The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  “I’ll consider your wise advice, oh noble councilors,” Raythen said. “But if it’s all the same, I’d rather not spend my last few hours conversing with a pair of mountain snakes.”

  The advisors exchanged a glance, before Zorri beat his fist on the inside of the cell door.

  “You don’t deserve the mercy we offer, kingspawn,” Korri said, as the rattle of keys announced the unlocking of the door.

  “Do not leave your last chance too late,” Zorri said.

  Raythen offered them a light shrug. It wasn’t until the door slammed shut and the echoes of their footsteps had receded up the Dunwol Keg’s stairway that he finally managed to unclench his fists.

  •••

  The tunnels stank of blood and darkness.

  Shiver’s senses were being assailed. He stood in the midst of carnage, of slaughter, of an atrocity that he knew he had unleashed.

  The Aethyn were dying. The last of the daggerbands had made a stand in one of their sacred caverns. They were trying to buy time for those who could not fight to escape the darkness, and the avalanche of rending talons and wicked fangs that had come with it.

  She knew that was the purpose of this final battle. The one who ruled Shiver, who controlled him, who had bound him to her dark purpose. She knew this was all a distraction. And Shiver knew how she hated distractions.

  “Hurry,” she hissed. The word was only partly meant for Shiver. It goaded the slaughter-beasts around them, claws scraping on stone as they bore down on the tunnel the remnants of the Aethyn were fleeing through. Hulks of the Ynfernael, redolent with demonic power, their bodies like slabs of molten rock bubbling with magma-heat, their great maws like fanged, blazing furnaces.

  Shiver was driven before them. The tunnels beyond the cavern were narrow and winding, their bare rock walls amplifying the heat of the Ynfernael creatures. They swept round a corner and found the stragglers from the last of the Aethyn. A girl and her mother, too slow to keep up with the rest. The latter had fallen. The former was trying to help her back to her feet. She froze as she saw Shiver, framed by the terrible beasts he had unleashed.

  Time seemed to stand still. The girl’s eyes were wide in the terrible glow of the hulks. Shiver’s gaze met hers, riven with fear and confusion and, in that fleeting instant, he made his choice.

  He turned and stood before the oncoming Ynfernael creatures.

  “No more,” he snarled, the chains that bound him drawn taut as he spread his arms, blocking the tunnel.

  His power surged, then stumbled, held in check by the enchanted manacles. They were rimed with ice, the air of the tunnel turned suddenly frigid. That was all though – since being shackled, Shiver had never been able to draw upon the Empyrean, never been able to unleash his magics in defiance of his fate. He didn’t need magic right now though. He only needed that which he had been lacking for so long. Courage.

  The hulks lunged, their terrible heat making the cold air shimmer. He faced them down without blinking, his heart pounding, his white flesh slicked with a cold sweat. He knew death in that moment, and welcomed it, welcomed the savage release of fangs and claws.

  But it didn’t come. A snarled command arrested the forward motion of the hulks, causing them to twist and writhe in agony just before they could collide with Shiver.

  She stepped forward between them. The fires of the Ynfernael made her scales glimmer with a terrible, hypnotic beauty. Her eyes were beyond dark, a void born out of the shadow that had brought her to Mennara’s plane. They doused Shiver’s courage. Slowly, shaking, he lowered his arms.

  “Stand aside,” she commanded.

  “No,” he said, forcing the word out.

  Her lipless maw curled back, exposing her fangs in an expression of disgust.

  She lashed out, the blow catching Shiver in the abdomen. He grunted, but took it, straightening back up in front of her.

  She struck him again, raking him with her talons. Bright blood streaked his skin. He cried out, but still he stood.

  Blows fell in a rain. He raised his forearms to protect himself. Ironically, the manacles and their biting chains took the sting from the blows. He felt them pause as she realized she was in danger of shattering the very restraints she’d crafted for him.

  To his surprise, she laughed. He dared lower his arms, his whole body shaking now, the sting from his fresh wounds making him hiss softly.

  “You really do amuse me, Shiver,” she said, her voice still riven with a dark, joyless mirth. “I have never known a child of the Deeps as stupid and cowardly. You’ve done my bidding across Mennara, been responsible for the deaths of thousands. You’ve unleashed the raw glory of the Ynfernael here today and doomed an entire clan of your kindred to extinction. Yet only now do you find the will to try and resist. After my objectives lie completed, after you have committed the greater evil, you try and stop the lesser from being carried out. Look at me.”

  He forced himself to meet the void where once her eyes had been.

  “After all you’ve done, you’d die for one little girl and her mother?” she demanded.

  “It’s a start,” he said.

  He watched her face contort from amusement into rage. She snatched him by the throat and flung him against the tunnel wall, the Ynfernael beasts at her feet yelping as her anger was transmuted into them. Shiver grunted with pain as he hit the stone and slumped down, his chains rattling. He managed to look up, not at his tormentor as she towered over him, but past her, down the tunnel’s length.

  The girl and her mother had gone.

  •••

  The crack of the master’s cane against the side of the lectern made Astarra jump. She looked up in surprise before remembering to avert her eyes. Master Loach didn’t like it when students held his gaze.

  “Wrong again!” the fat old runemaster barked, knuckles white where he grasped his stick. “I despair, Astarra, I really do!”

  “I’m trying, Master,” she said, face flushed with embarrassment and anger. Her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty, making it difficult to turn the pages of the text arcanum laid out on the desk before her. The rest of the class had gone silent, most likely just happy Astarra was the current locus for Loach’s wrath.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he growled. “I have been tutoring at the University of Greyhaven for thirty-three years now, Novice Astarra. Almost twice the length of time you’ve been alive! I can assure you, in all that lengthy period, I’ve never seen a student as rebellious and ungrateful as you. Never!”

  “I’m sorry, Master Loach,” Astarra mumbled, frantically searching across the page in an attempt to find where she’d misread the incantation. The words seemed to confound her, deliberately tripping her tongue, refusing to allow themselves to be uttered. The runeshard she’d been ordered to channel, the Deeprune, sat like a loadstone on the desk in front of her, gleaming with a deep, oceanic blue in the dusty light shafting through the lecture hall’s high windows.

  “When you first enrolled here, I held out some hopes for you,” Loach was saying. She’d heard it all a dozen times before, and she knew that if she didn’t placate him soon, she’d spend the night scrubbing every crack between the hall’s flagstones.

  “To have already mastered a runeshard like the Viridis Stone at such a young age points to a degree of natural talent,” he said. “Of course, I had misgivings about your lineage. Some Forthyn apple-picker’s daughter. Still, I promised Grand Master Bellor that I would give you a fair chance. And I have, over and over.”

  “I’m sorry, Master Loach,” she repeated, feeling her frustrations beginning to stir. She had been through this too many times. How often would she have to bow and scrape because some couldn’t accept that someone who wasn’t from wealth or power already possessed as much proficiency with the runes as they did? “I’ll get it right this time, I swear by Kellos.”


  “Do not take his name in vain, young woman,” Loach snarled, unhappy that his diatribe was being interrupted. “I have never known someone of your station to achieve anything of note, certainly in Greyhaven. You will be no different, I assure you.”

  Astarra realized abruptly that she’d snatched up the Deeprune. She could feel its energies flowing through her hand and arm, bitterly cold and crushing, like the depths of the Sea of Teallin. An audible gasp went up from the rest of the class. Loach had frozen.

  “Novices are forbidden from touching a runestone, unless told to do so,” he said. “The penalty for doing so is expulsion!”

  Astarra gazed down at the small piece of marked stone in her palm, its size belying the fathoms of power it contained. It made her feel as though she could do anything, as though she need only think of something, and she would possess it. She looked up at Loach and met his gaze, feeling a potent surge of defiance as she held the eyes of the man who had so often spited her.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  Fury gripped the runemaster. He hauled himself out from behind his lectern, spittle on his lips as he stormed towards her.

  “You ungrateful little wretch! I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget!”

  Astarra stood. Loach was bringing up his cane, face ruddy and twisted with fury.

  She was faster. The words came to her now, unimpeded by stress or fear. As she said them, she raised the runestone in her right fist, calling on it, summoning up its power.

  “Ataqua imedego!”

  The runestone’s energies surged, like water bursting through a dam. Invisible, it overturned Astarra’s desk and slammed head-on into Loach. The runemaster was picked up and carried, hurled back into his own desk, sending books and papers flying.

  Astarra gasped, feeling the phantom rush of cold water. She fought it, wrestled with it, feeling as though it was going to drag her under as well. Finally, she let go of the Deeprune. It clattered down like a lead weight, sinking heavily to the depths.

  Loach gasped, slumped back against the remains of his desk. He was soaked from head to foot, his robes clinging to his fat frame, his hair lying lank over his shoulders.

  “This… is an outrage…” he sputtered, staring up at Astarra. “You’ll achieve nothing without the university! Nothing without the proper teaching!”

  “I don’t need runemagic to do this,” she said, picking up his fallen cane and snapping it in half.

  •••

  The lock exploded.

  Astarra cried out. For a few racing heartbeats she didn’t know where she was. She could still feel the crushing force of the Deeprune, the rush of waters around her.

  It was pain that brought her back. She raised her hand, and realized she had a long gash along her palm. Blood dripped slowly down her wrist to stain her baggy white sleeve, turning it black in the dim light of the smoldering fungal root.

  The lock was no more. Seemingly overloaded by the confluence of energies and memories, it had burst apart in their hands. It was a shard of the split bone that had sliced across her.

  Shiver seemed unhurt, though his black eyes were wide. He looked at Astarra, who returned his gaze with equal measurements of shock.

  “You’re hurt,” he said slowly.

  “Yes,” she admitted. He reached out and carefully took her hand. His fingers were freezing to the touch, but he let her turn her palm over to inspect it.

  “Relax,” he ordered, before placing his own palm against hers. This time she did flinch, though the pain lasted only a moment. When Shiver removed his hand, her palm was still bloody – as were Shiver’s long fingers – but beneath it the cut had healed.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “Did you see?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Two visions?”

  “Yes.”

  “We saw not only our own memories, but each other’s. I did not know that was possible.”

  Astarra mustered up a shrug. Her thoughts had been thrown into turmoil. She understood now why Shiver had hesitated before agreeing to let her see a fragment of his past. It was intimate in a way she couldn’t have comprehended before. To lay out not only a personal, private experience, but one that was redolent with pain and shame. She had never explained her past in detail to anyone before, let alone shared a recollection of it directly.

  “I think it’s because I forgot it,” she said, forcing herself to admit to her thoughts. “That moment you saw. It was in Greyhaven, when I was still at the university. It was the night I left. I couldn’t have told you anything about it before now. I think my memories blocked it out. It was too painful.”

  “It must have been very difficult,” Shiver said. “The manner of teaching that seems to be employed at Greyhaven is far removed from the lessons my kind learn about the Empyrean, and the Turning.”

  “I should never have gone there,” Astarra said. “It was only ever going to end that way.”

  “But if you had not, you would always have wondered,” Shiver said. He was looking down at her blood on his hand. “You would have questioned whether or not a formal education could have unlocked the power you seek.”

  “It isn’t power,” Astarra said. “It’s respect. I’m the daughter of an apple picker. There aren’t many in Terrinoth who’d give me credit as a runemaster.”

  “There are many ways to earn respect,” Shiver said, looking up at her.

  “Have you found a better one than strength?” Astarra asked. “Than power?”

  “Many,” he said and, to her surprise, he smiled. “We would likely not still be alive had I not won Maelwich’s respect.”

  “That was her, in the tunnel?” Astarra wondered. “With her mother?”

  “I believe so. I had neither strength nor power that day, but found some degree of courage, at last.”

  “You were truly a slave then,” Astarra said. “Bent to the will of the Ynfernael.”

  “No,” Shiver said. “I was by then, but not at first. I flirted with its power. My essence was drawn to it by nature, it seems. For a little while, I embraced it. And by the time I realized the terrible consequences that came with it, I was already shackled.”

  “The one that did that to you,” Astarra said, unable to hide a shiver as she recalled the terrible creature that had commanded him in the tunnel. “Who was she?”

  “I do not speak her name,” Shiver said. “Not yet. I… am not ready.”

  She knew better than to press him. Instead, she went and retrieved her staff. The cooling rush of the Viridis Seed was a welcome relief.

  “We know that I have been here before,” Shiver said, his gaze now on the key still in his hand, undamaged by the arcane lock’s destruction. “We know that I was the one responsible for unleashing a terrible evil in this place. It can only be the same evil that now haunts the Deeps again.”

  “You’re sure?” Astarra asked.

  “No, but I will be soon,” he said. “I am going to offer to lead Maelwich and her daggerbands to where I believe it emanates from. Once there, I will seal it away for all time. Another small step along the path of penance.”

  Astarra thought for a moment. The elf seemed set on his course. She didn’t know what help she could offer him, didn’t even know exactly how he expected to combat something as ethereal as a shadow. The one thing she was certain of was that she wouldn’t be backing down now. She spoke.

  “Thank you, for healing my hand.”

  Shiver blinked, as though he’d forgotten the deed.

  “You are most welcome, Astarra.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she told him, her tone brooking no argument. She was surprised to realize that there was no hesitation, even in her thoughts.

  He nodded. “I thought you might. Hoped you might.”

  “You did?” she asked, gen
uinely surprised that the elf would want her alongside him after all her jibes and suspicions. She was even more surprised when she realized that he was smiling.

  “There is a struggle ahead,” he said. “Desperate and dire. I don’t need to see your memories to know that you would never turn your back on a challenge like that.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Dunwol Kenn Karnin resounded to the deepling drums. They had struck up about an hour before, and had been steadily rising in tempo ever since, their rhythm running through the stonework of the ancient citadel.

  Raythen recognized the beat. It was a mori barr, the death march. It heralded the end of kings and the return of the fallen from war. It was called up from the Hall of the Ancestors to ring out through Thelgrim, through the very roots of the mountain itself. It was a statement of certainty. A dwarf would die this day.

  Bradha led him from the Dunwol Keg. He didn’t try to resist. He’d considered it. He could still make his play. But he knew he’d have been acting in panic and, in his experience, that never ended well. It wasn’t time. Escape was the final option, and he still had other ones available.

  As usual, he was gambling. On this occasion, it was on Mavarin breaking before he did. Mentally or physically, it no longer mattered. It had been up to him to raise the stakes. He couldn’t blink first, not now.

  There was no jeering this time as he was marched into the throne room. Instead, the Guild Council began to chant in time with the rising beat of the hidden drums, a wordless counterpoint that spoke of dark anticipation.

  The beat grew faster as he was taken down into the bowl of the amphitheater, stamping boots reverberating back from the vault above and making the flagstones underfoot vibrate.

  The blocks he, Mavarin and the jury had been gathered at had been removed, replaced by one large stone dais set before the throne crag. There were raised metal platforms on either side, both heaped with a series of carved stone slabs. Mavarin was already waiting under guard before the dais steps, while beyond it Ragnarson watched from his throne. His expression was as cold as ever.

  “You really think this is a good idea, Raythen?” Mavarin demanded as he was led to his side.