by Robert Ryan
There were bows and arrows too. It was these that Faran most wanted to look at, for they were far different from the ones used in Faladir. But he caught Ferla frowning at him, and ignored them after that. Curious as he was, no bow was worth dying for.
But the tombs soon changed. The artifacts of the poor gave way to the artefacts of the rich. The alcoves were larger, and in them were chariots, some ceremonial with gold-rimmed wheels. There were piles of coins too. Silver and gold. And the dead here were no mere bones or withered remains. They were embalmed and protected against the ravages of time. Gold rings still fitted to fingers whose flesh had not withered. And silver earrings adorned faces that were dead, yet still held the likeness of the living.
Faran shuddered. He did not like the feeling that the dead were watching him, and he sensed the whispering of the harakgar as well. They were behind somewhere, preoccupied now but he knew they would return. They would challenge Aranloth’s charm again.
Ahead, the path they followed leveled out. The very rock cracked, like mud at the bottom of a pond that had dried out, and over a fissure a slim bridge leaped to the other side. It was arched, and graceful, and out of place in this grim darkness lit only briefly by the passage of the two lòhrens.
They drew closer. Ahead of the bridge was another stele. It was of black stone, and inlaid with gold was more of the strange script of the Letharn.
Aranloth did not translate it. Nor did Faran ask. Some things might be better not to know.
The sound of rushing water came from somewhere far below. But Faran could not see it.
They stepped onto the bridge and began to cross. Below, where the water should have been, was a dark void. No bottom to the fissure was visible. Yet within that black void, strange lights danced. They moved and ebbed to a graceful rhythm. What they were, Faran could not even begin to guess.
But he did not look down again. Instead, he followed Aranloth as the lòhren strode across quickly. When the old man reached the other side, he turned and waited for the others.
Faran joined him, and turned around also. For a moment, he thought he saw some movement in the shadows beyond the other side of the bridge, but he was not sure. Yet he did see the harakgar.
They sped through the air on wings of fire, streaking toward the group.
Ferla and Kareste ran the last little way and left the bridge. Even as they did so, the voice of Aranloth boomed out.
“Har nere ferork. Skigg gar see!”
The harakgar drew up, hovering above the bridge, and their flesh writhed as though on fire and they spat sparks. Angry was the glare of their eyes, and each gaze was like a dagger of hatred and resentment.
Again, Aranloth voiced the charm. “Har nere ferork. Skigg gar see!”
The harakgar beat their wings of flame, and then dissolved into smoke that drifted away into the shadows and was lost from sight.
“They seem angry,” Kareste said nonchalantly.
Aranloth looked grim. “They’re always angry.” But he seemed to consider her words more and then spoke again. “But you are right. They are worse than usual.”
Faran wondered just how many times Aranloth had been here, and for what purposes. But Aranloth seemed to give the matter no more heed. He turned and led them forward again, but not very far.
Before them was a crossroads. The main way they had been following continued straight ahead, but there were also now smaller tunnels to the left and the right.
Aranloth did not hesitate. “This way,” he said, and he took the right tunnel.
This descended also, but not so steeply as before. The alcoves became larger too. They were chambers now, large and supplied with all the household items the dead must have used while alive. The dead were there as well, reposed on beds of stone as if in their houses of long ago that now, in the world above, were nothing more than ruins.
Faran could not judge time down here in this strange place of fear and peace. It seemed they had been walking for a long while, but Aranloth had not called for a rest break and no one seemed tired anyway. Perhaps it would be better to keep walking. The sooner they left here the better.
He kept looking behind him as they walked. He noticed Kareste, coming up the rear as she always did, was doing the same thing. But was she looking for the harakgar, or the shadow that pursued them? And what was he looking for himself?
Aranloth seemed certain that the shadow could not follow them. But the old man had not quite been himself since the circle of standing stones. He could be wrong. And there had been something back at the bridge. Perhaps Kareste had seen that also.
They had not traveled much farther when Aranloth’s pace began to slow, and then he came to a standstill.
“Beware,” the old man said, turning to them, and then he faced the front again.
They gathered close to him, but what instinct warned him of something, Faran did not know. He sensed nothing different here than he had before.
But soon he saw a figure, faint but shining with an inner light, walk toward them. Graceful was that walk, and though slow it spoke of surety and authority.
“The sprits of the dead sometimes walk in this place,” Aranloth whispered to them. “There is no danger, but do not anger she who comes. Her power, even in death, is great.”
The figure approached. It was a woman, and she seemed neither young nor old. The robes she wore shimmered palely, for they were made of light. As was her figure. There was no substance to her, and yet she seemed real. Certainly, the sharp gaze of her bright blue eyes was real.
A silver diadem was on her head, and it gleamed in the shadowy light. Faran was not sure, but he thought she was an empress, or at least of royal blood. She had that look about her, and she bore also a likeness to the great figures carved on the cliff face opposite the entrance to the tombs.
Aranloth did something Faran had never seen before. He bowed. Not just a slight gesture, but a full-bodied bow of deep respect.
The empress, if empress she was, regarded Aranloth with a cool gaze.
“You yet live,” she said, and her voice was a whisper in the air, less solid even than her figure. But she still maintained a tone of authority.
“My work is not yet complete,” Aranloth answered. “There is no rest for me, yet.”
“Some would say that your work was complete, and cursed, long, long ago.”
There was a pause. “Are you one of them, O Queen?”
Some light of the lòhren’s staff caught the diadem on her head, and silver flashed in the dark. It made her face seem younger.
“I am not one of them. I judge your deeds fair, and history has proven you correct. Yet still there are whispers among the dead that you betrayed us. They will not cease, but this you know.”
“It is not possible to please all people, O Queen, as you know. To some, I am a traitor. To others, a hero. But when the great dark calls me, I shall sleep in peace.”
The queen regarded him several long moments. “That is all a man, or a woman, can hope for. Queen or pauper alike. But I do not walk these dark tunnels to speak of the past.”
Aranloth straightened, and if he usually looked like an old man, he looked fierce and ready now as a warrior before battle. Age dropped off him like a cloak, and Faran realized it was a guise. Here was the true Aranloth. And he was a figure of power. He seemed ready for any news the queen might offer, and eager for it, though he guessed it might be bad. But knowledge was power, and he was ready to act on whatever he learned.
The queen, for all that she was shorter than Aranloth, seemed to look down upon him.
“You are in grave danger. Take heed! Dark things stir, and forces from the void have been loosed upon the world. But your greatest threat is yourself. You are your own enemy. To prevail, you must become one with yourself.”
Faran could make no sense of those words. Legend said that the dead knew the future, but it also said that they spoke in riddles. At least one of those was now proven true.
But the q
ueen was not done. She turned next to Ferla, and regarded her solemnly.
“Your name is written in the stars, girl. You are the quiet one whose name will soon echo across the land, and rumor of it passes even through the void. Be brave, and learn what you must in preparation for your task ahead.”
Ferla paled, but she seemed to have no trouble meeting the other’s gaze.
“And what will my task be, O Queen?”
“That, you already know. It is not one of your asking, or even to your liking. But you know your duty.”
Next, the queen turned to Faran, and her cool gaze rested on him. He saw the eyes of a woman dead long before a time that he considered legend. Yet there was life in them, and for all her remoteness he sensed a kinship with her. She had endured hardships while she lived, and injustice that she longed to right. He sensed it more clearly than any words she could speak, and he wondered about himself that instinct could tell him such a thing, and that he believed it instead of calling it fancy. He had changed since leaving Dromdruin.
“You are not who you think you are,” the queen said to him. “The land calls to you, and you have seen the Lady. A strange thing for one so young, when others live lifetimes without seeing her. But you will be one of her great servants, as have some of your ancestors in ages past. You will have burdens to carry, heavier than normal men. But that is fitting, for you are not as others. The blood in your veins makes it so.”
Faran’s mind whirled. He understood nothing of what she said, but she stepped lightly away from him before he could speak.
The queen stood before Kareste. “Your troubled youth is over, and you made wise choices, in the end. Now your service to the land truly begins. And it is needed.”
The queen moved again to stand before Aranloth, and she seemed weary now.
“The long sleep calls me again. Beware! Things are not as they seem.”
Aranloth made to speak to her again. “O Queen … ” But his voice trailed away for she faded from sight and was gone. Strangely, the tombs felt empty without her.
“Who was she?” asked Faran.
“The first queen of the Letharn.”
Ferla frowned. “But I thought the Letharn were an empire. Does that not make her an empress?”
“The Letharn founded an empire,” Aranloth told her. “But they did not start as one. Once, their rule extended only between the two rivers and up to the great hill where the city was later built. She was the queen who began the expansion of the realm. But she did not live to see it grow into an empire.”
With that, the lòhren turned to face the front again and began to walk.
“Time presses,” he called over his shoulder. “We don’t want to spend a moment more in this place than we must.”
They moved ahead, and Faran thought on things as they shuffled through the darkness. Only the little pool of lòhren light that surrounded them made this place bearable. Better to focus inward and think than to look out and see the endless dead.
But the words of the queen were just as dark as the tombs, and he could make nothing of them. Not of what she had said about him, nor the others. But he did glance at Ferla from time to time, and he felt proud. If the queen were to be believed, his friend was destined for greatness.
The tunnel turned and dipped, and they came to another bridge like the last. They crossed over quickly, and as before Faran saw no bottom to the fissure below. Only a void of darkness filled by those strange twinkling lights that moved and swayed.
When they had reached the other side Aranloth’s face paled. He looked back the way they had come, and his voice was filled with dread when he spoke.
“It cannot be.”
But it was, and they all saw it. The shadow that hunted them stood on the far side of the bridge. It was featureless, but without doubt a man.
“Nothing survives in here without the charm,” Aranloth said. “Flee! I’ll hold the bridge, and catch up to you when the thing is dead.”
But the shadow did not seem scared of him, and it stepped onto the bridge and strode forward.
7. Aranloth the White
The shadow strode across the bridge. Manlike it was, yet a thing of shadow also, and fear ran before it like wind before a storm. No attack of stealth was this, but the strike of one who expected to win.
“Move!” shouted Kareste, and she ushered Faran and Ferla forward along the tunnel.
Faran needed no more urging. Fear gripped him, and he ran. But even as he did so, he slowed. Aranloth had befriended him and suffered risk and threat of death on his behalf. He should not be abandoned now.
Even as he thought that, he saw Ferla stop and string her bow. She had thought the same as he.
“Fools!” cried Kareste. “What help could you give Aranloth against such as that?”
But she had stopped herself, and they turned and watched from safety to see what unfolded. Not that they would be safe for long if Aranloth fell.
Kareste stood before them, staff blazing with light. Faran knew that if Aranloth fell, she would be their last hope. But the old man would not fall. He must not fall.
The shadow came to the middle of the bridge, and there it paused, suddenly wary. For Aranloth had not run from it, but rather stepped onto the bridge to meet it.
But the shadow, if now cautious, still attacked. It raised its two arms, and crimson fire dripped from its fingertips. Then it thrust them forward and the red fire spurted, leaping from its fingers like a hail of arrows sped from a line of bowmen.
Aranloth raised his staff. His movement was unhurried, but swift as light a shield of silver bloomed before him.
The crimson flame streaked away from the shield and jagged upward to the ceiling. Showers of rock fell down, but Aranloth ignored that and lòhren-fire, silver-white, leaped from his staff at the shadowy form in the middle of the bridge.
Aranloth’s opponent raised his arms in a crisscross fashion, and a wall of shadow appeared. It did not block the lòhren-fire, but absorbed it like sand absorbing rain.
Faran held his breath. These two opponents seemed equally matched, and the forces they unleashed amazed him.
But no battle could last forever. There was no such thing as an equal match. One or the other must soon prove to have the greater skill, or at least the greater luck.
Aranloth lifted high his staff. The shadowy figure raced toward him, seeking to close the gap. But a sudden wind blew, driving from Aranloth’s staff, and the shadow-figure rolled and tumbled backward. Nearly it fell off the bridge into the chasm below, but on the very precipice it regained its footing and stood defiantly.
It raised its arms, but Aranloth acted first. He retreated, leaping back nimbly across the bridge and spinning a shield of light behind him. A bolt of crimson lightning struck it, and thunder rolled through the tombs.
Faran felt the tremor of it in the stone beneath his boots, and rocks fell once more from the ceiling. The shadow began to advance again, but paused as once more Aranloth raised his staff.
This time, nothing happened. The shadow began to move again, but even as it did the lights that ebbed and flowed in the chasm came suddenly into view. Like a swarm of insects they rose, but they did not attack Aranloth’s enemy. Instead, they clustered all over the bridge itself.
Those small lights kept gathering. There were more of them than stars in the sky, and they piled atop the center of the bridge. They flashed and twinkled, and the light coming from them soon shone brighter than the sun.
Aranloth wheeled back, but he stumbled and fell to his knees. Kareste shouted, and raced forward toward him. And the shadow advanced.
But then the shadow paused again. A moment it stood there as if in thought, and then it too wheeled and ran. Even as it did so, the lights flared, and the span of stone that was the bridge groaned. With a crack like thunder, the center of the bridge snapped, and it slowly bent and toppled into the void. The length of the bridge behind and ahead groaned as well, then it too slipped away into darkness.
>
Silence fell. Aranloth scrambled on loose rock slipping into the dark where the bridge had uprooted from its joining to the floor of the tunnel. But Kareste reached him in a flurry of robes, and dropping her staff she slid to the ground and grabbed hold of him.
Kareste heaved the old man free of the rubble, and then snatched up her staff again. She gazed across the chasm, but Faran did not think she saw anything more than he did. The shadow was gone, either into the void or back up the tunnel behind.
The strange lights rose and swirled, and then they drifted downward again into the fissure and disappeared from sight.
It took Faran a while to realize that no noise had come up from the chasm. There should have been the smashing sound of stone as the broken bridge hit the bottom. But there was nothing, and that disturbed him. Surely there was a bottom, but that it was so far away that even the sound of a fallen bridge would not reach back up to the surface was disturbing. Next time he crossed one of those, he would not look down.
He and Ferla went over to the two lòhrens. Kareste was examining Aranloth for injuries.
“I think your arm is broken, old man,” she said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he answered.
Kareste turned to Ferla. “Get me some cloth. I need long strips.” Then she looked at Faran. “I’ll need the practice sword Aranloth made.”
Kareste worked quickly. She broke the sword in half and trimmed it with a knife. Then she used the cloth Ferla had gathered to bind Aranloth’s arm with a splint. Finally, she fashioned a sling for him and handed him back his staff.
“Good as new,” she said.
But Aranloth looked far from well. His face was gray, a gash bled from his forehead and his hands trembled. If he felt pain, he hid it well. But he could not hide his sudden frailty. He looked in truth the old man that he was. And that scared Faran.
They allowed him to rest a little while longer, but it was clear that he was lucky to even be able to walk. Kareste took over responsibility for the chant that warded them from the harakgar, and she had to voice it before they set off again, for the harakgar reappeared.