by D. H. Dunn
“None taken,” Drew said, turning to check on Upala’s progress. She glanced back at him, causing his heart to flutter as if he were in high school and seeing his sweetheart. Was he that lonely or was she that special? He shook his head against his musings. There were certainly more important things to focus on.
“Take me to them please Trillip,” Merin said.
“With certainty, they are waiting for you just inside the antechamber,” Trillip said with a bow and a wave, indicating the entrance to the lower library.
Though he was taller and thinner, he reminded Drew of Kaditula with his flourishes and mannerisms. He wondered if all the men of the Rakhum culture behaved this way.
Merin ran forward, kicking up snow as she did. Her woolen hat blew off, allowing her dark hair to shift in the wind. Drew made a note of where the cap landed, then noticed Trillip had done the same.
“My Lady Upala,” Trillip said, bowing as she approached. Gone was the smile with which the man had greeted Merin, replaced with a more fearful expression and an even more respectful tone. “It is well to see you back among us, my lady.”
“Yes, it is well to see you,” Drew said with a wink, immediately embarrassed he had done so.
Upala smiled back at him, slight perspiration visible on her brow. Drew suspected the exertion was due to how she rarely made the descent, not to mention her ordeal in the Under. According to Merin, Upala often stayed at one of her two libraries for years, so Drew supposed she wasn’t used to all the climbing.
“I am glad you are alive and unharmed, good attendant Trillip,” Upala said.
Trillip took a step back, his mouth slightly open.
“I am. Uh, thank--thank you, my Lady.”
Drew frowned, wondering if Upala had ever used Trillip’s name before, or expressed an interest in his well-being. It was growing clear the person she had been before was more reminiscent of bad leaders he had seen in the military than the woman he now was growing to know. That other person was someone she had likely been for hundreds of years, maybe more.
Could someone truly change after that much time?
“We saw the flares and descended immediately,” Upala said. “Then we were attacked on the descent. Snowslicks, though only through the skill of Drew were we able to survive. Could you tell me what has happened?”
“Such a question,” Trillip said, then quickly added. “I mean no offense, my lady. It is simply that a great deal has happened in the several months of your absence.”
“Please, Trillip. What has transpired?”
“An attack, as you can see some evidence of. I had arrived a few hours earlier myself, leading the weekly supply caravan-”
“Weekly supply caravan?” Upala asked. ”Why is the library only being supplied weekly?”
“Coordinator Harliss reduced the frequency several weeks ago my Lady. Once we arrived this morning, it became clear the library had been--I cannot call it an attack, my lady.”
He paused, giving Drew the impression he was holding something down inside him, as if the expression of his horror was embarrassing to Trillip. He continued after releasing a ragged breath.
“It was a slaughter, my Lady. Each and every guard struck down with precision. The only survivors the caravan soldiers and I could find were the children, who were hidden at the instruction of Miss Merin’s daughter, saving them.”
“Who?” Upala asked. “Who attacked? My brother’s people?”
“I cannot say, my lady. Perhaps Miss Merin will be able to tell, she is more versed in such things.”
“How many dead?” Drew asked, trying to process all the information. The unease that had started with his strange healing now darkened further. The last thing he had expected to enter was another battlefield. “How long ago?”
“I do not know how much time has passed, good sir. I count the deaths of ten guards, each kill was clean and swift. There is little blood to be found, most seemed to have died from a single strike.”
“Poison perhaps,” Drew mused. At least Merin’s children were safe.
“Ten guards you say, Trillip? Ten?” Upala took a step forward, the man moving back in response.
Drew could feel the tension in Upala rising, her hands opening and closing. ”There should be thirty guards there, at the least. Especially considering Kater’s attack at the summit library.”
“Yes, my lady. After the attack and your loss . . . my lady many feared you gone forever, though I should add, I myself did not give up hope. To continue, after the attack on the summit, Coordinator Harliss thought it best to consolidate our forces at Rogek Shad, to keep the city safe.”
“Did she indeed?” Upala turned on her heel, striding through the snow toward the entrance of the library. “I will need to address that decision with her once we are off the mountain.” Drew ran after Upala, leaving a surprised Trillip standing in the snow.
Walking through the stone archway that marked the entrance to the lower library, Drew was immediately relieved to be out of the elements. There was a warmth coming from ahead, the smell of a fire crisp in the air.
A short hallway followed, the ceiling low enough that Drew could feel his hair brushing against the stone. It was narrow enough that he could see little ahead of him save Upala’s form, silhouetted against the firelight of the room they were approaching.
The antechamber of the lower library was far more impressive to Drew than its exterior prepared him for. The room was large, Drew guessed at least a hundred feet wide and nearly half of that deep, with high ceilings held in place by large, wooden beams. Adorning the stone walls were more than a dozen tapestries in various states of disrepair, though many of them were still whole enough to present images. The tapestries he could make out each featured a single animal with a long neck and a wide, leathery wingspan. Drew was surprised to see such a recognizable creature here in another world, even if it was one of myth.
“Dragons?” he asked Upala, who nodded.
“My people’s great Fear.” She cast her hands wide around the chamber. “These represent the Fourteen Fears, the great Dragons which both created my race and then nearly exterminated the Manad Vhan when we rebelled against them.”
Studying the images more, Drew could make out a mountain on several of the artworks, as well as lettering in a language he could not understand.
“The Dragons created the Manad Vhan?” he asked, walking farther into the chamber. He was surprised at how well the cold was held at bay. More heat emanated from the wide entryway ahead where he saw the red and orange flicker of a fire.
“Created us to be servants, yes, if the writings we have found here are to be believed. We are . . . improved versions of the Rakhum, whom the Dragons wished to use but found too fragile for their purposes. Thus, we are made in the image of the Rakhum but possess far greater resiliency.”
“So they created you, but I’m guessing they later turned on you?”
“Yes,” Upala said, walking closer. A new heat built inside him just from her proximity. “Or we on them. Either way, the Dragons nearly removed the Manad Vhan from existence, back in a time before our remembering, an age we only know of because of the writings stored here. A dragon killed our parents, while Kater and I were still children. Thus we became lost here, among the Rakhum of this region.”
Drew peered more closely at the nearest tapestry, which showed a green-and-white lizard with waves of some sort coming from its head. The mountain in the backdrop seemed familiar, his mind placing it quickly.
“This looks like a mountain I know. Lhotse, another peak very close to Everest in my world.”
“That is the dragon we called The Thread. Our great hero Orami Feram imprisoned it at the mountain’s peak, one of the last of the Fourteen to be subdued.”
She glanced around the room, then took Drew’s hand. He could feel her pulse underneath her skin, his heart pounding as it tried to match her rhythm.
“Drew, I know you have much to ask and I have much to explain. I
will tell you it all, both what I know, and the myths I believe. At this moment though, I need to explore the impact of this attack. I owe these people. I owe them answers.”
“Of course,” Drew said, his cheeks flushing. He intended to release her hand but found himself squeezing it tighter. “There is all the time in the world to give me a history lesson. Let’s go see to Merin and find out what’s going on.”
She led him out of the chamber and through a series of passages, Drew doing his best to keep his mind on the matters at hand.
Glancing at the many small rooms that passed on both the left and right, he saw they primarily contained wooden cases filled with scrolls, along with the occasional rune-covered stone tablet.
He thought of asking Upala how old all of this excavated material was, but decided against it.
This is the work of Merin’s people, he reminded himself. Work that they did not for their own benefit, but at the insistence of the woman whose fingers now intertwined his own.
The image of generations of Rakhum hollowing out these tunnels struck another note of discord inside him. Upala had seemed nothing but remorseful for her past, and yet he began to wonder if he really knew just how dark that past was.
Of course, there is no shortage of darkness in your own past, Adley, he reminded himself.
He sighed as Upala led them into a broad chamber, the heat from another fire bringing some warmth to his disposition.
Merin was waiting for them in the large space, her children on either side of her. They were huddled together against an entryway deep in the room, on the wall farthest from Drew.
Drew could tell from the looks on their faces that she had told them the fate of their father. The boy was hugging his mother tightly, the tall woman kneeling with one arm around her son. Next to her, her daughter was stone faced as she looked around the room, her eyes focusing on nothing. The girl had glanced at Drew as he entered. He looked away, unsure of what he might say or do that would be appropriate. The look in the girl’s eyes was one he knew well.
He directed his gaze around the room, hoping to avoid the girl’s eyes and the too-familiar look in them.
Drew reasoned this room was about the same size as the antechamber, but this space was circular. A huge fire burned in the center, the fire pit taking up about a quarter of the total space. The smoke from the fire exited the room through a circular chimney, which Drew surmised must exhaust somewhere on the mountain. He did not recall seeing or smelling any smoke outside, but he had not been looking for it either.
There was little other detail in the room besides the fire. The walls were smooth and well carved, just as the antechamber had been. In the half of the room Drew and Upala entered from, the walls were bare save for the light dancing upon them from the flames. The other half of the room contained a half dozen open entrances to hallways, each of them dark passages that quickly bent out of Drew’s sight.
Trillip stood next to the fire, his body an unmoving straight line. Drew did not recall seeing the man walk past them in the antechamber, yet he was here ahead of them all the same.
With a gasp as his eyes adjusted to the light, Drew made out the bodies that had been collected in a small alcove, covered in both sheets and shadows, well concealed from the children.
He stepped closer to the alcove, kneeling and lifting the fabric covering the unmoving shapes.
There were three corpses, all dressed similar to Trillip in simple, brown robes with hoods. Though none had the thin, red sash that Trillip was wearing. Someone had turned the bodies towards the wall, hiding the faces, but he could still tell that one of the bodies was female and the other two, male.
All three of the corpses showed little blood, most of it near the head and shoulders. If they were killed by slit throats, there was less blood than Drew would have expected. Trillip noticed the focus of his attention and walked over to them.
The efficiency was shocking, these killings had been quick. Drew suspected these men barely knew they were being attacked before it was over. That sounded nothing like the Kater he had known in the Under.
But if Kater’s people were not responsible, who was?
“My lady,” Trillip said, bowing to Upala. He favored Drew with a nervous smile, and Drew suspected Trillip was concerned about how to address him. He struck Drew as the sort of man who liked protocol and procedure. He had known many such men in the Navy.
“The bodies were found at the entrances to the two unfinished excavations.” Trillip whispered while pointing, indicating two dark tunnels farthest from where Merin still comforted her children. Seeing their interest in the investigation, Drew watched her send them toward the antechamber. Walking away as a pair, older sister leading, they reminded him of himself and Artie.
He felt a familiar pang inside him, and he quickly locked the mental doors before more memories came pouring in. He didn’t need the flood of grief right now.
“The unfinished chambers?” Upala asked, nodding to Merin as she joined them. “There is little of value we have discovered in those directions. Hundreds of inert portals, unmapped and dangerous. The research that would have held value to Kater’s people would have been in the other directions.”
“Do we know if these attackers were Kater’s people?” Drew asked. “Maybe they were working for someone else?”
“There is no one else,” Merin said. “In this valley, there are only the peoples of Rogek Shad and Nalam Wast, the Rakhum under Upala’s control and Kater’s.” Drew noted the emphasis Merin used on the word ‘control.’ It seemed to him less like Upala controlled than Kater, but there was still a lot he didn’t know about the situation.
Trillip stiffened in response to Merin’s reply, while Upala simply lowered her head.
Merin walked over to the nearest body, pulling it gently away from the wall and removing the hood. Empty eyes stared back, a thin, red cut across the man’s throat. “This is precision work, as Trillip said. I am confused. Kater’s people are not known for such tactics. In the rare events they attack, it is with brute force and Kater’s technology. These guards were well trained, yet they were dispatched easily.”
Upala joined Merin at the fallen guard, kneeling before him. “I know this man. His face, it is familiar.”
Drew followed, but kept a few steps away. The bodies, with their unblinking eyes, made it impossible to keep his memories at bay.
It was too reminiscent of the corpses that floated alongside him in the Indian Ocean after the sinking of the Machias. Their eyes looking at him even in death, questioning his actions.
Merin stood, her jaw set.
“His name was Lernidan. He served you in the upper library for the past ten years, often personally. You would have seen him every day, walked by his face every day. Yet you do not know his name.”
“Merin,” Drew said, taking a step forward. He was torn, feeling a desire to defend Upala, yet the growing awareness of just how absent a leader she seemed to have been gave him pause.
Upala stood to face the taller Rakhum, her hands open. “It is acceptable, Drew. It is fair and I do not need to be protected from it. Merin, there is nothing I can say that will rewrite the history I have here. I did not honor this man in life, perhaps you can help me honor him in death.”
“I can make the necessary arrangements, my lady,” Trillip said, drawing a glare from Merin. “Or perhaps that was not what my lady meant.”
“Merin, you can see that Upala is trying to acknowledge past mistakes here.” Drew spoke in Upala’s defense, but he could feel some of his own confidence under siege. Upala’s guilt felt far too familiar to Drew, Merin’s anger equally so.
What would he have said to the families of the lives lost on his ship, how would he address the loved ones of those he had failed? In the end, he had only spoken to one, his own father who had slugged him across the jaw for his words.
He understood how Merin felt, but he also knew what it was like to be in Upala’s position.
Meri
n addressed him, eyes still set and fixed on Upala. “Drew, I owe you much, but do not pretend to understand what has happened here. This is not your world. Lying here is a man Kad and I worked with, ate with, laughed with. He died defending my children.” She spoke to Upala again, “And I choose to believe that is what he was here defending, not old Manad Vhan paintings and scrolls. You claim to have learned a new perspective from your time in that crystal in the Under, and I have seen evidence of this. You offer apology, and it seems earnest.”
She took another step closer to Upala, who did not back away. The two women were nearly eye to eye, Merin’s intense glare peering down into Upala’s sorrowful one.
“My lady. You may offer apology in good faith, but that does not require me to accept it. Too many of my people have died while you studied your books and scrolls, leaving the knowing of names to underlings like myself and Harliss. If you wish to climb to forgiveness, you will find that mountain is far higher than Ish Rav Partha.”
Trillip opened his mouth to speak, when a scream ripped through the chamber. Drew froze, focusing on the sound. An adult male scream, not one of the children. It was cut off nearly as quickly as it began.
A chill ran up his spine. Whoever murdered the guards with such precision might still be here.
“I thought we were alone here!” Drew moved closer to the room’s exit, while looking to Trillip for answers.
“I did bring one of our guards with me from Rogek Shad. He wanted to explore the back passages for clues.” Trillip said, his eyes wide with concern.
“Come on--it was down that farthest corridor.” Drew broke into a run, Merin and Upala right beside him as the screams began anew. As he charged forward, his stomach began to tie itself in knots. Chasing after an assassin, with not even an ice axe to defend himself with.
“Trillip,” Merin cried from just behind him. “Please see to the children!”
As a trio, they followed the noise into the passageway, quickly coming to an intersection. As one, Drew and Merin looked left and right, both sides silent and with equal lighting.