The Warrior (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  To his human eyes, Ascilius and Elerian were dim, indistinct figures, barely revealed by Ascilius’s small mage light. What lay beyond the boundaries of that light was a total mystery to him.

  “My name is Elerian and my companion is named Ascilius,” said Elerian reassuringly. “He carried you from the dungeon where you were imprisoned. We are still in the tunnels below Calenus, but we are safe for now.”

  “My thanks to you and your companion for rescuing me,” said the man in a firmer voice. “My name is Dacien.”

  Upon hearing the prisoner’s name, Ascilius’s dark eyes lit up with curiosity. “Which family do you belong to?” he asked. “I may know your parents, for I visited the camps and cities of the Tarsi many times in years past.”

  “My father’s name is Orianus,” said Dacien with a note of caution in his voice. “He was friends once with someone named Ascilius. You are a Dwarf are you not?” he asked, as he leaned closer in an attempt to discern Ascilius’s indistinct form.

  “Indeed I am,” said Ascilius proudly. He brightened his mage light slightly so that Dacien might have a better look at his craggy features. “You are right to be cautious in naming Orianus as your father, but you need have no fear of me or my companion. We are both enemies of the Goblins. If you are truly Orianus’s son then you have seen me before although it is unlikely that you will remember me. When I last saw you, you were a lad of two.”

  “I have no memory of you,” replied Dacien, “but now that I have had a good look at you, I must say that you do not look like the Ascilius that was described to me by my father and sister.”

  “And you do not look like the boy I remember,” said Ascilius sharply, his dark eyes bright with anger at having his identity questioned.

  Dacien smiled. “That is a point well taken,” he conceded, breaking the tension. “You will have to forgive my caution, for Torquatus has set many traps for me over the years. How is it that you are still alive? According to the tale told to me by my father, you left our land after a trading venture but never arrived home. When your father sent word that you and your companions were missing, a search was undertaken by my people. Eventually, the remains of your party were discovered near the Catalus. Only burned wagons and gnawed bones remained. It was sadly assumed that Goblins had killed and eaten all of your company.

  “The lucky ones were killed,” said Ascilius grimly. “Those of us who survived were taken to the Goblins’ iron mines as slaves. How did my father take the news of my death?” asked Ascilius in a voice suddenly devoid of all emotion, for he was not much interested in reliving his miserable years in the mines.

  “When I was older, I remember hearing that there was no funeral,” said Dacien, looking uncomfortable. “I thought it odd at the time, but perhaps Fundanus still clung to the hope that you were alive.”

  “That I doubt,” said Ascilius with a bitter note in his voice. “There was never any great love between us.”

  “If it is any comfort to you, my father held a great death feast in your honor,” said Dacien, seeking to cheer up Ascilius.

  “Orianus was a good friend,” said Ascilius, shaking off some of his somber mood. “How old are you now Dacien?” he asked abruptly, sounding almost fearful of receiving the answer to his question.

  “I am now in my thirty-second year,” said Dacien quietly.

  “Twenty-six years,” said Ascilius, shaking his head in amazement. “I had not thought that I was a captive for so long. Are my people well?” he asked anxiously.”

  Dacien looked at him sadly. “I am sorry to be the bearer of so much bad news, Ascilius, but in truth, things have gone ill with your city since you disappeared. For years, the Dwarves of Ennodius fought a bitter war with the Goblins, who tried constantly to wrest control of the north road from Calenus away from them. They sustained many losses, but they were able to resist the Goblin forces until about a year ago. A badly wounded Dwarf appeared in one of our northern camps one day, carrying word that a great dragon had unexpectedly descended on Ennodius. According to his story, she first broke into the city and then laid waste to all the land south of Ennodius.

  “The eye I saw in the orb!” said Ascilius in a voice filled with distress. “It was a dragon’s eye and an ill omen of the future. I wish that I had never looked into that cursed sphere.”

  “The orb merely shows the future; it does not create it,” replied Elerian quietly to Ascilius as Dacien looked in confusion from one to the other, for he did not understand their words.

  Elerian’s assertion offered Ascilius little comfort, for it seemed to him that by looking into the orb, he had somehow drawn the dragon down upon his city.

  “Do you have any other news for me?” he asked harshly of Dacien.

  “Sadly, we have had no word from the city since the dragon entered there,” said Dacien. “The Dwarf who brought the news died from his injuries, and none of the scouts my father sent to investigate ever returned, for the dragon now patrols all the plains east and south of Ennodius. She took many of our horses and men before we moved our herds farther south. No one now dares venture any farther north than the banks of the Tanicus. I am sorry to be the bearer of such bad tidings, Ascilius,” said Dacien regretfully.

  A grim look had come over Ascilius’s face as he listened to Dacien’s words. He turned away from the Tarsian and sat in silence, staring morosely at the dark waters of the underground lake. Thinking to cheer his companion, Elerian took, from his pack, the two tankards he had made in Nefandus, filling them with clear, cold water from the lake. He changed the water to potent golden wine before offering one cup to Ascilius and the other to Dacien. The air of the cavern was chill and damp, and Elerian had seen the Tarsi shiver more than once beneath the wolf skin cloak he wore.

  Ascilius took his mug without a word, drinking in silence. Elerian let him be, for he was growing used to Ascilius’s occasional dark moods.

  “This is wine,” said Dacien as he choked a little on the strong brew, for he had expected only water.

  “It will warm you,” said Elerian, as he sat down beside Dacien once more. Bearing in mind that mages were not always held in high esteem, Elerian did not offer any explanation of how he had come by the wine.

  “Someone I could not see slew the Mordi guards in the room of the changelings before cutting my bonds,” said Dacien as the wine warmed him. “Was that you, Elerian? I saw you briefly on the floor next to Torquatus when I crept up behind him, but I never saw you enter the dungeon.”

  “Elerian has a ring which renders him invisible,” volunteered Ascilius unexpectedly. “He is a powerful mage.”

  Dacien looked at Elerian with new found respect.

  “He looks almost like one of my people,” thought Dacien to himself as he took in Elerian’s dark hair and gray eyes.

  “Are you a Tarsi?” he asked curiously.

  “No, I come from northern Hesperia,” said Elerian with a smile. “Like Ascilius, I was taken prisoner by the Goblins long ago. Can you tell me what year is this?”

  “It is spring in the year 999 of the Fourth Age,” said Dacien.

  “Twenty years have passed since I was captured,” said Elerian quietly as he reckoned up the time of his enslavement in the mines. “I am now in my forty-second year,” he said sadly, thinking of all the years of his youth that he had lost in the mines.

  “That is a mere pittance of time for one of your race,” said Ascilius dismissively.

  “What race is that?” asked Dacien in confusion. To his eyes, Elerian appeared to be a completely ordinary, middle aged man, even featured but worn by his years of suffering at the hands of the Goblins.

  “Elerian is an Elf, Dacien,” said Ascilius quietly as the strong wine began to restore his spirits. “He is an Eirian, to use their own language, perhaps the last member of that race in the Middle Realm. He will never grow old, no matter how long he lives.”

  Dacien looked at Ascilius as if he thought the Dwarf might be joking. “But I always thought the
Elves were uncommonly fair in appearance,” he said in a puzzled voice.

  Upon hearing Dacien’s words, Ascilius nearly choked on his wine. Dacien looked rather embarrassed.

  “I meant no offense,” he said apologetically to Elerian, but Elerian merely smiled.

  “Pay no attention to Ascilius,” he said mildly. “He is a difficult companion, always seeking to play tricks on everyone around him. I am no more an Elf than you are.”

  Ascilius choked on his wine for a second time in reaction to Elerian’s unjust character assassination. His face grew red as he tried to talk and cough at the same time. Elerian ignored the sputtering Dwarf, passing Dacien some dried meat from his pack.

  “Eat and regain some of your strength,” he said while helping himself to a piece also.

  Dacien looked from Elerian to Ascilius, who was slowly recovering from his coughing fit.

  “What strange company I have fallen in to,” he thought to himself as he hungrily ate some of the tasty meat Elerian had handed him.

  “What happened to Torquatus after I lost my senses?” asked Dacien as the food restored his strength. “Did he die from the wound I gave him?” he asked hopefully.

  “After you wounded Torquatus, he fled through a portal,” said Ascilius, who had recovered from his second fit.

  “We do not know if he is alive or dead,” said Elerian,” but Ascilius and I both owe our lives to your brave action”

  “You have already repaid the debt if there ever was one,” said Dacien graciously.

  “I am surprised we encountered Torquatus here in Calenus,” said Ascilius to Dacien. “Calenus is a long way from Ossarium.”

  “He was here because of me,” said Dacien soberly. “He bears a special hatred for my father. It was his intention to personally change me into a mutare before sending me back to my home to be a torment for my father. The price of restoring me to my natural form would have been submission to his rule, something my father would never have agreed to.”

  “Well, if we are not to fall into the hands of the Goblins again, we must be on our way,” said Ascilius, rising abruptly to his feet. “I do not think Torquatus is dead, and he will surely be thirsting for our blood once he recovers from his wound.”

  Dacien washed down his food with the last of his wine and then stood with his cloak gathered around his thin shoulders.

  “I feel much better,” he said.

  “That is good news indeed,” replied Ascilius. “I have carried you far enough for one day.”

  Brushing aside Dacien’s thanks, Ascilius took his tankard and rinsed it with his own in the lake. After returning the cups to Elerian’s pack, he set both rucksacks on his shoulders, despite Elerian’s protests and set off along the road that ran by the shore of the lake. Dacien followed close behind Ascilius, walking in the dim pool of light cast by the small mage light hovering over the Dwarf’s head. Elerian was last in line. There was still no sound of pursuit behind them, and Elerian began to hope that they had lost the Goblins for good when Ascilius destroyed the bridge.

  He felt much better from the rest and the food. As he walked behind Dacien, Elerian examined the road more closely. It was about a dozen feet wide, carved mostly from the living rock that made up the shore. There was a low curb on the right, barely knee high, and at intervals in the curb were the remains of stone posts.

  “What were those posts for?” Elerian asked Ascilius curiously.

  “There were mage lights on them at one time,” said Ascilius. “The Goblins must have destroyed them all.”

  He suddenly brightened his mage light enough so that even Dacien could see a stone pier that jutted out into the lake on their right. The shattered posts continued out along both sides of the pier.

  “There were boats kept here back in those days,” said Ascilius, “and mage lights on the roof of the cavern to give light. Dwarves would often come down here to fish or take their pleasure in the boats.”

  They left the empty pier behind, and Ascilius dimmed his light once more. A thick silence fell over the cavern as the three companions followed the road.

  Despite Ascilius’s assurances that there was no danger lurking under the still waters of the lake, Elerian continued to eye the dark water on his right uneasily as he walked behind Dacien. He still had an uneasy feeling that there was some unseen danger lurking nearby.

  There was little space between the wall of the cavern and the lakeshore, and the road often ran by the edge of the water. In those places, Elerian kept to the far side of the road, lighting his own mage light so that he did not have to depend on Ascilius’s light.

  Dacien seemed to share some of the same misgivings, for he, too, kept to the left, near Elerian, casting many suspicious glances at the dark water to his right as he walked. Ascilius, who appeared to be deep in thought, ignored the lake, walking next to the curb.

  Walking beside Elerian, Dacien said quietly, “In my land we avoid deep rivers and lakes; for sometimes, they are the home of creatures we call undines. When they are hungry, they come on land, taking the form of beautiful horses. If they succeed in tempting a man to mount on their back, they carry him into the deeps to devour him.”

  “That is nothing but a legend to frighten children,” said Ascilius impatiently as he looked back over his left shoulder at Dacien and Elerian. “I have often traveled near lakes and rivers in Tarsius and have never seen such a creature. There is nothing in this lake besides a few fish.”

  No sooner had Ascilius spoken than a great turbulence stirred the deep water to his right. Amid a cascade of streaming water, a dark shape suddenly erupted from the lake.

  THE UNDINE

  The creature that emerged from the depths was only an indistinct figure to Dacien, but Elerian and Ascilius, with eyes better attuned to the dark, saw it clearly in the dim glow of the mage lights. Floating above the dark surface of the lake, they saw the finely sculpted, sable head and powerful, arched neck of a horse. The animal’s dark eyes and sleek, wet hide gleamed in the reflected glow of the Ascilius’s yellow mage light.

  The horse swam steadily toward shore, water cascading off its sleek hide in silvery streams when it emerged from deeper water into the shallows next to the road. Bunching its powerful muscles under its sleek hide, it leaped over the curb, landing on the road in front of Ascilius. Snorting through flared nostrils, it pranced on trim hooves, which gleamed like jet.

  Motionless, eyes wide, the three companions stared as if mesmerized at the powerful, beautiful creature that had appeared before them. An irresistible compulsion to mount the shining creature and make it their own grew in each of their minds, crowding out all other thought. As if they had lost their wits, Elerian and Dacien ran toward the horse, but before they had taken more than a step or two, Ascilius, who was closest to the creature, clambered onto the curb and leaped onto the water horse’s sleek back. With the Dwarf clinging tightly to its long mane, the water horse reared up and spun toward the lake on its hind legs. Two great leaps carried it out to deeper water where it slipped beneath the surface, leaving scarcely a ripple behind.

  Suddenly free of the rapture which had clouded their minds, Dacien and Elerian stood by the curb, filled with dismay. Beneath the inky surface of the lake, the will o wisp glow of Ascilius’s mage light faded away into the depths.

  “The undine has taken Ascilius to its den,” said Dacien in a distraught voice. “He will never see Ennodius again,” he said sadly.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Elerian grimly. Dropping his pack on the road, he took something from his pocket, laying it on the top of the curb along with his sword. “Keep these things for me until I return, Dacien,” he said quietly.

  Without another word, Elerian put his long knife between his teeth, leaped over the curb, and raced through the shallows. When the water deepened, he made a swift, flat dive, slipping smoothly beneath the dark waters of the lake. Alone on the road, Dacien watched in consternation as Elerian’s mage light disappeared into the depths,
leaving him in complete darkness.

  “Now they will both die,” lamented Dacien to himself. “No one can defeat an undine in its own element.”

  Carefully, he groped his way over to Elerian’s pack. After a futile search for a candle or some means of making a light, he returned to the curb and felt along it with his right hand. His fingers touched the cold hilt of Elerian’s sword. Wrapping his hand around it, Dacien lifted the sword. Its weight and cold hilt felt reassuring in his right hand.

  “He left something else for me next to the sword,” thought Dacien to himself.

  Transferring the sword to his left hand, he groped along the top of the curb. Again, his fingers closed on cold metal. A pale light immediately sprang up between them, pushing back the darkness.

  “This is the hilt of the knife that I used to strike Torquatus,” thought Dacien to himself. There was no mistaking the gems which adorned the hilt. On the curb he saw a twin to the hilt he held in his hand, the blade also burned away. “Both blades burned away by unnatural blood, but still useful as a light,” he mused to himself. “That must be why Elerian left them behind.”

  The second hilt, Dacien put in Elerian’s pack. Using the pale light from the hilt he held in his hand to illuminate the way, he crossed to the far side of the road, carrying Elerian’s pack with him. Sitting on the ground in a little pool of pale light, with his back against the rough wall of the cavern so that nothing could approach him from behind, Dacien pulled Elerian’s cloak tightly around him. In front of him, beyond the range of the light emanating from the knife hilt, the darkness was so thick that it seemed almost like a wall.

  “If Elerian does not return, I can follow the road alone,” thought Dacien to himself, “but with my meager light and ignorance of the city and its passages, I stand little chance of finding my way out. My best hope is to wait; hoping Elerian will come to his senses and swim back to shore. Together we may discover the way out. Ascilius, I do not expect to see again in this life. No one ever escaped from an undine after mounting on its back. Even now, the unlucky Dwarf is probably being devoured in some watery den in the depths of the lake,” thought Dacien sadly to himself as he settled himself to wait, straining his ears for the splash of water that might signal Elerian’s return.