Page 1 of Dark Shaman: The Lost Treasure (The Children Of The Gods #98)

ELUHEED

R ain clouds hovered over Mount Ararat's steep slopes as Eluheed made his way up the familiar path, hoping it wouldn't start raining before he reached the cave.

At these elevations, sudden thunderstorms and heavy precipitation could create dangerous conditions even for an experienced climber like him.

He wasn't worried about hypothermia, but icy conditions could mean slipping and falling, and there was a limit to what his body could repair.

It was too late to go back, though. Besides, he'd already missed the summer solstice by nearly two weeks because of the weather, and he could delay no longer.

This was the time when the veil between worlds was supposed to grow thin, and there were certain rituals he was obligated to perform.

After all, he was a shaman even if he was temporarily displaced.

Eluheed chuckled bitterly.

What had been supposed to be a temporary displacement, a way to save and hide the most precious of treasures, had turned into a very long exile, and he'd lost hope of ever going back.

For better or for worse, this was his home now.

A hawk circled overhead, its cry echoing off the mountain's face, and Eluheed paused, watching its flight pattern with the practiced eye of one who knew how to read nature's signs. Except for the worsening weather, nothing seemed amiss.

Just a hunter seeking prey among the rocks.

He continued the ascent, his boots finding purchase on rocks he'd climbed countless times before, each step bringing him closer to his hidden treasure.

The cave entrance lay another hour's climb ahead, concealed behind a wall of rocks, the narrow opening visible only to someone who knew exactly where to look.

Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet trembled, and Eluheed froze.

The tremor lasted only a heartbeat, so slight that he was tempted to dismiss it as his imagination, but he knew better.

These mountains had been his home for hundreds of years, and he knew them well.

Tremors were common, but the question was whether they would intensify or die out.

Fifty-seven years prior, the mountain had erupted, as it also had four centuries before that. He'd survived on both occasions, but only by sheer luck. Many hadn't.

His charges were in no danger, though, even if it got much worse. This mountain was as close to their natural habitat as it got, and they were built to withstand whatever it could unleash. Nevertheless, Eluheed quickened his pace.

Another tremor, stronger this time.

He climbed faster, his legs carrying him up the slope that would challenge a mountain goat. His leather satchel bounced against his side as he leaped from boulder to boulder, no longer caring if there were any other climbers on the mountain to witness his unnatural agility.

The cave was close now, perhaps two hundred meters above. He could see the distinctive rock formation that marked its location. He'd built it himself, making sure it was unmistakable, so he could always find it.

Then the world around him exploded into chaos.

The earthquake struck with a force that threw Eluheed to his knees. The mountain groaned, a sound that seemed to come from the very heart of the earth below. Rocks the size of houses broke free from the slopes above, tumbling past him in a deadly cascade.

Eluheed pressed himself against an outcropping, shielding his head as debris rained down. Through the thunder of falling stone, he heard something that made his blood freeze—a deep, resonant crack from somewhere far below, as if the mountain itself was splitting apart.

"No," he breathed, though the word was lost in the cacophony.

The shaking intensified. It wasn't merely an earthquake now.

The mountain was awakening.

Eluheed had lived long enough to recognize the signs. Volcanic gases began rising from the new fissures, sulfurous and choking. The temperature climbed, and he could feel the heat through his palms where they pressed against the rock face.

He had to reach the cave.

Fighting against the bucking earth, Eluheed struggled upward.

A boulder crashed down where he'd been standing moments before, pulverizing into dust. He leaped over a widening crack, barely catching the opposite edge as the gap yawned wider behind him.

His fingers dug into crevices as he hauled himself up.

The cave entrance was just ahead, still sealed, still intact. Relief flooded through him. If he could just?—

The explosion knocked him backward, a blast of superheated gas and ash erupting from the mountain's peak.

Eluheed's vision went white as the shockwave hit, his body tumbling through the air like a leaf on a gust of wind.

He slammed into a rock face, the impact cracking ribs that immediately began to heal.

When his vision cleared, the world had transformed into a nightmare.

The sky had turned black as night, choked with volcanic ash that fell like hellish snow. Lightning crackled through the ash clouds, illuminating the mountain in terrible flashes. And below, far below where the villages nestled in the valleys, the screaming began.

Eluheed looked up toward the cave's entrance, or where it had been. The entire face of the mountain was gone, sheared away in a massive landslide that was even now racing down toward the inhabited areas below. Millions of tons of rock and earth, moving with the speed of an avalanche.

"No!" This time he screamed the word, his anguish lost in the mountain's roar.

His charges, his sacred duty, were buried beneath half a mountain, lost perhaps forever. The weight of his failure crushed him more thoroughly than any falling rock could have.

But the distant screams cut through his despair.

There were thousands of people below, toward whom death was racing at an impossible speed.

Eluheed turned his back on the obliterated cave and on his charges that would continue to slumber under the rocks without him and bolted toward the village below.

The landscape blurred past as he descended at incredible speed, leaping over chasms that hadn't existed minutes before.

The landslide thundered behind him, a wall of death that grew with every meter it traveled, collecting rocks and earth into its hungry mass.

The first village appeared through the ash fall—Akhuri, home to nearly two thousand souls. The small houses clustered around an ancient church, their inhabitants confused by the darkness and the shaking earth.

"Run!" Eluheed roared as he burst into the village square. "Run for your lives!"

An elderly woman stood in her doorway, frozen in terror. "The world is ending," she wailed. "God has forsaken us!"

"God wants you to run." Eluheed grabbed her arm, practically lifting her from her feet. "Now!"

But it was already too late. He could feel the landslide's approach through the ground, a vibration that grew to a roar that drowned out all other sound.

Some of the villagers ran screaming, while others stood frozen, staring up at the mountain they'd lived beneath all their lives, unable to comprehend that it was about to kill them all.

Eluheed dropped the old woman and sprinted toward the church, where children were running out, their teacher trying to herd them away from the incoming disaster.

The landslide crested the ridge above the village like a tsunami of earth and stone. Eluheed had seconds at best.

He grabbed a boy, then a girl who couldn't have been more than five. He could only save so many.

The teacher pushed more children toward him. "Take them. Save who you can."

He grabbed two more when the houses started to explode into splinters. The church, which had stood for five hundred years, vanished in an instant. The screaming suddenly stopped, replaced by the grinding roar of millions of tons of debris flowing.

Eluheed ran, four children clutched against his chest, his legs pumping with desperate strength. The ground beneath him was disappearing, consumed by the advancing wall of destruction. He leaped over a stone fence just as it was swallowed up, the children screaming in terror.

Ahead, the ground rose slightly—not enough to stop the landslide, but perhaps enough to slow it. Eluheed pushed harder, his muscles burning. He could feel the heat of the debris flow now, the friction of so much moving earth raising the temperature to lethal levels.

They crested the rise just as the landslide caught up to them.

Eluheed threw himself forward, curling his body around the children as they tumbled. Rocks battered him, tearing flesh that immediately tried to heal. A tree branch punched through his shoulder. He screamed but didn't let go of the children.

They tumbled in the chaos for what felt like hours but was probably only seconds. Then, miraculously, they were thrown clear, ejected from the edge of the flow onto solid ground.

Eluheed uncurled, checking each child. Bruised, terrified, covered in dust and blood—but alive. All four of them.

Behind them, the landslide continued its destructive path, heading for more villages below. Eluheed could already see the dust cloud rising from where Akhuri had been. Two thousand people gone in less than a minute.

"Stay here," he told the children, setting them in a cluster by a large rock. "Don't move. I'll come back for you."

The oldest boy grabbed Eluheed's torn sleeve. "Don't leave us!"

"I have to try to save others," Eluheed said, prying the small fingers loose. "Be brave. Watch the little ones."

He didn't wait for a response. The landslide was heading for the monastery of St. Jacob, where dozens of monks lived. Perhaps he could still save them.

But as he ran, Eluheed knew it was hopeless. The scale of the disaster was beyond his abilities. He was just one immortal, and he couldn't stop a mountain from falling.

The monastery bells were ringing when he arrived, the monks standing in the courtyard, some praying, others trying to gather precious manuscripts.

"Leave everything!" Eluheed shouted. "Run! Now!"

An elderly monk, presumably the abbot, responded with an eerie calm. "If God wills us to die today, we die."

"God gave you legs to run," Eluheed grabbed the man's arm. "Use them!"

But the monk pulled free, smiling sadly. "You run, my son. Save who you can. We will meet our fate here."

Eluheed wanted to scream at the foolishness, but there was no time. Younger monks were already fleeing, and he helped herd them toward relative safety. Behind them the ancient monastery, repository of centuries of knowledge and faith, vanished beneath the unstoppable flow.

The rest of the day blurred into a nightmare of desperate rescues and terrible failures.

At the Russian military barracks, he found the soldiers mobilizing.

The Sevjur River, dammed by the massive debris flow, began to flood upstream villages. Eluheed and the soldiers spent hours pulling people from the rising waters, diving again and again into the muddy torrent.

By nightfall, the immediate danger had passed. The mountain was still rumbling ominously, occasional pyroclastic flows glowing like rivers of hell on its flanks, but the great landslide had spent its fury.

Eluheed stood on a hillside overlooking the devastation, his clothes in tatters, his body covered in cuts and bruises that had healed a dozen times over.

Below, the landscape had undergone a transformation.

Where villages had stood, there was only raw earth.

The monastery, the town, and entire communities had been erased as if they had never existed.

In the distance, survivors huddled around fires, their wails of grief carried on the ash-laden wind. He had saved many throughout the terrible day, but thousands had perished.

Somewhere beneath those millions of tons of rock and earth lay his sacred charges. The treasures he had sworn to protect were lost. How would he ever find them? The entire face of the mountain had collapsed. It could take centuries to search through all that debris.

Eluheed then remembered the children he'd left behind. He needed to retrieve them and deliver them to someone who would find them help.

Relieved to find the children where he had left them, he carried them to the soldiers, who were in better shape than most.

"You saved many today," their commander said. "Thank you."

"I didn't save enough."

The commander nodded. "There is nothing left for us here. We will help organize the people as best we can and then go back to Russia."

"Can I come with you?"

There was nothing left for him here except grief and a crushing sense of failure.

"Of course," the commander said. "After we are done here."

Eluheed nodded. He would go to Russia, learn what he needed to learn, acquire the necessary skills, and someday, somehow, he would return and reclaim what was lost.

The mountain rumbled again. Ash continued to fall like grey snow, covering the devastation in a shroud of volcanic dust. Tomorrow, the full scope of the disaster would become clear. The dead would be counted, and then the long work of rebuilding would commence.