Warrior of the Wild(65)

Everything darkens all of a sudden. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see a shape blocking part of the sun. Not a cloud, something nearer and swifter. I’m torn between not taking my eyes off the cat and seeing what the blur of movement is.

It’s growing closer. Growing bigger.

It’s coming right for us.

I can’t help it.

I look.

Blue and white, a mixture of cloud and sky. A perfect camouflage—just like everything else in the wild.

As if the otti bird needed the extra advantage.

Razor-sharp talons that match the azure of its underbelly stretch out, each one the size of an arm. They clamp firmly over the middle of the great mountain cat. The feline didn’t even hear it coming.

A mighty growl lets loose, but it’s nothing to the shrieking caw of the victorious bird. It takes off in flight, the great cat clutched in its talons. Wings flap against the ground, sending rocks tumbling over themselves. I waver, nearly knocked over from the wind gust. Soren reaches a hand out, whether to steady me or himself, I don’t know.

And we watch as the bird and cat disappear from sight.

With a grin, I turn to Soren. “It’s real.”





CHAPTER


19


“Don’t just stand there,” I say. “Let’s go. It went that way.”

Soren still stares at the last point he saw the bird before it disappeared. I wave a hand in front of his face. He blinks and finally turns his head away.

“I didn’t think we’d actually find it!” he shouts. I step back at his loud exclamation, one composed of sheer shock. “Sorry,” he adds.

“We did. And it’s getting away.”

“It’s already gone.”

“But the trail is fresh, you idiot. Let’s go!”

He finally finds his feet and starts upward again, trailing along to the right, the direction the bird went off in. It was definitely going toward the peak, but from a slightly different angle.

Soren leads this time, his motivation escalated by the sight of the bird that could be his salvation. I trail behind, not saying anything. My excitement grows as I watch Soren’s grow. He picks up the pace, his breathing frantic, but knowing how close we are seems to give him more energy.

I’m staring upward, trying to guess how much farther until we reach the top, when I hear Soren stumble.

He must have fallen onto his back, because by the time I see him, he’s moving himself to a sitting position.

“What happened?”

“I must have run into something?”

He says it like a question. Up ahead, clumps of enormous boulders lie about the area as well as some trees, but they’re too far away for Soren to have stumbled into.

I step past him, thinking perhaps he stepped into a hole in the ground and stumbled, but I can’t see how that would have sent him falling backward rather than forward.

I connect with something solid and teeter backward, but I manage to catch myself. I look back at Soren on the ground, whose expression is just as puzzled as mine. He watched me the whole time, saw that I ran into … nothing.

I reach out my hands in front of me.

They connect with solid air at the wrists.

“It’s just like the god’s lair,” I say. “This is exactly what it felt like when I tried to enter.”

“Could he be close?” Soren whispers, eyes flitting about our surroundings.

“Or he doesn’t want us approaching this part of the mountain. Perhaps it’s part of his domain.”

We wait, not daring to move, in case the god is nearby.

But after a few minutes of not being struck down by inhuman forces, we relax.

“You said the barrier keeps out metal?” Soren asks.

“Yes, but we can’t very well leave our armor and axes behind to climb the peak. Not after our mountain cat attack. We’ll circle this area. Maybe there’s a break. Peruxolo’s power can’t encompass the whole mountain or else we wouldn’t have made it this far.”

With one forearm pressed against the invisible wall, I start walking in a direction parallel to it, Soren trailing behind me.

Only about twenty feet later, my arm falls through the nothingness with no resistance.

“It’s gone,” I say, turning toward the peak once more.

We start the upward incline, but it’s only seconds before we run into another wall.

“What the hell?” Soren says.

Our frustration growing, we walk along the new wall until it disappears, then continue the climb upward.

Our path turns into an invisible maze as we avoid the god’s power. We backtrack, zigzag, go in what feels like circles—just so that we can find a path that isn’t blocked by the invisible wall.

“We’ll never find the bird like this,” I huff after running into yet another barrier.

“We’re making progress,” Soren says.

“Barely.”

“Before you arrived, I’d never even set foot at the base of this mountain. This is progress. Don’t give up on me now.”

That stops my complaining instantly. I’m doing this for Soren, because I want him to be free to return to the villages. And I need his help to publicly face the god. We can do this.

But all these barriers—it’s like the god is taunting me. Does he know I’m alive? Why is he protecting this mountain peak?