by T Nisbet
Chp. 38
I stepped off of the bottom rung of the ladder and looked around, immediately impressed. The tunnel was at least eight-feet tall and maybe five-feet wide. It had been professionally carved into the greenish red granite rock.
“When you said ‘tunnel’ I was expecting to have to crawl,” I said, taking a deep breath of stale air.
“Demolus and I have been preparing for this passage for sixty years,” Guldan said admiring their work. “We had plenty of time to do it right.”
“Thanks, I hate small spaces.”
“Right, lets go.”
Guldan waved his hand and the ball of flame hovering above his head sped off down the tunnel lighting our way. Nodding at us both, he set off jogging down the tunnel, followed by Ivy, then me. Our respective auras lit the stone around us peeling back the darkness as we ran after the whirling ball of flame. The sound of our leather boots against the smooth floor echoed softly through the tunnel.
I settled into an easy jog and concentrated on my breathing. I hated tight spaces. Sometimes when I was trapped for too long beneath a pile of tacklers in football, I would feel panic setting in. Despite it’s size, this tunnel had me feeling much the same way. I found myself concentrating on Ivy’s softly glowing form as she jogging behind the vampiric elf.
Ivy had never gone out for any athletics, but that wasn’t because she wasn’t an athlete. I could tell from the way she ran, from the way she kept her arms tucked and lengthened her stride to keep up with Guldan that she had excellent control of her body.
She had told me once how she didn’t like competing because she didn’t like how beating someone at something made her feel. I didn’t really think about winning that way. I didn’t do it to beat someone, or take away his or her self-respect. I had tried unsuccessfully to explain that athletics wasn’t really about winning or losing, but about the joy of competition itself. She didn’t agree, but I respected her for her opinion. She was so nice to everyone I could see how it could go against her nature.
The cool thing about Ivy was everything didn’t have to be her way. She respected me for my opinions, even if they were different from her own. She rooted for me at the games, as well as at home when she was sleeping, apparently. As I ran behind her, I found myself wondering if I’d ever get to see her nightie with my name and number on it again.
We caught up to Guldan’s ball and stopped near a solid-looking wall. The spinning ball of flame vanished with a wave of his hand. Guldan put a finger to his lips and pressed a stone near the top of the wall. The stone moved inward and the wall shifted silently to the side an inch.
The dark haired elf peered through the gap for a moment. My heart rate picked up quite a bit as Ivy and I stood catching our breath, waiting. Guldan gently pushed the wall open wider and squeezed through the gap motioning us to follow. Ivy squeezed through, under different circumstances I would have been more affected by how the size of her chest caused her difficulty getting through, but I was too frightened to pay more than fleeting attention to it.
As soon as she was through, I pressed myself into the gap and stepped into a pitch-black room. Our auras seemed unreasonably bright, lighting various crates and boxes nearby.
“Storage room,” Guldan whispered, shutting the secret doorway into his tunnel. “Pull your hoods low. Magi turn any guard’s minds towards boredom and compliance to my commands if you can. Don’t give Jake the ruby until we make it to the chamber. Ready?”
Ivy and I nodded and pulled our hoods low over our faces.
We followed Guldan through the storage room to a door. Nodding, Guldan opened the door revealing a wide, torch-lit hallway. He stepped out into the hall as if he had every reason to be there. Ivy and I followed, keeping our heads slightly bowed.
The ceiling of the hallway was darkened with soot from the torches, as were the walls above our heads. An acrid, nauseating smell assaulted my nostrils. I fought to keep from gagging on the unhealthy odor. The air was stale, and smelled of smoke, rot and feces. Sounds of whimpering mixed in with an occasional agonized scream somewhere ahead.
Guldan strode forward down the torch-lit hall. I concentrated on breathing through my mouth so the smell wouldn’t affect me so badly as I followed him and Ivy. At the end of the hallway a wide circular, stone staircase wound downwards.
As we reached the stairwell the echo of voices coming up the stairs from below greeted us. My desire to flee the opposite direction nearly overwhelmed me. Guldan hesitated for a moment, turning to face Ivy and me; he pressed a finger to his lips again.
“The imps will devour him slowly for delaying me!” he said loudly, heading downward towards the voices.
My heart felt like it would explode out of my chest as I followed him down the stairs. Each step brought us closer to the smell that threatened to make me throw up. We had gone no more than twenty feet down when a group of dark clothed blood elves appeared on the stairs below us dragging a man covered in his own blood.
Guldan pointed at one of them never slowing his decent.
“You!” Guldan yelling, “who ordered this wretched human out of his cell?”
The group stopped and the dark elf Guldan had addressed bowed low, and then stepped forward.
“Lord High Executioner Zelnik commanded us to bring the prisoner to his…” the blood elf began, then blinked and shook his head as if his thoughts had left him. “What is your command Lord Guldan.”
“Lord Guldan!” said two of the elves in surprise and fear.
“Indeed, I have just come from dinner with Lord Zelnik. He asked me to see if I might be able to burn the truth out of one of his prisoners. This must be him.” Guldan said with command. “Who has been responsible for his torture thus far?”
Another of the blood elves stepped forward and bowed differentially to Guldan. The look he gave Guldan betrayed his bow of respect.
“What have you learned so far?” Guldan asked.
Despite Guldan’s commanding presence I could see he was agitated. There was an eminent threat to his posture and his right hand toyed with the hilt of his sword.
What was going on?
“Nothing, my lord. He won’t talk,” the dark elf said.
“I see,” Guldan growled. “Take him back down to his cell.”
The elf responsible for the torture shook his head.
“We have orders from the high...”
It happened so quickly I barely had time to register it. Guldan’s arm moved with lightning speed and deadly precision in an arch before him. The elf who had done the torture on the bloody man wore a surprised expression. His body began to quiver and then reeled sideways as his head toppled off onto the stairs. A fountain of blood painted the ceiling and wall crimson.
“Anyone else care to challenge my authority?” Guldan growled.
“No mi lord!” said the dark elves almost in unison.
“Then get moving,” he ordered. “One of you drag this Pla’Arg to the hell hound pits. Put his head in with the pups for sport.”
“Yes mi lord,” one of the blood elves replied moving to the side.
The four remaining elves turned and dragged the listless, bloodied human back down the steps. We followed behind them. Guldan spared a glance back at Ivy who nodded at his unspoken question. It seemed pretty obvious she had something to do with the dark elves’ compliance.
The stairs spiraled downwards past several wide landings that branched off into one or more passages. Dark elf guards on the landings looked at us curiously but didn’t say anything as we descended past them into the bowels of the dungeon. The cries and agonized screams grew louder as we made our way deeper. The reek became more and more overwhelming as well.
The stairs emptied into a darkly lit, cell-lined hallway extending off to the left and right. Nasty, roughly cast, black metal bars made up the front of the cubicles. The cells nearest the stairs appeared to be empty, but I couldn’t see how far back the cells extended into the darkness.
The dark e
lves we followed turned right. The wide dungeon hallway was far from empty and appeared to be the main thoroughfare through the bottom most section of the dungeon. Raggedly dressed and bloodied slaves pulled small carts under the direction of overseers wielding whips and other cruelly employed weapons. The vicious cracking of leather biting into flesh brought forth some of the cries I’d probably heard from above.
Bored-looking dark elves stood before some cells guarding whatever was being held behind the cruelly fashioned black bars. As we made our way down the nightmarish hallway, the guards recognized Guldan and bowed to him when we passed. Near the end of the hallway the blood elves we followed stopped before a cell.
“Clean him up. Get him some food and bind his wounds,” Guldan ordered. “I will be back to get the information Zelnik wants shortly. See that he talks to no one. Do I make myself clear?”
The dark elves nodded fearfully.
“If upon my return I do not find all is as I have asked, you will find yourselves begging for a quick death.”
“It will be as you have ordered mi lord,” said one of the elves bowing low.
“See that it is,” Guldan said, calling a ball of flame forth in the palm of his hand. With another wave he set the spinning ball above the cell door where it hung suspended in the air.
Guldan turned away from the cell, and we continued to the end of the hallway and started down some stairs. When we were out of earshot Ivy whispered to Guldan so quietly I could barely hear.
“They’re frightened, angry and suspicious, but are going to do as you ask.”
“Good, that’s normal for them,” Guldan responded, quickening his pace down the stairs.
“Not that I would leave anyone down in this hell hole, but why him and not any of the others?” I asked.
“That’s Demolus’s son,” Ivy whispered sadly. “How…”
“I know not Magi!” Guldan interrupted angrily. “He is supposed to be with his mother in a village to the south. I will not leave him to Zelnik’s ministries if it can be helped.”
Now it made sense.
“We’ll get him on our way back if possible,” Guldan growled. “But only if he’s capable of moving quickly. The mission is all that matters.”