Chapter I:
Blood-Drenched Beneath the Black Lode Peak
Two solitary figures awoke among a welter of broken wings and torn membranes, and vague visions of their nightmarish flight from Gredgehold assaulted their minds. Groaning, they slowly sat up, feeling their weary, bruised and aching limbs. Garvey's torn back stung with the fire of a thousand bee stings and he gingerly unstrapped his harness and pushed away the wreckage of the wings that had carried him before the great storm.
Ntashia tried to blink away the cobwebs in her skull, and turned her head from the light of the overhead sun that seemed to burn at her eyes. "Any idea where we're at?"
Garvey looked around, noting the chasm-interrupted terrain to the north and the the three great peaks to the south. "I see peaks, but we're definitely not anywhere near Gredgehold--the formations are different. I was hoping the winds would blow us toward the Valley Idor."
"No such luck," said Ntashia as she reached for a knife and cut away the tangled harness of her wings. "The winds picked us up and threw us in the opposite direction. Fortune was not favoring us last night. I lost a sister, and who knows how many miles we've been hurled away from Valley of Diamonds?"
Garvey climbed alongside of his wife and she put her head on his broad shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her narrow waist. "I'm sorry about Lana. I wish we could have done something more to save her."
Ntashia's brow furrowed. "It was that treacherous skelk, Cinyan. I should have put my blade through her gullet when I had the chance."
"Maybe so," said Garvey. "I didn't care for her much, but I didn't realize she was capable of such treachery."
"Each of us is capable of committing any number of attrocities," said Ntashia, "but we rely on our conscience to guide us to better actions."
"The problem with a conscience," said Garvey, "is that the more you ignore it the duller it becomes until eventually it's withered and dead. Maybe even someone like Cinyan, who started as a basically good person, could let her envy eat her up so much that finally she was able to rationalize away her conscience to the point where even murder wasn't beyond her ken."
He felt Ntashia stifle a sob and she quickly wiped away a tear.
"It's okay, go ahead and cry. There's nothing wrong with letting it out."
"A Muvari warrior does not shed tears until after the battle is over," answered Ntashia. Abruptly she rose to her feet. "I will cry for Lana when I have brought Cinyan to justice, but before that we must find our way to Caladrex. Ledgrim is still under the tyranny of the exiles."
Garvey looked again at the three peaks again and noted the black walls of the third. "Perhaps the One God was pushing us in the right direction when he let the winds carry us further from the Valley Idor. Instead they have carried us almost to the doorstep of the exile fortress. That is the Black Lode Peak, which Sar Savaht told you about in your hallucination."
Ntashia looked upon the peak with awe slowly dawning upon her face. "So it is. Then our plans have been adjusted by a higher power. First we shall rescue Sar Savaht and his family, then we shall find our way through the diamond gates of Caladrex."
"Exterak," murmured Garvey, remembering the password which Sharone had shouted out to the guards at the mouth of the defile which entered into the exile fortress.
"No mercy," translated Ntashia as Garvey brought that moment back to mind. "That is the motto we must adopt if we are to have any hope of surviving this night."
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