Wystwood

40. The sisterhood of seers

"Could it be one of the seers?" Ada whispered as Raeph dragged a finger across the rock salt, its pale grains dusting his skin.

She knew Raeph understood her meaning, but he seemed resistant to answer, turning back to the outcrop and skimming around it, away from the spring. Ada followed after him, boots crunching across the salt as they skirted the rockface overgrown with moss. A few of its strands shrivelled backwards, withdrawing into a dark opening.

Ada's breath caught in her throat as a cavernous passage opened up before her. Its entrance was low and narrow, severed in two by a column of rock that pierced into an uneven ceiling. From afar, it would have been almost indistinguishable from the outcrop, long vines tumbling down over the opening and veiling it from view. The air from its depths shuddered out in a sunken chill and sent the low leaves twitching.

Ada reached up, running her palm across the umber rock and pushing aside its vines. Someone had written on the stone, their words a child's scrawl etched onto the overhang with a flake of charcoal: The Sisterhood of Seers. 

The sign marked the entrance to the cave, and around its scratched letters were three kisses stained onto the rock. Their edges had crumbled away, as if the lips had been painted not with makeup, but with blood.

Raeph paid no attention to Ada as she stumbled back a step, instead crouching down beside the opening to place a hand upon the earth. No salt passed the overhang's shadow; inside the cave lay only soil and splutters of dead grass, dulled and darkened compared to the silvery salt outside.

"Salt is a common ingredient in magic," Raeph said, his low voice stunted by the rocks. "It's used for binding objects and places. And people."

He traced the line of salt that stopped just in front of the cave's entrance, his gaze rooted on the dark descent ahead. Ada's blood rushed cold at the realisation. "They're trapped down there?"

Raeph rose to his feet, careful to keep from stepping onto the soil. "They have been for centuries."

With a shake of her head, Ada replied, "That can't be possible." 

But even as she spoke she wasn't certain of her own words. There had been a great many things Ada had never thought to be possible before arriving in Wysthaven.

Together, they stared into the shadows. The rocks ahead seemed strangers to the sun, their mottled faces left without light while the wystwood trees snagged it for themselves. In its dismal darkness, the cave appeared to seethe and shiver.

"You said you wanted me to steal their iron dagger?" Ada asked.

"Yes."

"Well, where will it be?"

Raeph shifted, the salt sheet beneath him cracking out into pale fissures. But the soil didn't make a sound as his boot sunk past the cavern's boundary, grass wilting out of his way as Raeph stooped beneath the overhang. "Let's find out."

Ada drew her grandmother's cloak around her shoulders, trying to ignore the trembling at the tips of her fingers as she stepped into the cave. The crudely drawn sign was lost behind her head, and she too had to bow down to pass beneath the overhang and around the column of stone.

In the dark, Ada felt forward with her feet. Her breath came in puffs, the shadows banding around her chest and drawing the oxygen from her lungs. The path began to narrow, rock walls closing in as the dirt sloped downwards. Raeph murmured to her from somewhere ahead, "There are steps."

His words were shortly followed by the muffled beats of his boots, and Ada was left to wonder how he had managed to make out the deftly carved stairs without a light.