by A. Giannetti
With this threat hanging over his head, Ascilius quieted down somewhat, and they resumed their journey in silence and at a better pace than before. Eventually, whether by some plan of Ascilius’s or by accident, they entered a much larger tunnel, which brought them to a great, circular chamber at least sixty feet across at the juncture of four large passageways. In the center of the chamber was a fountain carved out of stone in the shape of a young Dwarf girl with a water jug in her round arms. Clear, cold water flowed from the mouth of the tilted jug and splashed into a large stone bowl at her feet. From there the water drained away through some hidden recess.
The air was fresher here, and Elerian felt more at ease in this wide space. After he and Ascilius washed their hands and faces in the fountain and drank their fill of the cold water, they sat with their backs against the side of the bowl to have a bite to eat.
“We are nearing the half way mark of our journey under Albior,” said Ascilius as he chewed on a strip of dried meat he had taken from his pack. “By design, the mine shafts do not run near the walls of the mountain, but many years ago, when I was still living in Calenus, I advised the elders of the city to put a hidden door through the outer wall of the mountain, high on the eastern face. A tunnel runs down to the mines from that door. If we can reach that passageway, we can escape from the city through the secret door.”
“We must reach it first,” said Elerian gloomily. “Is there anything down here to be wary of other than getting lost? It seems to me that several times as we have sat here, I have heard distant voices.”
“Some parts of the mines are still being used by the Goblins, but we should be safe enough where we are,” said Ascilius reassuringly. “These tunnels were falling into disuse even before the city was taken by the Goblins. Look at how thick the dust is on the floor. We are the first to have walked through here in many years.”
Despite Ascilius’s reassuring words, the feeling that they were in danger remained at the back of Elerian’s mind. When they packed up their things and left the chamber with the fountain, he cast many uneasy glances over his shoulder as he followed Ascilius down one of the large passageways that opened onto the hall they had just exited. After traveling less than of a quarter mile, they came to another open space so vast that Ascilius’s small light illuminated neither the walls nor the ceiling far overhead. The air was filled with a muted, throbbing roar.
“What is that noise I hear?” Elerian asked Ascilius.
“You will see in a moment,” said the Dwarf.
Ascilius had barely ceased speaking before they came to the edge of a gulf over one hundred feet wide that fell away to unknown depths. The subdued roar that filled the cavern had its source in those depths. From the cool, moist air that fanned his face, Elerian guessed that, far beneath their feet, an underground river flowed through the chasm.
Directly in front of them, a stone bridge crossed the abyss in a single, graceful arc. Like the tunnel that had led them to this cavern, it was wide enough for two wagons to travel abreast. Along both sides of the bridge was a stone curb about two feet in height. Elerian could not understand what kept the bridge from collapsing of its own weight in the middle, for there were no supports of any sort beneath the arch.
“It is held up by magic,” said Ascilius, seeing Elerian’s puzzled look. “Do you see any joints in the stone of which it is constructed?”
Elerian looked closely. The surface of the bridge and the walls that formed the curbs had a smooth, glassy appearance, and try as he might, he could see no cracks or seams of any sort in the surface of the bridge or curbs. It appeared to be all of one piece like the walls of the old Elf home that he had discovered in the Abercius as a youth.
“Some kind of joining spell was used here,” said Elerian. He was familiar with such spells, but not on the scale he saw before him now.
“Exactly right,” replied Ascilius. “The stones used in the construction of the bridge were melded together and then hardened with the same spell that I used to strengthen the tankards you made for us. You could strike them with the heaviest hammer you could lift without doing the slightest damage to them. No, I cannot reveal the spells that were used,” said Ascilius when he saw Elerian’s gray eyes light up at the possibility of gaining new magical knowledge.
“Yes, I know,” said Elerian in a resigned voice. “They are secret spells that cannot be revealed to outsiders.”
“Actually,” said Ascilius as they began walking side by side along the right hand curb of the bridge, “I could reveal them to you once you become my apprentice. You would no longer be an outsider then.”
Craftily, Ascilius watched Elerian out of the corner of his eyes. When he saw Elerian’s face light up with anticipation, he said blandly, “Of course, I still have not made any firm decision about becoming your master. In fact, your recent lack of appreciation for my interesting observations on underground lore leads me to doubt that you have the patience or interests to be a proper apprentice,” he said in a judicial tone.
Ascilius’s eyes gleamed with pleasure as it dawned on Elerian that he had fallen into a clever ambush laid by his crafty companion.
“Laugh now,” said Elerian in mock anger. “I will have my revenge on you at the first opportunity. I shall drink a cask of ale in front of you and never give you so much as a drop.”
They had almost reached the center of the bridge by now. Ascilius’s tart rejoinder to this dire threat died on his lips, for out in the darkness on the far side of the bridge, beyond the reach of his mage light, he heard a tearing sound, followed by soft snorts and crunching, chewing noises, as if some great beast lay hidden in the darkness, noisily consuming it prey.
THE BRIDGE
Elerian and Ascilius both froze in their tracks, listening apprehensively to the grisly sounds coming out of the inky blackness in front of them. Opening his third eye, Elerian saw a large scarlet shade crouched over something lying on the ground well beyond the far side of the bridge. The outlines of the shade were indistinct, shifting and flickering as the creature tore at its meal.
Elerian’s first instinct was to quietly retreat, hoping that at some point the monster on the other side of the bridge would leave after it finished its meal. He was reaching out his left hand to touch Ascilius’s right shoulder to signal that they should go back when a sudden, bright light blinded his magical eye. Hastily, Elerian closed it, resuming his normal vision.
“We are in for it now,” he thought angrily to himself, for Ascilius had increased the size of his mage light, illuminating the whole bridge and a good portion of the shelf of stone on the far side of the bridge.
A dark, sleek, furred shape crouched there, scaled, taloned paws dug into the human body from which it was noisily stripping flesh. Eyes burning like red-orange coals, a horned, nightmare head turned toward Ascilius and Elerian, snarling in fury at having its meal interrupted. Before they could stir a muscle, the lentulus abandoned its meal and rushed toward them, covering the ground in long supple leaps. When it reached the bridgehead, it suddenly took to the air, spreading vast, leathery black wings.
As one, Elerian and Ascilius threw themselves flat onto the bridge. They heard the whistle of wings hurtling through the air as the winged shape of the lentulus shot by overhead. Intending to return and make a second attack, the creature banked sharply to its left, but partially blinded by Ascilius’s mage light, it swept in too low and struck the stone curb running along the edge of the bridge with its chest. With a hoarse cry, the lentulus, stunned by the collision, fell back into the chasm below the bridge.
Elerian was the first to leap onto to his feet. Opening his third eye, he ran to the curb which the lentulus had struck, looking over it into the darkness below. A score of feet under him was the red shade of the lentulus. It did not appear injured, for it was hovering in mid air by furiously beating its great wings. In a moment, Elerian knew it would fly back up above the bridge to launch another attack, an attack they were ill equipped to fight off.
“There is only one way to stop it,” thought Elerian calmly to himself.
Closing his mind to the danger he was about to expose himself to, Elerian swiftly retrieved his magical knife from his pack. Then, after dropping both the pack and his belt knife onto the bridge, he leaped lightly to the top of the curb in front of him, holding the jeweled hilt of his magical knife in his right hand. Below him, the lentulus was already rising for its second attack. Without a word to Ascilius, who was just rising to his feet, Elerian stepped off the curb and disappeared from the Dwarf’s horrified view, dropping like a stone into the gulf below the bridge.
Elerian felt a rush of air before landing face down on the lentulus’s broad back. The impact drove the air from his chest, for beneath its sleek fur, the creature’s body was as hard as stone. Before the lentulus could react to his presence, Elerian wrapped his legs around the beast’s sides. With his third eye open, he saw only the beast’s red shade beneath him, but feeling along its neck with his left hand, he found the thick fur which grew there, burying his long fingers into it to help maintain his hold on the creature. Elerian raised his right arm, intending to thrust the blade of his magical knife into the back of the lentulus’s thick neck, but a sudden, sinuous twist of the creature’s muscular shoulders, intended to throw him off, spoiled his aim. The blade, thin lines of argentum glowing like silver threads in the dark, missed the creature’s neck, plunging instead into its right wing joint, where it attached to its shoulder.
A whistling shriek of pain and anger stabbed painfully at Elerian’s ears as the magical blade sank through the lentulus’s stony flesh. Elerian felt a great rush of power flow from his body into the knife, leaving him with barely enough strength to maintain his hold on the lentulus’s back.
Suddenly, the great, leathery wing on his right collapsed. With Elerian still clinging to its back, the lentulus dropped into the chasm, unable to support itself with just one wing. Ignoring the air rushing past its body, it twisted its ugly head back over its left shoulder, trying to reach Elerian’s face with the razor sharp teeth that lined its ugly, pushed in snout. Releasing the dense fur he held with his left hand, Elerian rolled to his right, the lentulus’s jaws snapping shut just inches from his face with a hollow, clicking sound. At that moment, the jeweled hilt clenched in Elerian’s right hand abruptly came loose from the creature’s body, its blade consumed by the lentulus’s dark blood. Badly weakened by his use of his magical knife, Elerian was unable to hold on to the lentulus’s sharply angled, sinewy body with just his legs. He continued his roll over its injured wing before falling into the abyss.
Relieved of Elerian’s weight, the lentulus slowed its fall into a slow, spiraling descent by flapping its good wing. Below it, Elerian’s body twist in the air as he fell, giving him a last view of the bridge far above him. For a brief moment, he saw Ascilius’s pale face, illuminated by the mage light hovering over his head, leaning dangerously far over the curb of the bridge as he attempted to penetrate the inky void beneath him with his eyes. Because he lacked mage sight, Ascilius would have no idea as to what had occurred after Elerian stepped off the bridge
A great lassitude filled Elerian. He made no attempt to call out to Ascilius and felt powerless to save himself. With his strength badly depleted by his magical blow against the lentulus, he was tempted to simply close his eyes and wait passively for the quick death that would be his at the bottom of the chasm. Then, the cold, damp air rushing past his face revived him a little. Without any forethought, Elerian slipped into the hawk form he had worn so many times in his youth. As his arms and legs changed to wings and clawed feet, something fell from his right hand. Acting out of reflex, Elerian reached out and grasped it with a foot that now had three strong, clawed toes growing out of the end of it. Instinctively, he beat his broad wings against the air, arresting his fall just before he struck the swift, dark waters of the river that flowed through the bottom of the chasm.
With powerful strokes, Elerian began to rise out of the dark depths, guided by his mage sight. Briefly, he saw the fiery red shade of the lentulus as it spiraled past him in its slow descent toward the river below. It snarled at him once as they passed, for the lentulus also possessed mage sight.
As Elerian sped past the lentulus, the fierce hawk mind that shared his body suddenly began contesting with him for mastery of the body that they shared, for Elerian had not protected himself properly when he changed his shape. Overwhelmed by the swiftness of the attack, his sense of self began to fade. He could not remember his name, and slowly, he began to forget that he had ever been anything but a hawk. As he rose above the bridge, which he saw as a dead black shape running from one wall of the chasm to the other, the hard, cold object still clutched in his right foot attracted his notice. When Elerian bent his head down to examine it, the golden light cast by his shade suddenly awoke the splendor of the jeweled hilt clutched in his scaly toes.
The sight of the flaming jewels, burning like red, green, and white fires, jolted Elerian’s mind. All at once, he remembered that he was Elerian in the form of a hawk and not a bird dreaming that he was a man. With the force of his newly awakened will, he overcame the fierce mind that shared his body. The master of his body once more, he immediately banked his wings, dropping toward the bridge below in a tight spiral. Cupping his wings, Elerian settled lightly in the middle of the bridge, not far from where he had leaped over the curb. Gathering his strength, he cast the spell that would transform him back to his own shape. As his body changed, his clothes reappeared, and a moment later, he stood on two legs again, fully dressed. Then, overcome with weakness, he slowly collapsed onto the cold, stone surface of the bridge.
For a time, Elerian lay without moving where he had fallen. Between the power the magical knife had drawn out of him and the two shape changes he had undertaken in such a short span of time, he was spent. It was concern for Ascilius that finally roused him. He sat up and looked around him, but the darkness was complete. There was no sign of Ascilius’s mage light anywhere. Opening his third eye, Elerian saw that the bridge was empty. There was no sign of the Dwarf’s golden shade or of the pack and knife that he had left behind. Straining his keen ears, Elerian heard only the muted roaring of the underground river that flowed through the bottom of the chasm. A glittering pool of multicolored light attracted his gaze, and he picked up the jeweled hilt of the knife he had used to wound the lentulus. It had fallen onto the bridge when he transformed. Elerian tucked the ruined knife into a pocket.
“Where has that dratted Dwarf got himself off too?” he wondered as he climbed wearily back to his feet.
He considered calling out, but his innate caution warned against it. Other dangers besides the lentulus might be lurking about in the dark, and there was no point in alerting them to his presence. Closing his third eye, he lit a small mage light, the tiny spark taking up a position a foot or so above his head. Bending over to examine the surface of the bridge, he saw that the thick layer of dust covering the stone showed widely spaced prints running toward the far side of the bridge.
“After Ascilius saw me fall into the chasm, he ran to the end of the bridge,” thought Elerian to himself, “but where is he now?”
He followed prints across the bridge, where a road led from the bridgehead into the darkness that lay beyond it. From the prints left in the thick layer of dust that covered the ground, Elerian saw that Ascilius had left the road, running to the right along the edge of the chasm. Clearly, he had been looking for a way down even though, as far as he knew, Elerian had fallen to a certain death.
“I hope that he has not climbed down into that abyss to look for me,” thought Elerian to himself, half in irritation and half in admiration of the Dwarf’s bravery.
He followed Ascilius’s tracks, looking for a place where Ascilius might have begun his descent. Suddenly, the Dwarf’s solitary footprints were obscured by prints from other booted feet.
“There was a struggle here,” thought Elerian to himself
, as he read the blurred marks in the thick layer of dust that covered the ground.
He got down on his hands and knees and carefully examined the stony ground, but there was no sign of blood. A confused jumble of prints led away from the site of the struggle, toward the road, but Ascilius’s footprints were not among them.
Elerian was now torn with indecision. Had Ascilius fallen into the chasm, or had he been carried off by his attackers? There was no way to tell from the footprints. He walked first to the edge of the chasm and looked into the depths There was no mage light to be seen in the darkness below him, but that alone did not rule out the possibility that Ascilius might now be lying wounded or dead somewhere in the gulf below. The only sound that came to his ears was the muted roar of the river. Then, faintly from the depths, Elerian heard a deep, bubbling growl, full of pain and anger. Evidently, the lentulus had survived its fall, aided by its one good wing. The thought of that monster alive in the depths below was unsettling, and Elerian fervently hoped Ascilius was not now somewhere close to it.
Leaning far over the edge of the chasm, he quenched his mage light and opened his third eye. The red shade of the lentulus appeared as a bright pinprick far below him, but there was no golden glow from Ascilius’s shade to indicate that the Dwarf was also in the chasm. If Ascilius was down there then he was either hidden from view or no longer alive.
“Which way should I search,” wondered Elerian anxiously, for he was wasting time when every moment counted.
He wished for one of his moments of foresight, for if he searched in the wrong place, it might cost Ascilius his life, if he still lived, but now, when he could have used it the most, his ability refused to manifest itself. With his mind still churning with indecision, Elerian finally turned away from the precipice at his feet and followed the booted footprints away from the chasm to the road. He still saw no sign of Ascilius’s footprints, but it seemed more and more likely that the Dwarf had been carried off by his assailants. Hoping that he was making the right decision, Elerian began following the road, which soon disappeared into a large tunnel that pierced the wall on the far side of the cavern.