Page 111 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

ZEVANDER

A quiet scritching reached Zevander’s ears, and his eyes shot open.

The hearth’s fire offered a small bit of light as his gaze swept over the room and landed on movement across from the bed.

His surroundings flickered. Had he fallen into dreams?

Frowning, he unraveled himself from Maevyth’s naked body, leaving her sleeping, and focused his attention on the far wall where an invisible entity chalked an image across the dark stone there.

Never taking his eyes off the anomaly, he dressed quickly, then gathered up his sword as he stalked toward it.

The white chalk kept steady lines over the stones, though Zevander couldn’t yet make out what it was.

Am I dreaming? He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

When he opened them again, the chalk still moved.

Sword held loosely in his grasp, he lightly swung, the steel glinting as it clashed with the wall, proving that nothing, nor no one, was there.

And still, the chalk moved on its own. Lowering his sword, he ran a finger over one of the chalked lines and when he looked down a small chunk of vivicantem was clutched between his finger and thumb, white dust coating his hand and scattered over his tunic.

As if he’d drawn it himself.

A long creak had him twisting around, just in time to catch a shadow slipping out through a gap in the door.

“Fucking hell!” Zevander muttered. A quick glance back at Maevyth showed she was still asleep. In quick strides, he swiped on his boots, not bothering to lace them, and chased after the intruder.

Once outside, he glimpsed a cloaked figure hustling past the small cottages, toward the mountain. With measured and weightless steps, Zevander stalked after, through the village and up the path in the direction of the vein.

Lyverian men stood at intervals a few meters apart along the vein that stretched at least two furlongs, guarding it with their vivicantem-tipped spears in hand, as the figure surreptitiously slipped between two of them.

Completely unnoticed, it seemed, when the stranger disappeared over the edge of the vein.

Zevander called upon his vanishing glyph and thick curls of smoke slithered around him like ink floating in water. As he snuck by the guards, one of them turned in his direction, and Zevander froze. The guard looked right through him while at the same time, seeming to sense him there.

After a few seconds of vigilant scrutiny, the guard turned away and Zevander climbed down into the vein after the intruder. He trailed him until they reached the flat, stone floor of the vein.

Careful steps brought the stranger to the middle of the trench where he knelt to the rock and ran his palm over the stony base of it like the two were old friends reunited. From his cloak, he retrieved a blade and jabbed the sharp end of it into the stone, chipping away at the rock.

Sparks flickered around the blade with every strike, and he grunted with the task, gouging the stone, until at last, a flash of white slowed his strokes. He ran his finger over the glittery white surface and jabbed again, over and over.

Laughter drew Zevander’s attention back toward the guards who still hadn’t taken notice, their voices carrying over the trench as they talked amongst themselves.

The white stones popped free, and the stranger held them up to the moonlight, confirming they were vivicantem.

Clutching them, the stranger scurried farther across the vein to a flat section in the rock and dragged the vivicantem over the black stone.

Still hidden, Zevander prowled closer, and as he did so, a surging pulse of his heart had him pressing the heel of his palm into his chest, as if he were trying to keep the damned thing from bursting through.

His blood slithered in his veins like an oily sludge, crawling with something vile that chewed at him for escape.

His skin prickled, the black flame stirring, and the scorpion on his back shifted the way it did whenever he felt threatened by something.

In time with the erratic beat of his heart pulsed a dark and ancient aura beneath his boots.

Rising up from the depths of the stone below.

The stranger lowered his hood, revealing himself to be Cadavros, not in his monstrous form, but that of his old mentor. “Incredible, isn’t it?”

Could he sense Zevander through the vanishing glyph?

“At one time, this chasm was filled with flames hot enough to melt iron in seconds.” He ran his palm over the stone and, pushing to his feet, faced Zevander. “I never quite appreciated the significance of it. The potential. Sablefyre dies in these veins, but they can be brought back to life.”

Calling back the smoke, Zevander gave only a fleeting glance toward the symbol Cadavros had drawn. “What are you doing?”

“Dipping my hand in fate.” The other man looked around, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “This vein, it is a source of great power. Eldritch power. We were foolish to imagine that we could ever fathom what lies buried beneath its molten surface.”

Zevander finally got a look at the symbol he’d drawn—one vaguely familiar to him. Frowning, he stepped closer, desperate to remember where he’d seen it. “Did you follow us here, to the mountains?”

“I’m not here at all.”

Zevander glanced around, noting the position of the guards who stood with their backs toward them. “This is Caligorya.”

“It is.”

“Why are we here?”

“I spent years studying the godsflame,” the mage kept on, while Zevander’s eyes traced over every detail of the symbol. “A perilous pursuit, given any form of demutomancy had been outlawed.”

Zevander quietly studied him. “What is it that you seek?”

Hands behind his back, Cadavros stood alongside the symbol, pulling Zevander’s attention there again.

“Would you believe me if I told you my intentions were noble in the beginning? That I only wanted to design a means to revive the dead veins. To produce more vivicantem that would feed thousands of spindlings.” Again, he twisted around, arms outstretched.

“Do you have any idea how many of these dead veins exist in Nyxteros alone? How many could be brought to life ?” He shook his head.

“We’re told it's impossible . That only a god can reignite a vein.”

It was true. Zevander had always known a dead vein to be useless. Nothing but an empty promise for those starved of vivicantem. So he couldn’t help the curiosity stirred by Cadavros’s words.

“Unfortunately, the king had no intention of equally distributing the vivicantem produced. That which I’d spent a good portion of my life researching served as nothing more than a means to fulfill his greed.

And in my desperation to prove myself, I found something profound.

A discovery that would’ve had the entire magehood hunting me if they’d known what it was.

” Cadavros lowered his gaze to the symbol on the ground and as Zevander examined it again, memories cut through his mind like a dull blade.

A cloaked stranger chipping away at stone. A metal object falling loose. A silver symbol embedded into the rock.

“Buried in the wall of a dead vein was the amulet that housed the curse of Pestilios. Broken by a single sacrifice. One life.”

“Dorjan. You bound Prince Dorjan’s soul to it.”

“Yes.” Tipping his head, Cadavros circled the image he’d drawn.

“Even I feared the amulet’s power. As I studied it, learned what it was, I found myself changing, my thoughts darkening, as if molded by something unseen.

I had become infected by the amulet.” A wild glint shone in his eyes.

“ Obsessed with that chthonic glyph, the most intricately complex glyph I’d ever seen.

It was said to have derived from deep in the pits of Nethyria. A means to destroy two worlds.”

“And who hid these wonderful gifts inside the vein?”

“That is a true mystery of the gods. A subject for scholars to postulate for centuries to follow, had I chosen to share it. But I refused. You see, what I’d discovered was useless without sablefyre.

” The man’s words were a distant sound to the quiet thud of blood in Zevander’s ears as the glyph burned itself into his mind.

A deep sizzling pain raked across his skull and Zevander clenched his eyes as it seeped into their sockets.

“I could guide the flame, of course,” Cadavros kept on.

“Manipulate it—that I possessed the skill to do. But I had neither the power nor skill to harbor it. To summon it from nothing and let it feed on my vivicantem as it bent to my command. I’d read countless tomes about the Emberforge ritual.

How dangerous and impossible it was. Nothing but a myth to some academics.

But possessing the flame was the only way to enliven the vein. ”

A piece of the puzzle snapped into place.

Zevander had never quite grasped what it was that Cadavros had wanted of him, not until that very moment.

From the time he was a child, he’d heard stories of the monster who’d cursed him, had been told vague speculations.

But as he stared down at that symbol, he could see an image in his mind.

A version of the flame he’d been cursed with, but stronger, far more destructive.

It wasn’t the vein Cadavros sought, nor the vivicantem.

He’d wanted the most devastating form of sablefyre.

“You proved centuries of speculation wrong, Zevander. You proved that a mere mancer, a child , could house the power of a god. A power strong enough to unravel creation.”

“And so, what? You long to consume me, as you attempted to when I was a baby?”

Cadavros chuckled. “Unfortunately, Deimos bound us in a way that would destroy me if I attempted such a thing again.”

“It isn’t Deimos you need to worry about. I’m not the weak and helpless boy you manipulated all those years ago.”