He nods slowly, but I can sense the guilt will stay with him. Some wounds never fully heal—I know that better than most.
"Our escape route is gone," I observe, stating the obvious but needing to voice it.
"Yes." Nazim turns away from the harbor, his voice hollow. "The boats, the safe houses, the contacts—all compromised. We need to get away from the coast entirely."
"Where?" Forla asks.
"The hills." He points toward the rolling highlands that stretch inland from Eelry, their peaks lost in morning mist. "Cold country, hard traveling. But the Dark Elves prefer coastal operations. In the mountains, we might find sanctuary."
I look at those distant hills—gray and forbidding, promising hardship and uncertainty. But they also promise freedom from the nightmare of the arena, from the chains that have bound us all. And more importantly, they offer a path toward my brothers, toward the clan sanctuary in Northern Rach.
"Then we climb," Forla says before I can speak.
Her determination strengthens my own resolve. We'll face whatever comes together.
We gather what supplies we can from the dead Dark Elves—coins, weapons, a few travel rations. It feels like graverobbing, but survival overrides sentiment. The hills won't care about our moral qualms.
As we leave the harbor behind, I take one last look at the burning ship. Somewhere in those flames lie the dreams of easy passage, of simple escape. Now there's only the hard road ahead—steep climbs, bitter cold, and the constant threat of pursuit.
20
FORLA
The coastal winds give way to something harsher as we climb into the hills of Rach. What started as a gentle breeze becomes a cutting gale that slices through our clothes like knives. I pull my cloak tighter, but it's threadbare fabric meant for summer days, not this bitter cold that seems to seep into my very bones.
"Storm coming," Rophan rumbles, his massive frame somehow more resistant to the chill than the rest of us. Dark clouds gather on the horizon, moving faster than seems natural.
"How much farther to shelter?" Thoktar asks Nazim, who's been leading us along what he claims are old smuggler routes.
"There should be caves ahead," Nazim replies, but uncertainty colors his voice. "If memory serves."
If memory serves. Not exactly confidence-inspiring when the first fat raindrops begin to fall, cold as ice against my skin.
Within minutes, the gentle rainfall becomes a deluge. Water streams down the rocky hillsides, turning paths into treacherous rivers of mud. My feet slip and slide with every step, and more than once I have to grab Thoktar's arm to keep from tumbling down the slope.
"There!" Nazim points to a dark opening in the hillside. "Cave!"
We stumble toward it, soaked and shivering. The cave is shallow but dry, barely large enough for the four of us to huddle together. I press against Thoktar's warmth while the storm rages outside, lightning illuminating the landscape in stark, violent flashes.
"This isn't natural weather," I murmur, watching the way the rain seems to fall upward at times, defying gravity.
"Nothing about these hills is natural," Nazim agrees darkly. "Rach has old magic in its bones. The kind that doesn't like strangers."
That first night sets the pattern for what follows. Three days of brutal travel through terrain that seems designed to break us. The weather shifts without warning—blazing heat that has us gasping for breath one moment, then bitter cold that numbs our fingers the next. Rain turns to sleet turns to snow, all in the space of an hour.
But it's not just the weather that troubles me.
There are sounds in the darkness that make no sense. Howls that rise and fall like human voices, but no human throat could sustain those notes. Scratching against stone that suggests claws, but claws larger than any beast I know. And underneath it all, a constant whisper that might be wind through rock formations, or might be something else entirely.
On the second night, I wake to find glowing eyes watching us from the darkness beyond our small fire. They're too high off the ground to be wolves, too widely spaced to belong to any creature I recognize. When I nudge Thoktar awake, the eyes vanish, leaving only the memory of malevolent intelligence.
"What did you see?" he whispers.
"I don't know. Something that shouldn't exist."
We find tracks the next morning—footprints in the muddy ground that look almost human, except they're twice the size of Rophan's massive feet and have too many toes. Nazim studies them with growing unease.
"Hill wraiths," he murmurs. "Haven't seen sign of them in decades. They usually avoid travelers."
