Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [190]
“My father often told me that in the end, the grass and trees take back the land from a fire mountain. It must be happening here.”
“Truly, and look, there it is.”
At the north end of the valley soared a mountain the like of which Rhodry had never seen. Just like the multiple brochs of a great lord’s dun, it seemed formed of three peaks fused together—the highest, a truncated cone, rising snowcapped between a much lower, shambling pair, which looked as if their tops had been bitten off by some unimaginably huge beast. The slopes rose dark, striped here and there with trees, here and there creviced with shadow. A thin mist hung at the apex.
“Smoke?” Rhodry said.
Enj merely shrugged, staring fascinated at the volcano.
“I think your dweomer did lead us here,” he whispered at last. “Even if I should die tonight, seeing this mountain would have made the journey worthwhile.”
It was, Rhodry supposed, very beautiful, but still, he couldn’t understand Enj’s fascination. He himself would have preferred a view of the High King’s palace or suchlike any day.
“I see water over there,” Rhodry said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t reek of brimstone, too.”
They camped that night between the mountain’s feet. For the first time since Othara had given him the talisman, Rhodry dreamt, these long and vivid dreams of flying far above the earth, of seeing trees and mountains swoop by underneath as his vision wheeled and soared. Yet along with the delight worry touched the dreams, a faint dread, a wondering if danger lay nearby. He woke suddenly at dawn and lay in his blankets, hands tucked underneath his head, while he stared at the peaks rising above. As the light brightened, deepening the shadows, he could pick out fissures and strange long formations of rock, twining down the mountainside like rivulets of black water between green-gray banks of trees. Here and there the rock pooled as well or made boulders shaped like drops, the record of ancient splashes from a time when the mountain had spilled liquid rock like metal from a blacksmith’s spoon. As he studied the slopes, he felt the earth tremble under him, just for a few beats of a heart before it stilled.
“The land of blood and fire, he whispered.
Rhodry sat up and began to study the two side cones. Not only were they lower, the left somewhat more than the right, but they were far more deeply eroded, with the leftward the most heavily forested of the three. The left, then, would probably offer the easiest way up. Given how tired they were, and how little food they had left, it would be best if their first choice were the correct one. He considered calling the dragon to see if he could form some impression of its direction, then realized that to do so would warn it.
Enj woke soon after, and he’d also been worrying about their route. After a scant breakfast of squirrel caught and roasted the day before, they discussed which of the two lower peaks to climb.
“Or should we climb either, for that matter,” Rhodry said. “I feel in my very soul that the dragon’s up there somewhere, but that’s not a rational thought or suchlike. I’d hate to have you depend upon it.”
“What else do we have to depend on? I think, Rori, that if you’re meant to have this wyrm, then we’ll find it easily, and if you’re not, well, then, we’ll die no matter which way we go.”
“Imph. An unlovely thought, that, but I think me you speak true. What we need is an omen. Too bad Otho’s not along to cast us a geomancy.”
Enj laughed, then went back to studying the mountain. Even though the day was growing sunny and hot, the gray mist still hung at the highest peak. Rhodry rose to his feet and