Tanwyn took a short breath in and pushed himself to his feet. "She said that there are rumors about the prince."
"Bastian?" Cole asked. Her hands tingled as her mind whirled. "What rumors?"
"That Thijs... harmed him somehow.
"What why?" Cole asked, surging to her feet and shivering. "He didn't do anything that Thijs would be angered by. Why would he harm his only heir?" Tanwyn just hadn't read the code right.
"She says no one knows why, but the rumors going around say that Thijs was so furious when he returned that he did something to Bastian. The people of the city say that they've seen the prince a few times since then, but he's... different."
"Different?" Cole asked, her eyebrows drawing down. "What does that mean?"
"She didn't say."
Cole glared at him.
"Really. That's all that the message said."
Cole ground her teeth as she looked out over the foothills in the direction of the city. What was Thijs doing so far away? She wished she didn't have to think about it, but somehow her mind kept coming back. She had been prepared to murder Bastian, and yet hearing that his father had done something to him made her squirm. Her imagination kept returning over and over to his father's eyes glinting in the firelight as he brought the belt down on Bastian's back, ripping the flesh and never even wincing. If he could be so cruel when his blood was running cold, what would the king do when it was boiling hot?
"It doesn't matter what the king's doing," Tanwyn said. "We just need to get into the caves and find that sparkstone. Then I can start working on getting the Eldritch to actually care about Thijs and his dark workings."
Cole nodded. Once they had the sparkstone she and her mother could magic themselves supplies and money, enough to disappear forever into the countryside of a foreign country. She was working toward that, she told herself. Even if it didn't feel as right as it had before.
"Did Meegan say anything about Baerghast? Will we run into him here?" Cole asked.
Tanwyn shrugged. "She said nothing about where he was, but if he had access to a horse then he could well have reached here before us. We'll have to be prepared for anything."
Cole swallowed hard but knew that it was just reality that they might have to fight the man in the billowing black cloak. She knew she shouldn't be afraid of him, but he had somehow in her mind taken on the persona of a black creature born from shadows. A monster, not a man. She'd rather he stayed with Thijs in the castle, far away. But if for any reason he suspected that the people who had tried to assassinate Bastian might know of the dark creatures in the caves, he could well be waiting for them.
With not much night left to hide them, the group started up the final twisting path toward the mountain side. As they walked, Tanwyn kept them slightly off the path, dodging behind boulders and outcroppings, always keeping their eyes on the glow of the fires. The closer they got to the camp, the stronger a scent of smoke and dust filled the air. Cole recognized it as the smells of mining. Rock and flame, bursting into the air even at the latest hours, because no one ever stopped mining in Thijs' kingdom.
When they reached the edge of the camp, Tanwyn had them hide behind a large outcropping of rock. They were only a few hundred feet away from the first tents, and with the blaring light of the fires burning in pits all around the camp, they were able to take it all in.
What vegetation the mountain might once have had was stripped away and scorched. The rocks themselves bore the black marks of flames high onto the walls that surrounded the opening of the cave. Machinery, much like the battering rams and catapults used in war, were stationed nearby the cave entrance. The men in the camp were obviously all soldiers, dressed in full armor and armed to their teeth. Though they seemed to be gearing down for the day, they all looked as tense as rabbits as they walked through the paths between tents, heading to their quarters to catch some sleep. No one spoke to each other, and everyone kept their eyes plastered on the ground in front of their feet.
Cole recognized this as well. People in fear of their lives, like the miners forced to go back down after a collapse in a tunnel. Men and women who knew their mortality had just been tested, and who would have to put it back up against the test in just a few hours time. This was not a camp, but instead a graveyard of the living dead. Men and women walking on borrowed time, dreading the rising of the sun when they must head back into the black mine.
"Let's head over toward the entrance. Everyone will be in bed soon, and we'll just have to deal with the few men on guard overnight," Tanwyn said.
Getting to the entrance of the mine was not as difficult as Cole thought it might be. They merely kept to the shadows that ringed the camp, and managed to creep their way, hiding behind boxes and barrels, until they were just a few feet away from the gaping black maw.
Inside, torches lined the cave walls, leading down and away from sight. Guards stood a little bit into the cave entrance, their swords drawn and their eyes wide and skittering at any sound. Cole noted that their backs were not facing the mine, but instead were facing the camp. They were not guarding the mine from outsiders... they were guiding the outside from the mine.
"Our options are to overpower the guards, or to distract them," Tanwyn said. "I was thinking that we could wait a little bit out from the camp until tomorrow night and then we could find some arrows or--"
"Or we could just run past them and lose them in the tunnels and darkness," Cole interrupted.
Tanwyn opened his mouth, but then closed it again. "I suppose that works too."
"Whether they tell Thijs or not that we're in there, it will take them longer to find us than it should take us to find the sparkstone. Or at least hopefully," Cole said. "Once we have the sparkstone, we can just travel away from here by magic."
"All right. We'll run then," Tanwyn said.