Ancients (Heroes by Necessity Book 1)

by Riley Keene

  Elise directed the group into the darkness of the vaguely known and barely mapped, first through the sewer access tunnels, then into forgotten side passages connecting the tunnels to abandoned bolt holes and deserted hideouts, before finally making their way towards the catacombs they sought.

  And, with Ydia’s blessing, the long-forgotten spell of Athala’s bookish lust hidden somewhere within.

  Chapter Two

  They moved slowly through the cramped hall in a single file due to the claustrophobia-inducing walls that sloped away at a delicate angle. Athala was happy for the slower pace, as she was able to actually keep up for once. Elise, however, poked and prodded at Ermolt, likely trying to keep the group on track with her schedule.

  “I don’t see why you can’t just straighten up,” Elise said from the center of the golden halo of torchlight just ahead. “What, are you afraid of spiders or something?” Athala found herself grinning at Elise’s teasing tone. While they hadn’t known each other long, Elise and Ermolt had become some of her favorite people in the world, even if they didn’t necessarily get along all the time.

  “No,” Ermolt said, his booming voice echoing against the close walls. He was hunched over beneath the low ceiling of cobwebs that filled a sizable space beneath the sandstone ceiling above, rhens away from Athala’s head. “That’s not it at all. I just don’t want to be blinded by a carpet of webbing wrapped around my head.” Athala grinned, amused by how much he sounded like a sulking child.

  “It’s alright to be afraid of spiders,” Elise said, gesturing with the torch as she spoke. The firelight sent rippling shadows along the fascinating stonework of the ancient passage they traveled. “Nothing wrong with having a phobia. I’m pretty spooked by giant crabs, myself. But then, they’re still about the same size as me, not a thousand times smaller.”

  “Technically,” Athala said, “the average house spider is about thirty million times smaller than Ermolt. By weight, of course.”

  “I’m not afraid of spiders!” Ermolt said with an exasperated punctuation of his hands, raking them through some of the webbing. He recoiled as if burned. “You’re both just talking nonsense. I’m not going to stand up straight and drag my face through a solid wall of spiderwebs the rest of the way just because my back is getting a little sore.”

  The halls fell silent in momentary reprieve. Athala focused on watching her feet, purposefully stepping around the bits of broken off rock that littered the hard-packed dirt. Athala didn’t think of herself as clumsy normally, but she was wearing one of her nicer dresses and she didn’t really want to get it dirty. She really liked this dress, and plus Elise wouldn’t let her live it down. The Conscript would never stoop to the level of “I told you so,” but she would be disappointed. And that was bad enough.

  “You know,” Elise said after a moment, and Athala could hear the grin that curled her thick lips, “perhaps I should commune with Ydia on your behalf.” Her voice held a sing-song quality that echoed against the stone. “I’ll call in divine intervention for your poor spine and save you from the self-inflicted torment on behalf of the spiders you definitely aren’t afraid of.”

  “You know what? Forget I even said anything. I’m fine.”

  “No, really! Maybe this is my calling. Ydia will answer my prayers and I’ll be elevated to Priest, all thanks to your whining.” Elise nodded and Athala snickered under her breath. She was trying to stay out of it, but Elise and Ermolt had a way of digging at each other that reminded Athala of her and her brother. Well, before the whole inheritance talk with their father. “Surely it’s part of Her grand plan, or else someone as large as you would be able to suck it up and deal for a quarter of a bell.”

  “Actually, it’s been over half a bell already,” Athala interjected.

  “Details.” Elise waved the comment away. “That changes nothing. In fact—” The torchlight dipped as Elise stumbled, her foot likely catching on an uneven place in the floor.

  “Careful.” Ermolt reached out and steadied her before she fell. “If you’re having trouble, I could carry you. Just climb up on my back and I’ll drag you through these harmless cobwebs.” He paused, and Athala could almost make out the grin that spread over his shadow-lined face. “Unless you’re afraid of spiders or something.”

  “Have either of you seen the inscribed rock yet?” Athala asked, hoping to distract them.

  “Which inscribed rock?” Elise batted away Ermolt’s hands and turned to look at Athala. Her face was almost completely in shadow, but Athala heard no malice in her words. “Is this the one that’s square shaped and set into the wall, or the triangular one on the ground?”

  “Neither,” Ermolt said before Athala could answer. “Those were both back in the sewer tunnels.”

  “Right.” Athala stopped and consulted the small bound notepad she kept in the front pocket of her dress. Squinting in the low light, she tried to find the passage she knew by heart. She had reviewed her notes nearly a thousand times between last night and this morning in preparation, but it was comforting to know she was correct. “This one should be set into a pillar on the side of the path. By these reports, it’s probably a reddish type of stone, different from the rest.”

  “Was it on the collapsed pillar I stood back up about fifty fen back?” Ermolt asked. “I wasn’t looking for a red stone.”

  Athala shook her head. “That one wasn’t far enough out from the entrance to these catacombs. And anyway, the passage should open up around it so that you can stand up. At our current pace, we should either have come across it within the last ten fen or so, or be coming up on it soon.”

  Ermolt stood up as tall as he was willing, the top of his dark head just barely brushing the low ceiling of cobwebs. “Now that you mention it, I see a pillar ahead. Eighty fen or so. Maybe that’s it.”

  “You can’t see anything that far away,” Elise said as she started walking again.

  “I sure can.” Ermolt resumed his hunched over posture. “Up ahead on the left. Why do you think I can’t?”

  “Because I can’t. The torchlight doesn’t reach far enough.” She extended her arm, holding the torch farther ahead as if to will it to illuminate what Ermolt thought he saw. To Athala, beyond the torch was just an inky fog.

  “The torchlight reaches farther than the bright ring around us. Not all of us grew up in the big city, surrounded by light at all hours of the night.” He pointed ahead into the near-pitch darkness of the cloistered hall. “On the left there. I admit from this distance it might be a person roughly my size standing with his head in the cobwebs, but it seems a little unlikely.”

  “I still don’t see anything.” Elise leaned forward, putting her face closer to the torch.

  “Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll be there in a moment. And stop holding the torch in your own face. You’re just blinding yourself.”

  Elise reacted by holding the torch to one side, nearly scraping it against the wall. The shifting light illuminated the right wall completely, throwing harsh shadows onto the left. Athala noted the pitted stone, worn by the moist air and heat that permeated the area. “Well, that’s not terribly helpful.”

  “It will be once your eyes adjust.”

  Elise huffed, returning the torch to in front of her person. The details of the wall swam out of focus and Athala looked away before her terrible dark vision started telling her that the pits in the wall were the empty eye sockets of some animated corpse. “You know, I don’t tell you how to breathe. Don’t tell me how to see.”

  “Well, then don’t tell me how to walk, either!” Ermolt shot back. “If I want to walk all hunched over, just let me. At any rate, I still don’t see why we didn’t just take a torch to these cobwebs when we got here.”

  “Webs actually don’t burn,” Athala said, trying to keep her tone cheerful even though these two were starting to grate on her nerves. “It’s a common misconception. The dust stuck to them will burn, but the webs themselves don’t. Trying to set the webs alig
ht would cause the immediate area to flare up as the dust burned off, but it wouldn’t spread.”

  “And to do it, I would have to hold the torch straight above my head,” Elise added. “I don’t want to catch a dribble of burning pitch on my face.”

  Ermolt seemed to consider this for a moment. “Well, I could take the torch from you and reach just fine.”

  “Yes, but then I wouldn’t have a torch.” Elise held her arm a little farther ahead as if holding the torch away from Ermolt. The light danced across the light brown skin of her extended arm. “If you wanted a torch, you should have brought your own.”

  “Fine. Have it your way,” Ermolt said, his shoulders sagging slightly as he sulked.

  “Oh, I see it now!” Elise said excitedly, pointing ahead. Athala squinted to see, but the object remained just outside of her dark vision’s range for now. She too had grown up in the busy city, although she doubted that actually had anything to do with Ermolt’s increased vision. He was a barbarian, after all, and despite many physical similarities, he wasn’t technically human.

  “See, I told you it was there.”

  “You didn’t know,” Elise scoffed. “You just said you saw it because Athala said we should be coming up on it.”

  “It’s on the left just like I said!”

  “You just guessed and got lucky.”

  Ermolt stuck his fingers in his ears and wiggled them at Elise’s back. Athala clamped her free hand over her mouth to muffle the giggle. “So, Athala,” Ermolt said, causing Athala to swallow the laughter. “Does the inscription on this one say something?”

  “Well, the others had been worn down by the elements, but we’ve left most of that behind at this point, so I should be able to read it. None of the texts confirm what it says because the explorers who were last here didn’t know the language, and the rubbings they took were really poorly done—and smudged besides—but the letters looked like Draconian.”

  “Draconian, eh?” Elise said, and Athala shook her head at the slightly accusatory tone. “I remember someone telling me that no one gave dragons more than a second thought.”

  “We have no evidence that Draconian is related to dragons.” Athala picked at her cuticles for a moment before continuing. “As far as we know, it’s just the language of magical formulae. The reason isn’t really clear, either. It could be it’s because the language was originally translated in a long-forgotten city called ‘Draconia’ or something.”

  “So what I’m hearing is that there’s a dragon down here,” Ermolt said, nodding. “Definitely. Maybe more than one.”

  “I said no such thing!” Athala wrinkled her nose up at his back, suppressing the urge to slap him between the shoulders. She’d likely just hurt her hands on his hide armor anyway, and he was just teasing her. She also needed the perfect function of both of her hands to cast any spells.

  “Yes, definitely dragons. Because that’s what Draconian means. It means there are dragons.” Athala started to clarify, again, but Ermolt continued, talking over her. “It’s been a pleasure working with you both. I’m honored to have you at my side as we go into a hopeless battle with ancient and unknowable beings of deific magic.”

  “Well, it might not be a fight,” Elise said. “We could just need to talk to them. I mean, the dragons represent the Gods, right? Maybe they’ll be reasonable. I could maybe talk Ydia’s dragon into not eating you.” She paused. “Maybe.”

  “No.” Ermolt shook his head, squaring his shoulders as much as a person hunched over to avoid dipping his head into spiderwebs could. “I’m attached to the idea now. I’m going to die in honorable battle fighting an army of dragons. Don’t try and change my mind.”

  “You two are terrible,” Athala said with a sniff. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stop and take a rubbing of the pillar. You can continue your inane conversations while I do.”

  The pillar was about as tall as Ermolt had said, spanning from floor to ceiling. About the top quarter or so of it vanished in the mass of spiderwebs, but the carvings went only as high as just above Athala’s head. The carvings themselves were almost perfectly preserved in spite of the humidity in the air. She broke out a few pages of parchment and a nub of charcoal to take a rubbing.

  “Definitely Draconian,” Athala said, dancing her fingers lightly over the delicate red stone to make sure it wouldn’t crumble as soon as she put pressure on it. “Interesting language, mechanically speaking. Each letter actually represents an entire, well, ‘word’ isn’t right, but close. It’s formed by combining symbols and overlapping them the same way you mix ingredients in alchemical processes.”

  Elise and Ermolt both made vaguely encouraging noises from behind her, so she continued. They were being paid. They could at least pretend to learn something when she was explaining important things.

  “Overlapping symbols that represent ‘furniture’ and ‘sit’ would mean something like a chair, but only in informal use, like if I were using the language to write a message.” She held the parchment in place with one hand while she rubbed the charcoal into the page with the other. “In actual use, it might be overlapped with a dozen other symbols, for things like ‘oak’ and ‘skin’ would mean that it was made of wood and leather. And that’s on top of symbols that represent purpose, like if the chair was for dining, reading, or resting, and add to that any of a million other symbolic components to further specify details about the chair.”

  Athala dusted the excess charcoal from her page, scanning down the perfectly formed symbols. “The more symbols you add, the more complex the ‘letter’ is, and the more specific it is.”

  “So what does it say?” Elise said, leaning over Athala’s shoulder.

  “Well, I can’t just read it straight across. I’m not fluent in conversational Draconian, if such a thing existed. It takes a moment to figure out what parts were used to compose each letter, and then decipher what it actually means, and then put all the letters together into a complete thought.” Athala stared at the rubbing for a moment.

  She pointed to a specific symbol. “You can see this symbol repeats several times, and it looks like—” She trailed off as she read over the complex, angular symbol, whispering to herself. “Hold place individual building lock keep bad metal block against life person?” Athala leaned against the wall next to the pillar, tapping her chin for a moment. When she realized her hand was covered in charcoal, and thus so now was her face, she sighed. “Fortress? A building or place where you lock or hold or block bad things, to keep people alive?”

  Athala shrugged and tucked the charcoal nub back into a pocket of her knapsack before fetching a handkerchief from a different pocket. She rubbed the charcoal off her fingers, and then also off her chin. “That sounds right. I’d have to keep translating and compare everything together to be able to use context for more information. But that’s a good start.”

  “Do you think that’s related to the spell you’re after?” Elise stared at the stone, pointing to all of the places where that particular ‘word’ appeared. “Some kind of magical barrier or something?”

  “Probably not.” Athala pointed to another symbol that appeared next to the ‘prison’ word in two different places on the stone. “This letter is just a whole bunch of negation symbols piled together. Unless you two want to set up camp here for me to decipher and translate, I’d say, at a glance, it means it’s not a fortress.” Her brow furrowed. “Or a fortress for nothing. So maybe some kind of, I don’t know. Siege spell? I was pretty lax in finding the history of this place as compared to the location, so I can’t say for certain what happened here that would give me a clue.”

  With a wave of her hand, Athala smirked. “I might even have both of these words completely wrong, and it’s a memorial to a person, not a place. Maybe an architect who built fortresses? A general who won a battle at a fortress? Maybe instead of a fortress, it was a prison?”

  “Is it important that we understand it?” Ermolt asked. “Would we be safer to wait f
or you to decipher it?”

  “Probably not,” Athala said, trying to sound confident and flippant, but her inflection made it sound like a question to her ears. “Messages this complex are notoriously hard to translate. Spells are easy because the syntax is strict. The word order is important. Actual sentences meant to convey meaning are a lot looser, and unless you know the conventions of the culture or even the person who wrote it, it can be guesswork as to what the sentence actually means even if you have all the words.” She waved vaguely at the inscription. “It’s a riddle I’ll solve once we have the spell secured and are back home safe.”

  “As long as you’re sure,” Elise said, looking with concern at the pillar.

  Athala ignored her. “We’re about halfway there, so let’s continue. I’d hate to be down here after dark.”

  As they started moving again, Athala rolled the rubbing up and stowed it in the scroll case she carried next to her pack, careful not to smudge the charcoal. The rubbing would have historical significance, completing the records she’d referenced to locate this place, but she valued it more as a personal amusement.

  Decoding Draconian messages was fun for Athala. Coming to a solution would feel like an accomplishment, and depending on the content, she might get something else out of it. It could be relevant to the research she would need to do about the spell, or might provide clues for her to locate more spells once her work with this one was finished.

  But with the spell finally so close, she couldn’t afford to be distracted by even something as fulfilling as deciphering Draconian. Collecting a permanent spell large enough to be picked up on a locator ritual would be mentally taxing enough on its own.

  Athala rested a hand against the little notebook squirreled away in the pocket of her dress, caressing the collection of paper as a mother would a child. There would be plenty of time for fun after she collected the spell.

  Chapter Three