Elven Doom (Death Before Dragons Book 4) Read online

  It was a good thing I wasn’t in charge.

  22

  The rain turned to freezing rain and pelted the backs of our jackets as we peered down into the crevasse. It was about fifteen feet wide where we were, but ledges and bulges made it impossible to see how far down it went.

  Lieutenant Sabo flipped a coin over the edge, perhaps thinking it would bounce off the walls all the way down and we would hear it land, but this wasn’t a well. It hit one icy blue ledge and bounced into a shelf of snow and disappeared.

  “What was that supposed to accomplish?” I asked.

  “Not quite what I imagined,” he said wryly, “but now you have something to aim for on your descent. A quick and easy way to earn ten cents.”

  “Such riches. You don’t think you’re going too?”

  “I’ve never climbed anything like that.” Sabo looked to Willard.

  She shook her head. “Thorvald and I will go down and scout. Banderas will lead a rescue team if needed.”

  Sergeant Banderas was about a quarter mile away, investigating the footprints we’d seen from the helicopter. He seemed a natural choice to take along, but…

  “You’re going down?” I asked Willard. “This isn’t Hollywood. The senior officer doesn’t go on the away missions. You send the red shirts.”

  Sabo snorted. Willard gave me a blank look. Now that I thought about it, there hadn’t been any Star Trek mugs among the Garfield and Smurfs collection in her kitchen cabinets.

  “I know more about dark elves than you do,” Willard said, “and if it’s possible to negotiate with them, you need a senior officer.”

  “If they’re interested in that, I’ll let them know the address of your tent and your office hours.”

  Willard thumped me on the shoulder. “You’re not in charge here. You just let me know if you sense a platoon of elves with magical bows down there waiting to shoot up at us.”

  “No, I can’t even sense the magic that Sindari and I detected over there.” I pointed my thumb back the way we had come.

  “Did you put him away?” She glanced around.

  “Yeah. His time on Earth each day is limited. We’ll want him when we get to the bottom.” There wouldn’t have been a way for him to climb down, regardless. Even a goat wouldn’t be nuts enough to go down the slick vertical walls.

  “Agreed. Sabo, get a camp set up over there.” Willard waved to a relatively flat area on our side of the crevasse. “If anything crazy happens, that’s the way out.” She pointed up the slope toward the path we’d been following earlier, to where a temporary bridge had been laid across a narrow section of the crevasse by whoever maintained the mountain trails for climbers. Wind had kept it largely swept free of snow, but it was little more than a metal plank laid across the gap. “The trail continues down the mountain and will eventually get you to Camp Muir.”

  “Does that mean the choppers won’t be back today?” Sabo asked.

  “Not unless the weather gets better.” Willard waved toward the clouds socking us in. “It won’t hurt us to set up and be ready if they don’t.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We could all just set up camp and hang out up here,” I said. “Maybe they’ll come up to visit us tonight, and we wouldn’t have to fight in territory they know and have likely booby-trapped.”

  Willard considered the argument. “Why would they come out?”

  “To kill us? It’s a fun hobby for dark elves. You saw the scientists.”

  Her grim expression and head shake suggested she wasn’t in the mood for humor, and I silently apologized to the dead for any disrespect.

  “They can probably levitate in and out of there without climbing,” I said, “so it wouldn’t be as epic a feat for them to visit us. With all their weapons.”

  Wind gusted, tugging at our jackets. The freezing rain had stopped, at least for the moment. If we were going to rappel down, this might be our best time for it.

  “Levitation sounds handy,” Willard said. “We’ll go down, set the anchors, and scout the bottom today, and that’s it. It makes sense to see if there really is a cave system down there. For all we know, the creatures that made those tracks turned Disney-lemming and fell to their deaths.”

  I highly doubted that, but I didn’t argue further. Willard was right that the dark elves might ignore us if we stayed on top of the glacier, especially if they were already in the middle of implementing their plan. Up here, five hundred feet above the ice, we were no threat to them.

  If I made it down there and learned they were already implementing their plan… I would have to go in, not climb back up to spend the night. It sounded about as appealing as wandering out onto a live firing range. But this was the job I’d signed up for, and tens of thousands of lives were at stake. I had no choice.

  As I stared down into the icy depths, past layers of white, gray, and pale blue, I wondered if I would ever make it out again.

  23

  Banderas protested when Willard announced I was going down with her. He kept protesting as we screwed in anchors at the top to make future descents—and the climb back up—more manageable. Only when we started rappelling into the crevasse did he subside.

  Willard had agreed that Banderas had more experience than I did—this was my first time climbing ice, and I didn’t hide it—and would have been the logical choice under most circumstances. But these weren’t most circumstances. She wanted me and my sword beside her in case of an ambush.

  The inside of the crevasse was breathtaking, swirls of dark and light ice all around us, with places where the frozen walls had melted and then hardened into epic icicles. After seeing those, and hearing things crack and break free as we descended, I was glad Willard had made one of the soldiers lend me a helmet.

  The ice was softer than I expected, though maybe that was typical in the summer. Our picks and the screws for creating anchor points went in without too much trouble. Hopefully, that meant the climb back up wouldn’t be too onerous, but I doubted it. Five hundred feet, creeping up a foot at a time, would be hard work. At least on the way down, gravity was with us.

  My injury ached as the rappel seat dug into my thighs, my full weight cradled by the meager straps, but the pain didn’t impede me too much. The climb back up would be a different matter, when I had to use my legs to push myself up the ice walls, and I wondered if the dark elves would mind if I camped outside the door to their lair instead.

  We reached the bottom in one piece, clumps of hard snow and shards of fallen icicles crunching under our boots. The air was much cooler down here, as if we’d stepped into a walk-in freezer, and I zipped my jacket up to my chin.

  As Willard radioed up to give a status report to the rest of the team, I turned a slow three-sixty. There weren’t any caves in sight, but those footprints were down here. The massive creatures had left numerous tracks as they came and went, but the main trail led up the slope.

  I sniffed a few times, wondering if an animal scent might linger in the area. Instead, I caught the first hint of brimstone wafting along the air currents.

  A carbon monoxide detector was clipped to each of our packs, giving me some reassurance against us wandering into toxic air, but my lungs might react to gases that wouldn’t bother others. Wouldn’t that be fun.

  Willard finished her report, the radio spitting static as often as issuing words. If we left the crevasse and entered a cave system with hundreds of feet of ice above us, we would lose our ability to communicate with the team.

  “I sense the magic we felt from above,” I realized. It was faint and somewhere beyond the wall of ice to my left. “Let me get a second opinion.”

  I touched my feline charm, calling Sindari back for his superior nose and superior senses.

  As soon as he formed, he looked up, an uncharacteristic hunch to his shoulders.

  The walls go up and up, and you can’t see the sky, Sindari thought into my mind.

  He was right. Some gray daylight made its way down
to us, but it was dim down here. From no point along the bottom could we see the sky above.

  How will I climb out to escape? he asked.

  By stuffing yourself in my charm and riding up on my neck.

  How will you climb out to escape?

  Right up the wall like a spider. I showed him my ice axes and the crampons on my boots. The ground was as slick as a skating rink, so I needed the metal teeth to keep from slipping. I’d expected to find bare ground at the bottom of the glacier, but maybe it was under a layer of ice. Do you sense the magic, Sindari?

  Yes. About a quarter of a mile away and down here with us.

  Can you tell if it’s another golem? Or something else?

  I believe it is something else.

  I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad.

  Neither am I.

  “What’s he think?” Willard asked.

  “He doesn’t think it’s another golem.”

  “That’s non-specific.”

  “He’s a non-specific kind of tiger.”

  Sindari squinted at me, perhaps trying to decide if I was teasing him. I ruffled the fur on the top of his head.

  Since the slope didn’t look too challenging to navigate, I traded my ice axes for Chopper.

  “Eravekt,” I said.

  The blade glowed a soft but strong blue, highlighting the slick frozen walls to either side of us.

  During the earlier trek, I had tried the new dwarven commands Lirena had given me and found that both worked. The results were less dramatic than the sword’s illumination, but I’d touched Chopper’s blade and had indeed felt that it heated or grew cold at the words.

  Whether that icy metal could better penetrate dragon scales remained to be seen. Even though Lirena had warned me about Zondia, I hadn’t yet sensed her. I hoped she wouldn’t harass the soldiers up there making camp.

  Willard started up the slope, carabiners and ice screws jangling on her belt. I left behind anything that could jangle and caught up with her. So far, I didn’t sense any magical beings, but if I had to activate my cloaking charm, I didn’t want to worry about noise giving away its camouflage.

  “Any sign of dark elves?” Willard asked as we walked side by side, the crevasse wide enough for two. “It’s hard to see anything but the prints of these giant creatures.”

  “No.”

  I smell that creatures neither human nor elven have traveled this way, Sindari said.

  “Do you recognize them?”

  Willard opened her mouth but must have realized the question wasn’t for her.

  We do not have a word for them—they do not exist in our realm—but they are great two-legged creatures, protected from the cold by magic. They thrive in it and cannot abide heat. They are larger than ogres. They must barely fit down here.

  “The jötnar?” I mused, thinking of legends from my mother’s ancestors.

  “Frost giants?” Willard asked.

  “Essentially.”

  “If dark elves exist, I suppose giants can.” She eyed the walls rising above us. “It’s hard to imagine them fitting down here. Or anyone levitating something that large up and down that far.”

  “Size matters not,” I said, not expecting her to get the reference, since the Star Trek comment hadn’t rung a bell.

  Willard’s eyebrow twitched. “When your ally is the Force?”

  “Yup. Or magic.”

  This way. Sindari had gone ahead and reached a section of the crevasse that was blocked at some point above so no daylight filtered down. This was where we might encounter our light-hating enemies. And their frost-giant pets.

  I walked up to join him, my crampons clicking on the ice. Stealth would be difficult down here, even without clanking gear. “Let’s see if we can find that magical signature, Sindari.”

  Before we’d gone far, the ice under our feet turned to rock. Warm sulfur-laden air whispered past our cheeks.

  To one side, a crack ran up the ice wall, and visible steam wafted out of a vent. It fogged the blue-tinted air, my sword’s light mingling with that of our headlamps.

  A few steps farther on, Sindari turned, facing an ice cave, the ceiling rounded about fifteen feet overhead. It led back into absolute darkness.

  The magic we sensed is in that direction, Sindari told me. And there is more magic beyond it. Many, many devices. Also, I can now sense the auras of dark elves.

  How far away are they?

  Another half mile beyond the first device. It is placed away from their other devices and encampment. It may be an alarm or another type of magical sentry.

  I gave the information to Willard, then stepped into the cave with Sindari at my side. “If we can get closer, Sindari and I might be able to count how many dark elves are down here by their auras.”

  “They’ll sense us, too, I assume. And maybe come visit.”

  “Visit, right.”

  I paused, considering our options if a horde of dark elves streamed out at us. We couldn’t levitate, and that climb out would take a long time, even without enemies shooting at us. We’d both left our rappel harnesses on, so all we had to do was clip in and go, but it wouldn’t matter if we were being chased.

  “I have the flashbangs, which might slow them down, but… maybe you should wait here. Sindari has magical stealth, and I can activate my cloaking charm. I’m sure they know our group is here, but at least they wouldn’t sense me coming in to scout.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you going in alone.” Willard’s tone turned dry. “Even if there weren’t enemies with a fondness for killing humans inside, you’re not supposed to explore caves by yourself.”

  “I’m not alone.” I patted Sindari on the back. “We won’t be gone long. Maybe you could get Banderas and one of the others with a magical gun down here, in case I’m not as stealthy as I think and the dark elves try to follow me out.”

  Willard clenched her jaw. I could tell she wasn’t pleased with this proposition, but she also couldn’t argue against it. None of the soldiers had an equivalent to my cloaking charm.

  “Get a head count and take pictures if you can,” she said. “Even better if you can make a map. If there are alternative tunnels that lead into their lair, so we don’t have to make a straight-on attack along a route they’ve had plenty of time to booby-trap, that would be ideal.”

  I had a feeling that other cave we’d seen might have been an alternative tunnel—and that was why the dark elves had blocked it off.

  “I’ll do my best.” I waved her back into the crevasse, activated my charm, then turned off my headlamp and proceeded by Chopper’s glow.

  As dark as it was in the cave, I could have used my night-vision charm, but I wasn’t ready to continue in pitch-blackness. It was creepy down here, knowing thousands of tons of ice were over my head and could drop on me, either through magic or nature’s whims, at any second. Once we were closer to our enemies, I would have to extinguish the blade, so its light wouldn’t give away my position, but not yet.

  As Sindari led me deeper, cracks and snaps, ice shifting above and to the sides, made me twitchy. Glaciers moved, I reminded myself. Slowly, yes, but they did advance and recede. This wasn’t anything unusual.

  A tremor shook the ground, and more snaps sounded, one right over my head.

  That was less usual.

  I licked my lips and glanced back, but the wide passage had bent enough that Willard was no longer in view. Neither was any of the natural light filtering down from above.

  I checked the time. Not wanting to climb out in the dark, I gave myself an hour to explore. If I took longer than that, Willard would worry.

  Not without cause.

  24

  Sindari nosed at the ground as we walked deeper into the cave. The bare rock did not hold tracks, but they held smell. He’d informed me that the giants had come this way many times. He didn’t know if they were inside now or out on the mountain somewhere.

  I didn’t know which to hope for. Inside, I would ha
ve to deal with them. Outside, the soldiers would.

  Water dribbled down the rounded walls, and a drop splashed on my gloved hand. Steamy sulfurous air caressed my cheeks.

  Was my chest growing tighter? Or was that my imagination? I’d felt constriction before purely due to my own emotions stressing me out, so I tried to breathe evenly and maintain a calm state of mind.

  The tunnel widened, opening into an underground chamber with a lake in the middle. Water dripped into it from above, and pungent wisps of steam rose from the surface.

  Sindari trotted to a great alcove in one side where pine needles had been scattered all over the floor. A few furs were piled among them, and the scent of an animal den mingled with the volcanic gases.

  Sindari nosed one of the furs. They sleep here.

  So, we found the kennel for the guard dogs?

  Essentially.

  I can’t help but notice that they’re not home.

  No.

  We won’t go much farther. I’d thought I was leaving the soldiers in a safe spot up on the glacier, but they might be in more danger than we were. We’re almost to that device. We’ll check it out and then go back.

  As we skirted the lake toward a passage opposite the one we’d entered, I thought about taking the photos that Willard had requested, but I couldn’t do that without using the flash on my phone. This looked like a place where dark elves might be standing guard, dark elves with cloaking magic that hid them from our senses. Afraid of being spotted, I’d already extinguished my sword and switched to my night-vision charm.

  A few other low-ceilinged tunnels led away from the lake chamber, and I tried to make a mental note, so I could sketch a map later. A part of me wanted to explore them while I was here, but I would have to crawl on my hands and knees to do so. That could take a lot of time. From here, it was impossible to tell if they ended after a few meters or went farther back and rejoined the main tunnel, or led somewhere else altogether.