by Brian Fuller
“How is it possible that you’ve been alive since the Shattering?” Gen asked cautiously as he took his place at the table. The bony chair was a little knobby against his back.
Their host leaned back, eyes distant. “That is part of the story. From your conversation, I know you have heard of this place in legend or history. Likely, that history questions its fate. Echo Hold was built by a collaboration of the human kingdoms during the Middle Peace, and—as you have so aptly noted—it is as impenetrable as a Basher’s skull. In its glory it was a nation unto itself, nearly five thousand men and their families living within the walls—only the best of men and the finest of fighters. A Knight General ruled over the fort with a council of eight Knight Captains. Knight General Oakenstone was a good man, seasoned and sensible, and I felt honored to serve as his High Captain on the Council.
“As well you know, the Middle Peace ended as Mikkik sowed corruption and betrayal to break apart alliances and dull the honor and hope of all good things. Echo Hold was no exception, though Oakenstone’s vigilance and swift justice secured our safety for a time. Mikkik threw armies at this place only to have them slaughtered by the thousands. Soon, he ignored us and sent his strength to drive the armies of men, dwarves, and elves to the west. We sallied forth from time to time, confident in our security, and harried the enemy, but we never wandered far from our gates.
“Messengers arrived from the dwarves that dwelt in the underground mountain halls not far from here. They brought word that they had called forward all that remained of their men and boys that could fight and equipped them with the best armor and weapons from their mighty forges. They proposed that we join with them, a force ten thousand strong, to fall upon Mikkik’s rear and turn the tide of the war. Oakenstone rejoiced at this opportunity and heartily agreed, as did the rest of the Knight Captains. I, of course, voiced the same publicly. But inwardly, a doubt grew, spreading its enervating vines in my heart.
“Was it cowardice? You would be right to ask. I think not. It is not my nature. I can only say that this place had grown upon me. My wife, young, inviting, and tender-eyed lived here, and whenever I rode back through these gates after a raid or a short march, my feet felt married to the ground beneath them and my heart a part of these stones. The thought of riding half a continent away inexplicably terrified me, not because I feared death or battle, but because anywhere but this place, I thought, could only be alien and forlorn.”
“But despite these misgivings, I still honored my duty and supported Oakenstone in his preparations. But doubts shoved aside and not confronted are but cracks into which evil can pour its poison and sicken us, and before we are aware, we are gripped in a feverish madness of emotion that overcomes all sense or pledged commitment. And when I was in this fever, a servant of Mikkik found me.
“Like a god he was, but without the brilliancy, and he made no pretense at presenting himself as holy or even as my friend. It was a Mikkik Dun, and after unhinging my joints with some spell, he forced into my head a vision of what the dark one planned and the doom that awaited the Knights of Echo Hold were we to leave the safety of our walls. Numberless columns of dark creatures streamed through the canyon below and overthrew all in their path. He offered a way to save myself and my men. I took it.
“And then he changed me by some power, and he gave me the means to kill Oakenstone without suspicion. To my eternal shame, I did it. To all appearances, Oakenstone had simply gone to bed and never awakened. You cannot imagine the sorrow, but the funeral and mourning provided a convenient excuse to delay our departure. I then cited the need to scout around the area to be sure that no ambush would befall us, and thus we waited more.
“The dwarves grew impatient and sent me missive after missive, begging that we make haste, to honor Oakenstone’s pledge, but still I delayed. At last, a ragged dwarven messenger, haunted and harrowed, arrived at our gates, claiming that some horror had flooded their halls and mines, killing his people in droves. He begged for our assistance, and I would not give it. And in that cowardice, the members of the Council overthrew and imprisoned me. Immediately they marched to their aid. They never returned. Not one. Only women and children remained here afterward, and of course, I remained in my cell. My wife abandoned me, ashamed, and I did not bother to explain my actions.
“But that is the tale of my sin and my guilt, and after you have eaten, you shall see my penance and witness to it. Perhaps, then, this prolonged existence can find its end. I have been cursed, and that curse will not allow me to die. I do not know if it can be undone, but I hope that by showing you my work of restitution, I might receive some reprieve and find peace again.”
“You are Sir Tornus, then,” Gen stated, “if I remember my history.”
“That is correct,” Tornus replied, eyes distant. “That name stood for honor and bravery once. Part of my penance is that you will teach my history so that I can no longer be held in such esteem. I am a murderer. I betrayed the dwarves. Following a certain line of reasoning, I betrayed the world. Ah, but here is dinner!”
Gen’s mind spun, but a meal delievered by the sulking Bibbs set his mouth to watering. A rich venison stew with spiced bread filled the famished corners of his belly. They ate until sated while Tornus, who didn’t bother with the feast, regarded them carefully.
Once it was clear that they had finished, he stood. “If you are satisfied, I ask you to come with me so I can show you what poor atonement I have attempted for my mistakes. Come.”
Tornus guided them through a side door and several dim passageways until they walked into a courtyard softly lit by the moons. As with other areas they had seen, bones clumped about in uneven heaps upon the paving stones. Outside the keep, the city of Echo Hold stretched before them along dark, abandoned streets. Sturdy, two level buildings of stone slid mournfully by as they followed Tornus through the maze of lonely avenues toward an unknown destination. At last they emerged into an open plain separated from the city by a waist-high wall.
“Beyond this,” Tornus explained, “is where all the agriculture needed to sustain Echo Hold in the event of a siege took place. The orchards have grown wild and the fields returned to weed, but here was the only place big enough to accomplish my task.”
He led the young men through a broken wooden gate and headed into the quiet field of dry, raspy grass. All about them sat stones placed at regular intervals, forming long rows to their left and right.
“These are grave markers,” Tornus announced. “I went into the dwarven halls and found all the dead and carried them here for burial, each warrior with his weapon and each mother with her children. A staggering task, to be sure, but a debt that I owed them for my part in their destruction. Did you know that their bones, like their weapons, do not age or rot? But no matter. What I want to show you awaits us ahead.”
Gen glanced back at his stunned companions. Staggering hardly sufficed to describe the enormity of the task. The rows of graves ran interminably in all directions, disappearing into the dark. As they proceeded, the burial sites were newer and less choked with grass and weed until soon fresh mounds of dirt indicated recent work. A polite cough from Tornus tore their attention away from the graves to an enormous pit dug into the earth.
“This,” he said, pointing into the abyss, “is what killed them. All of them. It destroyed the armies sent forth and then turned and slithered into their mines and caves and halls and poisoned the rest. After the Shattering, the host of them just stopped and lay where they were. They did not rot, and, while lifeless, they still feel warm to the touch. I gathered every one I could find and threw them here.”
Gen peered into the pit, trying to understand what it was he was seeing. It took several moments before he could discern that the moonlight softly glinted off the bodies of an uncountable number of black-scaled and unmoving snakes.
“If you are wondering,” Tornus said, “there are sixteen thousand, three hundred and thirty-three of them down there. I cannot be sure I discovered them
all. There are simply too many cracks and crannies in the dwarven halls.”
“I can’t tell what they are,” Volney said, nonplussed.
“They are snakes,” Gerand informed him. Volney edged away from the pit, blood retreating from his face just as quickly.
“Black-toothed vipers, to be exact,” Tornus corrected. “They are only as long as a man’s arm or leg, typically, but just imagine if thousands of them slithered into a column of soldiers marching through high grass. Their teeth can puncture boot leather, and the poison reduces muscle to barely coagulated slime in moments. While I rue my decision not to march with the dwarves, leaving them unprotected, I cannot fathom what we could have done had we been there. Only Mages would have had some recourse, but I doubt even they would have lasted for long.”
A voice intruded into Gen’s mind. “I await thy bidding, my master. I am Ghama Dhron, one of the four fell servants of Mikkik.”
The voice spoke in the ancient evil tongue, and Gen jumped back and drew his sword, only to find his companions and Tornus regarding him as if he had gone mad.
“What startled you, young master?” Tornus asked, face curious.
Gen’s mind raced. “I thought I saw something move,” he lied.
“Oh! You have good eyes in the dark. They have been a bit twitchy since the light of Trys rejoined the sky.”
“What?!” Gerand and Volney exclaimed.
“Do not fear, friends! They have done nothing, as yet, amounting to purposeful movement. One will twitch or spasm now and again. I suppose that if we waited until Trys bloomed full in the sky, we might have a problem, but I plan on burning the lot of them as soon as I can pile enough tinder and wood into the hole. Nevertheless, I can see you are uncomfortable, and it is most discourteous of me to have taken up so much of your evening in this fashion when clearly you need your rest. Come, let us retire to the keep.”
“Speak the word, master, and I will follow. I do the bidding of he who holds the power of my making.”
Gen shook his head to clear it, and while he could no longer hear the words, he sensed a presence in the back of his mind, full of hunger and malice, awaiting his call. The feeling remained strong even after they crossed into the safe confines of the keep.
Tornus wound his way back to the hall where they had taken dinner, all the plates and bones now cleared away.
“Stay and rest a moment by the fire,” Tornus encouraged them graciously. “I will go command Bibbs to prepare a room with three beds for you. When you are ready to rest, use the stairs by the main entrance. It will be the first door on your left. Now, I must bid you good evening.”
“Thank you for your hospitality, sir,” Gerand said in parting.
Tornus turned, expression strange. “There is no need for thanks. The company you provide is certainly worth more than anything you have received at my hand. Sleep well.”
Gen waited until the echoes of their host’s steps had long faded down the empty corridors before calling for Volney and Gerand to come close so they could talk quietly.
“I feel a great deal more than uneasy about this Tornus,” Gen began. “Something doesn’t seem right about him.”
“Doesn’t seem right?” Volney interjected. “He’s bloody mad! Imagine, stuck here for centuries with nothing but a Basher and wagonload of guilt to keep you company! For pity’s sake, he dragged every dwarf carcass in this mountain range and buried them here!”
“I do not think he is mad,” Gerand contradicted. “Loneliness and time have warped him, but he is willful and perfectly in control of himself.”
“His own narrative of events holds the key,” Gen added. “He said the Mikkik Dun changed him somehow to keep him alive for all these years and taught him some secret of murder. That is the most disturbing. He made a covenant with dark powers, though his forthright confession and heroic efforts at atonement certainly cast him in a more favorable light.”
“But what of those lamps?” Gerand asked. “Those Uyumaak he killed—and killed in an instant—had not one mark upon them! How was that done? Not to mention the piles of bones everywhere.”
“Perhaps the way he killed the Uyumaak is part of the secret he gleaned from the Mikkik Dun,” Gen speculated. “Remember how no one could tell that Oakenstone had been killed? We take watches tonight and leave early tomorrow even if a company or two of Uyumaak encamp at the gates.”
“Agreed,” Gerand and Volney said in unison.
Gen stretched and placed his hand on his sword hilt. “We now know the answers to some questions historians have asked since the Shattering. Hopefully we can live to share them.”
They left the hall, only the sounds of their own footsteps and the crackling and popping of the dying fire accompanying them. They found the stairs where they had first entered the keep, the door locked and barred. Bibbs had ensconced torches along the staircase and the hallway it intersected at the top. The door to their quarters stood open invitingly, a lamp inside casting a wan yellow glow that spilled into the hallway.
The room was spacious with a high ceiling and thin round columns decoratively placed down the middle. Two arched windows flanked the fireplace mantel, wood old and brittle. Gen speculated that the room had served as a meeting hall or an officer’s mess. A single fireplace stood in the center of the long room, the three beds clustered close to it, though nothing burned within.
“I suppose all the blankets and mattresses have gone to rot,” Volney observed dourly. “The mention of a bed had me hoping for a little more than a wooden plank a few inches off the floor.”
Gen closed the door and joined his companions, spreading their travel stained blankets on the ancient furniture. “I will take first watch. I will trim the lantern but leave it burning for as long as it has oil.”
“I’ll take second watch,” Gerand volunteered.
Despite the lack of comfort, Gen’s friends drifted off to sleep quickly, and Gen breathed out and tried to relax his mind and body. Since escaping Elde Luri Mora and regaining his health, he felt, as Sir Tornus did, that he had a restitution to make for his mistakes, mistakes with potentially disastrous consequences for the world. And perhaps, as their host also thought, nothing he could offer as expiation met the cost of the severity of the crime. While he could never pledge any allegiance to Chertanne, the enormity of his mistake in trying to kill the Ha’Ulrich weighed upon him.
Pride and madness, he thought.
But there was more. He had yet to admit to himself that he loved the Chalaine in a way that he should not, for he found nothing unwholesome in his feelings with which he could convict himself. If he wanted her unjustly or wantonly, surely the self-reproach would come more easily.
Only her pain and disappointment in his love stung him, and with whatever life he had allotted to him, he was determined to prove to her that to trust him had been no mistake, that his heart was true, and his motives pure. He would serve her without any hope of reciprocation or reward, though he recognized that his stupidity had rendered his ability to protect or aid her feeble, indeed.
The hours passed slowly. The sound of Bibbs shuffling down the hall and extinguishing the torches provided the only break in the uneasy monotony of the passing time. Gen threw open the shutters to get a better look at the sky to check how much time had passed, the weak light and view of the sky calming his nerves. A soft, cool wind helped alleviate the oppressive feeling he’d felt since entering the keep, and the uncomfortable bed now beckoned to him.
Only an hour more.
Chapter 55 - Ghama Dhron
Gen awoke Gerand for his watch in the dead of night. A chill had stolen over the room as the night deepened high in the mountains. After stretching and rewrapping his cloak about himself, Gerand slipped on his boots and went to the open window to refresh his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the opening, a slanted column of moonlight casting the shadow of Gen’s companion across the room.
Remembering their strange circumstances set Gen’s blood to churning
, grogginess fleeing as anxiety and a need to depart in haste took hold. Were it not for the scant illumination from the moons, the room would be lost in utter darkness. The ancient bed creaked wildly as Gen settled on it, and, despite the toils of the day, sleep would not come.
Time crawled by as he stared at the cracked ceiling, ears primed for any sound besides that of his companions’ breathing, every moment passing lending him hope that the night would pass uneventfully and the protecting sun rise to free him from the nagging fear that gripped him in the presence of their host.
So it was that when he first heard soft, steady footsteps in the hallway, he could not tell if it were real or a product of an imagination ripened by fear. The voice of experience and the nearing footfalls pulled him off his bed, Gerand casting a worried glance at him. A quick shake pulled Volney from his slumber. They struggled with their boots and strapped on their weapons. Anxiously and in silence they waited, hearing someone tread back and forth just outside the room like a sentry for nearly fifteen minutes. At length, the pacing stopped and the door swung inward. They drew their swords, staring at the vague shape outlined the door frame.
“Who goes there?” Gerand demanded.
“Forgive me, young master,” the voice of Sir Tornus spoke. “I had only come to check to make sure my guests slept well.” He entered and closed the door. “Bibbs can, from time to time, be mischievous. But I see that you are ready for a fight. A shame on my house that my guests cannot find rest after such a tiresome day.”
Gerand relaxed, noting that Tornus held a shuttered lamp at his side, but no weapon. An awkward pause kept nerves raw. Unexpectedly, Tornus’s voice, sad and agonized, broke the silence.
“How can I do this?” he moaned, face angled toward the ceiling. “I suppose I hoped too much that my penance would bring release. Too many crimes. Too much to forgive. There is no escape, and I am so hungry! The Uyumaak do not satisfy. What are three more among so many? I must feed this one last time and leave this place.” More sobs filled the room. “I am sorry, my young friends.”