The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  “I saw Talarin not long before the end,” one of Maelwich’s elves said. “He had retrieved the Star of Timmoran that the tainted Dunwarr dropped. I didn’t see what became of him though. I saw no other survivors.”

  Astarra stared at him for a moment, then looked at the others.

  “Then where’s Raythen?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I can’t sense him,” Shiver admitted as Astarra looked back the way they had come. He didn’t want to admit that the reason for his inability to feel the Dunwarr’s presence was mostly down to his exhaustion. A cold, deadly fury had gripped him while he had been battling the Ynfernael, freed from his trance by Astarra’s vision, but now the exertion of drawing so stridently on the Empyrean for aid was catching up with him. He’d almost lost consciousness while he’d been reviving Astarra, though he’d managed to shield his weakness from her. She had born enough of a burden in the fight already.

  “There are markings here,” Maelwich said, pointing at the floor of the confluence of tunnels. “It looks like some of the hound demons escaped the cavern during the melee. There are Dunwarr boots too, heading away from the cavern. There.”

  Shiver was no tracker – he could make little sense of the dirt and scuffed rock of the tunnel. His concern for Raythen ran counterpoint to the dangers that a number of the Ynfernael beasts had escaped. They couldn’t be allowed to spread the corruption further. Maelwich at least seemed certain as she strode off into the darkness, gesturing to the others. “They can’t have gotten far!”

  One of the elves carefully pulled up the jaela root, the light of the smoldering spores providing the only illumination as he set off after Maelwich. The rest followed.

  “Do you think Talarin made it out with the Hydra?” Astarra asked, grimacing as she was forced to lean on Shiver for support. He placed a hand around her shoulder, trying not to let her see how his own steps almost faltered.

  “Why would he take it?” Maelwich said from ahead. She alone seemed unaffected by the desperate battle in the cavern. Her drive and energy was astounding.

  “Why would anyone take it?” Mavarin spoke up. “Power.”

  Shiver glanced at him, trying to gauge the dwarf’s thoughts. Raythen had claimed Mavarin had led them all here as part of an elaborate plan to steal and then ‘rediscover’ the Hydra Shard. He’d fought hard alongside them, but now he wondered whether the inventor still bore some ulterior motive.

  “Talarin has power already,” Maelwich said defensively, casting a sharp look back at Mavarin, her face lit by the jaela’s glow. “He does not need more.”

  “Is that what he thinks, or what you think?” Mavarin asked. “I stole the Hydra from the Hall of the Ancestors and planted it where they told me. When I went back for it, it had gone. Who took it?”

  “You’ve said it yourself, the twins,” Astarra pointed out.

  “But how?” Mavarin asked. “Do you really think even one of them could slink off to that section of the mines without being noticed?”

  “They were rotten with Ynfernael power,” Shiver said. “They could have retrieved it by all manner of dark means.”

  “Perhaps,” Mavarin said. “But if the taint really runs that deep, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more helping them than just me.”

  Nobody had a chance to respond to the accusation. Maelwich cried out from up ahead, and raced off into the darkness. Shiver grimaced, trying to catch up without losing Astarra.

  The leader of the Aethyn had come across another tunnel cross section. Four of them met at a central point, branching off into the unknown dark. Maelwich had halted between them, standing over her discovery.

  A body lay at the center of the junction, slumped on its side. It was Talarin. The jaela light gave weak illumination to the slumped form.

  Maelwich was staring at the body, seemingly frozen. Tentatively, Mavarin rolled it over onto its back, and recoiled.

  Talarin’s face, lit by the green glow, was twisted and deformed. Black veins formed a latticework all along his pale flesh, and his mouth had become distended with unnaturally long canines. His eyes, wide and staring, were glossy back.

  “Talarin was a daewyl,” Shiver said softly, looking down at the twisted body. Seeing its corruption laid bare filled him with loathing. There was concern too – he hadn’t sensed the taint upon him, hadn’t recognized him for what he was, despite the fact that he too had once born the same allegiance. “He hid it well.”

  “The Ynfernael hid it well,” Maelwich corrected, her voice riven with equal parts sorrow and disgust. “From all of us.”

  “He must have taken the Hydra for the twins,” Mavarin said. “They all serve the Ynfernael then. Demonic whispers and shared lies seem like their lot.”

  He knelt down to examine the pouch at the fallen elf’s waist. It was empty.

  “If that’s the case, then who took the Hydra from him?” Astarra wondered out loud.

  Maelwich bent over the corpse and grasped the elven dagger buried in its chest. She twisted the serrated blade roughly free.

  “This was the dagger I gave your Dunwarr ally,” she said, holding the dripping length of razor-edged steel up to the light.

  “Raythen,” Astarra murmured. Shiver felt a sense of dismay, quickly replaced by one of acceptance. Of course it would have been Raythen. He was a fool for not having predicted the dwarf’s actions.

  In the silence that followed, Mavarin began to laugh. Everyone looked at him, causing him to pause, then burst into even louder mirth.

  “What is it?” Maelwich demanded, her pride stung. The dwarf took a moment to compose himself, still chuckling fitfully.

  “Well, it looks like I was right to hire Raythen after all. He got the job done, even if it wasn’t in the way I intended.”

  Shiver found little amusing about the situation. He felt Astarra’s anger flare.

  “He must have spotted Talarin picking it up after Korri dropped it,” she said, a hint of bitterness in her voice. “Pursued him this far. I guess we shouldn’t have trusted him after all.”

  “I’m amazed you ever did,” Mavarin admitted. “I didn’t think for a moment any companionship between the three of you would last. In fact, I was hoping it wouldn’t. It would make you all easier to direct if you didn’t trust each other.”

  “Then that is your mistake, Dunwarr,” Shiver said.

  “Quiet,” Maelwich interrupted, again raising the blade that had killed Talarin. “Do you hear that?”

  Shiver paused and listened, instantly picking up what Maelwich had heard as Astarra and Mavarin fought to detect it.

  “Fighting,” he said. “Down that tunnel.”

  He pointed at one of the four leading to the junction.

  “It sounds like Dunwarr.”

  •••

  They came across the last of the demons to have escaped the cavern before its collapse. They were attacking a band of Dunwarr at the end of one of the twisting tunnels, where it rose up towards another hidden entrance in the Dunwol Kenn Karnin’s foundations. Astarra heard a roared battle cry as she arrived at it and saw Captain Bradha driving back one of the snarling hounds with wide swipes of her shortsword, a trio of her fellow Warriors’ Guild members at her back. Two of their number already lay dead, savaged by beastly fangs, while a demon likewise lay hacked apart by Dunwarr axes, its limbs still spasming.

  Maelwich leapt upon the remaining creature from behind, avoiding its spiny ridge as she plunged her daggers into either side of its neck. It tried to buck and gouge her with its chitinous back and wicked, barbed tail, but she darted lithely away from it, landing on all fours in front of Bradha and leaving it to die.

  The dwarf captain raised her sword defensively, but did not strike. Astarra saw the eyes behind her helmet, darting from one member of their unlikely party to the next.

  “By the Ancesto
rs,” she said gruffly. “You all look like you’ve been dragged through the Ynfernael backwards.”

  “I think we might have been,” Astarra admitted, silently relieved the captain hadn’t immediately lashed out at Maelwich. She knew she couldn’t summon the power necessary to fight the four dwarf warriors, not even for a moment.

  “There are demons loose beneath your city,” Maelwich said, standing up, abruptly towering over Bradha. “My daggerband have ended their threat. An Ynfernael portal has been closed this day.”

  “A portal?” Bradha repeated. “Beneath Thelgrim?”

  “Opened by your king’s treasonous advisors,” Maelwich went on, her words cutting and sharp. “Or did you think these creatures you have helped bring down are natural denizens of these tunnels?”

  Bradha shared an uneasy glance with one of her warrior-kin.

  “We were searching for him,” she said, pointing her ichor-stained sword at Mavarin. “He recently absconded along with another criminal. Eight of my kindred are dead because of it, and I suspect you all had a hand in it.”

  “We mourn their deaths,” Astarra said. “But there is more at work here than the feud between elf and dwarf. Evil has been uprooted from beneath Thelgrim, but it might yet triumph. Your king’s advisors were seeking to break your city’s defenses and flood the valley before the gates. They want to make a sacrifice of the thousands seeking shelter there.”

  Bradha stood considering the accusation, then gestured once more with her sword.

  “You will be brought before King Ragnarson,” she declared. “You can make your case to him.”

  “I’d rather not–” Mavarin began to say, but Bradha clattered her sword off the rim of her shield. The three Dunwarr brought their shields up, locking them together.

  “We have all seen enough fighting this day,” Shiver said, the weariness in his voice obvious. “We shall speak to your king, Dunwarr.”

  •••

  Silence lay heavy across the throne room of the Dunwol Kenn Karnin as Bradha finished conversing quietly with Ragnarson. The King in the Deeps was sitting atop his towering throne, looking almost small compared to its graven, stony bulk. Astarra did her best not to stare, taking in the sweeping majesty of the great amphitheater. Its tiers of seats were currently empty, cleared by order of the king as they had entered. Guards had forcibly ejected the members of the assembled Guild Council who had protested. Even the Guild Masters themselves had gone, ushered out by Dunwarr captains and Ragnarson’s curses.

  It seemed the king didn’t want any to witness what was spoken of by Astarra, Mavarin and the elves.

  Only the three captains of the Warriors’ Guild, including Bradha, had remained behind, listening in stony silence to Astarra’s story. She had marshalled what little strength she had left to tell them of the shadow beneath Thelgrim, of Korri and Zorri’s manipulation and the desperate sacrifices made beneath their very feet. Afterwards Ragnarson had conferred privately with his captains, seemingly now the only Dunwarr he was willing to trust. They stepped away from the great throne’s rocky perch as Ragnarson cleared his throat.

  “Had Captain Bradha not brought me the head of one of these beasts, and were her testimony of what she has seen in the tunnels below this fortress not clear and certain, I would order you all to be cut down before me this very instant,” he said, his voice as cold and hard as his expression. “As it is, there may be a modicum of truth to what you have just told me, runewitch.”

  “It’s all true,” Astarra said, too tired to feel anger at the Dunwarr king’s accusing tone.

  “What is true is that a number of my people are dead, slain by you and the elves you have thrown your lot in with,” Ragnarson went on. “You broke into this very citadel, murdered eight guards and left with two criminals. That is all fact.”

  “One criminal, actually,” Mavarin said bluntly. “M- Me. Raythen won his innocence in the Trial of the Mountain.”

  Astarra and Shiver both shot the inventor a withering look. Ragnarson carried on as though he hadn’t heard the outburst.

  “The blood of the slain demands justice. I would be derelict in my duties as king if I did not pursue it.”

  “The blood is on the hands of your fallen advisors, not ours,” Maelwich said. Astarra had been worried that the proud deep elf would have little time for the Dunwarr king, but she had said nothing antagonistic since they had been led into the hall. Her words were calm and measured as she addressed Ragnarson.

  “They twisted your will to their own ends. They were the ones who instigated the theft of the Hydra Shard, and they likewise have now claimed this Dunwarr’s invention, the burrowing device. They sought to start a war between our two peoples. They also hoped to kill thousands of innocents, and they may yet if you do not ensure the defenses above the valley are secured.”

  Ragnarson was silent, his grim expression unchanged. Maelwich went on.

  “There is no dishonor in being taken in by the lies of demonkind. Deceit is the very essence of the Ynfernael. It has laid its roots slow and deep here. The corruption started many years ago. You could not have foreseen it – even we only sensed it as it bore fruit. Such mistakes cannot be undone. My people know that better than any.”

  Ragnarson looked at Maelwich, seeming to consider the words, then signaled abruptly to the trio of warriors by his side.

  “Skirmish-Captain Svensdottir, you will take one hundred chosen warriors from the guild and march immediately to the Upper East defenses, where the Deeprun flows by the tributaries. Find the burrower device there and destroy it. Slay any who attempt to impede you. Be ever-vigilant for the spawn of the Ynfernael. Captain Svensson, take a dozen of your own warriors and issue a proclamation outside the Guild Hall. The curfew is now over. All restrictions in Thelgrim are at an end.”

  Svensdottir bowed and departed, calling up to the guards at the throne room’s doors to send word ahead of her to the citadel barracks. Ragnarson turned his gaze back to the bedraggled outsiders who had been brought into his hall.

  “You have sacrificed much to strike down the evil which threatened this city,” he told Maelwich. “That is obvious. I will consider the blood shed by your clan fair payment for the Dunwarr lives you have stolen. The same goes for your sorcerous kinsman, and the runewitch. As for Mavarin…”

  Astarra felt the inventor tense up beside her before Ragnarson went on.

  “He may not have known of the greater evil he was committing, but he has still defiled this city and the halls of its ancestors with his crimes. He is my subject, and it is my place to render judgement on him.”

  Mavarin started to speak, but Astarra put a warning hand on his shoulder, stilling him while the king continued.

  “The proper punishment for his transgressions is death. Nevertheless, there has been enough blood spilled in and around Thelgrim in recent times. I will not be responsible for any more. Instead, I call upon royal prerogative. He will be banished from this city. You will walk from here into exile, strange inventor. Go where you please, but never return, upon pain of death.”

  Mavarin seemed to consider the pronouncement, then nodded, a slow smile creeping across his dirty face.

  “Funnily enough, I wasn’t intending to stay anyway. Guild membership seems to have lost its allure lately.”

  “Your judgements are fair, King in the Deeps,” Maelwich said, inclining her head. “And if all is thus settled, we shall take our leave. The clan will be anxious for news, and I wish to dispatch fresh daggerbands to ensure the denwal far true has been cleansed.”

  “Captain Bradha will escort you all from the city,” Ragnarson said. Bradha stepped forward, indicating for them to join her.

  “One last thing,” Ragnarson said, his voice turning gruff for a moment. Astarra looked up at him, sitting alone on his cold, unyielding throne.

  “Tell me again,” he said to her. “When did
you last see my son?”

  Epilogue

  Shiver felt the cool rush of the waters running over his face, slowly breaking down the filth that had defiled him for so long.

  He stood in the shallows of the river running through the Aethyn’s cavern, his robes hitched up around his waist, bending forward to splash more of the swift-running water over his face and torso. Astarra and Mavarin stood next to him, likewise crouching or stooped over, dousing themselves down.

  They had returned to the Aethyn camp with Maelwich, where they had been greeted by the welcome sight of first rootbread and broiled silver fins, and then a short but deep sleep. Astarra had simply collapsed on a mat of woven cavern creepers beneath one of the clan’s shelters, and Shiver slept on the stone beside her, too exhausted to even care about the dried ichor staining much of his body.

  It was the first uninterrupted sleep he had known for months. There had been no dreams, no night terrors, and no memories. When he started awake, Maelwich and the two other Aethyn survivors of the battle in the cavern had already completed their ritual washing in the waters of the subterranean river. Now it was their turn.

  Mavarin waded out into the current until it was almost up to his chest, scrubbing his battered leather apron clean before diving fully beneath the surface. Shiver was worried for a second that he had been caught up in the wicked current, but he re-emerged swiftly, spitting water, shaking his head and grinning like a dog. From fighting against Ynfernael horrors to bathing in a sacred deep elf cavern, nothing seemed to truly phase the dwarf.

  “Where will you go, Dunwarr?” Shiver asked him, standing up and stretching aching back muscles. The inventor shrugged.

  “I don’t know yet. That’s the good part.”

  “Don’t the dwarfs of the Duldor Deeps value invention?” Astarra asked as she shook out her braid, her long, dark hair falling to her waist. Mavarin scoffed.

  “Those tinkerers wished they were half as gifted as me! No, I think it’s time to leave the mountains altogether. Perhaps I should become a rogue, like Raythen.”