The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  A murmur ran through the audience, checked by a furious look from Ragnarson.

  “I find believing that a challenge,” Haldar said. “It seems this jury needs to question the wardens and the Tomb Master to ascertain whether they were at their posts.”

  “They are not members of the guilds, and so were not summoned to this council,” Ragnarson declared. “I will send for them at the next interlude.”

  “Might I make a suggestion as to their absence,” Korri called out from the jury, looking towards Ragnarson. The king nodded, and both Korri and Zorri stepped forward together, ignoring Haldar’s obvious frustration.

  “I consider it highly improbable that the theft of the Shard was the work of a single criminal,” Korri said. “And indeed, we have two accused standing before us right now. The Trial of the Mountain may have found in favor of Raythen, but that should not eliminate him from our understanding of the crime as a whole.”

  There it is, Raythen thought. The Trial had brought him a reprieve, but it seemed as though it was already up. He had refused to help the twins when they’d visited his cell. He had no doubt they wanted to pay him back for that.

  “It seems likely to us that if Mavarin didn’t have a hand in the apparent absence of the wardens, Raythen may well have,” Zorri said, off the back of his brother’s veiled accusation. “This Council might benefit from questioning him on the matter.”

  “As a victor in the Trial of the Mountain, I am not bound to answer this jury,” Raythen said. “In fact, by law I could walk out of this hall right now, and none of you could stop me.”

  “That would be a point of debate,” Zorri said, smiling at Raythen with all the charm of a rattlefang serpent. “And a hotly contested one at that. But I would certainly like to see you try.”

  Raythen shrugged. “Regardless, I will not answer, except to say that your accusations are baseless. I had no hand in any of this.”

  More growls from the audience. He snatched a glance at Mavarin – two could play a crowd.

  “I wish to open a line of questioning regarding motive,” Krellen, the master of the Miners Guild said, before the council could get out of hand again. “King Ragnarson, I request the floor.”

  “Granted,” Ragnarson said, motioning for Haldar and the twins to step back. They did so with obvious reluctance as Krellen took their place.

  “The question of how does not seem to be one we can answer immediately,” he declared, his imperious tone immediately grating on Raythen. “It would seem wiser, instead, to try to establish the why. Can you explain your actions to the jury, Kayl Mavarin? Consider, as you do so, that your life surely depends on it.”

  Mavarin cleared his throat, then hesitated. It was clear to Raythen he was trying to put on a show of defiance, and was coming up short. He’d broken first, and he was still trying to work his way through the consequences. Whether he’d come up with a plan yet, whether these further admissions were all part of it, Raythen wasn’t yet sure.

  “I stole the Hydra Shard because I knew that whoever recovered it would be rewarded,” he said. “I took it because I believed that once I claimed to have found it, the guilds would have little choice other than to admit the League of Invention.”

  A fresh surge of outrage gripped the throne room. Raythen caught himself feeling impressed. It was a drastic move, desperate, but it had almost paid off. Clearly Mavarin was obsessed with gaining official recognition.

  “You really thought we would admit a lone madman onto this council?” Krellen demanded, caught somewhere between shock and anger.

  “If I had been the one to find the Shard using my inventions, you would have,” Mavarin said, voice filled with defiance. “And why not? My genius enabled me to steal it. Isn’t that proof enough of my abilities, of the potential of my work?”

  More rage. Ragnarson himself was barking something invective-laden at the inventor, his hammer and anvil forgotten. Raythen looked at Mavarin, catching his eye.

  “You know, I’m almost impressed,” he said above the uproar. Mavarin shrugged.

  “Where is it?” Krellen was bellowing, pointing furiously at him. “Where have you hidden the Shard?”

  “I don’t know,” Mavarin snapped back. “It’s not where I left it. It’s gone. I believe the deep elves took it.”

  It looked for a moment as though the guild council members were going to rush the two prisoners. Bradha signaled to the guards on the upper tiers, who formed a column that rapidly descended into the bowl and spread out around its edge, putting a barrier of burnished steel and iron-oak between the roaring crowd and the two prisoners.

  Raythen could have laughed. It was all so obvious. The whole thing had been a charade, right up to the part where Mavarin had blasted his way into the cave off the tunnel junction. That was where he’d hidden the Shard after he’d stolen it, and that was where he had intended to triumphantly rediscover it. Instead, it had already disappeared, stolen, presumably, by another.

  Only one part didn’t make sense to Raythen.

  “Why me?” he asked, ignoring the chaos unfolding around them. “Why did you hire three adventurers if the Hydra was never really missing?”

  “It would have been too convenient if I’d rediscovered it alone,” Mavarin replied, facing Raythen rather than the throne. “I couldn’t trust anyone in Thelgrim, but if I hired outsiders, it would seem more legitimate when I rescued the Shard. Besides, those infernal deep elves are everywhere, and I didn’t fancy having my throat slit traversing the last few tunnels. Planting the Shard the first time was more than enough.”

  “So, we were just hired muscle,” Raythen said. “And an alibi. Don’t insult my intelligence any further, Mavarin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on. You specifically hired a traveling runewitch from the southern forests, the disgraced thief, son of the king of the Dunwarrs and a cursed deep elf who quite probably has the blood of thousands on his long, bony fingers. I couldn’t imagine a trio more calculated to take the blame by this council for stealing the Shard.”

  “If I only intended to use you as a shield, wouldn’t I have done that during this trial?” Mavarin said.

  “I think you intended to,” Raythen said. “I think you were caught off guard by the Trial of the Mountain. You panicked, and here you are. Full marks for planning, but execution leaves something to be desired… if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Mavarin looked away, clearly trying to master his anger. Raythen smirked, glad to be proven right by the tinkerer’s expression, before the ringing report of the anvil drew him back to his father.

  “The trial is adjourned!” Ragnarson was bellowing as he raised the hammer and pointed it at the two prisoners. “Captain Bradha, take them back to their cells. Both of them!”

  “You can’t do that!” Raythen shouted back. “The Trial of the Mountain is inviolable! I am a free Dunwarr!”

  Ragnarson wasn’t listening. In truth, Raythen had known winning the Trial guaranteed him little. At the very best, the jury would appeal his freedom and prevaricate over his release. Still, it felt good to be technically on the right side of the law, for once. He was going to make the most of it.

  “Don’t you dare lay a hand on me,” he said to Bradha as she approached, one of the other guards grasping Mavarin. To his surprise, she didn’t grab him, but did point up the amphitheater stairs to the throne room doors.

  “Free Dunwarr or not, if you want to leave this hall alive, I suggest you come quietly with me,” the captain said. “Now.”

  “Point taken,” Raythen replied, looking around at the pandemonium that had gripped the royal chamber. “We can discuss specific legalities later.”

  •••

  Maelwich helped lead them back up from the depths. News of Ulthar’s unnatural demise spread rapidly through the encampment. The place seemed to grow even more quiet a
nd somber.

  “Thank you, for trying to save him,” Maelwich said to Astarra and Shiver as the clan council prepared to meet once more. “Clearly the darkness below Thelgrim has grown more powerful than even we anticipated.”

  Astarra nodded, unable to bring herself to properly receive the thanks. She hadn’t been able to save Ulthar’s life. She felt as though the entire venture had been a failure.

  “It has reformed the tunnels to confound any attempts at finding it before it is strong enough,” Shiver said. “I believe it lies directly beneath the cavern lake the Dunwarr call the Blackwater.”

  “I am going to tell the council as much,” Maelwich said. “I see no other option than to attempt to tunnel through. It’s that, or abandon this place altogether.”

  The suggestion left Astarra aghast. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of retreat. It didn’t seem practical even when she did. It wasn’t in her nature, she knew. It made no sense.

  “You cannot abandon these mountains,” she said “They’re your home! And what about the dwarfs. They are completely unaware of what’s coming. Once the shadow is strong enough, they won’t stand a chance.”

  “We tried to warn them,” Maelwich said. “Their mistrust and arrogance blinds them. They think we stole their worthless runeshard.”

  “And just who did?” Shiver asked. “Don’t you think its disappearance is more than mere coincidence?”

  “Even if we had it, there is little it would do to help us,” Maelwich said. “You both felt the power in the darkness in those tunnels. It is of the Ynfernael, the hellish plane. It is the antithesis of the Empyrean. Petty runemagic will not stop it, even enhanced by a Dunwarr trinket.”

  “Runic magic is not petty,” Astarra said, her anger goaded. She was trying to run through possibilities in her head, looking for a way forward that didn’t involve abandoning the Dunwarrs to the Ynfernael. Maelwich gave her a withering look.

  “You do not have the power to break open that stone,” the elf said. “We will have to try by hand. I will speak to the council and call upon the rockshapers. If we can protect them, they may be able to delve through the rock and open a passage to the heart of this evil.”

  “It may take too long,” Shiver said. “Every minute is vital.”

  “What if there’s a way we can break through the rock?” Astarra said, her mind racing, the words struggling to keep up. There was one possibility, though she was almost loathed to admit to it. She had no wish to revisit that particular device. “A way to hit it so hard it doesn’t have a chance to fight back?”

  Shiver realized immediately what she meant. “Mavarin,” he said.

  “His device,” she went on. “His burrower. We could reach the shadow before it has any more time to grow.”

  “What device?” Maelwich asked, adding something in the Aethyn tongue as she looked to Shiver.

  “Mavarin is the Dunwarr inventor who brought us to Thelgrim,” he said. “He has a large… contraption of his own design that seems capable of boring through the densest bedrock.”

  “We suspected the Dunwarr have some new, mechanical creation,” Maelwich said. “We have been feeling strange vibrations in our passages for some time and uncovered unusual tunnels.”

  “It’s perfect for reaching the space underneath the lake,” Astarra said. “But we’ll need him to pilot it. He was taken while Shiver and I were escaping Thelgrim. He and our other companion, Raythen.”

  “Why would the Dunwarr arrest two of their own?”

  “King Ragnarson believes we had a hand in stealing the Hydra Shard,” Shiver said.

  “They were captured helping us escape,” Astarra pointed out, looking sharply at him. “We abandoned them so we could get out. I want to repay that.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” Shiver said, his tone more defensive than she had anticipated. “But the threat of the shadow under Thelgrim cannot be ignored.”

  “You won’t be ignoring it if we can get them out of Thelgrim,” Astarra pointed out. “We need them.”

  “Are you suggesting breaking back into the fortress where we were held?” Shiver asked. “Because that is likely where they’ll be, under a full guard. We don’t even know the tunneling device is still intact and can be reached once we have Mavarin.”

  “It’s a safer gamble than trying to dig our way to the Ynfernael,” Astarra said. “You said it yourself, we don’t have time.”

  “I know nothing of gambling,” Shiver admitted.

  “Then consider it sound advice,” Astarra said, looking to Maelwich. “If we can claim this device and its pilot, we can strike directly to the heart of the shadow. We just need a way of getting into Thelgrim’s core.”

  “We have a way,” Maelwich said, to Astarra’s surprise. Apparently seeing her expression, the elf smiled.

  “We have shared the mountain roots with the Dunwarr for many centuries. Not all of our interactions are peaceful. It would be remiss of me, as clan leader of the Aethyn, not to have a means of striking at the core of their fastness, should I need to.”

  “We do not seek war,” Shiver said urgently. “If anything, the darkness below will feed off that. Every death will make it stronger.”

  “It wouldn’t be a full assault,” Maelwich said. “Merely an… expedition. I will inform the council as such and assemble the daggerbands.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You can swim, can’t you?” Shiver asked. He’d undone the upper half of his robes and secured them around his waist. The light of the jaela roots picked out his wiry, well-defined musculature, giving him a rangy, dangerous look.

  “I can,” Astarra said defensively, removing her short over-jacket and ensuring her long braid was properly bound. “I just haven’t tried it underground before.”

  “The current is strong,” Maelwich said. “Do not fight it. Let it carry you.”

  The deep elf daggerband, led by Maelwich and Talarin, had assembled on the edge of the river running through their encampment’s cavern. The waters gurgled beneath Astarra, looking almost pitch-black as they wound their way over and around the smooth-worn rock. How she was supposed to navigate those lightless depths and avoid being dashed to pieces on slippery stone, she had no idea.

  “What if I need to breathe?” she asked, only half joking.

  “Raise your head,” Maelwich said. “If it hits rock and you are still under water, keep swimming until you are not.”

  Astarra let out a little hiss of exasperation, and slung her staff over her shoulder. She really didn’t want to do this. It had been her idea though, and there was no chance she was backing out of something she’d suggested, not when the Aethyn’s council had agreed to it.

  “Ready?” Talarin demanded impatiently. Astarra nodded. Maelwich had stepped up to the edge of the flow, long, swing daggers secured over her back. She looked to Shiver, who simply shrugged.

  “Atho alla,” the leader of the Aethyn clan said, then stepped over the edge and dropped into the subterranean river.

  The rest followed. Astarra hesitated. She realized Shiver was looking at her.

  “I’m with you,” he said. “Just follow the light.”

  “What li–” Astarra began to say, before Shiver pushed her. She just had time to drag in a huge breath before she hit the water.

  The cold almost stole it from her. It was bitter and knifing, so overwhelming it momentarily shocked her into inaction.

  The water around her shuddered as Shiver plunged in beside her. At first, she couldn’t see anything, but she felt the current snatch her and pick her up. She struggled to hold onto her breath as she tried to right herself, thrown about in the black waters.

  Just as she was about to panic, she saw what Shiver had meant. There was a light ahead, down in the river with her. She caught only a glimpse of it as the seething flow spun her around, but she was able
to turn back towards it.

  It was the green glow of the jaela root. One of the elves who had plunged into the river ahead had part of the fibrous fungi wrapped around a stick. It seemed to burn even underwater.

  She held on just long enough to orient herself before the ache in her lungs grew too painful. She surfaced, dragging in a welcome surge of air. They hadn’t even left the cavern yet. The current hauled her back under, like a living creature dragging down its prey.

  Maelwich’s words came back to her, amidst the broiling, frigid darkness. Don’t fight the current. Let it carry you. She tried to relax, but it was difficult. The cold was all she could think about, that and the desperate desire to keep the light of the jaela in focus ahead of her. She struck out after it, and found, blessedly, that she was being swept along.

  She didn’t know how long she swam for. It became a nightmare of icy cold and surging, black currents. Several times her arms and legs struck painfully off unseen rocks, and once her staff snagged, arresting her and almost strangling her before she could free it from a submerged cleft. Countless times she struggled upwards, desperately seeking air, and found only the unyielding resistance of a flooded tunnel roof. She fought through the panic, kept going, until she reached even the smallest sliver of clear space between rock and water.

  On and on it went, as the buried flood carried them along the twisting roots of the mountain. Then, suddenly, she realized that something had changed. The darkness was no longer absolute, no longer a crushing pressure around the tiny, wavering glow of the jaela being swept along ahead. Light had driven it off, had suffused the waters all around her. For the first time she could properly see the elves swimming alongside her, darting like sleek, aquatic hunters through the surge.

  She surfaced again, struggling for air. The sight that greeted her stole the breath she’d been seeking.

  The great ceiling arch of Thelgrim’s cavern soared above her, a jagged sky of stalactites lit with the wonderous glow of a hundred starglobes and a million, million uncut gems and geodes. Their brilliance seemed to make the open air around her shimmer, and glittered back from the surface of what she realized now was Thelgrim’s raised aqueduct. It felt as though she’d just passed through the darkest bowels of the Ynfernael and emerged into the glory of the celestial realms.