The Heartstone Blade (The Dark Ability Book 2) by D.K. Holmberg Page B

the mountainside? The mines all worked deeper into the mountain, sloping ever downward into the depths. But he’d Slid them up the face of the mountain. If there were going to be another entrance, would it be higher than the one the miners used?
    Rsiran frowned and crawled around the massive boulder blocking the path. The wide base of Ilphaesn spread beneath him. On this side of the mountain, if he looked far enough into the distance, he could see the end of the Aisl Forest as trees slowly faded into the plains. Higher up the mountain, he wondered if he could see all the way to Asador. But they had looked all along this side of the mountain. So far, Jessa had not seen anything that looked like it could be a cavern entrance. Each Slide had carried them higher up Ilphaesn, ever closer to the peak, but what if they’d been looking in the wrong direction?
    He squeezed Jessa’s hand in their sign that he planned to Slide.
    They emerged near the miner’s entrance to the caves. The path here was wider than higher along the mountain but still treacherous. A single wrong step could send them slipping off the rock and falling down the side. Rsiran had been careful to bring them back to one of their previous Slides.
    From where they stood on the path, they were shielded by the gentle curve of Ilphaesn as it wound back toward the mines. A short walk for any of the Towners who might be standing guard. Rsiran relied on Jessa’s Sight to keep them safe here.
    “What are we doing?” she whispered.
    “Going the wrong way.”
    Rsiran dropped to his knees and crawled to the edge of the path. A soft pattering of rocks fell from the edge, bouncing below him. Ilphaesn dropped off steeply here, no longer spreading out as it did on the other side. Instead, the rock seemed to have been shorn from this side as it plunged down toward the sea. Frothy waves crashed far below. A wave of dizziness struck him and he backed up.
    “There’s nothing down there,” Jessa said.
    “Nothing you see?”
    She leaned over the edge, ignoring the dangers he felt. “Just nothing. Flat rock until it reaches the sea.”
    “There has to be something.”
    “Why? Why must there be something?”
    Rsiran sighed and came to his feet. How to explain what he heard every night he lay alone in the tunnels? That tapping—the soft and steady sense of dread that he’d felt hearing it—lived in his mind, not imagined. And the boy hadn’t been responsible for all of it. He couldn’t have been. Rsiran remembered clearly times he’d heard it when the boy had been with him.
    “Because I know there’s someone mining here.”
    “You already told me it was the boy.”
    “There’s someone else. I don’t know who, but I don’t think it’s in the same mines.”
    “Can you not just…feel…for the opening in the mine?” she asked.
    Rsiran hadn’t even considered trying that. Taking a moment to focus on the lorcith, he realized he did feel the opening to the Elvraeth mines. It felt like an emptiness where the lorcith should be. Otherwise, the sense of lorcith was all around him, pressing on him with a gentle awareness. As he focused, he realized he could even sense the tunnels working beneath him by the void they created in the continuous sense of lorcith.
    Pushing that sense outward, plunging deeper into the rock, he searched for a different sense, one where he could feel the absence of the lorcith, but try as he would, he couldn’t feel anything different.
    “No.”
    “Then maybe there isn’t one.” Jessa shrugged and then looked up and down the face of the mountain. “This is dangerous. Being out here, Sliding along this path. Damn, Rsiran, I’m uncomfortable enough just standing here. What would have happened had you taken us just a little too far?”
    “But I didn’t.”
    Jessa smiled. “I know you have control of it. I’ve seen you Sliding. You don’t know it, but you sort of… shimmer… when you Slide. Everything around you sort of bends. It’s