by Alexey Pehov
And then again, the servants of the Master could still be quite close, and running into them on a platform only four paces wide could be fatal. Lafresa, Balistan Pargaid, Paleface, and a dozen men into the bargain. I thought how delighted they would be to see me. But then, if I let them get away, lost sight of them in the maze of palaces and halls, I could forget all about the Key. And any chance of ever getting out of here and back up into the sunshine. No thinking was needed! I had to act! How did that verse riddle go on?
And then, carry on! The twin doors stand open
To the peace of the halls of the Slumbering Whisper.
Where the brains of man and elf and orc alike
Dissolve in unreason.… And so shall yours.
An encouraging prospect, especially bearing in mind that the Doors were anything but open, and to reach the Halls of the Slumbering Whisper I still had to travel for days across a thin thread of stone stretched between the darkness and the abyss.
I cast hesitation aside, lit one of my lights, stepped onto the bridge, and walked on.
Trying to walk along the center and not look down, I held the little magical lamp at arm’s length and hoped that the light in the darkness would not attract unwelcome attention from unfriendly individuals who might happen to inhabit this place.
The road was as straight as a bowstring and easy to walk along; I just had to forget about where I was and keep away from the edge.
Silence and darkness. Darkness and silence. How could you ever describe the Palaces of Bone, if the words “darkness” and “silence” and “half-light” were thrown out of the language?
You couldn’t. Because Hrad Spein is the darkness of subterranean catacombs, the silence of ancient tombs, and the half-light in the gloomy halls that are sometimes lit in mysterious ways.
My little light struggled to keep the gloom at bay, illuminating the bridge for seven paces ahead and seven paces behind. But there wasn’t enough light, and I felt like a little bug stuck in a demon’s pocket. The bridge had a very slight incline, and I gradually moved lower and lower.
Far, far ahead of me a series of dense white flashes flared up in rapid succession. From where I was they looked like the blinking of a white-hot grain of sand. But that was quite enough to make me stop and put both hands round the magical light to make quite sure that it wouldn’t be seen.
Another sequence of whitish sparks—they were more than a thousand yards away. I gazed into the gloom for three long, weary minutes, but no more flashes came. Whatever Lafresa had been up to over there (I was certain this was one of her tricks), it was all over now.
I sat down with my legs crossed and waited for another ten minutes just to be on the safe side. A perfectly reasonable precaution—I didn’t want the Master’s servants to suspect anything; let them think I was still stuck on the other side of the Doors.
After that I wasn’t at all afraid the men would see the light—the distance between me and Balistan Pargaid’s brigade was too great, and my little light and Lafresa’s magical flashes, were like a glowing ember and a forest fire.
After walking for about twenty minutes, I started hearing a low, regular drone. The kind of sound that alarmed bees make in their hive, or water makes when it falls from a great height. The straight bridge, which held up so mysteriously under the pressure of time, sloped down almost imperceptibly, so that now I was about three hundred yards lower than the Doors. And the longer I walked, the louder the obscure drone became.
The droning gradually became a rumble, the rumbling became a bellow, and the bellowing became a roar. The air was filled with a feeling of freshness and fine droplets of water that I could hardly see. Now I knew what was there up ahead.
A waterfall. Just then I didn’t have the time or the desire to figure out how it could have got there. It started getting noticeably brighter. Walls appeared out of the phantasmagorical darkness, glowing faintly with a dead, pale green light. They came together somewhere way up high where the uneven ceiling sparkled.
The roaring became indescribable and the walls moved in, until they were only forty yards away from the bridge. The moisture hanging in the air settled on my clothes like dew and chilled my skin. I thought the rumbling of the falling water would split my head in half. The bridge became wet, and the stone glittered in the light of my little magical lamp. Thank Sagot it wasn’t slippery, or I would have gone tumbling into the abyss at the first careless step.
Another two hundred yards, and there they were—a waterfall on the right and a waterfall on the left. Huge heads, thirty yards high, appeared on the walls. They were grotesque, half bird and half bear, their beak-mouths were wide open, and the torrents of water were roaring out of them. The black water, barely visible in the pale green light of the cave, roared and raged and it went hurtling downward.
Sagot! As I walked past the waterfalls roaring like a hundred thousand demons of the abyss, I was afraid I would go deaf forever (I forgot all about the earplugs I’d brought along) or that the torrent of water would sweep me away. I felt as if I could reach out my hand and touch one of them. And those familiar half bird, half bear heads looked as if they could strike a stranger down, or at least give him such a scare that he wet his pants. But my pants were already wet anyway, like all the rest of my clothes.
The waterfalls of the underground river were behind me now, their roar was fading away. The walls parted again and their pale green light died, inviting the gloom back in.
Darkness take me, but I was monstrously tired, and I settled down right there on the bridge for a bite to eat. I had to take my soaking clothes off and wring them out, too—I was shivering and shuddering after my involuntary bath in the spray of the waterfalls. After I’d got my outfit into more or less decent condition, I turned to the needs of my stomach and took out a soaking biscuit. My light blinked one last time and went out. I swore and lit up a new one. How long had I been staggering across this bridge? By my calculations, almost three days had passed since I first entered Hrad Spein, and I was still only somewhere between the second and third levels.
After a short rest I had to start moving again. By this stage the bridge was no longer straight; it had twisted into a spiral, increasing the speed of my descent. After what seemed like an eternity the walls moved in again, the bridge took a final turn, and there before me was the way out, or rather, the way in to the third level.
* * *
A hall.
I can’t even find the words to describe what the light showed me. I only had to give the right command, and the circle of light expanded to forty paces (then I could see everything really well, but the life of the magical lantern was shortened by several hours). Nothing I’d seen in Hrad Spein so far could compare with the first hall of the third level.
I was entering the level of the elves and the orcs, which had been created without any involvement by men. Cracked stones, basalt and granite, all the crude statues and coffins of roughly dressed stone had been left behind above me, and here … Here the scene before me was one of absolutely astounding, incomparable beauty.
The color scheme of the hall was black and bright scarlet. A very beautiful combination if you looked closely. Black walls with red veins and flecks, elegant black semi-arches with red ornamentation that looked like orcic letters, a ceiling where the red lines and strokes merged to form the image of a huge cobweb. A floor laid with matte black slabs, with the same red veins as on the ceiling, with a fine seam of red between each slab. The light of my little lamp set the hall sparkling and gave the place a truly magical, fairy-tale appearance.
Now I really was in the Palaces—once they were famous throughout all Siala, and even gnomes and dwarves came to Hrad Spein to gaze at the beauty of the burial halls. But those times are long gone now, together with the Age of Achievements.
Hrad Spein became unsafe, the road to it was abandoned, and those who decided to come here were few and far between. But elves and orcs, dwarves and gnomes, men and goblins—they all remember w
hat lies hidden beneath the green crowns of the Forests of Zagraba, they all tell their grandsons legends, fables, and myths about the former magnificence of the underground palaces. After the evil of the bones of the ogres and others unknown awoke on the lower levels, the place was left deserted and dead.
For some reason the third level was pitch dark. There was none of the magic of glowing walls that I’d become used to, and if not for my lights I would have had to grope my way along. My steps could hardly be heard, but I made myself walk carefully and reduced the power of the light to its normal level. No point in shining like the sun—Balistan Pargaid’s lads could be somewhere nearby.
The black-and-red hall was followed by another just like it, from which three openings led into another three exactly like the first. And from each of those there were openings to another three. And so on to infinity. The maze was as complex as anything on the upper levels. In every space one or another small part of this frozen black-and-scarlet beauty was picked out by the light of my little lamp and then disappeared again, shrouding itself in the night. A frozen column here, an elegant arch there.
How many halls had I seen in all these hours? If I hadn’t had the papers from the abandoned Tower of the Order, I would have lost my way long ago in the cunningly contorted labyrinths. Probably that was what had happened to the servants of the Master, who were now an hour and a half ahead of me. If not for Lafresa, I would have written all the lads off as candidates for the darkness. But the blue-eyed woman had some kind of inner instinct, and even without a map she was able to find the right way through the labyrinth of the Palaces of Bone.
Every hall on the third level was an immense tomb. The latest burial sites of the elves and the orcs were on this level. Tombs first appeared here in the final years of the Dead Truce, which both races had observed for many thousands of years—but everything comes to an end. Blood was spilled, and the truce collapsed. The elves erected the Doors, shutting the orcs (and themselves) out from the easy route to the graves of their ancestors.
Unlike men, the older races didn’t put up memorial gravestones, they simply built the dead (or their ashes) into the walls, and the structures of the graves were not visible, so anyone who didn’t know would never have guessed that the bones of orcs and elves who had died hundreds or even thousands of years ago lay behind a skillful piece of molding or a picture or a column.
* * *
The third level, and then the fourth.
And all of this in absolute pitch blackness. I had been in Hrad Spein for six days. I ate, slept, and went on my way. Walking through halls, corridors, and galleries. Ever onward and downward, deeper and deeper.… Not a single sign of the presence of man or any other creature.
But on the fourth level I came across something different from everything I had seen for the last two days. The undisturbed peace was missing here; this place had a distinct smell of death. The walls of the hall were covered with a material like the bark of oak trees, the ceiling was a tangle of stone branches, and the floor was grass frozen in marble. A freakish combination of smells—roses, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, dog-roses, and decomposition.
The dead.
Many of them, more than thirty. Skeletons covered with yellow parchment skin, wearing steel armor shimmering with the blue of the heavens and with crooked swords—s’kashes.
Elves. The bodies were especially numerous in the center of the hall. My little light picked out a coffin of black Zagraban oak with its bottom turned toward me.
I walked closer, trying not to disturb the bones of the dead elves. Probably, when the elves were attacked and taken by surprise, the ones carrying the coffin had dropped it and when it hit the floor it split open.
The elves had fought to defend their dead, but lost their own lives. Most men would say that dying for someone who is dead already is stupid, but Egrassa’s relatives took a very different view. The word “house” and the word “kin” meant more than their own lives to these creatures with fangs.
The lid of the coffin had been thrown a yard away, and the dead elf had tumbled halfway out of his final refuge. I wondered if his spirit had seen how the elves who brought him here died?
The elf in the coffin was wearing a crown. A circle of platinum with black diamonds, alternating with expertly crafted roses of tarnished silver. I was looking at the ruler of one of the dark elfin houses.
Sagot only knows what came over me, but I did something that was very stupid (even by my standards). I went over to the king’s remains, put them back in the coffin, and with a great strain turned the surprisingly heavy box back upright.
During these maneuvers the crown that had stayed on the dead king’s head for more than forty years fell off and hit the floor with a repulsive clang. I picked it up and in the light of my magical lamp the black diamonds suddenly came to life, sparkling more brightly than ever.
I couldn’t help exclaiming out loud in delight and admiration. Sagot! That subtle, shimmering play of light was so beautiful. I imagined what would happen if the stones were shown to the sunlight. The crown on the second level that had been melted by the pink ray from the ceiling simply couldn’t compare with the crown of the head of the House of the Black Rose. Well, how could horse dung possibly compare with the nectar of the gods?
I froze for a few seconds, struggling with myself. A part of me wanted to take this priceless thing; after all, the dead elf had no more use for it, and it would bring me an immense fortune. But another part of me appealed shrilly to my wisdom and prudence, pointing out that no one had ever managed to rob an elf from a ruling house, regardless of whether he was alive or dead.
This time the greed heaved a sigh of disappointment and gave way. Darkness take the diamonds, in the name of Sagot! Elves are vengeful even after they’re dead. Without the slightest regret, I cautiously set the black crown back on the dead elf’s head. Rest in peace, king, and forget that I unintentionally disturbed you.
My glance fell on a s’kash with a jade handle that was lying at my feet. I bent down and picked up the weapon, and the rippled pattern of the metal glowed dully in the light of my magical lamp. A blade worthy of the ruler of a house. As I laid the curved sword on the elf’s chest, my nose caught a faint scent of dog-roses. I folded the bony hands over the hilt.
First the left hand, then the right. The dead king’s right wrist suddenly flexed, setting his hand on top of mine, and I felt a sudden chilly sensation on my skin. The elf’s hand fell back onto the sword before I even thought of pulling my hand away.
Frightened, I held the hand against myself, unable to believe that I’d got away so lightly. The dead elf had only held me for a fraction of a second, but I could still feel that sudden searing chill on my palm. I staggered fearfully back from the coffin, realizing in some corner of my mind that I had instinctively closed my hand into a fist because the elf had somehow managed to put something in it. I opened my fingers fearfully, as if there was a vicious scorpion with a fiery sting hiding in them.
The fleeting flash of a falling star.
I just had time to see that it was black. The star fell to the floor with a faint tinkling sound. I bent down and picked up the beautiful thing—it was warm now, not cold. I couldn’t stop myself exclaiming out loud again.
Lying there on my palm was a ring every bit as beautiful as the crown of the lord of the House of the Black Rose. The body of the ring was made of interwoven threads of black silver and platinum, and its heart was a black diamond. It wouldn’t be surprising if the ring had magical properties, too—by the light of my lamp its facets shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow. Of course, the ring wasn’t as valuable as the crown, but even this black diamond was enough for eight years of the good life in my own little palace.
I walked up to the coffin and looked hard at the dead elf. The play of light and shade made his face look almost alive, almost animated, but very old. A faint odor of roses tickled my nostrils. With a final glance at the king, I walked away, clutching the ri
ng tightly in my fist, realizing that it was a gift. An unexpected gesture from the race of elves, but it was true. I took the glove off my right hand, put the ring on my finger, and gazed at the facets of the stone.
A gold spark was suddenly born in the depths of the diamond. It flared up and went out, and then flared up again. Flash. Darkness. Flash. The spark pulsed slowly, languidly, regularly, as if there was a real heart hidden inside the diamond.
Enlightenment always comes unexpectedly. My heart was beating with exactly the same rhythm as the stone. Or rather, the stone was glimmering in time to the beating of my heart. I didn’t know what kind of ring I had on my hand and what the consequences of wearing it would be, but I did understand, or rather, I felt, that I was bound to it in exactly the same way as I had been bound to the Key. I could feel myself in the stone and the stone in me.
It was a kind of tickling sensation that only lasted for about three seconds, then the glimmering of the stone faded and it became an ordinary diamond again. I put my glove back on, concealing the precious thing, cast a final glance round the tree hall, pulled the hood of my black jacket up over my head, and went on my way, leaving the elf still unburied in the dense gloom.
* * *
Dead silence, broken only by the sound of my steps. I don’t have the words to describe all the beauty of the underground Palaces. Black and red, orange and gold, blue and aquamarine, intense purple and dull ochre, the cold of blue marble and the heat of fiery granite.
Walls sparkled with mica and magnificent columns of pure amber, reaching up to immense heights. Entrancingly beautiful statues of orcs and elves, pools with their bottoms covered in fanciful patterns of turquoise and flowing water. Ethereal stairways with slim banisters that seemed to have been carved by some master craftsman out of a single block of green mountain crystal, and balconies woven out of fine threads of some unfamiliar metal, running round the upper stories of the halls.