Sasha’s fingers were red with cold. Spring had already started to warm the valleys below, but winter wouldn’t loosen its grip on these high places until well into Summer. She turned the small stick in her hands, feeling the runes carved in its smooth bark. She had found it in Oren’s bed roll, buried in the folds of his thick wool blanket.
The guard on watch near their small wagon hadn’t heard or seen anything out of the ordinary. He hadn’t noticed Oren get out of bed, hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave the camp’s perimeter. No one had. People didn’t leave camp at night in the Burning Mountains. Everyone knew that. Oren, at six-years-old, had known it too.
The other members of the caravan were packing their belongings and preparing to go. Oren’s disappearance had given weight to the dark stories about this place, stories that had seemed foolish when the caravan had set out three weeks ago. After Sasha discovered Oren was missing and her trembling search through the camp calling Oren’s name had grown into panicky cries for help, several of the more experienced woodsmen had formed a search party. They had found nothing. Now everyone was anxious to leave, to put as many miles between themselves and this rocky pass as they could before nightfall.
Sasha had discovered the carved stick in Oren’s blanket shortly after the searchers set out. Not knowing what else to do, she had gone back to the last place she had seen her son and searched his bedroll as if he could somehow impossibly be hidden there in the rumpled folds, safely sleeping. She still knelt there, trying to make sense of what she had found. She didn’t know what the runes meant, but she recognized them. Similar markings could be seen in most of the ancient places. Echoes of a lost people. But the runes in the ancient places were carved in stone, their shapes softened by centuries of wind and rain. The stick she held in her hand was green wood, the sap still sticky where it had been carved.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned her head to see. It was Kernon, leader of the caravan guards.
“Healer, you better get packed. Caravan’s moving out soon.”
Sasha tucked the strange stick out of sight, stood, and turned to face him. “I have to find my son.”
“My men searched the entire area. There’s no trace of him. The caravan can’t stay here any longer. In as little as two days this pass could be flameswept. Already some of the other travelers are complaining that they are being put at risk by the delay.”
Sasha folded her arms and glared at Kernon. “Your men could have missed something. I won’t leave yet. The caravan can go. I will stay behind with the three of your men whose lives I saved last month.”
“Be reasonable, Healer. The men who searched for your boy were some of my best. If he were still out there, they would have found him. If I thought there were any hope of finding him I would stay myself.”
Sasha couldn’t open her mouth or the lump in her throat would turn into sobs, so she just shook her head and looked down. Her vision blurred with tears. When she felt in control of herself again she looked up. “I’m staying. Even if I have to stay by myself. Oren is all I have left, and I won’t leave until I find him or learn what happened.”
Kernon stared at her for a long moment. “I won’t force any of my men to stay with you. But if the three you saved choose to honor their debt, I will let them stay, on one condition. You must agree that by midday tomorrow, you will leave this place and ride to meet the caravan at Padden’s Crossing. We’ll take your wagon with us and leave you with saddle horses. You should be able to catch up easily.”
Sasha nodded. “I agree.”
It didn’t take long for the caravan to start moving. One of Kernon’s men drove Sasha’s wagon, leaving his horse with Sasha. The three men Sasha requested agreed readily enough. They were honorable men, and they owed her a life debt. So when Kernon gave permission, the matter was settled.
As the last of the wagons rattled out of sight down the rocky pass, Sasha looked around. The campsite was nothing more than a slightly wider place in a narrow canyon pass. The scorched rock walls on either side rose hundreds of feet. The ground was covered with fragments of blackened rock. There were no trees in the Burning Mountains. Ever since some ancient curse had created the phenomenon that gave the mountains their name, nothing could live here permanently. At each new moon a flood of flame, fueled by some lost magic, engulfed these mountains, consuming everything but the rocks.
When the caravan entered the Burning Mountains two days ago, it was common to see ashes piled like snow drifts against leeward walls. The remains of unfortunate creatures caught in the monthly inferno. This far into the mountain range the ashes were rare. There was nothing to tempt wandering animals to stray this far, and the human travelers knew to be gone before new moon.
One of Kernon’s men, Nalor, walked toward her, leading his horse. In the quiet left by the departed caravan, the scraping and crunching of the horse’s hooves in the scree seemed too loud.
“Healer, whatever took your son won’t have left footprints in this loose rock. Do you have any ideas about where to start looking?”
Sasha nodded. “I want to search along the route we came yesterday. There’s a cave a few miles back that way. Oren found it while we were resting the animals, and he played in front of it for some time. I don’t know how deep it is, but it’s the only place along the trail that I can remember where someone might have been hiding and where Oren might have been singled out.”
“We’d better get going then.” Nalor turned to where the other two men Kernon had left were talking a short distance away. “Graj. Weyd. Mount up. We’re going back up the pass a ways.”
The ride to the cave took longer than Sasha expected. When they finally reached the place Sasha remembered, it was mid afternoon. They dismounted and Sasha led the group off the trail and around a cluster of enormous boulders. There, out of sight of the trail, was an opening in the canyon wall.
Nalor handed his horse’s reins to Weyd and ducked into the cave’s mouth. He returned a few moments later.
“It goes deeper than I can see without a torch. Graj, you stay here with the horses. Weyd and I will go with the Healer. We should know pretty quick whether this cave leads to anything.”
Graj and Weyd hobbled the horses while Nalor pulled torches from his saddle bags and lit them. Then Nalor ducked back into the cave with Weyd and Sasha close behind.
The soot blackened walls inside the cave drank the light from Nalor’s torch, scarcely reflecting back enough to make out the cave’s shape. Nalor walked slowly forward, eyes studying the stone floor. After a few steps he stopped and stooped down.
“Take a look at this.”
Weyd stepped around Sasha and crouched beside Nalor. Sasha leaned in close to see. At first she didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but after a moment she saw what had caught Nalor’s eye. The thick soot covering the the cave floor had been rubbed off, revealing pale gray stone underneath. Sasha straightened.
“What does it mean?”
Nalor stood as well. “This mark was made some time since the last burning, or it would have been covered by now. That’s all I can tell for sure. If we had any other sign of your son’s disappearance to follow, I wouldn’t consider this a likely option. But since this is the only unexplained track we have found all morning, it’s the best lead we have.”
Nalor started walking slowly forward again, his eyes fixed on the floor. It was only a moment before he found another mark. Then another, and another. As they followed the marks, the cave opened up around them. The walls were no longer visible in the dim torchlight, but the noise of their cautious steps began to echo in a way that suggested a large cavern.
After a few more minutes they came to a more identifiable marking. It was shaped roughly like a footprint, a child-sized footprint. Before they could go farther though, a shout came from outside the cave. Graj and Nalor turned back at once, drawing swords and moving fast toward the cave entrance. Sasha turned as well but hesitated. Oren might be close by.
I AM GLAD YOU ACCEPTED MY INVITATION
Sasha dropped her torch and collapsed to the floor, pressing her palms against her temples. The words were so loud inside her head she felt like her skull would shatter. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nalor and Graj reach the cave’s mouth. No daylight spilled through the low opening anymore. Neither one paused to look back.
When the voice came again Sasha screamed, but though she could feel the scream tearing from her throat, all she could hear was the voice.
YOUR SON IS HERE
There was more. The voice didn’t stop, but Sasha’s mind seized those four words and wouldn’t let go. After few more moments her torch flickered out and, battered and overwhelmed by the voice, so did her consciousness.