"Many stories will end tonight," said Dob, gazing at the crimson reflections in the sky and the flares of flame above the crater. The volcano loomed in the distance as a dark mass, the ashen-milky winter sky with untidy splashes of shadowy clouds had taken on a violet hue, and in the west it was already tinged with evening blue.

  They stood before the cave and, in the muted colors of the hazy sunset, looked out over a deep mountain valley, ringed with cliffs and winding gray spurs. Beyond it stretched the dark mass of a fir forest with silver tops, and the blue, shimmering expanse of the icy desert to the east. Evening was coming. At the mouth of the black tomb-throat, the travelers had lit a fire and supped on strips of white dried meat from the centaurs’ stores. And now they, too, sat around it, warming their hands and bracing themselves for the fact that they would have to walk many more hours before reaching the ruins of Ardrai, where Aok and his clan now held the defenses against the superior forces of smugglers and goblins.

  Everything had already been said; all words were exhausted. Gedelin and Ioran had found the centaurs from their troop, who at that time were finishing off the last snow wolves prowling near the grove. They had been ordered to hide on the slope and, should druids and goblins begin to sweep the area, to fight their way back to Regerlim. But Gedelin and Ioran themselves decided to escort Kairu and his group all the way to Ardrai.

  Then the travelers smothered the fire with snow, turned away from the sun, which had shrunk into a white lump drifting slowly westward, from the pale sky and the blinding drifts, from the slopes, cliffs, and groves—and, following Gedelin and Ioran, entered the cave through the very gates they had spent the previous night clearing of rubble.

  "So here is the thing," Gedelin said first thing once they were inside. "The mountain is awakening. Which means that neither men nor centaurs have a place down there, in the mines or natural caves. We would simply burn alive from the hot vapors and the heat. But there is a way that will let us survive… for the next few hours. The Runes of the Ice Shield." With these words, he and Ioran took from their packs pieces of bark with silver glyphs and handed them to the travelers.

  "Break them," ordered the centaur, "and then follow us closely and fear nothing. However hot it gets inside, the Rune will let us breathe and walk calmly straight through the crater to the other side."

  The travelers broke the Runes all at once.

  It was as though a gust of icy wind from outside swept through the corridor, making their hair stand. From the bark, rays of dazzling white light burst forth, brighter than torches. Kairu felt a cold, clammy shell cover his hands, feet, head; more than that, it crept into his mouth and nostrils and seemed to flow inside his body. His skin began to glow faintly with a ghostly blue light. The same happened to the others, and the world seemed submerged in a murky bluish substance, the Rune’s magic shielding their eyes. Dark objects almost lost their clarity, while torches and the eyes of men and centaurs flared like fireflies.

  "Well then," came Ioran’s muffled voice. "Now we go. And hurry—the magic won’t last forever…"

  Kairu was utterly exhausted, mentally and physically. He no longer felt the flow of power from Octarus, lying safely in the pack under his shirt. His thoughts moved sluggishly, his memory muddled, suddenly surfacing scraps long buried in the farthest corners of his mind. He walked, staring at Lainter’s back, scarcely aware of what was happening. He was no longer here, but reliving blurred fragments of childhood, his mother’s death, his first prophetic dreams, and attempts to peer into the future…

  How strange… He had never known how painful it was—to recall every single moment with sharp clarity, to unwind the thread of time in that span where his consciousness existed, tirelessly recording each instant of life.

  And everything that had happened to him until now no longer seemed real. Rather, it felt like impulses from Octarus, shadows of something long forgotten and sunk into oblivion, because time had ceased to be constant, because now it was possible to control it, to nudge events in the needed direction. And if something changed, the memories tied to those events also changed, and the mind began to tangle them, unable to tell real memory from altered…

  Meanwhile, they walked on.

  They turned into the corridor leading to the Mine of Poisoned Gold, skirted a lake of black slime shrouded with vapor, and followed the centaurs downward into a tunnel where even torches barely pushed back the dark. It smelled of burning and something else unpleasant that oddly made one drowsy. The wild cold outside had given way to suffocating heat. Volcanite crystals glimmered on the walls with a pale greenish light.

  "Touch nothing here," ordered Gedelin. In the torchlight, the walls looked glossy, with uneven reflections, like moonlight on a restless sea. Ahead, the hiss of steam could be heard.

  The corridor ended in a long hall where carts lay scattered against the walls. Two arches in the far wall opened onto dark tunnels leading in different directions, and in one corner, the air itself seemed to ripple. There lay a harpy, withered, its drooping wings splayed absurdly. Viggo grimaced with disgust.

  "What happened here?.. Why so many dead?"

  "Some disaster," muttered Konrad. "No one knows the reason, and no one wants to know. We don’t descend into the lower sections, into the mine itself… I’ve read, there are whole barrows of skeletons down there."

  Indeed, Gedelin turned right, and at the end of the next corridor, they found a staircase leading upward. From the ceiling hung greenish tatters like seaweed, so that the tall centaurs had to duck their heads to avoid brushing against the stuff. The glow of crystals grew stronger, and the next chamber—almost a grotto—was filled with blue light, like a cathedral with hundreds of lamps along its walls. It was a natural cavity in the mountain, and here the earth’s rumble was palpable. Steam rose from cracks in the floor and gathered under the ceiling.

  From here, tunnels led onward through a huge breach in the wall. They entered a labyrinth of natural caves, touched by human hands, only to cut a passage through the mountain to the other side. The air was stale, rocks lay scattered, black clefts gaped in the walls where primal darkness lurked, and the tunnel twisted and turned. Here and there, collapsed passages and heaps of ash appeared, and the heat from the depths was mounting. Everyone felt the breath of the awakening volcano; sweat streamed down backs and faces. Kairu took off his jacket and envied the druid ahead of him, who had no outer clothing but a wolfskin carelessly thrown over his shoulders.

  The ground shuddered and began to quake beneath their feet. Gedelin froze, arms outstretched for balance, peering ahead. A distant rumble and roar sounded, then everything hushed, as if the world had sighed, snorted—and quieted, returning to an uneasy surface sleep, still lingering in a sweet half-dream.

  "The Fire-Breathing Mountain is awakening," Dob murmured.

  Gedelin moved again. At the end of the winding corridor, a light shone, brighter than sunlight, and a blast of hellish heat and ash hit them. Kairu nearly choked, Konrad doubled over, coughing, Ashley turned away, covering her face with a scarf. The heat was unbearable even with the Runes’ magic, and without that protection, they would have long since been boiled alive… And a few minutes later, they emerged at the edge of the first chasm.

  To the right yawned a bottomless shaft reaching to the roots of the world, its walls glittering with red and yellow volcanite crystals, while from below came the glow of lava, boiling and devouring stone. From there rose burning air that scorched the lungs with every breath, and the heat in the tunnel was so fierce one might as well strip naked. The air shimmered, and steam from the lava streams, sluggishly flowing through fissures in the rock, rose upward into a vast hole in the cave’s ceiling. This was but one of dozens of tunnels stretching from the crater down to the mountain’s slopes.

  Gedelin dashed forward along a narrow rocky ledge, moving away from the lava shaft. The others hurried after him, their boots striking the cracked, glowing ground. Darkness closed in again. The torch flickered and went out: even the white magical flame lacked enough air. The earth trembled once more, silently, soil sifted down from the ceiling, and behind Kairu, Rita drew in a deep breath.

  "How much farther?" Ashley muttered through clenched teeth.

  "Plenty," Gedelin growled. "We’ll be walking for hours yet…"

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "You’re joking?!" Viggo gasped.

  "Not at all. You chose to go to Ardrai. This is the only road I know."

  The corridor bent again. Hot air seared the travelers’ faces as they emerged onto a path running along the wall above a chasm.

  Below, shrouded in gray haze, seethed and bubbled molten lava, a column of smoke rising endlessly upward, obscuring any sight of the opposite edge of the colossal shaft. Yet Kairu guessed that the crater of the Fire-Breathing Mountain was several miles across. The abyss swelled, devouring cliffs, licking them with its golden tongue, so that rocks crashed down, tumbling into the stone cauldron, and slowly sank in it. The crater walls glowed crimson with heat, while the ledge coiled upward in a spiral, a fragile, treacherous path leading toward the summit, a summit impossibly high and nearly hidden by gray clouds. Below yawned a blazing hell, its gurgling lava proclaiming the advent of underground gods.

  The travelers stood at the edge of this abyss, staring down, unable to tear their eyes away. Beside the breath of the giant mountain, they felt like mere grains of sand, and Kairu might have stood there until the lava swallowed his boots…

  "Stay awake!" Gedelin roared. "The lava won’t wait! If you value your lives—move!"

  And he was the first to go upward, stepping cautiously along the brittle ledge.

  "Who’s that?" Norton asked quietly, pointing downward. Kairu glanced again—and saw orange, long-tailed lizards running nimbly right above the lava’s surface, even along the vertical walls of the crater. He shuddered: instantly, he remembered that dreadful day on the ice of Derelzfjord, when goblins had ridden those very creatures…

  "Salamanders," Demetra answered. "We have volcanoes in Derelz too, I’ve seen them crawling out of the craters. They have a natural ability to endure tremendous heat and usually live right in such cauldrons."

  "There hasn’t been an eruption in Derelz for five hundred years," said Konrad. "But this volcano is active, though for a long time no one suspected it… Its last eruption was about thirty years ago. The one that killed Ardrai."

  Kairu’s shirt clung to his back, sweat streamed down his neck, his shoulder blades were rubbed raw by the links of his mail shirt—so scorching was the air. The Rune gave powerful protection, yet even centaur magic struggled against the might of nature. One thought pounded in his head: coolness. Kairu craved coolness. The heat had grown unbearable, almost tangible, the air a dense wall hindering their climb. The ledge narrowed; now they walked along the very edge of the abyss, holding tightly to each other’s hands. Dry stones slipped from beneath their boots, and it was strange to watch them fall so long before vanishing in the gray haze.

  The rocks kept collapsing, making way for new streams of fire pouring from the mountain’s heart, climbing in slender channels and spilling into the crater’s cauldron. Chunks of stone broke off, and liquid magma gushed out with a hiss, cascading like a waterfall down obsidian growths.

  How long had they been climbing? Kairu knew only one thing for certain: the upper rim never seemed to come closer. The spiral ledge winding up the wall felt endless. Even the centaurs faltered at one point, stopping to allow the others to rest.

  The travelers collapsed, spent, forgetting in an instant that beneath them lay hundreds of feet, separating them from the rising lava. The centaurs stood grimly, leaning against the wall and looking downward; the men and the druid rested with legs stretched out, exhausted. They still had a little time left, enough to allow such a respite.

  This was no longer a journey at whose end lay a goal—the ruins of Ardrai. It had become a flight from the elements, from the burning streams threatening to turn them to ash or to slabs of basalt. Kairu caught himself raging when the ledge leveled, or worse, slanted slightly downward. Each second in this hell drained him, yet fear lashed his back like a whip of ice, driving him to press on, almost running toward the summit.

  They rose again and went on, teeth clenched, feet blistered bloody, trudging stubbornly across the stone bridge that led to the frosty winter night, which only recently had seemed the worst fate imaginable. Foot by foot, upward, ever upward, circling the mountain mile after mile. And the lava gave them no respite, never slowing its dreadful, inevitable rise. Then Kairu lifted his head and suddenly realized the upper rim was very near.

  Those last yards they overcame crawling, scrambling along the ledge, feeling the dry rock crumble under their fingers, their bodies sliding on the bare stone surface with nothing to grip. Feeling hot air lick their boots, as if they stood upon a burning pan. Feeling dust and ash rain into their hair and down their collars, spitting it out as they clawed onward…

  Kairu pulled himself at last onto the upper platform after the centaurs, who had managed the climb most easily. He emerged into the cold, gulping air in desperate swallows. He rose, stretched out a hand to Rita, as exhausted as he was, then Dob climbed up, and together they hauled Ashley and Demetra to safety. The rest of the travelers followed, spilling as a group onto the snowy slope.

  Once again, they stood beneath the stars of the Vaimar night, coughing out dust, breathing the scent of snow with relief, and gazing at the long mountain trail leading on toward the trident peaks and the pass to the Duanmare Plateau. From here, the forest of Regerlim was visible as a thin dark stripe on the horizon; visible too the snowy field where tiny sparks of campfires gleamed like fallen stars. The slope fell away for miles, and now they were at a dizzying height beneath the massive cloud of hot gases and ash spewed by the volcano.

  At this point, the crater narrowed. In a couple of hours, one could walk its circumference and probably see all of Vaimar, from the edge of the icy desert in the north to the Olmaer range in the south. From here flowed formations of solidified lava like serpents. Steam rose, and magma poured in waterfalls from fumaroles into stone basins, forming lakes. More and more appeared, the mountain quaking, roaring as it spewed fresh torrents that wrapped the slope in a blazing net. The rumble was unceasing now. Kairu saw rocks and dust explode into the air, a fiery blast leaping upward, a fountain of sparks that spilled through natural channels down toward Ardrai.

  "Move!" Gedelin urged. "It’s a long way yet, and the lava is rising…"

  Kairu turned once more. Beyond a basalt wall, through an opening, the abyss’s edge was still visible. Another explosion boomed close by, so powerful it nearly knocked him to the ground. The rock subsided, and yet another lava-fall cascaded downward. It would take no more than half an hour for it to break free and flood the entire slope in a fiery storm… And the Rune’s power was waning. It was getting hard to breathe.

  Suddenly, everything blurred before his eyes, and Kairu almost physically felt the thread of time begin to unwind. And then…

  Then he was once again a spirit, lost in time, standing on the same ledge, the same lava waterfall roaring in front of him. Yet now he saw something else. A couple of hundred yards away, in the mountain’s slope, there yawned a black cave mouth that would later be drowned by lava, and from that mouth a man staggered out… His hair, black as pitch, whipped in the icy wind. He turned, glancing back at the trail leading upward, and Kairu saw his face, twisted as if by some insane torment. Gaunt cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and eyes that glowed blue from the Rune’s effect, though in truth they were orange… Kairu wanted to cry out, but could not: his body remained somewhere else, thirty years in the future, and with it remained the furious cry, the hands that might have strangled Saelin, this moron, who had caused so much ruin already… Now he could only stand and watch as the professor ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair, looked around, and slowly staggered down the slope, as though it mattered little to him if the tongues of lava spilled over the edge and chased after him.

  He was exactly as Kairu remembered him, and it was hard to believe that here the professor was thirty years younger…

  "Kairu!"

  It was Rita.

  He was back in his own time, deafened and blinded, feeling only the touch of her hand. His ears rang. Perhaps he would have to grow used to this…

  "I’m all right," he nodded with effort. "Why are we standing still?.."

  "We’ll have to go down past the lava flows," said Gedelin worriedly. "Usually the lava runs into the valley, toward Duanmare and the fields, while Ardrai lies a bit aside… that’s where we’ll go." He pointed at three mountains rising in the murk ahead.

  "Then how was the city flooded with lava thirty years ago?" Lainter asked in surprise.

  "There was a break… at the very top of the crater. A huge rock fell away, and the lava poured straight down, sweeping everything before it. Later, the centaurs sealed the breach and placed a magical barrier over it. To this day, no one knows what really happened. Perhaps human magic and technology played a part?"

  The centaurs hurried down, trampling the melting snow, and the utterly exhausted travelers followed, picking their way among massive chunks of cooled lava, choking on the smoke that blanketed everything. The volcano seethed and shook, bursts of ash flying overhead. From the nearby heat, the snowbanks mixed with soil, turning into wet, filthy slush that swallowed their boots. Yet even this was better than the endless climb inside the crater, that game of tag with death… The Fire-Breathing Mountain was now behind them, the road to the ruins of Ardrai before them.

  They skirted the main lava channels along gentler, firmer trails. Behind them, the lava had risen almost to the rim, spilling from the very fissure through which they had escaped, and the cloud of smoke had spread across half the sky, blotting out the stars.

  Darkness thickened, the slope leveled, and the pass ahead came into view. They longed for sleep, longed even more for water. Their lungs tore against the thin, frosty air as they moved in short runs from rock to rock. The group stretched out in a thin chain, walking single file behind the centaurs, with Kairu and Lainter at the lead, pressing forward among the channels where streams of cooling lava still crept downward. Below, all was already flooded; only one path remained, leading out of the mountain valley to a safe distance. And then the fog thinned, the heat fell behind, and Kairu saw that they had climbed the pass quite high, while the fiery tongues had followed their ancient channels leftward, into the valley, where the rivulets merged into one torrent that spread across the snowy plain, stretching orange fingers all the way toward Regerlim.

  "We can rest," Gedelin muttered wearily, stopping to wipe sweat from his brow. "The worst is already behind us…"

  The exhausted travelers collapsed on the cold, snowy ground. Before them, the end of the world seemed to unfold. New torrents of magma gushed from the volcano like from an overboiling cauldron. The Rune’s power was fading; it still shielded them from the ash swirling in the air and from the scalding vapors, but the protection was slipping from their skin, the blue glow vanishing. Yet there was no more need for magic.

  The Mountain had let them pass.