Wayfarer (Wanderlust 2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Soren! Stop!"

Soren wrapped his fingers around the bit of gate he had uncovered and yanked on it as hard as he could, to absolutely no avail. His hands slipped and he took a step back to regain his balance on the snowy, rocky heap.

"Soren." Jale moved in front of him. The whole time he had been digging, he had ignored her. She had said his name and tugged on his arm and said other things, and he hadn't stopped digging. He had to get to Tanden. But now she was standing in his way. He contemplated pushing her out of the way, but he didn't want to hurt her.

"Soren," Jale said again. "Look at your hands. You're hurting yourself."

Soren's gaze dropped to his hands. His gloves were torn to shreds, and the bigger gashes revealed bloody, sliced skin. Absently he knew that he should feel something. Some sort of stinging pain. But he couldn't feel his hands at all. Which meant he could keep digging. He stepped forward, determined to pull the gate open even though it was still mostly buried in rock and snow.

"No," Jale said firmly. "You need to stop."

He didn't understand what she was saying. Why would he stop? Did she forget what had just happened? "Tanden's in there."

"I know. But look." She pointed at the hill behind her. No, she pointed at the divot in the hill behind her. Where the cave ceiling had given out and left a pit. "The whole thing caved in, Soren." She was holding back tears, he realized.

For a second he wanted to be angry at her. She had brought them to the cave. It was her fault. The desire to be angry at someone, to blame anyone, boiled up inside him and he stepped forward. "So you're saying he's dead," he growled. It was so much easier to be angry than to let the idea actually settle in his head. Easier to treat the idea like a cruel lie than to let himself consider how likely it was.

Jale stood her ground. She was so small. Even standing slightly higher on the snow didn't make her tall enough to look him straight on. "No. He could have made it further back. It doesn't look like the mine collapsed, or the big cave. Just the entrance cave."

He realized that she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince him. The anger faded. He fell onto his knees. Chunks of ice and rock jabbed into his legs, but he didn't care.

He couldn't blame Jale. There was no enemy. Not like Toliver in West Draulin. Soren had been hurt and Tanden had someone to fight. Who was Soren supposed to fight? The snow?

"Jale..." her name came out shaky and weak.

She was suddenly kneeling in front of him, her arms around his shoulders, pulling him into a hug. "I'm sorry." She mumbled into his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face into her scarf, and cried. He cried because he was upset and helpless. There was no action he could take to distract himself.

Jale let him cry, but not for very long. Soon, she pushed him back and with a detached sort of calm got to work peeling his ruined gloves off of his equally ruined hands. "There are plenty of entrances to the mine. If we ride to Rald Caro, we can get someone to take us in and find another route to Tanden. Because he's there, in the mine tunnel." She pulled an extra pair of gloves from one of her pockets and tugged them over Soren's hands. They were too small, but the snug pressure actually felt good.

Soren stared at his hands and watched dots of blood seep through the wool. The compass ring Tanden had once given him stretched the fabric. "How do you know?" he whispered.

Jale wiped her eyes. "I don't. But I have to believe he is, because if he is, we can rescue him. And going around through the mine will be much faster than digging through all of this." She stood up and started towards the three horses. The animals shied away from her at first, understandably skittish after what had happened but too well trained to completely run away from the protection humans provided. When she finally coaxed one close enough that she could hold its reins, the other two followed.