Kingshold

by D P Woolliscroft

  Neenahwi looked up and saw the falcon flying above their party, soaring on the thermals and causing a pang of longing in her to be flying again. Her brother called the falcon Per, and since they had left the city, the bird had regularly returned to his shoulder. If she didn’t know better, it looked like it was whispering in his ear. Wait, she did know better, that was probably exactly what it was doing.

  “So, the bird of yours,” Neenahwi broke the silence with her brother, “is that what I think it is?”

  “Yep.”

  “I thought they were always wolves in our clan?”

  “Me too.” Motega looked into the distance of the mountain peak as he walked and spoke. “So did Kanaveen. He’s the reason why I have Per.” As if on cue, the bird flew down and landed on his shoulder, Motega treating it to a thin strip of jerky.

  “Go on, then. You obviously have a tale to tell. Spit it out.”

  “Not much to tell, sis. When I ran away—and yes, I do admit to myself that is what I did—I went to see Kanaveen. He said before I left I had to do the Quana, the coming of age ceremony, so if I died, I’d go to our hunting grounds in the next life. Apparently, that meant he had to punch me in the face, knock me out, and then leave me naked in the wild forest.”

  Motega told the story as he climbed up the rocky incline, loud enough for just her to hear. “That’s when the spirit came. At first, I thought I was going crazy and having hallucinations from hunger or Kanaveen tainting my water with the wrong mushrooms. It kept shifting shape from wolf to falcon until it leaped at me, or flew at me, not sure which, knocking me to the ground. I hit my head on a rock and got knocked out again. Next thing I remember was seeing myself lying on the ground, which was enough to scare me shitless and wake me up. And there was Per, staring right at me.”

  Neenahwi was silent listening to the story, trying to find her footing in the climb. “I’ve never done the Quana.”

  “Have you been to see Kanaveen recently?”

  Her cheeks burned with the shame of not being able to answer the question. The truth was she hadn’t seen the former champion of her father, the man who had saved the two of them when they were children, since Kanaveen had wanted to leave Kingshold a year after their rescue from Pyrfew. He had been like a father to her, a surrogate she then replaced with another. And why did they all have to leave?

  “I’ll go and see him once this election is done. Will you come with me?”

  Motega reached out a hand to grasp her arm, and he smiled. “Of course, I will, sis. He’ll like that. He probably won’t punch you in the face.” She smiled, too, and put her hand on his before they carried on climbing. “So, Per has seen some other things up there flying around. They’re not birds. He doesn’t have words, so he showed me what he saw. They look like dragons from children’s books. You know anything?”

  “Don’t worry, Motega. No one has seen dragons for centuries. Those are drakes, probably no bigger than ten feet long. The breeding season is approaching, and that’s why they’re here. They live most of the year on the western seaboard across the Arz Sea from Edland, but each summer they come back to roost in the caves here. We should be early enough in the season, and our destination low enough, that we won’t be a bother to them.”

  “A bother to them?” said Motega. “I was more concerned about those teeth and claws being a bother to us!”

  The climb became increasingly vertical, and so, the conversation died out once more. After reaching one large outcropping where the rock appeared smooth, like a melting glacier, Motega had asked what caused it.

  “Fire,” was all Neenahwi answered as she pushed on from the front.

  Eventually, she called a halt halfway up Tiston at a ledge that looked much like five others they had seen earlier in the afternoon. The group ate their modest lunch of bread and cheese with a vengeance, washing it down with fresh water gathered at a stream at the base of the mountain. When they finished eating, Neenahwi gestured to the mountainside and an area of juniper bushes close by.

  “Here’s what we’re looking for.” Neenahwi parted the bushes to reveal a cave entrance descending into the dark. “After all the up, now we go down.”

  It might have been a little over-generous to describe the hole they saw as a cave. In fact, it was more of a vent to provide fresh air to the inhabitants of the dwarven city below the mountain. It was about four feet wide at its entrance and descended at an angle before sharply dropping off into the darkness.

  There was only room for one person to move at a time, and so, it was decided that Trypp would lead the way—even though his experience of spelunking was limited, his climbing skills made him the best choice. Tying off a rope onto iron spikes driven into the cave wall, they were able to descend through the tunnel into the dark. They stopped at various natural stone shelves when possible, sometimes only big enough for one or two of them to rest at a time.

  Neenahwi did pause to admire the lamps Trypp, her brother, and Florian wore on their heads. She hadn’t seen a similar design before, and even though it only shed a limited amount of light to their proceedings, it was all they had.

  Neenahwi’s arms were tired as she descended the fifth rope and arrived at a ledge where she was again able to rest. Trypp and Florian sat there ahead of her, with the others descending behind.

  “How much further do you think we need to go?” asked Trypp.

  “I’m not sure. I believe we’re getting close, but I have no real way of knowing,” said Neenahwi.

  “We have one more length of rope, and we don’t know how far down we need to go. Once everyone reaches this point, I’m going to have to go and retrieve the last line.” Trypp didn’t look happy about the prospect of climbing down without a rope. “Hopefully without falling.”

  “You can do it, man!” said Florian, giving his friend a pat on the back, nearly knocking him over the ledge.

  Once the rest of the group was safely on the broad ridge, Trypp climbed up the rope into the darkness, the light of his headlamp barely visible. And then, all of a sudden, the rope fell to the ledge. All was quiet as the friends waited with bated breath.

  The light bobbed around above them, shining from one direction to the next as Trypp looked for the next foothold. But soon he was within sight; he jumped the last few feet to land with a little flourish.

  From there, Florian led the way down the rope, Trypp following at the back, not using the cable at all, instead, untying it and letting it fall to the group below whenever they reached a safe position. It was slow going, and not without danger, but after doing it three times, they reached the floor.

  They were in the middle of a vast green cavern, wide enough so they could see the walls on either side, but too long to see in which direction they should go, left or right. The ceiling was high. In fact, they could not see it either, just the ends of stalactites dripping into view. The floor of the cavern was covered with various mosses of greens, purples, and even reds, organized into neat little rectangles. Certain plots were obviously mushrooms and other fungi of strange and peculiar shapes, some reaching into the air like miniature mountains, and others pooled around the floor like melted candles.

  “This is one of the gardens,” said Neenahwi. “There are many of them to feed the dwarves under the mountain.”

  “Are they patrolled? Are we going to run into any guards or workers?” asked Mareth.

  “Potentially. We should be careful. We have to keep the light to a minimum and keep our eyes peeled for any signs of people who will raise the alarm too soon.” Neenahwi set off, gesturing for the group to follow her.

  “How do you know which way to go?” asked Motega.

  “I can feel the movement of the air. The city is still below us,” answered Neenahwi.

  Never had a group of ramblers, traipsing over farmland, tried to be so careful. Following Neenahwi’s lead, the group tiptoed through the vegetation of the cavern, mindful of the crops for the people who lived in the city. They skirted around various
squishy vegetables and sponge-like mosses. Neenahwi had tried a number of these unappetizing-looking plants in the past, and she had to admit, when they were prepared with some of the dwarven specialty slug sauce, they were close to edible.

  Everyone’s eyes focused on looking at the ground, making sure their footing was safe, while they passed under stalactites hanging from the ceiling, sharp pointed ends dripping salt to the ground. The end of the cavern came into view and the vegetation stopped, a barren patch of cavern floor before the vegetation resumed again a hundred yards or so beyond. Neenahwi, tired and glad of not having to watch her step, strode across the bare rock.

  And that’s when things went crazy.

  Chapter 27

  Unedar Halt

  Something hit Neenahwi on the back of the head, and she fell to the floor, striking her forehead on a rock. Shouting in pain, she rolled onto her back, hand touching her brow to reveal blood on her fingers.

  In front of her, the air was filled with tentacles thicker than her arm and more than twenty feet long, lashing out at the men who had followed her. Mareth was struck to the floor as a tentacle caught him in the stomach. Motega drew his axes and rolled across the ground out of reach. Dolph, sword already in hand, chopped at appendages reaching for him. In the center of the chaos was a mottled grey squid-like creature, easily ten feet tall, two eyes as big as dinner plates staring out.

  And beneath it, she could see the black leather boots of Florian.

  Why can’t a stalactite just be a stalactite?

  Suddenly, at her side was Trypp, with a look of concern on his face. He helped her to her feet, and she saw his mouth move to ask if she was alright. She didn’t know if she couldn’t hear him because of the shouts and grunts of battle or if the ringing in her ears had something to do with it.

  A little groggy, she paused, seeing Mareth draw his sword and move to fight next to his bodyguard. She heard his voice as he sang, the words indistinguishable, but she recognized the tempo as a fight song. Motega had assessed the situation and had dived forward toward one of the squid’s eyes, dodging one tentacle, chopping at another, jumping over one that reached to grab his ankle, to get within striking range.

  She tried to focus her attention and divide her consciousness, but the ringing in her ears kept causing her concentration to fail. She was going to have to do this as she had as a girl. “Trypp, don’t let me fall,” she ordered.

  She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the chaos, drawing thread after thread of the plant life around her, and feeling the modest flow of mana that she could control. Opening her eyes, she pulled one of her steel arrows from its pouch and threw it into the air. Neenahwi gathered the energy to hold the missile in the air, flying around and around above the monster and her friends, creating momentum before firing it at the squid’s eye.

  A rocky-looking eyelid closed, but the arrow sank into it, becoming lodged. Motega and Dolph had both managed to get close to the body of the Squiditite, causing deep wounds across its body. Dolph aimed a blow at its other eye, but his sword was caught by a tentacle, which twisted and pulled the weapon from his hand to clatter on the floor. Thankfully, though, the creature had decided this dinner wasn’t worth the trouble, and two tentacles stretched high up into the air to reach other stalactites and pull itself back into the darkness.

  Florian was lying on the ground, not moving and covered in slime. His face was grey, and there were small red welts on his face and arms that looked like love bites from the ugliest date he’d ever had. Motega rushed over and put his ear to his chest, heard breathing, and slapped his face about the cheeks to wake him, but to no effect. “Neenahwi,” said Motega. “He won’t wake; he’s breathing, but he’s not responding.”

  Neenahwi ran over to inspect Florian. After a few moments of deliberation, she turned to face Motega and Trypp, who were leaning over her shoulder. “He’s paralyzed, it’s some poison. Certain predators paralyze their prey, so they can better take their time to eat it. I think it’s what that thing was going to do.”

  “How long is it going to last?” asked Trypp.

  “I can’t say for certain, but from other examples I’ve seen, once it’s stopped being delivered to the victim, then it will usually wear off in time. I think all we can do now is wait.” Neenahwi looked back down at him and saw the gobs of slime dripping off everything above his knees. “Well, I guess we could clean him up, too.”

  The group felt uneasy resting on the barren patch of earth where they knew the stalactite monster lurked above, so they picked up Florian and took him to a soft bed of rust-colored moss to one side. They sat by him and waited, not sure of the passing time in the dark underground.

  All of a sudden, Florian sat up with a start, eyes wide, and open mouth sucking in a huge lungful of air.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Motega laughed. “I guess the sky finally fell on your head.” He helped him to his feet, and Neenahwi hugged him.

  “Good job you’re as tough as an ox,” she said, causing his face to regain some color.

  After a few minutes, the party was on their way again. Neenahwi at the front with the rest following in single file, all of them now paying more attention to the dark above their heads than the mosses under their feet.

  Ten minutes of walking and they reached the end of the garden cavern, a single exit passageway burrowed into the wall in front of them. They crept down the obviously crafted corridor, the walls too smooth to be natural. It twisted and turned, and soon a faint light was visible around the corner ahead.

  Neenahwi called a halt and gestured for them all to come close. “Ahead is going to be one of the entrances to the city of Unedar Halt,” she whispered. “You wait here, and I’ll go and announce ourselves.”

  “What?” said Mareth. “We’ve been slinking around, and you’re just going to walk up to them?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  She turned and walked around the corner, the passageway opening out to a small chamber with a large ornately decorated archway opposite her. Standing guard were three armored dwarves, all wielding pikes. “Hail, deep folk of Unedar Halt! It is Neenahwi, wizard, and daughter of Jyuth.”

  The dwarves turned, muttering something amongst themselves. They didn’t call out to her. They just took a threatening step forward. Turning up the intensity she called, “I’m here to see the forger. And you would be minded to take me to him.”

  Minutes passed. One of the guards had run to deliver the message that Neenahwi had arrived and asked to meet the forger, the youngest of the three on guard judging by his comparative lack of grey hair. Dwarves, they were called by most above-ground people; though, in fact, they weren’t much shorter than the usual malnourished resident of Kingshold.

  They were a different people in appearance, though, standing around five feet tall but broad and with muscular limbs and short necks. Their eyes were typically blue—sensitized to the dark, but still unable to see in the pitch black—and their ears were larger, giving them superior hearing. Yet, Neenahwi had always thought the people of Unedar Halt were not that different from most humans in appearance, but they were quite unique in other ways—not least, they had much longer lives than the people of Edland, even significantly longer than her own people.

  She had addressed the guard using the common tongue instead of their language, knowing, except for the most strident follower of Varcon, they would understand. The remaining two veteran guards were talking amongst themselves in Dwarvish in hushed tones. It was difficult for her to hear, but she could make out a few phrases.

  “This is why we shouldn’t be understaffed.”

  “Just walked right up.”

  “Too bloody many in the infirmary.”

  “Need to be ready when the Graks come again.”

  Her understanding of Dwarvish was pretty good, but she hadn’t heard the term Graks before. Were they under assault by goblins again or some other creature from beneath the earth? />
  After what seemed like an eternity of standing around (though her comrades had long since settled on the floor and rested their eyes after the exertions of the day), the messenger guard returned with a dwarf at his side. He had long, white hair, braided beard, but lacking the spectacles she had often seen him wear above ground to protect his eyes from the bright light of the sun.

  “Keybearer.” Neenahwi gave a deep bow and kicked Motega where he lay on the ground, gesturing for him to stand. “It’s good to see you again, Egyed.”

  “And it’s always a pleasure to see you, too, Lady Neenahwi,” he said, returning a deep flamboyant bow, mischievous smile peeking out from his beard. “Without Jyuth, I see. But it seems you picked up some other waifs and strays on the way here. Can I remind you, you are allowed to use the front door? Sneaking around in the dark is liable to get you pegged for thieves and a quarrel in the guts.”

  “We have good reasons for wanting our visit to remain secret to others in Kingshold. At least for now,” said Neenahwi. “We wish to see the forger.”

  “So, I heard from this young guard here. And why would that be? He’s a very busy man.”

  “Please, Egyed, I ask that you trust me in this matter. I’ll tell you both at the same time. Can we see him?”

  The dwarf laughed. “Of course. I already sent word to him. You know you’re always welcome after your help last year with the spectre. Come, follow me.”

  Neenahwi set off to follow the keybearer and gestured for Mareth and the others to follow. They passed by the guards unmolested, the surprise on Florian’s face clear as he was allowed to keep his weapons as he entered the city.

  “The deep people are deeply respectful of each other’s weapons. It’s a great insult to touch someone else’s arms,” she informed him.

  Walking alongside the dwarf, Neenahwi stepped through the short tunnel entrance and into a vast cavern that was the center of Unedar Halt. Its scale always took her breath away.