The Hidden Realm: Book 04 - Ennodius

by A. Giannetti

  Ascilius cooked thick slices of ham and bacon in an iron frying pan that he found in the kitchen while Elerian toasted chestnuts on a grating he discovered lying on the floor. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire, they ate their warm meal, washing it down with beer that Elerian made in two mismatched mugs, also taken from the kitchen.

  Ascilius had little to say as they ate. Elerian thought the Dwarf's face had taken on a haunted look. He had almost certainly known many of the Dwarves who had owned the shops they had searched, and the knowledge that they might all have perished was almost certainly weighing heavily on him. After they had eaten, Ascilius extinguished the fire. Righting an overturned couch, he wrapped himself in his now dry cloak and blankets, falling into an uneasy sleep on its torn pillows. His mage light still hovered over his head as he slept; illuminating his craggy, care worn features with a soft light.

  “Poor fellow,” thought Elerian sympathetically to himself as he put on clothes that were now warm and dry. “It must have been a terrible shock for him to find things so different here in the city from what he first expected.”

  Like Ascilius, Elerian was tired from the exertions of the day, but he was not sleepy in the least. After extinguishing his mage light, he walked up to the left window at the front of the room. Pulling back a corner of the blanket that masked the opening, he looked out at the street below. The darkness outside was complete, even to his eyes. Not a single sound came to his sharp ears, but it was easy to imagine some large, unknown creature prowling the dark streets and shops, looking for flesh to devour. Opening his third eye, Elerian saw only the dead black of lifeless stone. No shades prowled those dark streets before him, but he was not reassured.

  “Even my mage sight cannot see through stone,” Elerian reminded himself. “Who knows what lurks inside the empty buildings around us. The dragon, too, might be abroad.”

  Elerian thought it odd that they had not already seen Eboria prowling the main streets of the city, which were more than large enough to hold her enormous bulk. Had her threat been an empty one after all? Perhaps Ascilius was right to say that she was no longer a threat to them.

  Elerian let the blanket fall. After righting one of the chairs, he relit his mage light and sat down. Calling his spell book to his right hand, he opened it, poring over the spells on ring making that he had recently added. As he read, the silence around him was complete, except for the slow steady breathing of Ascilius.

  “There is something about these spells that I find both objectionable and dangerous, something that Dymiter never mentioned,” thought Elerian to himself after a while. “A ring fashioned with them would be able to command power from others, much as the ring of Torquatus does. I could never make such a ring. It would be inherently evil, and in time, I think it would inevitably lead anyone who wore it onto a dark path.”

  Tiring of his studies, Elerian finally sent his book away. Thinking to amuse himself and to perfect his mastery of his new elemental spell at the same time, he entered the bathroom. After plugging the drain in the basin with a bit of cloth, he turned on the spigot, filling it almost to the brim. Raising his right hand, he cast a transformation spell at the water, but raised only a small ripple on the surface. Opening his magical third eye, Elerian saw that the water in the basin was dead black and lifeless. Passing his right hand through the dark liquid, he raised silver ripples on its surface.

  “The water needs to be in motion in order to feed the spell,” thought Elerian to himself.

  Unplugging the basin and turning on the spigot, he watched as the water in the washbowl turned a bright silver color, full of energy again. Raising his right hand, Elerian cast a second spell, watching as a small golden orb flew from his fingertips to strike the water in the basin. Closing his third eye, he saw the upper bodies of a pair of small, sleek otters emerge from the clear water flowing through the basin. As they reared up their heads to look at him with round clear, eyes, he attempted to touch one of them, but his fingers passed through the otter's small sleek head and came away wet.

  “They have form and are able to move, but their substance is still water,” thought Elerian to himself. “Still, it may be a useful spell in the future. I can annoy Ascilius with it if nothing else.”

  He caused the otters to swim through the water that filled the basin until he felt that he had perfected his mastery of the spell.

  “Too bad I cannot get them over to Ascilius,” thought Elerian to himself, his gray eyes shining brightly as he imagined Ascilius’s reaction if the two elementals crawled beneath his clothes while he slept.

  “Another time,” he thought to himself as he turned off the spigot. The two small elementals vanished as the water drained away from the basin. Leaving the bathroom, Elerian slept perhaps an hour in his chair before rising to prepare a meal. Lighting a mage fire in the fireplace, he set a double handful of chestnuts inside the flames to roast. In their one small pan, he began to cook slices of smoked bacon.

  The tantalizing smell of frying bacon soon woke Ascilius. After the Dwarf dressed himself in his now dry clothes, he and Elerian ate in front of the fireplace, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  “What is the plan for today?” Elerian asked Ascilius as they ate.

  “I would like to spend one more day exploring the second level, although I no longer expect to find any of my people alive in this part of the city,” said Ascilius in a grim voice. “It is certain the dragon did not kill them, but perhaps the mysterious creature which left its claw marks on the doors may have had a hand in their disappearance. There may be Goblins and even Trolls in the city,” said Ascilius, absently tugging on his beard. “I really do not know what to think at this point.”

  “Another day in this empty tomb,” thought Elerian to himself dispiritedly, but he said nothing to Ascilius.

  As soon as they finished their breakfast, they packed their knapsacks. With tiny mage lights hovering over their heads, following them wherever they went, they left the shop, resuming their tense, nerve-racking exploration of Ennodius. Again, they followed the service roads in back of the shops where Eboria could not enter. Hands on their weapons, they searched room after room, gradually working their way to the center of the city.

  Despite the need to guard against surprise attacks, Elerian eventually found that he was growing bored, never a good thing for Ascilius. Despite the seriousness of their situation, a predatory gleam gradually entered his clear gray eyes as he observed Ascilius’s overwrought state.

  “He has suffered enough,” Elerian reminded himself more than once, but his bent for mischief gradually overpowered his good intentions. As he followed Ascilius into yet another dark room, this one filled with what appeared to be ornate lampposts, Elerian casually leaned against a pyramidal stack of metal posts standing opportunely by his right elbow. The following clatter and banging of metal was magnified by the utter silence of the room until it resembled a clap of thunder. Elerian watched fascinated as Ascilius leaped straight up into the air as the discordant sounds smote his ears. When his feet touched the ground again, trembling in every limb, he whirled around. His eyes wide and white as small saucers, Ascilius stared wildly about. Every hair on his head and in his beard bristled, bearing witness to his extreme agitation. His ax was upraised in his right hand, ready to strike.

  “What happened? Are you all right?” he asked Elerian, his chest heaving as if he had just run a long race.

  “I brushed up against a stack of posts,” said Elerian innocently. His face looked guiltless, but his gray eyes were almost incandescent, lit by inner laughter.

  Ascilius fixed unbelieving eyes on his companion. In all their time together, he could not recall a single instance where Elerian had made an awkward movement.

  “You did it on purpose,” he said in a stunned voice.

  With a frenzied light in his dark eyes, Ascilius suddenly dropped his ax and rushed at Elerian, arms upraised, his powerful hands twitching as if he were already throttling hi
s companion with them. Like a wraith, Elerian and his mage light both suddenly vanished before the furious Dwarf could lay hands on him.

  In a rage, Ascilius rushed about the room wildly grasping at the air, certain that Elerian was still in the room. In fact, Elerian was standing in the doorway, laughing silently to himself as he watched Ascilius stumble about.

  Gradually, Ascilius calmed down. He retrieved his ax, but instead of carrying it, he pushed the handle through his belt. Picking up a stout broomstick from the litter on the floor, he broke off a three foot piece of the thick oak handle with a single twist of his powerful hands.

  “I have never seen him so angry,” thought Elerian to himself as the sharp crack of breaking wood broke the deep silence of the room. “I think that it might be prudent for me to remain invisible for a while,” he decided, for it seemed to him that there was a rather demented gleam in Ascilius’s dark eyes as he looked wildly about the room, tapping his piece of broomstick suggestively on his left hand.

  Ascilius finally gave up trying to lay hands on Elerian and left the room. Without a word, he resumed his exploration of the city, but he did not throw away his broomstick. As he searched, he started at every imagined sound and shadow. His left eyelid had begun to twitch badly, clear evidence of the sad state of his nerves.

  “Bad enough that I have to watch out for Trolls and who knows what else,” thought Ascilius crossly to himself. “Now I also have to watch out for that demented Elf as well. I wonder where he is now?” Lovingly, Ascilius stroked his broomstick with his left hand, imagining the use he would put it too if he was able to lay hold of Elerian for even a few moments.

  Elerian was, in fact, only a few feet behind Ascilius. Invisible and silent as a shadow, he continued to follow the Dwarf as he explored empty rooms and tunnels with only the dim rays of his mage light to dispel the darkness. From time to time, just to keep things interesting, Elerian made some slight noise just to see Ascilius jump. Finally, the Dwarf stopped in the middle of a dark service tunnel.

  “You may as well appear. I know you are still here,” he said, disgustedly throwing away his broomstick which rattled hollowly on the stone floor of the passageway.

  “You must promise not to try and throttle me then,” said Elerian behind Ascilius’s back. He watched in amusement as the Dwarf started badly before turning around.

  “Throttling is too simple,” grated Ascilius. “I will think of a more fitting revenge if it takes me a hundred years.”

  Elerian suddenly reappeared, an unrepentant gleam in his eyes. “I cannot imagine why you are always talking of revenge,” he said mildly. “You would think I have wronged you somehow, instead of constantly saving your life from one horrific danger after another.”

  “Next time I am in danger, let me die,” said Ascilius dryly. “It will be a kinder fate then having to remain in your company and suffer your torments. In the short time since we have left Tarsius, you have, at various times, tried to drown me, set me on fire, and you have come close to stopping my heart on more occasions than I can readily recall, all to satisfy your perverse sense of humor.”

  “Such talk wounds me to the heart,” said Elerian, sadly.

  “You have no heart,” Ascilius shot back morosely as he entered another workshop. It also proved to be empty, but it did have working doors.

  “We may as well stop here and rest,” said Ascilius to Elerian, who had followed him at a safe distance. It seemed to Elerian that Ascilius had calmed down, but he remained wary.

  “No sense in taking any unnecessary chances,” he thought to himself as he helped Ascilius bar the doors.

  They went upstairs and ate a brief meal after which Ascilius went to sleep, too tired to worry about whether Elerian would play some prank on him while he slumbered. Feeling no need to sleep, Elerian sat in a torn up armchair. He looked first at his ruby ring with his third eye and was reassured when he saw the stone still pulsed with a crimson light.

  “Anthea still wears my ring,” he thought to himself. “I wonder that she has not come to visit me again.” He waited hopefully, trying to transmit his longing to see her again through the golden thread that bound their rings together, but Anthea’s wraith did not appear. “Some other night then,” thought Elerian to himself as he next turned his thoughts to Dymiter and the many questions he wished to ask the Elf mage.

  Calling Dymiter’s spell book to his right hand, he wondered if the wraith would show himself again. The book opened of its own accord after it appeared on his palm, revealing two blank pages, but no wraith appeared before Elerian’s magical third eye. Resuming his normal sight, he saw that black letters had appeared on the pages in front of him. A now familiar voice whispered in Elerian’s mind.

  “You will have need of this spell in the days to come, Elerian, for you face trying times.”

  Again, Elerian used his mage sight, but there was still no sign of the wraith.

  “He still seeks to bend me to his own purposes, revealing only what suits him,” thought Elerian suspiciously to himself as he closed his magical eye before silently reading the spell that had appeared before him. It had nothing to do with ring making, being concerned with creating a drink called aqua vitae. Never one to refuse a new spell, Elerian called his own book and transferred the charm to a blank page.

  THE RAMP

  As Elerian labored in the dark, the sun was two hours from setting in the outside world. Far to the southeast, six days after passing the Troll wood, Orianus and his company had finally reached the eastern end of the Nordaels. A wall had appeared on their left, fifteen feet in height and topped by a parapet with narrow arrow slots built into it at regular intervals. The wall ran for miles to the east, bridging a wide gap about ten miles across, the entrance to a valley that wound deep into the wall of mountains that rose up to the north.

  By sunset, the van of the Tarsi company reached the midpoint of the wall. Here, between two stout, rounded towers, was a great double gate of steel worked with the designs of running horses. To the right of the gate, a small, bright river, fed by cold snowmelt from the Nordaels, passed through a barred culvert beneath the outer wall.

  When Orianus rode up to the towers in the failing light, the king's heralds blew their horns, and immediately, the gates swung smoothly outward, revealing a valley about thirty miles long and fifteen wide that ran northwest between two lines of tall peaks which cradled it like outstretched arms. The valley was filled with rich farms and lush pastures already covered in shadow, for the sun had nearly disappeared behind the western horizon.

  A smooth stone paved road ran the length of the valley. Along the road and across the length and breadth of the dale were hundreds of snug stone houses, pools of yellow light spilling out into the gathering darkness from their windows.

  Tucked into the head of the valley and climbing into the foothills behind it was the city of Niveaus, the home of the Tarsi kings. Built by Dwarves of stone quarried in the nearby mountains, the walls and buildings of the city were all white marble, veined with green and black. When the sun rose in the east each morning, spreading its golden rays across the polished stone, the whole city appeared to glow, but now it was dark except for the golden lights which lit its many windows. In the highest level of the city was the palace of Orianus, a place filled with spacious rooms, green lawns, lush gardens, and white fountains.

  Although Orianus’s company was much reduced in number, for many of the wagons in the caravan had split off days earlier, traveling toward the southern part of the kingdom, it still took hours for the line of wagons following the king to pass through the gates of the shield wall. Once through the gate, the company gathered in the open pastures behind the walls, for they would not travel any farther this night. In the morning, the company would split once more. Those who lived in the lands to the east, between the city and the Flumin, would continue on their way while the rest followed Orianus to Niveaus.

  In her quarters in the king’s well-appointed pavilion, Anthea remain
ed awake long after the great company around her had fallen asleep. The sense of peace she had gained in her ancestor’s ruined dwelling had greatly diminished, for despite her best efforts, she had been unable to follow the golden thread that led from her ring to Elerian for a second time. Disguised by the illusion spell which made her changed features appear to be to be those of a Tarsi maiden, she restlessly paced her sleeping quarters, supple and silent, each movement full of feline grace.

  “Why does my necklace no longer serve me?” Anthea wondered to herself, gripping the silver beech leaf that lay on her breast with a long, slender hand, grown steely strong since Elerian had saved her life in the Troll wood. “Who knows what adventures Elerian has already experienced without me?” she thought to herself, her frustration growing by the minute. He has certainly reached Ennodius by now. Surrounded by the mysteries and splendor of the Dwarf city, will he forget me? With gold in his hands and a handsome face that would set any maid’s heart fluttering, will he still want me, a simple maiden of the open plains?” she wondered sadly to herself.

  Suddenly, Anthea stood stock still, eyes flashing. “Are Dwarf maidens comely?” she wondered to herself. “I never thought to ask Ascilius that question.”

  An image of Elerian surrounded by beautiful, grateful Dwarf women suddenly appeared in her mind. “I should be there by his side to protect him from such perils,” she thought to herself, her blue eyes flashing like distant lightening. “He is such a fool,” she thought to herself, her fair face suddenly softening. “If I cannot open the portal again soon, I will follow him no matter what the consequences,” she decided abruptly. Immediately, she felt more at ease now that she had an alternate plan to follow. The thought of crossing hundreds of miles of wild, dangerous country by herself, straight into the dragon’s lair gave her no pause at all.