The Dragon's Hoard by Carol Hightshoe

Author:Carol Hightshoe [Hightshoe, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy
Publisher: Sky Warrior Book Publishing, LLC
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Different Kind of Dark

David J. Fielding

Adhelin paused at the gaping mouth of the cave and glanced back over her shoulder.

She looked down the slope of the tree covered mountainside, dusted bone-white with a layer of hoarfrost. Far, far below, beyond the grey forest and stretching to the horizon, she could see the glass-like surface of the bay and her village, toy sized on the shore. She saw one of the long ships making its way slowly out to sea, its wake a thin line of silver-indigo on an ocean all orange and crimson from the dying light of the winter sun, and for a moment thought she should turn back from this fool’s errand.

They were all going to laugh at her anyway, so why go through with it? There was nothing in the cave but damp and wet, just like they told her there would be. At least that’s what she told herself.

But there was something else too; something she could only catch a hint of beneath the smell of rot and earth and rankness. A hint of something…ancient. Something no one in her village had ever known before. She shivered and tried to convince herself it was just the chill.

The bay and village seemed a world away, even though it had only taken her but half a day to make the climb. It wasn’t as arduous or treacherous as the tales had made it out to be, nor was it a twisting and tangled maze as old Yrjan, the village whitesmith had told her it would be.

“They call it Agda’s Tongue, and rightly so.”

“Why rightly so, grandfather?” she had asked, not hiding her doubt and suspicion.

The old man had glared at her for daring to speak to him in such an impudent manner, but she stood firm, arms folded defiantly across her chest.

“Just like your mother, you are,” Yrjan had sighed a heavy sigh, and then answered her, all the while hammering out a delicate design on a collar for the jarl’s new pet cat.

“Because, like a woman that path she is false and deceitful; first twisting you this way, then another until you will find yourself tramping in circles through dark woods you will swear you had passed through not an hour before, and when you finally tire and take your rest you will find yourself farther afield than when you started, lost and alone. Ware you young Adhelin, set not your feet onto that dark road, for many a man has lost his life seeking what they had hoped to find.”

Even at nine, the first time he had told her about the trail to the mountain cave, she had doubted the veracity of the old man’s knowledge. And now, after having walked it, she knew him to be an outright liar. She had followed it easily and not once had she become confused or lost.

And all the other tales she had heard about the path had been false as well. There had been no dark knights

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