Old path to the Center.
Berie came behind Slats.
Although Slats did not know what it was, Berie read it aloud.
"'Old path to the Center'. The Center is the palace. There is dwarvish here also because there were times the dwarves would come by way of tunnels to this place, and it was a marker that they had found the correct path."
"Could you not make simply one path?" Slats asked.
"We didn't make them," she replied. "It was a dwarven siege tunnel system, used to try to destroy the city. Many of the tunnels collapsed, and not even the elven people knew where all of them were. These pillars were set up underground to guide the dwarves safely during times of peace."
"And in times of war?"
"I do not know. My father would never tell me when he would talk of the city."
"Vines," Arsus said. "Living, tangling, vines. At least, at the dwarven place that was the case."
"Elven traps in a dwarvish place," Euso said. "Let us hope we have not dwarvish traps here! I have sprung one before in my travels through ruins. They can be quite nasty."
Berie looked past the torch. "This way," she said to them.
She began walking and heard the hum of the song that her mother used to sing, which made her smile.
Faint light from the torch lit the pathway from behind them and, though still dark, a torch ahead gave light to their path ahead. They passed three more torches and came to a large door, sealed shut with no obvious opening.
Berie placed her hand on the door, and it cracked open.
"Only an elf may open this doorway unaided. It assured we were the only ones that could control the door under the palace," she said.
The doors opened fully, and there was a great flight of stairs numbering around fifty. They began their trek up.
A light suddenly shined out, like a flame roaring to life, and there came a rumbling. The four fell to the ground, hugging the stairwells as the shaking broke pieces of rocks from above. Slats looked up, spotted a hole above, and through the dust a glow began to appear.
"Roll to the right! Everyone now!"
The four rolled as best as they could as a liquid fire poured from above them, splashing the steps just a few paces from where Arsus had been.
"Is this ground defended? An oil trap?" he shouted.
The Legatus began looking above for whoever could have poured it.
"Defended, yes, but that is no simple oil trap!" Slats said. "Euso, you had spoken of dwarvish traps! We must run! There will be more!"
As the rumbling began again, the four struggled on hands and knees to scale the remaining steps. The dwarves had worked their defenses into Narisond, as did the elves at Harrodarr.
More rubble dropped, and then fountains of fire fell from the ceiling. The sizzle of the molten rock caused a rush of heat that sapped the air from their noses as they made it to the top of the stairs. But that was not the last of the traps.
Berie was the first to discern the false platform. Her eyes spotted the difference, its surface above the rest of the floor. However, she was not quick enough to stop Euso from staggering over the last step and tripping it.
As his foot pressed it, a trigger pin let loose and a large stone pillar began to fall. Berie pulled Arsus by his arm up and out of the way, as Slats ran past Euso and grabbed him, hearing the sound above as the stone fell.
The pillar struck the stairwell and sealed it, the trap once again just missing Arsus.
"This place seeks my death!" he yelled, shaking his head. He took a deep breath.
"Do not take it to heart!" Slats told him. "It’s not like it’s only men and elves that these traps affected!"
"Where are we at?" Euso asked.
"The lower hall," Berie replied, "but I do not know where it is we should go. The elvish items from this room are gone. At one time, this place was a room where we kept some of our most precious cultural treasures. It seems they were moved somewhere in the last days.”
A light appeared in the room: a hovering orb, not much larger than the elf's hand.
At first, there was a scramble for weapons and firm footing. Slats and Euso both stared at the orb, although Slats already knew this was nothing of dwarvish design. As they began to calm, Arsus peered at the sight, unsure of what to do.
“Another trap?” he asked.
The orb began to float toward a distant stairwell. Berie followed, and a calmness came over her.
"What if this is another trap?!?" Arsus shouted again.
He began looking around and above them.
"Then it is not of dwarf or elf design," Slats said. "Let us follow her."
The three followed Berie as she ascended several hundred steps, raising higher up into the second level, which Berie called the Upper Hall. They paused for a moment and looked out from this level, even as Berie continued up another stairwell to the left of them.
A large ramp led down to a lower level, and a distant door that was the front of the palace. From here they could see across the entire city, looking over the walls of the lower area well to where they had left the horses and beyond. The moonlight above outlined the skeletal trees that bordered the city and showed in further detail the razing done to the home of the elves, for not a single structure stood out from the field of rubble.
They looked to one another, and then looked up the next stairwell, following Berie. After they traveled up many steps, they found Berie standing in a short hallway. Books lined the way on either side, and they saw another sight, a female figure.
She had long hair, much like Berie, but her raiment flowed, and though she was already only as solid as a soft fog, a silver sheen adorned her hair. The figure smiled and then dissipated.
Berie did not move. The others came to her side and noticed she had a small smile.
"My mother has helped us," she said. "I longed to see her again after I departed this place. At last I have."
The others looked back to where the figure had been and saw a large domed room ahead.
"In here," she told them.
As they entered the room, the travelers noticed a large table set under a skylight. In spite of the dreariness of the city, the stars still shined down above them. Berie walked around the table. It was bare except for a glassy stone slab placed in its center.
"My father used to read here late at night."
A small ledge was above with a pole, with a covered object atop it. A stairwell led to the ledge and as the others watched, Berie went to the ledge and uncovered the pole. The pole began to glow blue, catching light from the revealed starlight. The pole changed to a shaft of crystal, and a beam shot toward the table.
The slab burst into green flames and then went out. Glowing red runes, invisible before, appeared before them. Though seen clearly by all, they could not be understood by any save Berie. She went down to the table and began to read.
"Let the runes shine only for one wise enough to journey to this place and remember the secrets of our people. Our last descendants shall read and know: Magic has been taken from the west and sealed. Truesong has come to this place with Etha also. Most of the Dwarven Hammersong are gone, but those remaining are strong, though we bleed with failing resolve. A great force seeks to stop us, and with them come the wretched Itsu.
We fade in this darkened hour upon our dying land. Those that went to Elinathrond may well be lost. News of their attack in Taria has brought much suffering upon our hearts.
We do not know of what their fate has been. However, if you are reading this, someone lived and was the one to continue our race.
We leave this place under dwarven devices, for the natural ones have failed to the curse upon our lifeblood of nature. Perhaps our traps in Harrodarr can protect the place of the dwarves.
For now, we etch this final message. Be it with our death we will seal the east to prevent the Dark Gods’ rule. This is the last stand of the Dwarves of Harrodarr and the Elves of Narisond. May Etha be with us in the forever realm
s, for we depart now to bleed upon hallowed ground."
There was a pause, and both Slats and Berie stared at one another.
"Do we know where this hallowed ground is, Berie?" Euso asked.
"It speaks of the Field of Etha, a great plain where both dwarf and elf bled fighting one another in times well before even the rise of The Order. It is hallowed to both. We built a shrine there to Etha, I remember. It was not too old when I was last here."
Arsus laughed and said, “Excuse me, elf, but that is quite relative, considering you remember times well before my father was born."
She gave a slight smile and said, "Indeed to that."
"Then it is there," Slats began, "that both the Dwarven Hand and the way to renew magic to the land will be found. Let us finish this task."
He gave a firm nod and then headed out, followed by Euso and Arsus.
Berie waited, looking up to the place she had seen her mother appear. She heard the song once more, and then it faded and no further whisper of her past was to come to her again. She ran to catch up with the others.
Taking the path from the upper hall down to the main doors, she slowed as the others waited on her touch to open the gates.
Berie looked down the halls, and to the palace of her people left untouched. She wondered how many had perished in the place they were headed now.
Berie went toward the door and opened it. They made their way with haste through the desolation of Narisond. Coming again to where they left the horses, Berie took to her mount and turned her horse toward the west.
The others mounted and joined her.
"It is not far," she said.
She kicked her horse, and they sped down the road, passing the ruined gateway. She proceeded a few more gallops and then made a sharp turn up a stone roadway overgrown in weeds and partially buried. None had seen it before, but it was clear the elf remembered it, as a cloud of debris rose from her horse as she pushed it faster.
They came up the hill and went through the dead woods, the black skeletons of trees passing by at their sides as they wove in and out of the trunks and scraggily limbs. The forest path turned to that of red dust and rocky terrain. Berie stirred a murder of crows from the branches at the end of the woods. This region was not at all as Berie had remembered. They ascended another hill, and she turned their path further west and into bare foothills.
In her days these were green fields and dense woods, and a river flowed through the edge of a grove. That river was now no more than a red sand gully, scattered by the horse as she leaned back, the horse jumping it at full gallop.
The path climbed up and over layered flat boulders that grew in steepness as they traversed further up. They came to a place where the horses could go no further and dismounted. Arsus took hold of his spear from his horse and laid it against his shoulder.
"Never is it ill to plan ahead," he told Slats, who nodded in liking of his weapon.
They continued on foot, passing over a stone bridge where a shallow stream flowed from a high, unseen spring down south to where the land returned back green. They stopped, at last coming to a series of monolithic stones that lined a stairwell of eight steps toward a wall of sheer rock.
"This was the altar stone, the first place you would stop before proceeding to the shrine on the other side," Berie said.
She remembered the greenness of this place before. The great trees and pools that she sat by, staring into the starlight many nights of her childhood. However, no green remained now.
As they passed the altar stone, Berie gasped as the ground fell away in a crater that sunk the entire grounds. At what was a further horror to both elf and dwarf, it seemed a large assembly of statues stood all over the crater that were not crafted by any dwarf or elf smith.
At the very center of this strange crater was a large domed stone structure. An archway of stone was in front of it, intermingled with the barren trunk of a large tree. A stone wall ran around the base, but most of it was broken and crumbling.
From her childhood, Berie remembered the roots of the tree forming an even taller wall. There was a single opening in those times: a silver gate and a stone stairway leading under arched branches that provided a roof to the archway.
But the tree was dead, leaving just the stone foundations, and it was clear even more statues were on the shrine.
"This is not as I knew it, but the arches mark the shrine. In my time this place was atop a hill, the highest in the region."
They proceeded toward the stone shrine. Slats stared at the statues. There were many that had been broken, their faces smashed, arms missing, and some were no more than just piles of rubble with markings simply like their brother's and sister's that were with them. This was the fate of the dwarves and elves.
Drawing closer to the shrine, skeletons lay all around. Their armor, rusted and broken, remained these many years later, regardless of the simplicity of design. Arsus knelt down at one of them.
"Legionnaires, but of long ago. Perhaps before they held that name. I did not think The Order was so heavy handed in battle then."
"Perhaps not," Berie said, "but the bodies of the ethereal armies of the gods could've very well become as flame or water upon death. That we do not know. But I am sure it was everything within the grasp of The Order, once they learned the purpose of the seals. These may have been the only humans who fought, but perhaps it better they died in battle and returned to their natural form. I fear a sudden horrid death fell upon the defenders of the shrine, for these statues were not chiseled from stone."
As they came to the steps, there were large piles of bones strewn higher than Slats’s head. A silver gate still stood sealed and unbroken. They had halted the enemy at this point. Two statues sitting atop either edge of the stairwell at the shrine’s base were no larger than Slats himself.
Coming to the gate, Berie placed her hand over a series of symbols and the silver gate unsealed without a sound.
As they went up the steps, they could see the statues clearer. The one on the left held a hammer and a large ax. The blade of the ax was on the ground, buried into the neck of a skeleton that had somehow made it up onto the same level as him. His hammer remained high in the air, its swing stopped before it could pound the already dying victim.
The one on the right had also been killing many. In his left hand, the broken head of his ax was firm in his stone grip. In his other hand, he held what remained of a neck and spine; the rest of the body was now a pile of bones beneath him.
But there was something else of this dwarf, Slats saw. While his partner to the left had his back turned, this one gazed out over the battle, not even looking at his cornered enemy. His expression, caught in stone, was of surprise, eyes widened and mouth open.
Slats looked at this one in particular, turning and looking in the distance toward the outer edge of the crater.
"This one saw his forsaken end coming," he told Berie. "Whatever it was that was the final moment for our kin, this dwarf here saw it. The writings in Harrodarr did not lie of stone brothers."
Slats looked him up and down, and then looked over the ground and found a helmet of the finest metals. The statue above had indeed dropped his helmet in battle, and in all the years since, dwarven refinement had stood up to time. The helmet was etched with a curved ax pattern as well as an effigy of the stairs to Harrodarr. Slats knew these engravings.
"These two here were Hammersong!” Slats cried. “Although their fate was ill, it is well they went down as this, a pile of bodies beneath their feet!"
"May we be so blessed," Arsus said. "I am sorry, as my kin were a part of this. I am new to thinking of dwarves and elves in a different respect, but I can say that my ancestors were wrong."
"Let us right things in time," Berie said. "The shrine is here, and we must find the Dwarven Hand."
Chapter 16 The Cliffs of Tuonia
Garoa followed Asnea and the strange man as they entered a narrow alcove built into the trunk of a tree. The tre
e was unlike any he himself had seen. To another layer of steps and further up they went. Passing a large storage area, Garoa spotted boxes and sacks full of every type of grain and vegetable he could imagine.
A line of spears, new swords, and a plethora of arrows stacked in bunches sat next to them. He continued on, following them to a sitting area that hung over the trees. He looked to the levels below and saw other Leechers sitting in the trees on wooden platforms they themselves had built as watch posts.
Above them, in a stone room at the top of the tree, sparks and flashes flew out. Garoa looked on and saw a blacksmith smash the anvil and form the blade of a new sword, but no sound came.
"How does he strike an anvil without even a clinging?"
"It is dwarven, and in such it was made to let them continue to form weapons even though they were hiding from others in such a place as this."
"I expect the forge, but hiding?"
"Near the end of their time, they became much like the elves in some ways. Stories are told of elves living here, too, but of that we have not found proof."
"Where is Master Naskin?" Asnea asked.
"There were legionnaires along the southern mountain road. A strange happening for such a broken up group to be as such. He left with others to eliminate them."
"We are searching for a friend of this man. And for a proper introduction, Garoa, meet caretaker of the hold, Imia. He is one of the truest archers of the Leechers."
"Truest is a bit much, but I can out shoot Asnea, here!" Imia laughed. "It is well to meet you, Garoa; however, my first thought was that our mutual friend here had brought you as a recruit. I hope we can help you with your search. How is it you have found Asnea here?"
"She is my daughter," Garoa told them.
Imia looked to Asnea with a confused look.
"My mother spoke of him, and he knows much of her," she explained. "My mother described him well. It seems he has changed little in twenty years."
"Again," Imia said, "not my first thought of you, but Asnea has kept the cover as a brothel girl for a while, sneaking out when she could. It is only because we are not welcome in Taria."
Saints of Wura: Winemaker of the North, Arcane Awakening, Reckoning in the Void (Saints of Wura Books 1-3 with bonus content) Page 46