Shea heard a distant rumble of sound. She stopped and listened. Voices. She thought she heard voices. She rounded the corner and nearly fell over an edge, the drop of which was shrouded in complete black. Shea grabbed the wall as her steps sent rocks skittering over the edge.
She counted. One. Two. Three. Four. She’d hit twelve before she heard the clatter of it landing. That fall would have probably killed her.
She looked around, searching for what she’d heard. It was possible it was nothing but the wind playing tricks. With the way this place echoed, it wouldn’t surprise her.
Bright, flickering light in the distance to her right drew her attention. She squinted. Those were torches.
She started to shout out, but hesitated at the last second. It was possible those lights didn’t belong to Fallon. Alerting them to her presence could be a death sentence, if it was an enemy. She bit her lip and looked back the way she’d come.
Trenton was waiting. After all her talk of not leaving him behind, she’d eventually had to make the tough decision, knowing she could summon help faster than if she tried to carry him. She suspected that if she took much longer to find a healer, she would be returning to a corpse.
She squared her shoulders. Time to take a chance.
“Fallon! Anybody there?” she shouted.
She waited a moment. No reaction from the torches. She didn’t let herself give up hope. It was possible that her voice hadn’t reached them or that the echoes had made the words indistinguishable.
She tried again. “Fallon, help! Fallon!”
*
“Do you hear that?” Witt asked. He stood and walked a few paces from the fire Fallon’s men had started to ward off the chill of the caverns.
“What are you talking about?” Eamon asked.
“That.”
They all listened. A voice reached them, the words almost indistinguishable except one. A name. Fallon.
Caden looked at Fallon. They both came to the same conclusion at the same time.
“Shea.” Fallon popped to his feet, grabbing a torch and rushing to where he thought the voice was coming from. “Shea!”
“Fallon!” Her voice was getting stronger and clearer.
“Where are you?”
“Up here! I’m up here,” she shouted.
Fallon looked up and saw a dim light high above.
“Of course, she’d be somewhere high,” Caden said in a sour voice.
“Any idea how we get her down?” Fallon asked.
Witt’s expression was doubtful as he observed the cavern wall. Eamon looked just as lost but equally unsurprised. Both men were well acquainted with Shea and her penchant for finding herself in high places.
Eamon nudged some wood lying broken on the ground. There might have been stairs at one time connecting the passage above to this great chamber, but they were long gone.
“Trenton’s hurt. He needs help.” There was a long pause. “I think he’s bleeding internally.”
“I can probably get up there,” Witt said. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to make a climb.”
Caden frowned at him. “Do all of you Highlanders make a habit of climbing cliff faces like mountain goats?”
Witt gave a careless shrug. “Those who spend any significant time outside the villages. Eventually, everyone comes to something impassable by normal means. It helps to know how to climb.”
Caden made a sound that prophesized the grumpy old man he’d eventually become, if he lived long enough.
