The Light Must Hold by Gallom Kriss

Author:Gallom, Kriss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

More than resolve, the party needed some respite from the trials and tribulations of the land and its growing silence. The brothers’ endless march yielded a change in scenery, yet did little to repair their greatest issue at hand.

Those calming rivers ended only in sharp falls, and even Lior’s eyes couldn’t spot what lay in those pits. With any hope, the winding slopes the wagon rode marked the last stretch of those parlous mountains. If not, it’d be yet another chasm they’d be forced to crawl from.

For better or worse, howling in the winds had long left them as did the screeching calls of sibs or whatever horrid form they had become. Silence was often more unnerving than it provided a moment to calm and breathe. It never meant that they were truly alone: just that those in the brush beyond hid.

The darkness outside the Queen’s realm was a place of twisting shadows. While it might have appeared wholly vacant, life that defied the odds and survived did not do so without cunning. Lior couldn’t trust for certain whether that cunning included compassion for others who treaded those lands. And yet, for as mysterious of a duo as they were, Airi and Elouan were better evidence than any that there was more than just the taint of the void beyond the border.

As he roused from his dreamless sleep, the scraping and grinding of metal caught Lior’s ear, and he reached for the wagon’s curtain. The paladin remained shadowed while sparks flew from his blade. It came as no surprise that Elouan would keep his sword ready, but the unease stemmed from his diversion from the trail. As the cattle trudged forward, Elouan approached the coming cliffside with his weapon drawn.

Lior hopped from the wagon. The symbols he and Elouan knew between them were few, but he traced cracked lines in the paladin’s palm all the same and asked him to follow. Elouan did not comply.

Rugged terrain and perilous crags painted the last leg of the descent from that horrid mountain which found them in ruin. Even if a pendant’s light did little to discern rock from malignant shadow, a chill in Lior’s gut told him that something awaited all of them down that spiraled trail. The paladin thought so too as he rushed ahead.

“Not again,” Lior sighed. “For as much as Airi warns us, you’re the one who ought to exercise restraint.”

Tightening his grip on his pendant, Lior used the broadening glow to aid his vision. The trail continued much as it had before — winding in a coil tight enough to leave one dizzy. Sibs and hapless rodents fled from the nooks as their dens were unveiled by soft light. Further along and wedged by the cliffs, an overturned wagon lay. No adventuring party accompanied it, but nothing remained in those lands without purpose.

Tripping through the underbrush as he returned to the wagon, Lior shouted, “There’s a caravan ahead! Further on the trail!”

Intan sat at the helm with

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