Free The Northern Approach by Jim Galford Page A

argue or you look to be exception, yes?” Yoska told Raeln, smirking. “Trust me. Closed doors not keep my family out when we wished to trade. I give us ways around closed doors and we go through with dead men none the wiser, yes? This will get us to northern plains…after that, I can help less as my kin did not travel that far. Other families, yes, but not mine.”
    “How far to the entrance?” On’esquin asked, picking up the map and staring at it as though intending to crush it. Sighing, he folded it and slid it into his pouch. “Your knowledge is of more value than my maps, it would seem.”
    “Two days at most. We will need food and drink if we are to go so far below dirt,” the gypsy said, pointing with his knife roughly southwest. “Raeln offered to find food, which was very kind. I will go get water and proper drinks from whatever is left in village, as undead were so kind as to leave food and drink behind in our tents. Magic green man, you collect weapons. Should be easy trip, but I am not fool to have lived this long. We all bring what we can carry.”
    “Then we collect today, rest, and leave in the morning,” Raeln said, pulling himself up using the tree he had been leaning against. His whole body hurt from traveling and he was not looking forward to doing it again so soon.
    “No, we collect during day and we leave at night,” countered Yoska. “Dead do not care about light or dark. At night, the animals come out and the dead get very confused. They attack everything. We use that and they do not find us so easily, no?”
    “Assuming we make it through the tunnels, how much farther is it from the northern exit onto the plains before we get to Turessi?” Raeln asked On’esquin. “I assume that’s where we’re going?”
    “Yes, it is. Dorralt has gone there and will have taken anything of importance to the prophecy that he has found. We will have to go there to confront him if there is any hope of breaking his control over the armies.”
    Raeln continued to stare at On’esquin and Yoska turned and gave him an equally expectant look.
    “Fine,” the orc blurted out a moment later. “Two months by horse if we can travel almost to the border underground. If Yoska’s plan works, we can be there before the first lowlands snow. In Turessi it never stops snowing.”
    “Then we need to get moving,” Raeln acknowledged, heading off toward the trees. “I’ll be back before dark with as much food as I can find.”
     

Chapter Three
    “The Deep Dark”
     
    The land will be cast over with the shadow of destruction that takes its root in good intention. The monsters the world will face will believe themselves heroes who must commit atrocities to save the world in the long-run. My people revered their dead for generations, bringing them along as memories of those they had lost in their endless journeys. The very act of preserving our ancestors will be perverted and used against the nations and will create the nightmares that they will soon face.
    Through shadow, hope will travel toward light. The six will stand against the darkness and will redeem those who still remain. I watch them, scurrying like mice about the world, trying not to be seen, yet watched by me. These six will find strength in mere survival and through living from one day to the next, give hope to the world.
    To be honest, my friend, I do not understand these visions any more than you do. I speak nonsense and hope that it will change the outcome of what I have seen. Please let these words be enough of a guide that we can escape the worst of what these dying eyes were shown.
     
-           Excerpt from the lost prophecies of Turess
     
    “You have got to be kidding me,” Raeln muttered, crossing his arms and stopping at the head of the trail that snaked down into a cave-like crack in the mountainside. Days of hiking and all he wanted to do now was turn around and go back.
    Raeln had always heard the dwarves lived beneath