“The finest Master,” said Samga.
“Now I am off to my chambers. I simply must rest. And the first creature to disturb me will not remain a creature. Am I understood?”
Samga nodded. Dimsbury left. Samga remained for a moment, considering the horrible scene before him. Beneath Asarah’s choking sobs, could hear the labored, gurgling breathing of the dying lad. He twitched his head once, then hurried off to his duties.
35
Boltac awoke to more pain than he’d realized the world could hold. It was a universe of pain, a cosmos of pain, and he was at the center of it. In the darkness there was only pain. He tried to open his eyes and there was pain. He tried to close his half-opened eyes and there was pain. His body made the mistake of trying to cough. Then the darkness took him again. He didn’t even have time to ask how it might be that he was still alive.
An age, a time, or a moment later, he awoke again. There was a soft rustling in the darkness beside him, and he felt the touch of many creatures he could not see. It was not comforting.
“Wha–” he tried to ask, but too many ribs were broken for him to speak. He wheezed in pain. The soft touches–were they hands, or something else?–migrated to his side. Under their strange caresses, the pain eased. As he controlled his loud and labored breathing, he became aware of a low, whispered song all around him. It disappeared into the blackness with no echo, as if he were in a room so vast as to have no walls.
After a time, the pain in his side was soothed. His breathing came more easily. Unexpectedly, his body was wracked with sobs. In that place of dry darkness, tears streamed down his face and some infinite softness blotted them away. “I should be dead,” Boltac said at last.
“Someday, you will be,” said the voice in the darkness.
“Is this Magic?”
“Magic? We are merely flawed creatures caring for one of our kind. But there is a Magic in that, yes.”
The voice said nothing else. The silence made Boltac nervous, so he joked, “I guess this bottomless pit had a bottom after all.”
“There is no such thing as a bottomless pit,” said the voice in the darkness.
“No such thing as a free lunch either,” said Boltac. “So, who are you and why are you helping me?”
“We are the fallen ones, the discarded ones. The ones that were made, but not unmade.”
“En-henh,” Boltac said, trying to sit up and immediately regretting it.
“Be still. Your kind was also made, once. And you, as broken as you are, are not beyond salvation, if you will allow it.”
“Ho-oh boy. What is going on here? Am I dead? Did I have to pay for own my funeral?”
“We have been shaped and have learned something of the shaping of life. We are the forgotten ones. The made and discarded.”
“Wait, wait, you are…”
“The Wizard’s forgotten sons. The ones he made and thought to unmake by discarding us in this place.”
“So, uh, forgive me if this is a rude question, but why aren’t ya dead? For that matter, how come I’m still here?”
“When he made us, he did not weave a full spell. He did not allow for the possibility of death. So we must go on for eternity.”
“Wait? You mean you can’t die?”
“A horse can die, for it is alive. But we are like the carriage. We are not alive, but we function. We cannot die. Only fall apart for all eternity. Unless…”
The singing stopped.
“Unless what? What’s the catch? There’s always a catch,” said Boltac.
“We have done all we can for you.”
“And thanks for that. I don’t feel good, but I don’t feel dead either.”
“No life should be discarded.”
“You don’t get around much do you?” Boltac asked the voice. “Who are you? Not the plural you, not youse, but you in particular.”
“I am the UnderKing, First among the Broken.”
“Oh, sorry about that, your honor, my liege, whatever. I didn’t realize your kind had nobles.”
“We did not. But in the darkness, nobility is called forth by need.”
“En-henh? Come again?”
The UnderKing paused for a long time before continuing. “The Flame, the one the Wizard worships.”
“You mean the ‘Source of All Magic’?”
“The very one. We do not know how he came to hold it. We only know that it makes him powerful beyond all those who have come before him. When once his Magic is depleted, one touch of the Flame restores him.”
“But there’s a catch,” said Boltac, “There’s always a catch. No such thing as a free bottomless pit.”
“The Wizard’s Magic–ALL Magic–draws from the source. If the Flame of Magic is extinguished, Magic and everything that it has wrought will end… and we will be released.”
“So, ya telling me there’s a way to snuff out Magic? Like a candle?”
“Yes,” said the UnderKing, “but only a Hero, a true Hero, one Chosen by fate and circumstance can overcome the Wizard and quench the torrent of Magic. That is why you–”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute! You’re saying I’m the Chosen One? Like Chosen? Look buddy, no offense, but I’m just a guy trying to make a coin in this world, you understand?”
“In your heart, there is Love.”
“Yeah. Love of coin.”
“There is more,” said the UnderKing. “Do not lie to me. Do not lie in this place, of all places. There is no bargain you can make with the final darkness.”
“There’s always room to negotiate.”
“Not at the very end.”
“C’mon, all the stories and the sagas and the miracle turnarounds…?”
Silence.
“Look, I’m not your guy. I’m sorry. The guy you wanted, your Hero, is lying up there in a pool of his own blood and entrails. He was an idiot, but he was the better man. No thought for himself at all. What a jackass! I wish I could be like him, but I’m not. I’m not your Hero, so…”
“What of the girl?” the UnderKing asked.
“What, Asarah? Okay, look, I love her. I do. And I figured it out too late. I blew it. So now I’m here, where ever the hell here is. I got the kid killed and there’s nuttin’ I can do about any of it. It sucks, but that’s business. I can’t save her. I… can’t…”
Wise in the ways of patience, the UnderKing said nothing.
“I can’t even save myself. I thought I was a smart guy. I thought I had a clever plan, but now… none of my plans are clever. I’m just a fool. So, you know, kill me or whatever you’re going to do.”
“You are a broken thing,” said the UnderKing.
“Yeah. Broken. No resale value whatsoever. So what do I do now?”
“When in darkness, follow the light,” said the UnderKing as his voice retreated from Boltac.
“What? There’s no light down here. It’s the bottom of a bottomless pit!”
36
Boltac sat in the dark for a long time. There are many more gradations of darkness than the human eye can see. In fact, it is correct to say that humans cannot see any kind of darkness at all, only light. But there is always a catch. As Boltac stared into that endless night and saw nothing, he realized there was a patch of blackness that he couldn’t see, but it was a patch of blackness that he couldn’t see a little less than all the other blackness surrounding it.
Very slowly, and with many groans, he got to his feet. His clothes, what were left of them, were in tatters. But when he felt his limbs and torso, he realized that, somehow, he had been made whole. His ribs had stopped moving under his skin like a sack of broken sticks. The strange pads and paws of the Broken Ones had somehow set him to rights. For a moment, he considered that he might be a thing made, just as they were.
“You are a broken thing.” The UnderKing’s words echoed in his ears. In the vast silence surrounding him, the imagined voice was deafening.
Boltac took a step towards the less-dark darkness. It
was unnerving to walk blindly. He slid his foot across the floor, expecting a pit, or a knife in his back, or any one of a thousand injuries or tortures or traps that his mind conjured in the absence of anything to look at.
Even moving at a snail’s pace, Boltac broke out a cold sweat. But inch by inch, he moved forward. After a time he could not measure, he realized that the unseeable floor beneath his feet was sloping upward. But to where? How far had he fallen? There might have been no such thing as a bottomless pit, but there were surely deep, deep holes in the earth.
He came to a wall and felt his way along it in the dark. His hands clung to every fissure and rough place with greed and desperation, as if he could fall off into the darkness and be lost forever. As he walked, he was overcome with the hopelessness of his position. He was miles underground and could wander forever–or at least until dehydration killed him–without ever finding his way out.
“Follow the light?” Boltac called out. “Hey! I’m talking to you. I know there’s something out there… in here… whatever…” he said, assured at first, but his voice trailing off at the end. He thought for a while about all the somethings that could be out there in the darkness. Maybe yelling was a bad idea. Maybe breathing was a bad idea. Maybe everything was a bad idea.
Boltac laid his head against the wall and fought back tears. As silent sobs wracked his body, his necklace of charms made infinitesimal jingling noises against the stone. Did he have a ward against being trapped underground? He’d have to get one of those. When he got out of here that would be the first thing he would do. Surely those barbarous, tanned Southroners had a God of the UnderDark or some such. Who did the UnderKing worship, Boltac wondered? Somewhere, somebody had to have a charm against this kind of thing, and Boltac would find it.
Wiping his tears away with what remained of his sleeve, Boltac pressed on. A few steps later, he found an opening in the wall and in it, stairs. As he climbed, he realized that the steps were cut for a creature with a smaller stride than a human. It made climbing them even harder than climbing regular stairs. But even though his legs cramped and his lungs burned, he climbed. Not quickly. Not as a young man like Relan might, but slowly and without stopping.
• • •
When the sound of Boltac’s footsteps rising from the UnderDark had faded, Samga spoke to the UnderKing. “I told you he was not the one.”
“It is not done yet,” said the UnderKing.
“He’s no Chosen One. He cannot release us from The Master.”
“Maybe it is not the one who is Chosen who can save us, Samga. Maybe it is the one who chooses.”
“I have been away too long,” said Samga, turning to leave his King.
“I will await his return for a time.”
“Of course,” said Samga, “All you ever do is sit in the dark and wait.”
Samga followed his own scent-trail back to the secret fissure he would climb back to the Wizard’s dungeon. He had thought he was out range of the UnderKing, but all of a sudden his voice was there beside him.
“It is not all sitting and waiting, Samga. The darkness is where an Orc can look inward; here, there is nothing else to see.”
“We were made hollow. We are empty inside.”
“It is not done yet,” said the UnderKing, knowing that those words were always true.
37
Boltac stumbled through darkness for what felt like days. The stairs ended in another darkened level. Again, he felt his way towards the lighter darkness. He stumbled into walls. Once he almost fell into a pit. His nerves became numb to the constant strain, even as his hands cramped with the effort of extending outward as far as his fingers could reach. Eventually, the ache reached all the way to his shoulders.
He was on the verge of giving up, when he felt a faint stirring of air. It was not the stale reek of the depths. It was light and sweet, like a cool drink of water on a hot summer day. His lungs drank it in greedily, and he followed the scent and movement of that impossible breeze.
He rounded a corner and then he saw it. Light. Not the brightness of a new day dawning. Not even the faint light of a candle guttering its last spark in a pool of melted tallow. It was, perhaps, the faintest light a man can see. But compared to the void from which he had come it was a beacon to light his way. He hurried and fell. Got up and fell again. Climbed stairs using his hands and feet. Then a passage to the left, more stairs and there it was: a chink in the wall. A pure beam of sunlight in this darkened place.
He followed the beam to its source, a hole in an ancient stone door choked with vines on the other side. After a struggle with the stone, he was able to pull it open. Grass, vines, and sod fell in as he pushed his way out into the sunlight and open air.
He saw that he was high on the side of a mountain, facing east; the light was the sun shining through the forest canopy. Near him, a spring burbled down the slope. Boltac drank greedily from it. It was so clear and cold it made his teeth ache. When he splashed it upon his shaven pate, the shock of it sparked through him an emotion that was very much like hope. Realizing he was alive, free, and in the light of a new day, Boltac laughed as he had not laughed for years.
A short walk in the sunlight, a gentle stroll downhill and around the base of this mountain would put him on the road back home. He had it on good authority that some people even enjoyed such walks in the woods.
And then what? Sell what was left in his store. Buy a boat and head south? A leisurely drift down the river Swift. Some fishing along the way. Bonfires on the riverbank at night.
And then what? A shop or trading stall in Yorn or in the swamp-ringed Squalipoor? Surely he would not stop in Shatnapur? That would be too close to Robrecht. Too close to memories. Too close to…
And then what? Build a business again. Make back something of the fortune he’d lost. He could do it. Wasn’t he a lucky man? As he thought this, he jangled the necklace of charms and wards. A lucky man. Luck earned with hard work and the money it had brought.
And then what? His ease in old age, perhaps a place to put his feet up? He wasn’t too old to dream of a family. A vineyard, something productive, not too far out of a city, but away from the bustle. And then, as an old man, the busy-ness of his life complete, he would put his feet on the hearth, sip the wine that was too good to sell, and he would have time to think.
To think of what? Boltac looked back toward the stone door through which he’d escaped. To think of Relan falling to the stone floor. The look of confusion on his face that said, “But this can’t happen. I am the Hero!” To think of Asarah, lost to him. As lost to him as if she were dead. But her scream, her wails, crying for him. Would he not hear that screaming echo for the rest of his life?
He turned away from the door. “No. It was a bad deal from the beginning, but you got away with your skin. It’s a sunk cost, Boltac. Take the hit and walk away.” He nodded to himself as if that ended the argument. Good. Sensible. Mercantile. Just a bad deal. But when he went to walk away, his feet moved in the wrong direction, back toward the door, toward Asarah and Relan, Glory and Treasure, Wizard and Orcs…
He stopped himself. “Who am I kidding?” he asked the bright new day. “I’m just gonna get myself killed. I’m not the Chosen One. Who chose me? Who ever would choose me? I’m not a Hero. I don’t have broad shoulders or Shining™ Armor. I’m not even young anymore.”
He fingered the necklace thick with charms and got an idea. It was a bad idea. But then, this whole thing had been a bad idea from the get-go. Boltac made his decision. He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “You make your own luck,” he said to no one, hoping he sounded more certain than he felt.
He took a deep breath of fresh air. He said goodbye to the trees and the green grass and the water pure and dancing through the rocks. The clouds parted and the sun was too bright. He squinted and bade a silent last goodbye to the world. Then he headed back into the darkness. It was a bad deal all right, thought Boltac. But he had made it, and he wasn’t going to brea
k it.
Was he putting his life at risk? Sure, thought Boltac. But that was nothing. It wasn’t just the sum of all his yesterdays he had put up to finance this ill-advised expedition. It was the promise of all his tomorrows. Unless he saw this thing through, there would be no ease by the fire. There would be no pleasure in shrewd trading and crisp profits. There would be no living with himself.
And Asarah? thought Boltac. She Loves me not. But I Love her still, Gods help me; I can do nothing else. A thought surfaced in his mind: I guess that makes me some kind of Hero. As he closed the door behind him, he answered his mind’s foolishness with a skeptical, “En-henh.”
It was harder to go back. Now he could appreciate how stagnant the air really was down here. Each step still brought fear, but they were now robbed of hope and anticipation: he knew what awaited him at the bottom of the pit. So he followed the dark, sinking in the blackness, this time following his own compass of stale fear and dry death.
When at last he came to the gigantic, silent room, he stood listening for a time. He heard nothing, but took a chance anyway. “I know you’re there,” he said.
“You have returned,” said the UnderKing. “Why?”
“I need to find a way up.”
“We told you, to find your way out, you must follow the light.”
“Not out, back up. Into the mess. And with all the crap the Wizard has thrown down this hidey hole, you can’t tell me there’s not a friggin’ torch down here somewhere.”
“But this is the UnderDark,” said the UnderKing. “The Kingdom of Things Discarded that Wish to be Forgotten–”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s one hell of pitch for tourism, but if you want to me to take on this crazy Wizard at the height of his power, I gotta get up there first. For that I need light.”
In the darkness, a light appeared. It was a torch, and though it was soaked in oil and burning well, the darkness did not give up easily. It pressed in on all sides. As the torch was lifted, Boltac saw that it was Samga who held it. To his left, wearing a crown of bent and twisted metal, stood a simpler, cruder version of an Orc. The UnderKing closed his eyes and shielded them from the light with his claw. His features seemed drawn in crayon, simple and plain. A moon face, mere holes for ears, and a scribble for a mouth. His simple symmetry was interrupted by a leg bent underneath him, twisted as if it had shattered in a fall and never properly reset.
The Merchant Adventurer Page 15