Kelven's Riddle: The Mountain at the Middle of the World

by Daniel T Hylton

  For several hours he worked his way up the stone stairway on his hands and knees. As his amazement at the novelty of his situation ebbed, and his fear eased as he remained unmolested in the sinister darkness, he began to be hungry. His knees were sore and he was tired. The sweetroot in his pockets had been turned to mush by his ordeal in the siphon, but he decided that he should consume whatever nutrition the soggy mess still contained before it became completely inedible. Sitting on the stairway in the dark he ate all but a small piece of the mushy pulp and after a bit felt revived. Then, once again turning to face the unseen stairway, he went on.

  On and on, up through the darkness, wearing his knees away on the stone, he crawled for hours. Finally, as he was nearing exhaustion, he came upon another level place in the cavern. This space was small and square and surrounded by a short wall of rock. Exploring ahead in the dark, Aram discovered that the stairway ascended again after a few feet. He’d come to a kind of way station, about a hundred feet square. At the back there was a corner in the wall and he lay down there. Despite the pain in his knees, the totality of the darkness and the coolness of the air, exhaustion took him and he slept.

  When he awoke his joints and muscles were stiff and he was very cold. The absolute lack of light was disconcerting even after he remembered where he was. He ate the bit of food he’d saved from the day before and then stood up gingerly and massaged his sore muscles. He wasn’t very thirsty because of the humid, cool conditions underground but his need for water and nutrition were problems that would eventually have to be addressed.

  After loosening his aching muscles, he felt around until he found the stairway leading up and continued his climb. This time he did not crawl, but stepped carefully up; his knees would not take much more punishment and still function. Again there were no walls and the steps seemed to wind back and forth as they climbed upward across the rising rock. It was a difficult task negotiating the steps in complete darkness. Every so often, he found it necessary to lean forward and rest for a few moments with his hands on the steps in order to regain his sense of balance.

  Compounding the fatigue wrought of the unending physical strain, the utter darkness also began to wear on him psychologically. It was frustrating to have only two dependable senses of direction—up and down—at his disposal, and to have no real sense of his surroundings or his progress. At least he seemed to be alone under the earth. If there were an enemy about, surely that enemy would have attacked him as he slept.

  He came upon several more of the way stations throughout that day as the stairway ascended up into the subterranean night. The reason for the staircase’s existence puzzled him. Who lived in this dark place and had gone to such trouble to gain access down through the earth to the river? Where were they now? The vast underground cavern seemed deserted. At no time did he hear anything out in the darkness to suggest that he was not alone. Whenever he stumbled and banged his boot or slapped his hand against the stone, the echo of that sound was all that the darkness returned.

  He realized, however, that if he were threatened at any time, there would probably be little warning so there was no point in worrying about the possibility of assault. Besides, he’d been through so much already, the fact that he was still alive made him feel as if he were charmed. The one concern that grew in him was the lack of food and the onset of thirst. He needed desperately to get out onto the surface of the world where the gift of vision would be returned to him and he could attend to those needs.

  There was no way of telling time’s passage or whether it was day or night, so he trusted his body. When he was awake he climbed the seemingly endless stairway; when he grew tired, he went to the next way station and slept. After two more sleep periods, the long stair ended and he came out into a wide level avenue.

  By carefully exploring in the dark, he learned that on one side, the side where he’d ascended, a low intricate wall of stone marked the extent of the avenue. On the other side was a vertical wall of indeterminate height. The avenue was about thirty feet across but there was no way of determining in the darkness how far it extended in either direction.

  He decided to follow the wall to his right, because he still believed that he was just inside the confines of the mountain in that direction. He did not go very far along the wall until he discovered a doorway leading to his left into the rock. On a whim he decided to explore the tunnel beyond. The hallway led back into solid rock and continued for a good distance in a straight line. Every few yards along the corridor his hand touched extrusions from the wall. He surmised that, once upon a time, they had been used to hold some kind of light source. Once, to the left, he found a small square room with nothing in it, so after walking the perimeter he went back out and continued along the corridor. His energy for that cycle wore out before he found an end to the tunnel, so, thirsty and very hungry, he curled into a ball along the wall and slept.

  In his sleep there was a curious distant sound that grew no nearer as he slept yet remained constant. He dreamed of wind and storms. When he woke and lay groggily against the wall, rubbing his aching joints, he slowly realized that the sound that had haunted his sleep was perceptible to his waking ear. It was a curious sound. He couldn’t decide whether it was a kind of hissing or a gurgling. It emanated from along the corridor to his front so he eased cautiously along the wall in that direction. As he did, the sound grew clearer. Finally he knew what it was. It was the sound of running water, a tiny stream.

  A short way further along the corridor he found a circular indention in the wall on the right hand side. Feeling with his hands along the rounded back wall of the indentation, he discovered a pipe that extruded a few inches from the wall from which a stream of water poured into a drain at the floor. Thirsty enough to care nothing about the quality of the stream of water, Aram put his face into it and drank deeply and long. The water was sweet and cold and seemed to pour its refreshing strength straight into his muscle and sinew. He wondered how many more outlets he would find and decided to believe that in the level of the subterranean structure where he now was, they might be a regular thing. If that proved true, his only remaining problem, beside the continuing blindness, was the lack of food.

  The corridor went on for two or three hour’s worth of walking, even though he was moving faster now. He came upon another water station and again drank his fill. A few steps beyond the water station, he came out into a large open space. The corridor ended and the walls went straight away from him at right angles to the corridor in both directions. He decided to step cautiously out into the open space. Almost immediately, he ran into another wall. He’d come to an intersection. This new corridor ran at right angles to the one that he’d just exited. Again, after consideration, he decided to go to the right, toward what he hoped eventually would be an outlet from the mountain.

  This time, in order to inject some kind of routine into his journey through the dark, he went along the left wall as he groped his way forward. That way, if he came to another intersection, he would have an idea of its relationship to the progress he’d already made and he could continue on in an orderly manner. Again, there were extrusions in the walls and every so often, there were more of the water spigots though many were evidently plugged and did not flow. Hunger began to exert its influence, making him weak, and his forward progress became slower.

  After a short distance, he found another intersection and again he was forced to choose between going right or left. Going right would take him back toward the way he’d come so again he decided to go to the left. Blinded by the absolute lack of light, there was no way for him to know whether his decisions were good or bad, so he decided to ignore any attempt at logistics and just be methodical.

  This corridor was like both the earlier ones. There were extrusions along the walls, small rooms containing nothing, and periodic water supplies. Aram stopped exploring the occasional small rooms. It was a waste of both time and precious effort.

  The corridor was not as long as the previ
ous two had been, and he came to the end of it quickly. He was nearly exhausted and debilitated by hunger, so he stepped across the open space toward what he expected would be another wall. But there was nothing. Exploratory trips to either side found only more empty space. He took several cautious steps out into the open and finally touched stone with his outstretched hand. But it wasn’t a smooth, straight wall. It turned out to be a rounded structure. He walked slowly around it, letting his hand brush along the surface, and discovered that it seemed to be almost perfectly circular, perhaps six feet or so in diameter.

  In the dark, he couldn’t be exactly sure of when he’d made a full circuit of the rounded structure, and he wasn’t certain of the way back to the wall containing the corridor. He made a calculation and with his hand outstretched, moved in the direction he thought was right. In three steps his leg pushed against something that caught his leg just above the knee.

  Reaching down, he felt a wide flat stone surface like that of a table, covered with something that felt like soot or dust to his probing fingertips. It was about four feet wide and stretched away from him further than he could reach. His strength was completely spent by this time, so he lay down next to the table-like object on the floor and tried to sleep. The endless night had wearied him, body and soul; had sapped his strength, drained his courage, and depressed his spirit. He was exhausted by the cloying darkness and weakened by a desperate need for food.

  That night, he dreamed of finding a large patch of sweetroot on a bright sunny day. Birds sang in branches overhead and sunlight filtered down through the leaves. When he awoke, he thought that he was still lost in the dream.

  He could see.

  Just a little, but he could see.

  There was faint light all around him, just enough that he could make out dim shapes in the gloom. It was still too dark to determine the extent of the chamber, but he was undoubtedly in an extremely large room. The object next to him was in fact a table, about four feet wide and ten feet long with benches to either side. The large round object he’d circumnavigated earlier was an enormous column of stone, rising up and disappearing into the gloom overhead.

  He could not locate the source of the light. Indeed, it was so dim it seemed to be not much more than a lessening of the dark. But even as he sat rubbing his sore muscles and massaging his empty stomach, the light grew. In a few minutes he could see to the far side of the great hall in which he sat. A few minutes more and yellow light streamed in from a point high in the ceiling to his right, flooding the room.

  It was the morning sun, somehow finding its way inside through secret passages in the upper reaches of the chamber.

  And a magnificent chamber it was. It was more than fifty feet across at least and three or four times as long. It was oriented so that the light from the sun streaming from the east lit it fully from end to end. Six feet or so out from the walls on each side were rows of enormous columns extending from the floor to the ceiling. Beginning at a point a few feet above his head, the columns were intricately carved with leafy vines laden with fruit. At the top, where they touched the ceiling, the columns spread out like the canopies of trees.

  The center of the chamber was filled with rows of tables. There were four rows with a wide aisle between the center two rows. At the far end of the hall, away from the sun, there was a raised dais with another long table turned crossways. Some of the tables and benches were broken down and over everything lay the deep, thick grime of centuries. Dusty and silent, the great hall had the appearance and the feel of utter abandonment. Aram had leapt to his feet when the sunlight had revealed his remarkable surroundings, fearing discovery, but now, looking around, he knew instinctively that the builders of this great hall, whoever they were, were gone.

  The most magnificent aspect of the great hall was revealed when Aram walked out into the center aisle and gazed around. Adorning the walls high up off the floor and running all the way around the chamber were beautiful frescoes. In magnificent color, they portrayed tall, magnificently dressed men and women engaged in various activities. The majority of the frescoes were of men, clad in armor, performing feats of warfare. Though the color in all of the frescoes was slightly dulled by a covering of the dust of countless ages, and some were streaked with vertical water stains, they were nonetheless vivid and beautiful.

  Beneath the frescoes there were symbols, cursive, linear, and sweeping—writing, Aram assumed; he knew of such things though he had never learned to read—that ran around the walls in a long, broken line. The written language of whoever it was that built this hall, it no doubt described the magnificent achievements of those men and women depicted in the frescoes.

  Aram slowly walked the length of the hall, gazing around himself in awe. One fresco in particular, at the very front of the hall where the table was turned crossways on the dais, intrigued him. It depicted a tall man with tanned skin, vividly green eyes, and long black hair, dressed in silver armor, sitting astride a magnificent black beast. It was not a depiction of a clumsy, stout ox; this animal was tall and well proportioned with long legs and a proud arching neck.

  The animal was also protected by armor and the man upon his back held a bright sword aloft as if in victory. Near him stood a beautiful, dark-haired woman dressed in white, looking down the length of the hall. She had one hand on the neck of the beast, in the other she held the end of a rainbow that arced upward and disappeared into a field of stars in a black sky.

  Aram climbed the dais and looked down through the hall toward the light source high in the ceiling. It was a magnificent great hall, worthy of a mighty king, but it was obvious from the deep layers of dust and heavily mildewed water stains on the walls that none of the people depicted in the frescoes had sat in it for a very long time.

  At the far end of the hall from whence came the light, there was a broad arch that led beyond to another, brighter room. Aram made his way between the tables through the hall and out through the arch. He found himself in a large brightly-lit foyer that stretched away in both directions into other large halls. Over his head the rays of sunlight came in through open arches high in the stone wall. Straight ahead, out through another set of arches was a broad area of sunlit stone pavement and beyond that he saw a wide and fair green land bounded in the distance by forested hills and tall mountains over which burst the morning sun. He’d come out of the mountain into a magical place.

  V

  Aram went out through the arches onto the broad paved area that was bordered on the far side by a pillared stone railing overlooking a wide green valley posited with groves of trees. The paved court was at least a thousand feet broad and stretched for a mile or more away from him in both directions along the front of the mountain. Looking back, he saw that the stone in the face of the mountain fronting the court had been magnificently worked to create a tall, imposing façade the color of a pale rose.

  The facade was broken at regular intervals by several series of arches leading back into the mountain. It appeared to Aram that an enormous mansion had been carved into the stone face of the mountain. He walked out across the pavement a ways toward the distant railing and turned to look back again. The sight he beheld nearly dropped him to his knees.

  It was not merely a mansion; it was a city of mansions, some of which were veritable palaces, carved from the living rock, rising in seemingly endless splendor up the side of the mountain, and bathed in the glorious light of the morning sun.

  The sight of it was stunning; especially to a man who’d seen nothing more substantial than wooden sheds and stone huts in the whole of his life. Tall arches, windows, verandas, and magnificent facades were stacked above him to a dizzying height. Mansion upon mansion upon mansion. Here and there, where before the making of the city there had been ridges between the furrows in the ancient mountainside, stood tall towers of solid stone, anchored in the living rock of the mountain itself.

  The rock from which the city had been carved was cast in varying shades of tan, dark red, and pa
le rose; in places there were streaks of white that dazzled the eye. And there were patches of green vegetation everywhere, trees that reared their heads above the tops of stone walls, and flowering shrubs that peered out of hidden courtyards.

  The city appeared to be about three or four miles square as it rose up the side of the mountain. On either side the city was bounded by the rough flanks of the vast sloping rock and behind it the mountain became black as iron as it rose up to a great height where, far away, snow gleamed on the northern sides of towering ramparts. Set in the midst of this black fastness, the city gleamed like a multi-colored jewel. It was astonishing to Aram that such a thing could be created or that having been created could be abandoned.

  But such was evidently the case. There was no movement or sound except the wind sighing through empty windows and porticos. Whatever magnificent race of beings had made this place, they were gone, claimed by some unknown calamity in a distant age long past. He turned away and went to the rail to examine the valley below.

  Before him spread a very broad and very green land. Between the city and the distant forested mountains lay a rumpled valley of meandering streams, lush meadows, and knotted, dense clumps of trees. Out in the valley, four or five miles distant, he saw the glint of sunlight on water. A dark green coiling line of trees marked it as a river. Judging from the lay of the ground, the river flowed from north to south, from his left to his right.

  Several miles to the north, on his left, the valley tumbled up into a tangled jumble of grassy foothills spotted with trees. Beyond them were higher, timbered hills and behind them there rose the fierce gray stone of high, wild mountains marching out of view into the north. There were a few craggy peaks rising above the forested mountains to the east as well but they were a bit gentler in aspect than those to the north.