together and waited. She took a shuddering breath. When nothing untoward happened, she took another. Then another. As she mastered her ability to breathe, her heart began to slow down and for a moment or two, hope blossomed. She hadn’t died yet, maybe she wouldn’t.

She kept her eyes closed and used her other senses. The room, or cave, didn’t feel as cold as she expected. She could even detect the soft touch of the wind on her cheeks, a breeze, so if the air moved, she knew she would not suffocate. She took a deep, lung-filling breath. The air smelled of dry earth and wood smoke. Familiar smells, reassuring, and not at all scary. Her heart rate slowed a little more.

She opened her eyes now, and glared at the dark as though she could push back the shadows with her will alone. She shuffled her feet, listening to the sound, and feeling the texture of the ground. A room, she guessed, and the ground smooth. Not a cave then? She stretched her each foot out in turn, and swiped at the floor like some tentative and blind ballerina. The floor still appeared smooth. Lucinda stepped forward and swept the floor with her foot again. Flat and smooth still. Again, and again. Still smooth.

She stared ahead. “Too damned dark,” she muttered. Or was it? Were her eyes adjusting enough to the dark? Or did the darkness no longer hold the black depths it had?

In the distance a dim glow, like a candle, at the edge of her vision, shone with colourless light. Not enough for her to see much, but like a moth drawn to flame, she took a step toward the light anyway. Every step, she took with slow deliberation, the ground still hard and flat.

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