 town, waiting for me after tomorrow’s breakfast,” Jasna said.
Lord Justin made to respond, but Petra quieted him with a hiss and an upraised finger.
“Somebody’s coming,” she whispered. She glanced around. Save the woods, there was no cover.
“I don’t hear anything,” Justin said. But the girls pulled and pushed him along into the woods.
Several moments later, the rhythmic jangling of armor and weapons drifted through the fog.
“Are you sure they went this way?” a man’s voice asked. The accent was distinctly Traladaran.
The jangle and creaking of armor and leather subsided, though it was difficult to tell in the fog if it was lost in the distance, or simply swallowed by the mists.
Jasna glanced over at Petra, who closed her eyes, cocking her head one way and the other. After a few moments, she opened her eyes, shrugging. The two girls flashed several hand signals back and forth, before they both nodded.
Petra rose, her eyes intent on the forest floor. She moved slowly, placing her feet gently, arms outstretched for balance. Jasna followed, careful to place her own feet where the other girl’s had fallen. Before she took fourth step, she pointed at the young man, and then at the spots where she’d already stepped. He nodded, rising slowly, clutching at his sword and the lantern, surprisingly little wobble in his step. When Jasna’s eyes widened slightly, he stuck his tongue out at her.
Every four or five paces, Petra would pause, listening, and then move on. It took nearly half an hour to make another half mile’s progress, but they made it with a minimal amount of noise, and did not hear any sounds of pursuit.
It was eerie, creeping through the woods -- there were no sounds of wildlife, just the rustling they made with their progress and a dry rattle of what little breeze made it through the tendrils of fog curling amongst the twisted trees. The land began to rise steadily, and the mists faded. Shortly thereafter, the trees straightened, growing healthier the more the ground climbed away from the shoreline.
Ridges of black granite rose abruptly, like some great wall. They had to follow it back in the direction of the lake to find the fissure that the Old Road cut through, a fold in the rock wide enough for a large cart or small wagon. The sounds of Justin’s mail and sword echoed loudly in confines of the narrow pass.
The roadway still gradually rose, and they emerged to find a stretch of the road unbroken, weathered but sheltered from too much erosion by the small copse of pines that it cut through. Tracks through the accumulation of needles and swathes of mud showed that they were not the first to come along the road recently.
They followed the sound of a trickling brook for half an hour before the snorting and shuffling caused the group to freeze just before the bend in the trail. The sounds came more urgently, and the irritated snorting grew to a startled whinny giving way to a chorus of jabbering, shrill voices.
Jasna moved, to dash around the bend in the wooded trail, but Petra grabbed her wrist, shaking her head.
“What do you think you’re doing? Those are goblin voices!” she whispered.
She should have grabbed Justin’s arm as well.
“Come back here, Stableboy!” Jasna called after him. She wrenched free of the other girl, jogging after the young man.
“They’re only goblins,” he said, but the smile on his face dissolved as he rounded the twist in the trail.
“And goblins always travel in packs,” Jasna told him, as the dozen squat, gray-skinned figures looked up from ransacking the campsite. Yellowed eyes, narrowed in the sunlight, narrowed further at the intrusion. More eyes gleamed from the shadows under the trees.
Jasna swallowed, her mouth going drier the higher she counted, tallying opponents.
“Now would be a very good time to draw that sword,” she whispered to the young man.
“W-would it not be a better idea to flee?” he asked.
“I begin to see what you mean about his bravery,” Katarin said. The young man spared her a glance, his brow furrowing at the sing-song quality of her voice.
“Only twenty,” Jasna said.
“Did your Magia teach you how to make light, like she did in the catacombs?” Petra asked.
Petra wasn’t listening. She stepped forward, throwing her hands wide, speaking words that sounded more like a series of hisses and belches than language. She pointed -- dramatically -- to Katarin.
Jasna elbowed the weaver. “Ight-lay!” she whispered.
Katarin drew in a deep breath, and her fingers danced, curling and moving ever so slightly. She brought up her right hand, and a watery, rippling sphere of light wobbled a few inches above her palm. The girl’s breathing quickened, the corner of one eye twitching.
The goblins croaked in surprise, shuffling back a few steps. The few nearest the group raised an arm to shield their eyes.
Petra made another series of gulping croaks and barks. The goblins drew back another step, muttering amongst themselves and looking towards the largest among them -- a goblin only half a head shorter than Jasna.
It drew itself up to full height, squinting up at Petra. It gestured around the campsite, then pounded its chest as it burbled something to the girl.
She laughed, not taking her eyes from the goblin, pointing over her shoulder her at Justin.
The goblin peered at the group, the young man in particular for a long moment, then gave a gurgling sigh, shaking its head. It turned, barking something to the others, but from its body language, its message was obvious. Those goblins that grumbled or muttered, or loitered around were silenced or prodded into motion by a few well placed punches from the leader. The goblin pack took off at a shambling, loping run, disappearing northwards into the woods.
Katarin let out an explosive gasp, dropping her arm as the ball of light gave a final wobble and flopped over, winking out.
Petra choked down laughter. “Sword?” she finally managed.
“You offered me as your champion against their leader, if I followed your exchange correctly,” he said.
RobJN wrote: “You offered me as your champion against their leader, if I followed your exchange correctly,” he said.
The group halted at Petra’s call. She rummaged around in a bag at her waist, pulling out one of the pages they’d pored over the day before.
“This is it,” she said, glancing up from the page, at the mountains in the distance. “See? There is the snake and the rabbit. Which means….” She turned a slow circle.
“There!” Jasna said, and took two running steps across the broken paving stone. She jumped, trying to reach the branches of a scrubby shrub that clung to an outcropping of rock. Justin went to her side, reaching up, tugging at the branch. As it creaked aside, they saw the cluster of rounded folds of rock that looked like eggs sitting in a nest.
“There!” Petra said, pointing. Brynne turned, and saw the boot print in the drying mud. What they had taken for simply more overgrowth had apparently once been some sort of decorative hedging that ran along the front of the temple described in the manuscripts.
As Brynne pushed the tangle of brambles aside with her staff, they saw the beaklike overhang of rock. Beneath it was a fissure, leading down and into the hillside.
The girls crashed to a halt against Justin’s backpack.
“Why did you stop?” Jasna wheezed. She peeked around the young man’s cloak.
“Is it a dead end?” Brynne asked.
The rough walls, streaked with moisture, abruptly gave way to block-and-mortar stonework. A half-step down the worked-stone corridor was an archway, flanked by two bas-relief carvings of a young woman’s face, framed by flowing hair held back by a thin circlet.
All four girls gasped.
“It can’t be,” Brynne murmured.
“Who else could it be?” Katarin asked her.
The girls crowded around Justin.
“Hold that light higher,” Brynne told him.
The corridor was suddenly filled with an odd, thrumming hum.
The carvings to either side of the archway blinked, and then began to speak with Silva's voice. Slightly out of phase with each other, the words partially echoed in the girls' minds, the meanings in Traladaran overlaying the actual alien, spoken words. Just as they had whenever Silva spoke with them.
First avoid a harmful fall.
The girls went to one knee.
The floor vanished beneath them before the argument could even start.
Maybe after the second broken