The Valley of Lies (Lightkeepers #1)

Chapter SEVENTEEN: Liss

Cobwebs snagged their ears, and clods of dirt crunched under their boots as they made their way deeper into the mountain crevice. Dev's description of the narrow passage had been accurate, if not a complete account. Liss held her tome of runes against her waist, between the drawn sides of her damp cloak, preparing herself for whatever lay ahead of them. Dev had said there was something down this path she'd want to see, but he'd yet to elaborate. So far nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Besides the gritty dirt and occasional evidence of spindlewalkers, the muffled echo of distant thunder from the storm raging outside followed them into the darkness. The pitted walls of the crevice were dry in some places and damp in others, where trails of mineral water snaked between uneven clusters of rock. Liss supposed the strange phenomena resulted from hairline fractures in the mountain, nothing mystical.

Dev held his torch in front of them, dripping a flammable solution onto the oiled cloth to feed the tired flame. When the passage abruptly widened, he cast about, illuminating their surroundings. They had come to a dead end, the mountain walls enveloping them in an organically hewn alcove. Liss noticed nothing exceptional about the space at first, except that it was warm, even warmer than the passageway. Heat seeped through her clothes, sticking to her skin and causing shorter strands of hair around her face to curl haphazardly. She lowered her gaze to her feet, raising one boot at a time off the glistening path, careful not to stand in one of the small pools collecting in the many divots and cracks in the floor.

When she lifted her chin to follow the torch's moving spotlight, sweat was already beading in the crease of her neck. She was becoming lightheaded, and worried she would have to turn back.

"Come here and look at this." Dev waved her over to where he stood, seemingly unfazed by the heat. Liss found it odd, considering how easily he sweated during his Lightkeeeper training sessions; but maybe he was just used to it by now.

A spot on the ground near him emitted a pulsing golden glow. The nearer Liss stepped to it, the warmer the air became. By the time she was standing over the brightened spot, her knees were wobbling. She stooped down, and Dev followed with the torchlight. Although she blinked several times, the image before her was unwavering and real. Unless she was hallucinating. It was a flower, with deep purple petals and a vibrant yellow center blooming off the end of a thin, arcing stem. A stem that, nonsensically, appeared to have sprouted from the cave wall itself.

She leaned in for a better look, and to make sense of what she was seeing, but only became more confused. There was a kind of black void where the stem met the side of the crevice, darker than a night cloaked in shadows. Dev noticed too, moving the torchlight up the length of the wall, following the inexplicable inky blackness which cut through the stone like a thin seam, too dark and perfectly defined to be natural.

The strand of darkness reminded Liss of a sketch, like an artist had gotten frustrated at their drawing and blackened out the problem area in stiff, linear strokes. She reached toward it, almost without thinking. Dev scrambled to grab her hand, nearly dropping the torch.

"Don't!" he gasped, squeezing her fingers.

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't know, but it looks like the flower is growing out of it."

It did. The flower appeared to be born of the void, but something inside Liss nagged that more was going on than they understood. The flower was glowing, and the alcove was so hot. Unnaturally hot.

"Flowers like this don't bloom without sunlight," she said. It was stating the obvious, but Liss was having a hard time forming coherent thoughts. The heat was messing with her mind. She couldn't even be angry at Dev for pulling her hand back from the void. It would have been foolish to touch it. For all she knew, the void might be the source of the heat. It could be hot enough to melt flesh from bones.