“Why not? I could be the new Galinn the Great and win five years in a row. Or six, actually. I’d have to beat his record, of course. It would make me the longest-running champion of your dwarven games.”
Narrowing my eyes, I continued down the tunnel at a brisk pace. I needed to get this done and dusted, so I could go home to my plants. Tormund easily kept up with me, his strides long andpurposeful. Bloomin’ shadow demons and their bloomin’ long legs.
After a moment of silence, he asked, “Aren’t you going to make a cutting remark about my ego?”
“Not necessary,” I replied. “The next trial will put you in your place without me having to say a word.”
“What’s the next task?”
I stopped again, sighing heavily. “You don’t even know?”
“Why would I? I’ve never been Under the Mountain before.”
“Because, I don’t know, you’d done some kind of preparation before you came here?” I threw up my hands. “Most strangers who enter usually do. It never really helps, mind you, but at least they have the decency to try. You…you just think you can show up here completely unprepared and win the whole bloomin’ thing without trying!”
He took a step closer to me, grinning wickedly. “You’re doing that nose scrunching thing again.”
I tensed, then rubbed my nose. “Stop it.”
“Stop what? Making your nose scrunch?” Then, much to my horror, he tapped said nose. “Why in fate’s name would I do that? It’s so cute when you do it.”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. Scrunching my nose—gods, I really was doing it, I realized—I turned away and pointed emphatically at the tunnel walls. “Fine. You’re right. There’s more I’m not saying. Notice anything about the sunstones?”
We’d only walked several yards around the bend. The distant sound of singing dwarves still reached our ears, and the tunnel had yet to narrow. And yet there were sunstones everywhere. Curious to see if his mind worked fast enough, I cocked my head and watched him stare at the gems.
After a moment, he glanced back at the bend, then looked at the gems again, noting the overflowing carts here and there. “How long’s The Wet Beard been in business?”
“Decades,” I replied.
He nodded. “Just like the trading shops, I presume?”
“That’s right.”
“This tunnel is heavily used. It has been for a while. And yet there are hundreds of sunstones still embedded in these walls. We’re barely down the tunnel. Shouldn’t you have mined them all by now?”
“You’d think,” I said, impressed he’d gotten it so quickly. “They grow back. And this is the only place Under the Mountain where they do that.”
“That plus these mineral traces…” He rubbed the base of his curving horns, brow furrowed. “Well, that’s that, then. We need to search this tunnel for the Everstone. The other must be a fake.”
I took a step back in the direction of The Wet Beard. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re wrong, Tormund. I’ve spent my entire life looking for that stone. In this very tunnel. I followed the mineral traces. I dug my pickaxe into the densest clusters of sunstones. It’s not here. It never was. The miners of Rockheim found it instead.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “Surely you don’t believe that.”
I wasn’t sure what I believed. I’d seen the Everstone with my own two eyes, but more importantly, I’d felt its power. There was no faking that. Besides, what would Rockheim have to gain by tricking everyone into believing the stone was up for grabs? It made little sense.
Still, something about the whole thing didn’t sit right with me, either…
And if Tormundwasright and the Everstone was still in these tunnels, I couldn’t very well help him find it.
So I said, “I’dliketo think it’s here. Mostly because I’m not going to win the trials, now am I? But it’s time to accept realityand move on. Didn’t you feel the power of the gem they showed us? If it was a fake, it wouldn’t have any magic.”
“Sunstones have magic,” he countered.
“Not like that,” I said. “I’m telling you, this is all a coincidence and nothing more. The Everstone was never here.”
“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin, frowning down the tunnel. For a moment, it looked like he might listen to me. I started to turn back toward the mouth of the tunnel, already looking forward to a moss cake, a cup of tea, and a whole lot of bloomin’ quiet. My ears were still ringing from the stomping and the cheering in the arena, and all I wanted now was the company of my plants.
But then Tormund started walking in the opposite direction of The Wet Beard.
