by Aaron Dennis
“Yes, thank you, N’Giwah,” Poland said with a nod. “These are castle corridors. They will be dark and cramped. It will not do well to rush in especially if this man is as dangerous as any of the paladins I have heard of. It would be best to let Brandt take the lead. He can choose whomever he wishes to accompany him, but archers and other long ranged fighters should stay out here.”
Those with javelins and the archers glanced at each other. Though they whispered their grievances, they did not argue.
“Truth,” Scar said to Poland. “Besides, we should have the entrance guarded in the event that more opposition rears its head.”
“We never know when Khmerans or Kulshedrans will show,” N’Giwah agreed. “I will go with you for I know the way, and I must have Shamara and Hija with me. The rest will stay here.”
“Good,” Scar said. “I will bring the shieldmen and four swordsmen. Poland, Marlayne, Borta, you will remain where it is safe.”
Marlayne glared at him with her cold, blue eyes. Her chin trembled slightly.
“You are not leaving me behind,” she said with barely contained anger. Poland reached out to touch her hand, but she pulled it back before contact was made. “Damn you, old man, don’t even try to placate me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of arguing with a Fafnirian, my dear,” he apologized.
“I can’t guarantee your safety,” Scar warned with a furrowed brow.
“Safety be damned,” she spewed. “I have not spent my entire life and come this close to uncovering new meaning from Alduheim only to hide away like a frightened rabbit.”
Scar took a deep inhalation and looked to Borta, who was only smiling peacefully. “You will need me in there,” the Scultonian breathed.
Scar then turned to Poland, his arched brow implying an unasked question.
The old strategist smiled before saying, “Rest easy. My old bones would only slow you all down. I will gladly remain behind…so apart from Delton and Lortho, who is coming?”
All of the sword wielders hooped and hollered claiming they hadn’t seen action in a long time. Scar chuckled to himself; they were real warriors.
“Draw straws if you have to, but I’m only taking four,” he asserted. Again they bickered amongst one another. N’Giwah glanced at Scar with a tired wince indicating he needed to get a hold of his squabbling crew. “Fine,” the pale warrior barked. “Jayna, Ezlo, Bosen, and Pater. You will come.”
“Now, hey! Wait a dang blasted moment,” Rauls exclaimed.
“You are certainly not coming,” Scar laughed. “You never keep your mouth shut and will likely have us announcing our presence to the enemy by way of laughter.”
The rest laughed at his expense. Rauls sank back in his seat and pouted.
“Wh-wh-whooo’s laughing now?” Tarvin joked.
Once more they laughed and Rauls acquiesced begrudgingly with an exasperated, overly dramatic shrug.
“It is settled then,” N’Giwah said. “I will lead us there now. Grab what little you need. I do not think we will be gone long, but if we are not back by nightfall do not come looking for us. Gondala,”
“Sir?” a broad-shouldered Tiamatish man covered in green stripes asked.
“You will retreat to Ch’nako and send word to Jagongo in that event.”
“Understood.”
“Likewise,” Poland started. “We will make our way back to the outpost and send word to Gilgamesh should anything happen.”
Scar and N’Giwah nodded then rose from their log simultaneously. The explorers’ leader acquired an axe carved from the jaw of an animal from a scowling warrior. It was a toothy, flesh cutter with feathers and leather lacing. With no more hesitation, they started their march out of the camp beyond immense stones, and rounded the largest one yet a few hundred yards from the camp. At the base of the rear of the stone was an opening large enough for even the thickest shieldman to squirm through if he laid on his belly.
“This should be easy for you,” Delton said to Lortho. “You like writhing around on your belly anyway, don’t you?”
“No, I like being on top,” Delton corrected and waited for his turn to enter.
“I will go first,” N’Giwah said while Ezlo lit a torch and made to hand it to the Tiamatish leader. He waved it off replying, “I am a warrior of Tiamat. I can see in the dark.”
Ezlo crinkled his pointy nose.
“Well, we’re Kulshedrans, and we can’t,” Lortho argued.
By then N’Giwah was out of site, swallowed by the earth. Shamara, an ancient looking woman with gray braids down to her ankles, and a long stemmed pipe between her teeth, scrunched her faded, red dress about her knees before painstakingly making her way through the hole. Hija double checked the jawbone knives she laced to her skirt then dove in like a mole. The rest, Scar and his men, looked at each other for a moment.
“Today!” N’Giwah’s voice came echoing from the hole.
So the rest forced their way inside. Scar was first, followed by Ezlo then Lortho, Delton, Bosen, Jayna, Pater, and finally Marlayne and Borta. To their surprise, it was only the very entrance that was tiny. A dozen feet in, the cavern opened up with a steep descent into darkness. The blackness around them was quickly thwarted by Ezlo’s torch. The orange illumination revealed gray, craggy walls.
N’Giwah and his women were already two or three dozen paces in. They walked briskly, making little sound. The clunking, clanking, and clattering of Kulshedrans was deafening against those stone walls, but that was just the way it had to be, so Scar maneuvered Marlayne and Borta behind himself and in front of the shieldmen in an effort to protect the scholars’ rears. The sword fighters took the flanks as best as they could within the constricting walls, and all of Scar’s crew moved at his pace, which was as close to a crawl as a seven-foot giant can manage.
In the cavernous part of the journey, N’Giwah didn’t appear to be preoccupied by anything and maintained a rapid pace through the twisting subterranean passage. There were no real turns to make; it was a straight shot if a little winding. The air beneath the surface of Alduheim whirled about them intermittently, like some breathing beast was on its last legs. There was a slight putrid-sweet smell to it, something akin to mounds of moldy apples left out for cattle. During the few minutes in that cave, Scar’s crew let the Tiamatish wander ahead. After the slope came and went, N’Giwah came to a halt, said something to his women, and walked back towards Scar.
“This is the entrance to some kind of study,” the dark skinned warrior claimed in a whisper while hurrying the crew along. He rubbed his eyes and turned away from the torchlight before saying, “From what we have been able to surmise, it is a section spanning a few rooms devoted to a form of ancient magic.”
“I should like to see these rooms,” Scar whispered back. “There is writing about this magic?”
N’Giwah motioned with his head to follow, and slowly the Tiamatish went through a craggy opening the height and width of a normal man. Scar and the shieldmen had some trouble, but nothing so serious that some swears and grunts didn’t solve. Beyond the opening was a gray, stone hallway. The torchlight, though distorting the color, gave them the impression it may have once been white. The hallway connected some doorways in the vicinity before ending in blackness at both ends.
Scar followed N’Giwah into a room. They marched over a dry rotting door, which sat on the stone floor. The decorative pillars built on either side of the opening rose to about seven feet before supporting an arch carved to resemble vines. The ceiling was somewhere up there above them, but in the darkness and even with Ezlo’s torch, Scar’s group couldn’t see it.
The room N’Giwah had led them into had rows of dry rotted benches and small tables. At one end of the room was a squat podium and ruined, stone lectern. It was evident, to some at least, that it was a room for listening and taking notes. Whomever was teaching or preaching stood behind the lectern. Students sat in the pews to write. Scar liked that people of Alduheim wrote. The individuals of
the groups crossed each other’s paths a few times, running their hands on the furniture, walls, and ruined etchings in wood that either still clung crookedly to the walls, or sat in disregard on the ground.
“Where is the writing?” Scar asked.
Before an answer came, the sound of heavy dust or powdered stones leaving the ceiling and accumulating on the floor disrupted their attention and most everyone looked up. Ezlo raised his torch then stood on a stone pew and searched higher. Up in the arcades, small statuettes of soldiers in typical leather armors were sculpted into the beams, but there was no indication of what had caused the dust to fall.
“Some of the writing is in the next room,” N’Giwah finally replied.
Shuffling feet kicked up more grime. They paced from one side of the room, through a smaller, rectangular doorway, also with door heaved onto the floor, and into a connecting room with smashed shelves and bookcases. There was parchment and actual bound books torn, rotted, eaten, and scattered about. Rat droppings littered the ground.
“Careful, Ezlo,” Marlayne chastised.
The Kulshedran smiled meekly as he righted himself. Ezlo had bent over to look at a book with the picture of a Dragon on one cover, and the torchlight got a little close to parchment.
“You would have done well to bring gas lamps from the city,” Shamara whispered, her teeth still clenched around her pipe. “Since your eyes cannot find their way in the darkness.”
It was a true enough statement, but with no way to rectify the problem other than being extra careful not to light themselves on fire. Scar had a quick flashback of the Kulshedran battlement in blazes. He rubbed his butt once considering what another flash fire might do to the other cheek. As they continued to peruse, N’Giwah led Scar to a square, stone dais tilted at about twenty degrees and with a lip at the bottom. It held an open tome at an angle so that anyone in passing might read some passages.
“Can you read it?” N’Giwah asked with an expectant and hopeful stare.
Scar held his gaze for a moment. The torchlight glimmered in the Tiamatish’s eyes a strange blue and orange reminiscent of light on the eyes of a deer in a dark forest. Then Scar looked to the book, approached it, wiped the dust away, and to his own surprise, he read a few passages: Though the Dragon cults are prevailing, the key in their demise is the Dragon gems; odd jewels that glimmer with a faint light of their own. These gems are used to break the boundary between the realm of man and that of the beasts.
Scar’s eyes were wide and he could not pull them from the pages as he replied, “I can read…I can read it.”
“What does it say?” N’Giwah asked with great curiosity.
“That there were men who worshiped the Dragons. It would seem they communicated via some strange gems…have you heard of such a thing?”
They all remained quiet while the troops gathered around to discern the reason for pallid faces.
“No,” the Tiamatish man said after some thought. “I have never heard of this gem.”
“Marlayne? Borta?” Scar addressed them.
“A gem?” Borta asked.
“To commune with Dragons?” Scar clarified.
They were dumbstruck, so Scar continued reading. The passages described the gems as being the essence of the Dragon and that each Dragon had one, which he or she passed on to the leader of the cults. That leader would presumably spend time in meditation speaking to his or her Dragon Lord and defeating the cult leaders was as much part of the plan in saving men from enslavement as defeating the immortal beasts themselves.
Scar had to surmise that acquiring such a gem had been instrumental in winning whatever temporary peace was had. He started to turn pages and read more and more, but N’Giwah placed a hand on his wrist. With a point of his nose to the ceiling, he redirected Scar’s attention. More powder and loose rock fell from above.
“There are forces fighting above us,” Pater said.
The Kulshedran held fast to his helmet as he tilted his head to listen. Sounds of battle were erupting and bleeding through the stonework. Shamara closed the book and with both hands presented it to Scar, who took it, held it tightly then passed it off to Marlayne. She slid it into a travel pack.
“Let us move,” N’Giwah suggested. “This is all very important information to be sure, but will do us little good if destroyed in a fight. Besides, we have to face the paladin.”
Nods of ascent washed over the crowd, and they followed the dark skinned warrior out of that room, down the stone corridor—torchlight wavering over smashed statues—and to the end of the walkway where another hallway adjoined at the corner. Perhaps this is my home after all, Scar thought. I read the language…yet there is nothing in my memory of this place or of anyone teaching me to read and write.
His thoughts subsided as they continued in file passing more doorways, some of which still held their doors in place. N’Giwah eventually led them to a set of stairs at the end of the newly traversed passageway. The stairs diverged side-by-side; one set went up and the other further down. Keeping the lead, the Tiamatish man went down, the rest following in his footsteps. The sounds of battle had subsided, yet the occasional echo of body weight landing flatly on stone, or clashing steel rang, followed by cries of pain and victory.
“Our men are dying up there,” Jayna murmured.
“And so are as many of theirs,” Bosen answered. “Keep your wits about you. We’re not here to engage the Khmerans.”
Jayna spat at the ground, readjusted her plated armor, and kept pace. Beyond the stairs was a duplicate set of corridors. Marlayne hesitated when they were led into another room. There were bodies on the ground, and the ripe scent of death weighed heavily upon them. Ezlo shined his torch to the floor. There were a few dozen corpses; Kulshedrans, Khmerans, and two Tiamatish.
“This done by the Paladin of Mekosh?” Bosen asked.
Lortho kicked a Khmeran corpse, making his armor jingle loudly like a stack of silver dishes an angry servant dropped onto a table. That drew scowls and he shrugged indifferently.
“No,” Hija said. “This is the work of men warring for their kings, and some of us were just unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Her bitterness was lost on no one. In pressing on, it became obvious they were in some kind of storage chamber. There were ancient crates, barrels, and cases of unknown contents. They exited that room, made a left down a hall, and into another room with tools, farming implements, stones, steel, wood, and linens that had seen better days and fewer mites. Pater pushed aside a cobweb and prodded at a dry rotted set of bellows.
Leaving behind the aged remnants of a dead culture, the explorers veered through more corridors and to another set of stairs leading down. The stench of death was even heavier on the stale air.
“You don’t know ripe until you’ve come across death underground,” Delton joked.
No one laughed. It wasn’t very funny to those who were knee high in corpses and a hundred feet below fresh air. More bodies were revealed by Ezlo’s torch. They were over a dozen yards away, but the fire reflected off the steel studs of Kulshedran armor as well as Khmeran swords.
Scar stopped and rolled his shoulders before looking at the ground. It was bare earth and dusty. He toed at the footprints of previous tourists.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“The sewers,” Marlayne answered. “They are similar in design at Genova, the capital of Closicus.”
No one else spoke for a time. Walking between pylons as thick as a man for the better part of thirty minutes, they waded through stagnant puddles and a handful more corpses. Ezlo’s light didn’t reveal any walls, not even the stairs long behind them. The sounds of battle reemerged, this time, as a dull stampede overhead. N’Giwah motioned to them with his hand to move quickly. They jogged noisily for a minute then reached a wall of roughly hewn stone. It looked like one solid piece.
N’Giwah tensed with his right ear away from the group towards the far wall from whe
re they had entered. He sniffed a few times like a wild animal picking up the scent of prey.
“Khmerans,” he whispered.
“How do you know?” Jayna barked.
“They cover their skins with oils to mask their stench…unlike Kulshedrans,” the Tiamatish leader grinned.
“What?” Delton asked. “The Tiamatish smell like orange blossoms?”
“We do not keep old sweat in heavy clothing or armor,” N’Giwah reassured him.
Delton inconspicuously lifted his arm to sniff at his pit.
“Have the Khmerans entered Alduheim?” Scar asked.
“It appears so,” N’Giwah replied.
With that response, Hija took her bone knives from her skirt and stretched her legs and back.
“How did the Khmerans enter?” Bosen asked.
“From above us,” Shamara said. “There are many entrances throughout the old castle. We had hoped our new passage would keep us safe while we explored, but these bloodthirsty heathens would rather kill than learn, and so they have hacked their way inside.”
“Why not just seal it off,” Borta said more than asked. “You say your magic can mold stone. I have seen it twist the posts of Malababwen architecture.”
“And risk blocking our only escape route?” N’Giwah snarled. “What if the enemy enters from our own passage? We have to keep a point of exit, and besides, molding stone takes time.”
With that explanation now fully understood by everyone, they returned to silence. A moment passed then two, and the stampeding of angry feet grew louder and closer.
“They will see the torch,” Hija whispered forcefully.
“Not putting it out,” Ezlo fired back. “I want to see my enemy.”
“We can’t fight in the dark,” Delton added.
“They’ll have their own torches anyway, Hija,” Shamara sighed.
As the men drew steel and tensed or relaxed, depending on their proclivity, a glow appeared in the distance. The Khmerans did have their own torches, and as the light grew from the opening, two dozen Khmeran warriors in robes of green, blue, red, buff, and brown emerged. Most of them had a sword in each hand; long, thin, curved blades- poor for penetrating armored plates, but excellent for parting flesh from bone.