by A. Giannetti
THE STABLES
Before the sun’s first light broke over the horizon, Elerian awoke, as refreshed as if he had rested for the entire night instead of just a few hours. Like a forest creature rising from its bed, he rose lithely to a sitting position, untroubled by any aches or stiffness despite having lain on the ground wrapped only in his cloak.
Several feet to his left, Ascilius still slept, wrapped tightly in his cloak which was dotted with crystal clear beads of water from the white mist that hung low over the ground. Farther down the road, the rest of the Dwarf Company also slept, but on either side of the forest track, Elerian could see motionless sentries, standing in the fog like shadows as they kept watch over the forest.
Ignoring the morning chill, which he felt only a little, Elerian took a biscuit from his pack, nibbling on it quietly and washing down the rock hard bites with a little water from his water bottle as he patiently waited for Ascilius to awaken. Around him the forest slowly came alive as songbirds began to greet the dawn with sweet, liquid voices.
Beside him, Ascilius suddenly stirred and groaned softly, like one who dreams of unpleasant things. Abruptly throwing back his cloak, he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with both hands. Fully awake at last, he regarded Elerian with dark, somber eyes.
“I cannot see what attraction the forest holds for you,” he said grumpily. “It is damp and cold and there never seems to be a comfortable place to sleep.”
Elerian smiled. “You sang a different tune in the Broken Lands. Have you forgotten the camps we had there? There were warm fires, lights in the trees, and hot food with dry, soft beds to lie in when sleep called?”
“Those camps were few and far between as I recall,” said Ascilius crossly.
“Our discomfort then, as now, was and is dictated by necessity,” observed Elerian sagely. “If these were peaceful times, things would be different.”
“Then I hope that we will both live to see such days again,” said Ascilius, but his voice did not hold any great optimism. Reaching for his water bottle, which was filled with red wine, he took a great draught. The strong drink immediately brought back a sparkle to his eyes. “We must move quickly today, Elerian, for the wagons are already on their way behind us,” he said in a determined voice. “I only hope that we can evade the other Goblin patrols which we may find in our way.”
“The Goblins are thinking of dragons at the moment not Dwarves,” said Elerian lightly. “At least for today, I think we will find the way unguarded all the way to Galenus.” With a gleam of mischief in his gray eyes, Elerian related his night’s adventures to Ascilius.
“For once your foolishness has served a purpose,” said Ascilius grudgingly when Elerian concluded his tale. “Hopefully the Goblins will think that the patrol you and I slew was eaten by the red dragon.”
“I think it more than likely,” said Elerian cheerfully as he recalled the frightened faces of the Mordi that he had terrified with his dragon illusion. The tale of their narrow escape had no doubt already spread through the Goblin ranks. “Just to be on the safe side, however, I will scout out the road ahead of us,” said Elerian rising gracefully to his feet.
“Be careful,” warned Ascilius. “I cannot be there to rescue you every time you get yourself into trouble.” The Dwarf’s tone was light, but there was concern in his eyes, for Elerian had come uncomfortably close to dying in the lupin’s jaws the night before.
“I will be there for the assault on the fortress, never fear,” Elerian assured Ascilius cheerfully. After taking up his pack and other gear, he ran silently down the road, disappearing quickly between the great trees growing on either side of it.
“I hope he stays out of trouble this time,” thought Ascilius dourly to himself as he turned away to rouse his sleeping company. “He is a thorn in my side much of the time, but I would miss him terribly if he met an untimely death.”
Unfazed by either his close brush with death the night before or Ascilius’s concern, Elerian ran down the forest road, barely feeling the ground under his feet as he concentrated all of his senses on the forest around him, trying to ferret out any hidden dangers. He paid particular attention to the branches and leaves that formed a living roof overhead, on the watch for any suspicious looking creatures, but today the canopy was empty except for the small birds which normally resided in its branches.
By early evening, Elerian’s effortless stride brought him without incident to the lip of a gorge that ran north to south. Several hundred feet below him, the green waters of the Catalus emitted a muted roar as they rushed between stony banks, running south toward the scorched and withered valley that lay between Galenus and Ennodius. Perhaps another ten miles to the west, Elerian saw the steep slopes of Celsus, the mountain that housed Galenus, rising high above the forest.
“It is not far now to the castella,” thought Elerian to himself as he followed the hidden road down the steep, tree covered eastern side of the canyon. He was not surprised to see that it ended on the stony east bank of the Catalus before a span of glass smooth green water that reached from one side of the river to the other.
“I will wait here for Ascilius,” Elerian thought to himself as he examined the sheet of water that ran smoothly past his feet. He knew that the road continued on under its deceptively placid surface, but he felt no inclination to brave the strong current and icy cold waters of the river.
“I will leave the wading to the Dwarves,” he thought to himself with a gleam of amusement in his gray eyes. “There is no sense in wetting my feet when I can cross the river in comfort on Ascilius’s rope.”
At that moment, barely two paces to Elerian’s right, a large otter emerged from the river, rivulets of clear water streaming from its brown fur and a small, silvery trout struggling between its sharp teeth. Ignoring Elerian, the otter began to consume its meal on the margin of the hidden road, nosily crunching through scales and bones.
“This fellow is unusually brave and curious,” thought Elerian, noticing that the otter was watching him out of the corners of its soft brown eyes. “Is he more than he seems, I wonder?”
Opening his third eye, Elerian beheld his own golden shade and the smaller one of the otter. Extending a portion of his shade shaped like a golden thread from his right hand, he delicately touched the end of it to the left shoulder of the otter’s shade. As if stung by that ethereal touch, the otter leaped back. Abandoning its meal, it dove effortlessly into the river, disappearing beneath the green tinted waters of the Catalus. Thoughtfully, Elerian closed his third eye and studied the placid surface of the river. At the brief moment of contact between his shade that of the otter, he had felt a brief resonance, as if he had encountered something similar to himself. He had sensed thoughts, too, that never belonged to any animal.
“The creature was a shape changer as I suspected, but he did not belong to any race that I am familiar with,” thought Elerian to himself. A sense of frustration swept through him, for he felt as if he was on the verge of some discovery that might shed light on his own past. “Anthea did say that there was a part of me that was neither Elf nor human,” he reminded himself. “Is it possible that I have some connection with the creature that I just saw?” he wondered to himself.
Maintaining his position on the road where he remained hidden behind its illusion spell, Elerian kept a close watch on the river, looking both upstream and downstream, but the otter never surfaced again. He was finally forced to abandon his scrutiny of the swift flowing water when Ascilius and his company of Dwarves appeared behind him.
“I will have my answer some day, if I have to hunt through every stream in the Middle Realm to find another of these shape changers,” Elerian assured himself as he watched Ascilius rig his rope across the river. Using the line as before to keep from being washed away, the company forded the river a second time. Under the envious eyes of the Dwarves, many of whom were wet to the waist by the cold waters of the Catalus, Elerian crossed last, running lightly, with all the gra
ce and agility of an acrobat, across the taut cord spanning the river.
“Look for me at the road’s end,” said Elerian to Ascilius as the Dwarf coiled his wet rope. Leaving the company of Dwarves in the cool depths of the gorge, he ran ahead again, traveling through miles of empty forest until the road ended abruptly before him in front of a sheer face of gray rock covered with green moss and gray lichens. A diminutive, clear rivulet trickled down the center of the cliff, splashing into a small, shallow pool at its base. The overflow from the pool, a crystal clear steam barely a foot wide, disappeared into the wood to the right of the road. The forest grew right up to the face of the cliff, the thick green roof formed by the leaves and branches of the great trees around him preventing Elerian from determining how high the vertical face of stone was or what lay above it.
“There must be a door here,” thought Elerian to himself, but even his sharp eyes could not find any hint of where it might be. Tiring of his fruitless search, he was about to sit down when a soft voice whispered in his head, “The pool to your right is suitable for aqua vitae.” Instantly, upon hearing the voice of Dymiter, Elerian looked around him, but he saw no sign of the mage’s shade nor did he hear his voice again.
“At least I know that he is still alive,” thought Elerian to himself. Because of Dymiter’s long silence, he had feared that Elven mage had diminished his limited life force to the point where he had finally faded and left this plane of existence.
Deciding to take Dymiter’s advice, Elerian emptied his water bottle, filling it again with cold, crystal clear water from the pool. After casting the difficult spell Dymiter had given him for aqua vitae, Elerian watched with his third eye as a cloak of golden light flowed from his right hand, briefly covering the leather water bottle. Removing the stopper from its neck, he saw that it now contained a clear liquid that seemed to shine with its own dim light in the dark depths of the container.
“Did Dymiter forsee some use for this potent brew or did he merely advise me out of caution?” wondered Elerian to himself as he stoppered the bottle before sitting down on the road with his back against the cold stone of the cliff to wait for Ascilius.
“This may be my last sight in this life of green, growing trees,” he thought to himself with uncharacteristic gloom, as if the gray color of the cliff behind him had seeped into his thoughts, darkening his mood. “Who knows what bloody scenes of strife the passageway behind me will lead to and whether I will survive them?”
“Either you will or you won’t,” whispered back his common sense. “It is out of your hands so think about something else.”
“Good advice,” thought Elerian to himself wryly. Turning his thoughts to Anthea instead of his uncertain future, his mind became lost in waking dreams while his body sat still and silent as the trees that surrounded him, patiently keeping watch.
The sun was sinking below the western horizon and twilight was creeping over the forest when Ascilius and his small company suddenly appeared on the road in front of Elerian. All of the Dwarves looked tired, for the more than sixty miles they had covered in the last two days wearing full battle gear had taken its toll on them.
“I have seen no sign of any Goblins of any of their spies,” said Elerian to Ascilius after springing lithely to his feet.
“There are Goblins nearby even if we cannot see them,” said Ascilius wearily to Elerian. “Behind this stone face, a steep hill rears up its stony slopes. The castella of Galenus lies inside of it and there are battlements on its summit. Only the concealment spell on the road we stand on and the thick cover of leaves overhead prevent the sentries in the fortress from spying us from the heights and sounding the alarm. We had best get inside as soon as possible.”
Walking up to the rock wall behind Elerian, Ascilius spoke a word of command. A thin line of silvery argentum immediately appeared in the cliff face in front of him, revealing a hidden entrance. Two doors closed off the opening, each one five feet wide and ten feet high. When Ascilius spoke again, they swung outward slowly on silent hinges revealing a dark passageway with rough-hewn walls and a level floor. Ascilius entered the tunnel at once, his quick stride betraying his impatience to have solid stone over his head once more. Elerian followed the Dwarf reluctantly.
“Once more I must go underground where I would rather not be,” he thought gloomily to himself. Behind him, he heard the soft tramp of booted feet as the column of Dwarves filed into the tunnel behind him. When the last one entered the passageway, the stone doors swung shut of their own accord. The muffled thud they made sounded both final and ominous to Elerian’s ears.
Ascilius now lit a single, small mage light which centered itself just above his head. It followed him down the tunnel, acting as a guide and providing illumination for the Dwarves following him. Elerian, walking on Ascilius’s right side, saw as well by its faint light as if he walked in full sunlight, but there was nothing to look at in the monotonous tunnel save the rough walls. The passageway sloped gradually downward, ending before another blank wall after about a quarter mile.
Turning to the Dwarves closest behind him, Ascilius said quietly, “We will wait here until midnight. Rest quietly while you can, for when I open the hidden doors in this wall, we will begin our assault on the castella.”
After Ascilius's words were passed down the line, the whole company immediately cast itself onto the stone floor of the tunnel to eat and rest. Elerian sat with Ascilius a little apart from the nearest Dwarves, both of them resting their backs against the blank wall which ended the passageway.
“What is your plan once we enter the stables?” asked Elerian softly.
“If the chamber is guarded, we will first have to overcome the sentries,” replied Ascilius quietly. “Not a single one must be allowed to escape, for if the castella is roused against us, our task will become almost impossible. If we succeed in taking the stables, I will see if I can open the entryway that leads into the city. If luck favors us and I succeed, we may be able to enter Galenus without any more fighting if we can get all of the wagons into the city before the Goblins are aware of us.”
“What happens if the doors are sealed as they were in Ennodius?” asked Elerian, for it seemed to him that that was the more likely possibility.
“Things become much more difficult then,” replied Ascilius grimly. “We will have to clear the entire castella of Goblins before we can signal the Dwarves inside the city to open either the stable doors or the upper gate leading from the city to the castella. If we are forced to use the upper gate, many Dwarves are certain to die, for the road that leads from the fortress to Galenus runs across an open ridge where the wagons will be exposed to the crossbows and engines of war of the Goblins.”
Listening to Ascilius, Elerian was troubled by the tentative, uncertain nature of the Dwarf’s plan, but he kept his misgivings to himself. Instead, he sought to reassure his companion, for he understood better now the worry and uncertainty that weighed down Ascilius’s spirits.
“Take heart,” Elerian said quietly. “No matter what obstacles we face after the door behind us opens, we have the courage and strength of arms to overcome them and make a good ending to this adventure.”
“We will see,” said Ascilius soberly as he wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down on the hard stone floor of the tunnel. Like the rest of the company, he was soon fast asleep, the dim mage light hovering above his head revealing his craggy face but casting his closed, deep-set eyes into shadow, lending a grim look to his features, as if in sleep his innermost worries were revealed. Left alone with his thoughts, Elerian took to the dream paths in his mind which soon took him away from the dark passageway in which he now found himself, carrying him far to the east where his heart was.
When Ascilius roused himself hours later, he looked first at Elerian on his left. His companion was sitting with his eyes open, but there was a distant look on his face as if his mind was somewhere else. Ascilius had seen that look before, and it always caused him concern.
“One day, he may sink too deeply into that state and never awaken, for the gift of the Elves can be a danger as well as a blessing,” thought Ascilius worriedly to himself. Sitting up with a muffled groan, he stretched his aching muscles.
“Feeling your age ancient one,” asked Elerian who had come instantly awake at the sound of Ascilius’s voice. He regarded the Dwarf with steady gray eyes that seemed to shine with their own light.
“I’ll not deny it,” said Ascilius ruefully. “I am too old to be sleeping on stone floors.”
“Perhaps tomorrow we will sleep in a real bed again,” said Elerian lightly.
“A thought worth fighting for,” replied Ascilius with a smile. He took a deep pull from his wine skin and then rose to his feet, appearing much refreshed.
“Are you ready for what comes?” he asked Elerian, the doubts gone from his face and an eager light burning in his dark eyes.
Elerian rose in a single lithe move. “I am more than ready to pay my respects to the Goblins,” he replied cheerfully. There was a light rasp of steel on leather as he drew Acris out of its sheath. The lines of argentum inlaid in the blade gleamed in the dim rays of Ascilius's mage light.
“As much as I like a good fight, I hope that we will find the stables empty,” said Ascilius, grasping Fulmen in his right hand and settling his shield on his left arm. The argentum inlaid in the head and handle of his hammer gleamed softly as did the hammer and crown worked into the front of the shield. Ascilius nudged the Dwarves closest to him with his right foot to rouse them, and they, in turn, woke their comrades until all of the company was awake and standing with their weapons in hand. Their knapsacks and other gear were left stacked against a wall of the tunnel, for if they lost the coming battle, they would no longer have need of them.